The Florida legislature has made it possible for you to honor Jesus by choosing a license plate with His image on it. This landmark legislation was snuck onto another measure the other day by a bipartisan couple of lawmakers. The wing nuts will be pleased. From the St. Petersburg Times:

If you want Jesus on your license plate, the Florida Senate is looking out for you.

Because why worry about a budget impasse or property insurance when you can spend more than an hour talking about Jesus, the devil and license plates?

Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.

Siplin didn’t mince words when asked what his “Trinity” plate looks like, saying, “It has a picture of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

OK, I’m not going to riff about the seperation of church and state. I’m not going to riff about how the legislature is irresponsible to even discuss this when there are a whole lot of other problems in Florida that need to be dealt with. no, I think this is completely appropriate legislation, as it fits the Florida image as America’s tackiest state. OK, Jesus might not be all that pleased to know he’s been relagated to the exhaust end of the car. Heck, wasn’t he on dashboards just a few years ago? Well, he’s honored with a license plate now, and license plates in Florida are nothing if not the great leveler. One can honor almost anything in Florida by choosing a special license plate. Jesus is but one amongst a plethora of honorees, including manatees, turtles and the Space Shuttle.

It is all about poor judgement. A couple of years ago Brian Tierney, a PR man clearly over his head running Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., the Inquirer’s parent, led a consortium that took control of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. Tierney worked hard to turn the corporation behind, including renegotiating union contracts and enlivening the advertising base of both papers. But those of us in the know were ready for Brian Tierney, long a Republican operative, to put his right wing stamp on the papers, and he did so by hiring Rick Santorum, failed former Senator from Pennsylvania. That’s just a bad business decision.

Hiring Santorum to write a column that is never anything more than a meandering screed about how Democrats are flirting with the anti-Christ, attacking Santorum’s blessed traditional values, playing right into the hands of “Islamofascists, etc., is simply a poor choice. Santorum is not a good writer and his ideas are extremist and his use of logic is ill, and not a good “ill,” either. Santorum is basically of the Republican school of “if they disagree with me, then they are the enemy,” a school that is about as anti-American as it gets. But the Phildelphia Inquirer puts him on its editorial pages every two weeks, without editing or fact-checking, once every two weeks.

Friday in Clout we found out what the Philadelphia Inquirer pays Rick Santorum:

Former U. S. Sen. Rick Santorum is collecting $1,750 a shot for the columns that appear every other week in the Inquirer, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The checks are sent to a post office box in Great Falls, Va. – close to a Starbucks, we figure.

OK, it’s only $3,500 a month, but I could probably find 1,000 people who would write a better column than that of Rick Santorum who would cost less and inform the readers more. This is simply a bad business decision. They hired a poor writer with substandard thinking skills who is also a failed extremist right wing politician to write a column solely so the Inquirer had a voice fromt he right wing on its pages. The Bush Administration showed incompetence for eight years, and I suppose Brian Tierney, the CEO of Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., is just continuing the tradition.

When it comes to it, I say no bailout for any newspaper, not after this kind of demonstration of gross incompetence.

With the Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in Iowa, it is of to the County Recorders in all 99 Iowa counties to hand out those marriage licenses to both hetero and gay and lesbian couples. But there are rumblings here and there that some of the County Recorders are unhappy with the prospect of carrying out their sworn duty. There are even some Iowa Republican Legislators who are DENYING they ever had anything to do with encouraging that discomfort felt by some of the Country Recorders. Here’s a bit of the story from the Des Moines Register:

E-mails obtained by The Des Moines Register, meanwhile, show the struggle recorders are going through.

Warren County Recorder Polly Glascock said in an e-mail to colleagues that a woman from the Statehouse called her to ask how she’d handle the gay-marriage issue.

Glascock answered that she would be required to process the applications. “She inquired as to why I thought I had to do that – it’s not a law, it’s an opinion,” Glascock wrote.

The caller was the clerk of Republican Rep. Kent Sorenson.

Sorenson, a Warren County resident who is opposed to marriage for same-sex couples, said Thursday that he did not ask his assistant to make the call.

“I’m not calling for anarchy,” he said. “I want to make it clear that I’m not calling, pressuring her not to do her job. She has to do her job. That’s up to her, the oath she took and what she feels she has to do.”

In an e-mail to colleagues, Johnson County Recorder Kim Painter wrote: “The tentacles of people who want to turn this into something it should not be – a political stunt on the 27th – are reaching out, trying to locate a recorder willing to perpetrate an act of civil disobedience in a county where the sheriff won’t arrest, and the attorney won’t prosecute.”

In her e-mail, she said that she hopes none of her colleagues “go rogue.”

No, a Republican would never encourage a civil official to refuse to uphold the law! No, never! Kent Sorenson is clearly on the record as denying anything happened, and they’ll never prove it, either! Although Republican State Senator Merlin Bartz sure seems to be suggesting that County Recorders refrrain from carrying out their sworn duties. Sure, he sues artful language in his denials. . . Republican all the way, I suppose. Here it is:

Republican Sen. Merlin Bartz of Grafton said recorders are at the forefront of the debate. “They could pull out the code book and say, –I can’t do it,’” he said.

Asked if he is encouraging recorders to commit civil disobedience, Bartz answered: “I have to decide whether or not it’s civil disobedience. If you look at the code book, it hasn’t changed.”

Sioux County Recorder Anita Van Bruggen said her personal belief is that marriage is only between a man and a woman. She said she asked her county attorney whether she must follow the ruling. “He said if you do not, you face removal,” Van Bruggen said.

Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, said the Iowa Supreme Court set “a different set of moral standards” that conflicts with Iowans’ constitutional right to freedom of religion.

“If you believe this is wrong based on your theology,” he said, “how can you then deny your faith?”

Hey, there’s the crux of it at the end there, special rights for Christians who don’t believe in gay marriage. That’s the view State Senator David Johnson is pushing. They have no special right to work for the government and at the same time disobey the state of Iowa’s laws. No, that’s not how it works in America. Nobody has the right to a state job and also the right to disobey jobs. We voted that idea out with Dick Cheney.

If these Republican state Senators in Iowa have their way, there will be 99 jobs available in Iowa soon. Progressive job candidates should get their resumes ready.

Pat Robertson is off his meds again. In protest of the Homeland security report the other day that has all the right wing whack jobs in a dither, Robertson got on his 700 Club yesterday and told his listeners to jam the Homeland Security hotline. From Crooks and Liars:

Robertson: If that had been a Republican, there would be outrage and screams for Janet Napolitano to resign immediately. That – Terry, you’re somebody who favors life, wants to keep little babies alive. Somebody who has been a veteran and served our country as a proud member of the military. Somebody who is opposed to the left-wing policies of the administration and who wants to express his or her views as they are entitled to under our Constitution, these people are now being stigmatized as terrorists! This is an outrage!

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to do something about it. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what would. And I want you to call a number. This is the Department of Homeland Security.

[Reads number]

… And just say you protest. This is an outrage!

And Janet Napolitano has got a lot of explaining to do. And that lame excuse she was giving – –Oh, I’m sorry they characterized all veterans that way’ – I mean, come off it!

Meeuwsen: The report was the report. I mean, it is astonishing that it was allowed to leave under that –

Robertson: It – it shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left-winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.

But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous!

. . . (and later in the show)

Now, that in my opinion, is an outrage. And I think if you don’t speak out against it, it’s going to be allowed to stand. So I want to give you that number again. Ring those phones up there in Washington, let them know people care.

[Reads number]

That you protest this – ah, stigmatism of law-abiding Americans as being right-wing threats to America.

[Repeats number]

And if you jam up their lines, good for you!

I guess sending teabags wasn’t enough for Robertson, he wants to really make a dent in our ability to defend ourselves. Hey, did you notice him questioning the sexuality of Homeland Security workers? That’s code for blaming gay people for everything. He’s done that once or twice in the past, of course, so that’s not really news.

Someone should investigate him.

The Iowa State Senator in question is Matt McCoy, the only openly gay State Senator in Iowa. Here’s the story from the Quad City Times:

Lt. Mark Logsdon of the Iowa State Patrol confirmed Monday that Sen. Matt McCoy, an openly gay lawmaker and Des Moines Democrat, has reported being the target of a death threat.

McCoy was seen emerging from a meeting with law enforcement officials at the Capitol late Monday afternoon.

“That’s all I can say, I’ve been threatened,” McCoy said when asked what the meeting was about, but confirming it was a death threat.

Logsdon said the threat came to McCoy’s Des Moines office at the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, and House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, also have been the target of “troublesome phone calls,” Logsdon said.

“At the very least, it’s certainly a harassment of a public official,” Logsdon said.

Opponents of the same-sex marriage ruling rallied at the Capitol again Monday, promising to turn up the heat on state officials to get them to start the process of amending Iowa’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Is anyone surprised at this turn of events? The heat of the rhetoric has certainly heated up, especially with videos like that of the National Organization for Marriage, which distorts facts all over the place in presenting its dire warnings. OK, maybe that wasn’t the real video. Neither is this video. Sorry, I think NOM has taken the real stupid video off the air after everyone got hold of the audition tapes of the actors hired to portray real people. But you get the idea. These people are afraid, so they are making others afraid. It doesn’t take much to figure out that threats would result.

I’m hoping none of these folks are big fans of Glenn Beck. Just sayin’.

OK, this one shouldn’t be surprising. We know, for instance, that the whack jobs on the social conservative extremist end of the GOP spectrum are a bit on the dim side and don’t play all that well on the internet. We,, it was last Wednesday that the National Organization for Marriage launched their 2M4M campaign, not understanding that “M4M” is a standard abbreviation in personalsfor “man looking for man.” In other words, their cute slogan reads like a solicitation for group gay sex. Hey, even Rachel Maddow has made fun of it. Today we find that the National Organization for Marriage was so stupid as to not buy up the domain names for their new initiative.

www.2m4m.org is now a place of inclusion that stands for civil rights. You may go there for stories from people who support gay marriage, and you may go for links to very good videos explaining the distortions spewed forth by the right wing whack jobs. The site is expanding fast from its apparent launch yesterday. And I hope 2m4m.org takes a leading role in this fight for gay marriage, helping all Americans secure their religious freedom from those on the extremist right wing who wish to keep religious freedom only for themselves. Therefore my plug.

Mel Gibson, who has been accused of both anti-semitism and

Oh, the Vatican has not yet weighed in on all of the foreign policy decisions of Barack Obama, but it appears tthe Holy See is doing a whole lot to determine exactly who is appointed Ambassador to the Vatican. Caroline Kennedy, for instance, has been mentioned as a potential nominee. Reports from the Daily Telegraph, foreignpolicy.com, the right wing Washington Times and the extremist conservative Human Events say the Vatican has rejected that possibility, as well as a couple others. Ray Flynn, former Ambassador to the Vatican, says the problem is that Caroline Kennedy is pro-choice. From the Daily Telegraph:

The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama’s support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.

Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values. I hope the President doesn’t make that mistake,” he told the Boston Herald. “She said she was pro-choice. I don’t assume she’s going to change that, which is problematic.”

Let me propose something refreshing. After all, we had a completely fair election in this country, as oposed to the Vatican. We are a country that has no state religion, either. My proposal is that when the Vatican holds a completely open and free election, then they can have a say as to the Ambassadors we send to the Vatican. We’ll get the United Nations to monitor the elections so everyone in the world can see that they’re fair. Until then, the Vatican may comment all it wishes about Us policies it disagrees with, but determining our policies, for whatever reason, is going too far. Rejecting an Ambassador, or three, as is the case here, is much too far.

Would Caroline Kennedy make a good Ambassador? I’ve no idea. But Ray Flynn’s notion that there should be a litmus test is simply absurd. Does he also think there should be a litmus test for the most cherished values other countries hold? No, Ray, let’s not go there. It doesn’t appear you’re logically equipped to do so.

Tony Perkins, homophobic head of Family Research Council, the extremist right wing organization against just about everything they can’t accept with their narrow minds, has reaction today to the vote to legalize gay marriage in Vermont, and also the vote in Washington DC today to recognize same sex marriages across the country. I’ll go at this point by point from PRNewsWire:

“Same-sex –marriage’ is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well. Time and again, we see when citizens have the opportunity to vote at the ballot box, they consistently opt to support traditional marriage,” said Perkins.

No, Tony, this is democracy. It is decent people coming together and throwing your garbvage in your face as they show their respect for others. In this case, they are showing the respect for long-term caring relationships that you howl against. I’m sure you’re feeling scared that democracy works, Tony. And you’re going to see more int he future. Go get a divorce now.

“The vote today by the D.C. City Council was a direct affront to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The radical Left wants to destroy the traditional union of one man and one woman across the country and they will not rest until they do so.”

I have no doubts, Tony, that thousands of your constiuents are cowering in fear at the thought of their marriages crumbling because gay and lesbian citizens, good people, are able now to get married. As for your whiney little conspiracy theory, please grow a pair, or get a dog.

And finally:

“The marriage amendment movement has been many times more successful than the same-sex –marriage’ movement,” Perkins said. “FRC will continue to stand with those states which are seeking to pass marriage protection amendments and other measures in order to protect our most fundamental and essential social institution.”

Tony, FRC is going to be completely demoralized when so many of their marriages fall apart. I recommend you all move to another country. Escape while you can. RUN AWAY! And don’t bother to say goodbye. Nobody is going to listen to you when you do, and nobody is going to cry. Except maybe Glenn Beck.

Heck, and he ain’t going to market anytime soon. I’m thinking Juan Alberto Ovalle is going to jail. The Colorado Independent has the story, but I’ll quote from the Denver Post:

A man who narrates Christian CDs has been arrested on suspicion of using the Internet to arrange sex with a teenage girl.

Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, thought he was corresponding with a girl under the age of 15, but instead it was undercover officers with the Jefferson County district attorney’s office, according to court documents.

Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs, according to Internet websites that sell the products.

“We’re shocked,” said Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman with Focus.

Schneeberger said the group “is beginning its own process of looking into the allegations” and that it “will work with authorities” if asked.

It should be noted that there may be other internet predators out there pretending to read the Bible and live upstanding lives. Heck, there might even be internet predators in Colorado Springs, home of Focus on the Family. We just don’t know. But we should be encourage the work of the Colorado Child Sex Offender Internet Investigations Unit.

Oh, if you want a copy of Mr. Ovalle reading the Bible, you can get a copy here from biblebible.com. Always happy to give good shopping tips to readers.