May you and yours have a blessed Easter.

Mention Irish rock megastars U2 to people, and the reactions you get will span the gamut.

To kids today, a generation after they first came out, it’s probably all about Bono – the peripatetic, bombastic lead singer who’s parlayed a magnificent singing voice and a global pop following into a second career as a global charity leader (and, it needs to be said, arch-capitalist).

To someone who came of age in the nineties?  I’d imagine U2 was to them what the Rolling Stones were to me growing up in the late seventies and early eighties; dissipated celebrities noodling with making sense of their megastardom, albeit with less drugs and model-banging, but with a lot more artistic pretension ladled on top.

To hipsters of all eras?  Once they left Dublin, they were trayf.

And U2 has been all of that to me, too (except maybe the hipster bit).

But mostly, U2 is the band that tied together two big strands in my own life.  And the main catalyst for this, their breakthrough album War, was released thirty years ago today.

And the strands it tied together for me, and with style, were faith and rock and roll.

(more…)

Stay classy.

That is all.

To: His Holiness, Pope Benedict
From: Mitch Berg, Protestant
Re: None Of Your Business

Your Holiness,

With all respect due to your eminence in your church on spiritual issues, and to your predecessor’s stances in defense of freedom, I must confess that when I see you and your various ecclesiastical bureaucrats saying things like this…:

In an editorial aired yesterday on Vatican Radio, Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See, called “initiatives announced by the United States government in view of limiting and controlling the diffusion and use of arms … a step in the right direction.

 

“Forty-seven religious leaders of various confessions and religions have issued a call to American politicians to limit firearms, which ‘are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths,’” Lombardi stated in his address. “I’m with them.”

…and especially twaddle like this (I’ll add emphasis)…:

While acknowledging “that arms, throughout the world, are also instruments for legitimate defense,” and even admitting “No one can be under the illusion that limiting their number and use would be enough to impede horrendous massacres in the future,” Lombardi nonetheless asserted “it is necessary to repeat tirelessly our calls for disarmament, to oppose the production, trade, and smuggling of arms of all types.

“If results are achieved, such as international conventions … all the better!” he proclaimed.

…it fills me with protestant pride.

Your line, it seems, is “sorry about all the dead innocents who won’t  be able to defend themselves, but let’s hear it for those great guardians of the sanctity of human life, the U F****ng N”.

Sorry, Fr. Lombardi.  We fought a war in this country at least in part to be free of the rule of monarchs, whether secular or ecclesiastical.  And when I read your church’s official word on self-defense (again, emphasis added)…:

“According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, individuals have a right and a duty to protect their own lives when in danger, and someone who ‘defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow,’” CNS concedes, but offers a significant caveat. “According to the catechism, the right to use firearms to ‘repel aggressors’ or render them harmless is specifically sanctioned for ‘those who legitimately hold authority’ and have been given the duty of protecting the community.”

…it puts me in mind of the fact that functional representative democracy came much, much later to the Catholic than the Protestant world for a good reason.

In other words, Fr. Lombardi, your assistance is not needed here.  Thanks.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade while attending an ecclesiastical conference in Clermont, France. His exact speech is disputed but history shows his words were sufficient to inspire all of Christendom to wage war upon the Muslims then occupying Jerusalem.

September 13, 2001, a different crusader preached the same message in fewer words: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity . . . This is war.”

It’s been a thousand years and we still haven’t solved the problem.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

One of those faiths went through a Renaissance, a Reformation, and a half a millennium of civil evolution. The other largely did not.

Chuck Woolery on Twitter last night:

Biden, my strong catholic belief has driven me to support gay marriage, abortion forced birth control on the church and blatant lying. Amen

— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) October 12, 2012

I do have to confess; not since Ben Vereen’s prime, or maybe the heyday of Riverdance, have I seen tap-dancing like pro-“choice”, pro-gay-marriage Catholics rationalizing their politics with their faith (or at least the cafeteria version of it).

Earlier this week, I noted that the WaPo released a Presidential preference poll that…:

• Bucks all current polling and shows President Obama firmly in the dirver’s seat, which…
• releases no crosstabs or backup data for mere consumers to use to judge the poll’s context, parameters or validity.

As I predicted, only faster, the Strib is already on board.  Joe Doakes – making a rare two-fer today – wrote to ask about h this column by Sue Hogan at the Strib:

“Catholics” is a pretty broad label. Abortion advocate John Kerry claims to be Catholic and so do openly-gay parishioners at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis as well as traditionalists who attend St. Agnes in St. Paul.

Who did they poll?

How was the question worded?

Silly Doakes.  Raw data is for gatekeepers.

Let’s take a look at Hogan’s piece:

A majority of U.S. Catholics support President Obama’s decision to require religious institutions to include birth control in health insurance plans, according to two new polls.

A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that support among Catholics (58 percent) is higher than that of the American public overall (55 percent).

And who exactly is the “Public Religion Research Institute?  They describe themselves as “non-partisan”, which pretty much inevitably means “left-leaning”.  You be the judge.  Their piece on the poll doesn’t go into a lot more detail than Hogan’s puff piece.

Likewise, a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood found that Obama’s position enjoys support from 56 percent of American voters. Of the Catholics polled, 53 percent agreed with the president.

Meanwhile, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to decry the president’s decision, saying that it violates religious freedom.

And as we’ve noted in the past, PPP voter polls trend left of reality.

Look – I’ve expressed my skepticism that the Catholic Street really cares that much about the issue, or that the “middle management” would choose Vatican doctrine over progressivism.  It could be that the polls are accurate.  Since they seem to confirm my hunch, that’s a point in their favor [1]

But who did they poll?  What questions did they ask?

And, more importantlly, why aren’t they teliling us who they polled and what they asked?

Remember – distrust but validate.  Then, usually, distrust some more.

(more…)

This morning, I wrote to agree with Chad the Elder that the Catholic grass roots didn’t look like they cared that much about religious freedom – in part because a Catholic (indeed, Christian) laity was pretty much desensitized. like the fabled “frog in boiling water”, to the effects of losing that freedom, and that their leadership hadn’t done much to change that in a few decades.

On the other hand?  Maybe there’s some hope:

Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees.

 

“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.

 

Already Archbishop Timothy Dolan has spoken out against the law and priests around the country have mobilized, reading letters from the pulpit. Donohue said Catholic officials will stop at nothing to put a stop to it.

Hopefully it’s not too little too late.

Last week, when I wrote about the stirrings of backlash on the part of some Catholic activists and Bishops over the Obamacare requirement that Catholic hospitals provide contraception and abortions, I expressed my doubt that mainstream Catholics really cared that much.

I got a few Catholics sounding off in my comment section that sounded a little more bellicose than I expected.

Chad the Elder over at Fraters – who is, unlike me, Catholic – is a lot less sanguine:

Many Catholics seem all too willing to erect their own wall between church and state and like to pretend that their politics has nothing to do with the Catholic Church and vice versa. The problem is that when the government breaks through that barrier and injects itself into the affairs of the Church by attempting to force it to accept policies that violate core tenants of its beliefs, the illusion of this happy little coexistence is shattered.

Does it?

I’m not trying to be snotty, there – it’s a genuine question.

If people have little tangible investment in the practical results of religious freedom – if it’s more an intellectual and rhetorical parlor game than an immediate, vital part of their life – then will it “shatter” so much as “melt like stale jello?”

Well, at least it would be if the Church were more consistent and forceful in explaining exactly what is taking place and why it matters to American Catholics.

There’s that, too.  Leaving aside that the laity themselves, to my observation, seem to think it’s an issue well above their pay grade, I have a strong hunch that a good chunk of the Catholic hierarchy is lukewarm on upsetting the progressive applecart.

For whatever reason, Elder’s observations seem to be in tune with mine:

My experience may not be typical, but so far little word of this current controversy has surfaced in our parish on any given Sunday. A few months ago, there was an insert in the bulletin that touched on it. Since then, nothing. No homilies, no presentations, no mention in the weekly bulletin. The only thing related to politics that has merited attention has been on the marriage front, with updates on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment appearing in the last few bulletins. But nothing on the Obamacare rules which are a direct threat to the freedom of the Catholic Church to exercise its religious beliefs.

In order for there to be action, there needs to be a call for it first. I fear that too many Catholic leaders are still reluctant to sound it.

And while I’m assured by many Catholic friends that some of the post-John-Paul-2 clergy is more conservative, I have serious questions as to whether that’s filtered down to an awful lot of lay Catholics and their immediate leadership.  Chad’s observations don’t do much to dissuade me.

Of course, it’s similar in my own Presbyterian church (where, to be fair, the problem is opposite; an extremely liberal elected temporal leadership representing congregations that are frequently much more conservative.

Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media reports that the Catholic Church – or parts of it, anyway – are up in arms (as it were) over the Obama administration’s mandates:

My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

If true, that’s great news – but I gotta say I’m not nearly as sanguine.

I’m not Catholic – and in my observation, most Catholics outside the clergy and intelligentsia are as diligently observant of the Vatican’s rules as most Jews are of Kosher laws; birth control and hamburger on Friday are as common among Catholics as the odd bit of ham and Saturday shopping trips are among mainstream Jews.

And I know – exceptions exist, including among readers of this blog.  But in my observation, there are vast swathes of the Catholic Church, in major cities, that either turns a blind eye to the inconvenient parts of the Vatican’s rules, or is willing to rationalize and ignore them in pursuit of a “progressive” political agenda – which accounts for a huge number of Catholic liberals I personally know.

Oh, the Bishops will make a ruckus:

The issue is what the Catholic Bishops have called a “literally unconscionable” edict by the Obama Administration demanding that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans.

At a time when the media are full of reports about who is ahead and behind in the polls, and who will win the next Republican presidential primary, this incredible uprising in the Catholic Church is something that could not only overshadow the political campaign season, but also may have a major impact on the ultimate outcome—if Republicans know how to handle it. This matter goes beyond partisan politics to the growing perception of an unconstitutional Obama Administration assault on religious freedom. To hear the Catholic Bishops and Priests describe it, our constitutional republic and our freedoms hang in the balance.

But if you go to St. Joan of Arc (to pick a far-left parish of my acquaintance), it’s all an un-issue, ignored for the “greater good”; many, perhaps the majority of Catholic parishes I know of in the Twin CIties would trade, at the clerical level as well as among a fair chunk of the laity, the Nicene Creed for single-payer health care and Cap and Trade.

So am I wrong?  I’d especially like to hear from Catholics, here.  Does anyone at your parish – from your priests on down – care about Obamacare?  Has that “caring” been manifested in the form of “telling the congregation that it’s wrong, and that it’s going to screw with the what the Catholic Church supposedly holds dear?”

I’d be interested in hearing.

Tim Tebow gettingi knocked out of the playoffs is not “proof God doesn’t exist”.

It doesn’t matter how loudly you repeat it, or how much spittle flies out your mouth when you do.

In addition, it is wrong to say “Religion is losing” the game, as Christianity has no actual theological stance on the outcome of a football game, and you’d have to be a demented narcissistic douchebladder to suggest it (and, indeed, you are).

That is all.

Tim Tebow beats the Steelers,credits God, moves on:

“When I saw him scoring, first of all, I just thought, `Thank you, Lord,”‘ Tebow said. “Then, I was running pretty fast, chasing him — Like I can catch up to D.T! Then I just jumped into the stands, first time I’ve done that. That was fun. Then, got on a knee and thanked the Lord again and tried to celebrate with my teammates and the fans.”

Behind Tebow’s 316 yards passing, the Broncos (9-8) are heading to New England for a second-round game against the top-seeded Patriots on Saturday night.

And let the caterwauling begin.

Yesterday, I asked a question about the various “bullying” laws the left is proposing.

I asked – would it be considered bullying if I were to steal a young lesbian’s “Lady Gaga” CD – music that she found important in helping her discover her own identity – and to threaten to destroy it in an elaborate “ceremony” designed entirely to mock stereotypes of lesbianism.

I took a poll – and most agreed with me that that action would be bullying.

Of course, I’d never do such a thing.

But the real reason for the question was to ask liberals; if my hypothetical example was “bullying”, what would this be?

Because to me, the only difference between PZ Myers’ stunt from few years back – giggling about descrating a host from a Catholic service – and the sort of bullying that’s got lefties all exercised is the lack of a gay victim.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes…:

Somali immigrants not doing the jobs Americans won’t do, shutting down the assembly line in the refrigerator factory for prayer during work hours.

What we have here is a failure to assimilate.

From the PiPress piece:

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday that more than a dozen employees of the appliance manufacturer Electrolux in St. Cloud are again being denied proper prayer breaks during the Ramadan fast.

The employees are participating in the latest claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to the Associated Press…This year, the company reduced the length of the meal break. Muslim employees say they no longer have enough time to break their fast and complete prayers after sunset.

Discrimination?  Well…:

Electrolux responded Monday by saying that, in advance of Ramadan this year, the company proposed three possible revised meal and break schedules and put in place the schedule preferred by the majority of the employees.

“Electrolux seeks to accommodate the religious needs of all of its employees,” the company said in a statement.

I’m seeing a real opportunity here for a Muslim parts subcontractor…

And seriously – I am amazed that refrigerators are still built in the US.

One of the five second sound bites about Michele Bachmann is her take on her church’s (occasional) commandment that wives be “submissive” to their husbands.

Most non-Christians, and/or more liberal Christians (and I don’t belong to a denomination that preaches it, by the way) for that matter either misunderstand the idea, or know nothing but the distorted idea of “submission” fed to them by people like, well, Bachmann’s critics.

One of the areas where it’s irrelevant is, well, the presidency.  Michael Prell has an answer he’d suggest Bachmann give when she’s asked about the idea of “submission”.

Here’s the conclusion (read the whole thing here):

“Finally, as president, I will not be submissive to union bosses, to billionaire puppetmasters like George Soros, or to militant anti-American leftists who demonize our soldiers and preach ‘God damn America.’ And, unlike President Obama, I will not be submissive to indicted or convicted special interest groups like ACORN, or to Weatherman terrorists, or those who want to see Israel wiped from the map.”

“Instead, as President, I will be submissive to the American People, and to the Constitution, because as President I will honor my oath to serve both the Constitution and the People—unlike the current president of the United States and his minions who demonize patriotic and Constitution-loving Americans as ‘terrorists.’”

Submission is not the issue. It is who, and what, you submit to that matters.

That’s the real issue, and comparison, here; every tin-pot tyrant and banana-republic strongman is Barack Obama’s dominatrix.

Gallup released a poll earlier this week showing that Americans’ cold feet about voting for a Mormon for President has been holding steady for a long, long time:

Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967.

Here’s the part that I did and didn’t expect:

The new Gallup poll, conducted June 9-12, finds nearly 20% of Republicans and independents saying they would not support a Mormon for president. That is slightly lower than the 27% of Democrats saying the same.

So now we see which party is really clogged with bigotry and hatred.

Nah.  I’m a kidder.  I kid.  Maybe it’s just that the libs’ most prominent Mormon is Harry Reid.

It makes sense now, doesn’t it?

A brief yuk.

There.  Done laughing.

Let me take a moment to pour out my red-hot loathing on the “world is ending” crowd – whether it be a bunch of bobbleheaded Baptists or the “History” Channel’s lineup of disaster pr0n.  If ou believe in what’s in the Bible, there is that whole “nobody knows the place and time, not even My Son” bit to deal with.   So all you really did is give America’s bumper crop of smug, tittering jihadi-atheists something to giggle about.

Thanks for nothing, peckerwood.

(Photo via Learned Foot)

Further proof that my “Logic For Leftybloggers” series – especially the piece two weeks ago on the Tu Quoque Ad Hominem – is long, looong, lo-o-o-o-ong overdue comes in a piece yesterday at the Minnesota Birkeydependent where Andy Birkey, taking a rare break from covering Bradlee Dean, writes:

In testimony before Minnesota Senate and House committees last week, religious leaders and representatives from religious right organizations cited single-parent families and a skyrocketing divorce rate as reasons to protect marriage from being redefined to include same-sex couples by “activist judges” and “handfuls of legislators.” And GOP members rebuffed efforts by DFLers to include a ban on divorces in a proposed ban on gay marriage. However, a number of the legislators who say they want to protect marriage appear to have been divorced.

Right.  But in fairness, a number of DFLers aren’t really gay,aren’t on welfare, and haven’t had abortions either.

Note to DFLers and the writers writer at the MinnBirk: the fact that someone making an argument has not always been utterly consistent with their side of the argument is not evidence against the argument.

In a sense, we should be happy that this is the best George Soros can get for his money.

On the other hand, to 43% of our population, this is what passes for an argument.

In my “Why The Marriage Amendment Is A Bad Idea” post, I note that using the full weight and power of government to define marriage is noxious, if you believe in limited government.

Of course, the DFL side fully believes in using the full weight and power of government for everything;  they’d vacate the Rights of Man to stop bullying (of gay kids, anyway); they’d repeal the Bill of Rights to ensure automatic social-service budget increases; if they could sic the SEALs, the CIA and Chuck Norris on opponents of gay marriage, they would.

Of course, the “power of government” they prefer is the judiciary.  And Minnesota DFLers are second to nobody in their use of the imperial judiciary to force compliance with their policy goals.

So even if you think that government has no place telling people who or how to marry – and as I’ve written over and over, there’s a respectable libertarian case to be made against a Marriage Amendment – there are two very good reasons to refer this issue to the voters for inclusion (or rejection) in the State Constitution.

It’s Just Like Shakespeare Said, All Them Peckerheads Oughtta Be Dead (And Before Andy Birkey Or Eva Young Has  A Cow, I’m Referring To Lawyers): Actually, not just this issue; indeed, it could be any socially divisive issue that’s been enacted as policy by weasel lawyers and party-fed judges, from Roe V. Wade to John Finley’s judicial sniping at the Minnesota Personal Protection Act to the definition of marriage.

Any issue that drives these issue to a referendum that can withstand trivial, pressure-group driven legal challenges is a good thing.  And not just for the “winner” of the case.  Because…

Special Interests Need To Get Ready For Prime Time, Or Shut Their Vacuous Glitter-Flinging Pieholes:  As I’ve written in the past, I’m not unsympathetic with gay marriage advocates; I’d see a reason to meet them halfway (and, while I’m at it, never participate in the civil version of marriage ever again on basic principle, sticking with purely church-based ceremonies and eschewing the state license in the unlikely event I ever marry again).  But in turn I have found the arguments of gay-marriage proponents to be extremely illogical, unconvincing and frequently childish.

I was downright depressed to watch the people on TV from the Gay Rights rally a few weeks ago. A woman – apparently a lesbian who seeks to marry, well, another lesbian, and who has gotten air time on several TV news segments on the subject – when asked why she supported Gay Marriage, replied “we deserve it”.    Not once, but several times, on different newscasts.

And I deserve a foot massage from Scarlett Johannson.  But that feeling of entitlement is not a reason.   Still, it’s no worse than the arguments of most Gay Marriage proponents; they run the gamut from “opposition is bigotry” to “opposition is big bigotry”.

But chalk it up to “the wisdom of crowds”; gay marriage proponents know they don’t have to come up with a good argument, because heretofore “convincing” people has been a moot point; since the issue was going to be decided by a patrician imperial judge anyway, “convincing people” was about as relevant as “Mitch deciding what music to play when he gets Marisa Tomei back to his place”.

But now?  With, potentially a constitutional amendment in place, weasel-proofing the issue?  Gay Marriage proponents will have get their argument out of the realm of entitlement browbeating, and actually convince people.

And that would make democracy better.

Which is one of the reasons the left hates the idea so much.  Which will bring us to the next bit, down below.

Representative John Kriesel is getting plaudits from the crowd that normally wouldn’t spit on a Republican if he were on fire, because he opposes the GOP’s Marriage Amendment proposal:

John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove, is the first Republican in the Minnesota Legislature to announce his opposition to a proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage, according to the Star Tribune. The bill has cleared a committee each in the Minnesota House and Senate, and Kriesel said he’s working hard to convince his Republican colleagues that the amendment is a bad idea.

“I look at it as: We are all equal,” Kriesel told the Star Tribune. “It is not right. I can’t do it. I’m very upset about this vote. I don’t like it. I think it sends the wrong message. You live once in your life and I’ve learned that the hard way. You never know when it is going to be your time. People fight to find happiness….You find someone you love and now other people are saying because I don’t consider that normal, you can’t do it?”

Two things to set straight first:

One: I have nothing but respect for Rep. Kriesel.  He’s earned it, over and over.  The fact that he got elected to the House was one of the most satisfying victories of a very satisfying election season last year.

Second: As a libertarian-conservative, I’m perfectly fine with letting people live their lives their own way; I support legalizing many drugs, and support civil unions as a civil contract.

But I – along with a sharp majority of Minnesotans – believe Marriage is a fundamentally religious institution, above and beyond its status as a civil contract.  Every one of the world’s religions, barring the odd splinter (shaddap about Episcopals), agrees.

And when we say “marriage is, to us, a religious institution”, the best argument the gay marriage proponents have come up with so far is “no it’s not”.

Which is where I have to push back.  “Marriage” is really two different things, depending on who you ask;

• it’s a set of contractually-defined rights (from inheritance to power of attorney to standing in custody trials during divorce) and obligations (most noticable when things don’t go well)
• It’s an ordination for one’s Creator that you and another person are ordained to be together.

Of course, not everyone believes in the same Creator, or even that there is one; notwithstanding this, we are all created (by whatever you think created us) equal before the law of the land.

Most of the gay marriage activists I’ve heard are after the former; the latter seems to draw fewer (although there are plenty of people who want to induce major Christian denominations to recognize gay unions).

So there’s the dilemma for the principled libertarian Christian; in a secular sense, I can agree with Rep. Kriesel, that in re forbidding gays from forming civil contracts…

“It’s just wrong,” Kriesel said. “There is not anything that can move me on this.”

…while on the other hand being equally unmoved to renounce what I (and most Minnesotans) believe about the sacred institution of marriage.

In a sense, I think the Amendment would be a good thing for the proponents of gay marriage, inasmuch as it’d force them to state a case for radically changing the institution that sways the people.  The gay movement’s current strategy is to take everything to court (or to radically “progressive” legislatures), and chant that everyone that opposes them is a “hateful” “bigot”.  They desperately need to do better, if they want to convince anyone but a judge.

Especially someone like me – who doesn’t believe marriage is a “right” (or even necessarily a great idea), even for straight couples, but that equal protection before the law absolutely always is.

It’ll be interesting to see what issue it’ll be that demotes Kriesel back to “just another Republican” to the Minnesota Independent.  There’s always something.

Andy Post at MDE  points us to a tweet yesterday from a DFL staffer for St. Paul DFL Senator Dick Cohen:

Dumb remark by the overly-entitled child of boundless political privilege?  In and of itself, sure.  And, as such, more or less forgettable.

Post, however, wonders if the DFLers will show the same outrage as they did when a GOP Senator’s assistant sent an imprudent – dumb, really – email over the winter.  Kim Kelley, a legislative assistant to Senator Scott Newman, told the Minnesota Nurse’s Association that the Senator would not meet with their rep, since the Nurse’s Association had donated to Newman’s opponent’s campaign.

He linked to “Sally Jo Sorenson” of Bluestem Prairie.  Sorenson, always on the lookout for affronts to DFL integrity, amended a post she wrote last January in which she wrote about the flap in January:

Here’s the intact email, since the Kelley email no longer works:

From: kim.kelley@senate.mn [mailto:kim.kelley@senate.mn]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 2:00 PM
To: Eileen Gavin
Subject: [Eileen Gavin] Meeting

Hi Eileen-

Unfortunately, Senator Newman will not see any organizations that donated to/supported his opponent Hal Kimball. After some careful checking, I discovered that the MNA had donated to Kimball’s campaign. Your association will be unable to schedule an appointment with Senator Newman.

Kim Kelley

Legislative Assistant

Sorenson rejects the idea that there’s any moral equivalence between a bobbleheaded LA’s caustic, sneering contempt for Christians, and another bobblehead bringing a hint of retributive spite into getting access to a Senator.

And guess what – she’s right!

They are two separate, equally noxious issues.

Kelley let slip the worst-kept secret in politics; donations buy you access, and pissing off politicians loses it.  The Minnesota Nurses Association is no more welcome with Scott Newman than the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is with, say, Tom Bakk.  Oh, it’s good politics to meet with, and especially to be seen meeting with, ones’ opponents (and Sorensen does note that Newman did actually meet with the MNA after all), but let’s not kid ourselves; there’s a reason special interests pony up for campaigns.  (And the more politicians try to “reform” it, rather than illuminate it, the worse it gets).

Don’t kid yourself; if a young evangelical Republican tweeted a dumb jape about Eid, or Passover, or…well, any non-Christian observance, really, the long knives would certainly come out.  But Kaplan?  Well, she’s what you get from young “progressives” who’ve come up through an academic and political system that teaches smug, giggly, entitled intolerance.  And stop the presses – a  Jewish (presumably – I mean, it’s not a stretch to think Kaplan is at least ethnically Jewish, but given my family name, I’m not insensitive to the possibility it’s not) 20-something hipster is bagging on Christians.

It’s pretty piddly, really.  But so is most petty intolerance.