Bachmann Signs Pledge with Questionable Slavery Reference | Mother Jones

Only in the Tea Party ... Mother Jones magazine reports on the "Family" pledge GOP presidential candidates are being asked to sign and its interesting re-interpretation of slavery as having been positive because it kept families together. Who knew? 

Which Religions Are Acceptable?

Watching excerpts from the GOP Presidential debate, and the to-do about whether Mormon candidates Romney and Huntsman are "acceptable", made me wonder. 

Just which religions are acceptable in American politics? A possible framework: 

Catholic Professors Call GOP Policies "Anti-Life" | NYT

Nothing I can add.

Religious Newspaper Edits Hillary Clinton out of Situation Room Photo

Think discrimination against women and religious-based censorship occurs only in the backwards Middle East?

If you heard that newspaper edited Hillary Clinton out of a White House photo because images of women are provcactive, where would you guess that paper was? Iran? Palestine? Egypt? 

Try Brooklyn. 

A Brooklyn newspaper edited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason, director of counterterrorism, out of the iconic photo of the situation room during the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. 

Sweden's Easter Witches

From a Time.com gallery of things you don't know about Easter:

45% of Tea Party-GOP Think Obama a Muslim Born in Kenya

Whether you loath President Obama or are merely sorely disappointed in him, any rational person finds the idea that Obama is some kind of neo-Manchurian candidate, born in Kenya, then snuck into the U.S. to fake citizenship so he could run for President decades later is, well, far to the right of UFOs abducted my dog on the logic meter. 

Yet, 45% of Republicans believe Obama was not born in this country, according to a CBS-NYT poll released yesterday-- despite having his stamped, signed, numbered, official "certificate of live birth" published on the Web and repeatedly shown on TV.

A year ago, a Time Magazine poll shows at 46% of Republicans Believe Obama is muslim. In fairness, a Pew poll put that number at "only" 31%. 

Atheists Know More About Religion than Worshipers | Pew Research

As Tea Party'er Christine O'Donnell might say, "But what about the Wiccan's?" 

Excerpt from NYT's coverage: "Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

Pilgrim Non Grata in Mecca - Dowd on NYT

Today's Maureen Dowd on how the Muslim religion is closed to outsiders:

"You don’t have to be a Catholic to go to the Vatican. You don’t have to be Jewish to go to the Western Wall (although if you’re a woman, you’re squeezed into a slice of it at the side). You don’t have to be Buddhist to hear the Dalai Lama speak — and have your picture snapped with him afterward.

Who's Really Killing Financial Reform? - by Reich

Great post from Robert Reich: "Some Democrats are quietly grumbling that all the tough talk emanating from the White House in recent weeks — the President calling the Street’s denizens “fat cats” and threatening them with limits on their size and the risks they can take, even waiving a watered-down version of Glass-Steagall in their faces — is making it harder to collect money from the Street this mid-term election year. And the Street is quietly threatening that it may well give Republicans more, if the saber-rattling doesn’t stop.