By now you’ve all heard about the heinous Ugandan bill that would lead to the imprisonment of homosexuals and the execution of any with AIDS, and you’ve probably also heard that it was promoted by American right-wingers. There’s a curious phenomenon going on right now: people are trying to stir up some principled opposition to the bill, and the religious right is dragging their heels. It’s strange because once they’ve been cornered, wrestled to the ground, and forced to face a camera, they all quickly repudiate the bill — unless you’re Fred Phelps, it’s pretty much impossible to support it, it is so barbaric — but you can also tell they aren’t happy about having to make a public denial. Weasely ol’ Rick Warren has finally spoken out against it, but as archy analyzes Warren’s statement, it’s not very impressive:

By my count, about twenty percent of his message is a direct condemnation or call to opposition to the bill. About thirty percent of the message is self-promotion or promotion of his groups. The other half of the message is his greeting to the pastors and a Christmas message. The latter part should have been sent as a separate message an waters down the most important part of his message, but that’s quibble on my part.

This stuff isn’t hard. When someone announces that they want a legalized hunting season on gay people, you reject it, plainly, clearly, and loudly. It’s revealing when it takes you this much time to decide it’s a bad idea.

Who will be the last man to die in Obama’s war? And what will he have accomplished?

This is going to go on for years and years, isn’t it? Sarah Palin is going to keep on saying stupid things to keep herself in the news.

No one person has all the right answers. It takes a united nation, and it does take godly counsel, and it takes prayer and answers to prayer – and a collective humble heart of a nation seeking God’s hand of protection and his blessings of prosperity.

I think if we can get back to that, our country will be a safer, more prosperous and healthier nation.

No, it won’t. God does not provide, OK?

Yes, this one diagram pretty much covers all the bases.

Michael Moore wrote a friendly letter to Obama before his announcement to expand the war in Afghanistan. It’s worth reading.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

It’s Wednesday morning. I don’t see his corporate backers fleeing him just yet, but the people who voted for him are turning away in disappointment.

I had my reservations before the election, but I voted for Obama as the better choice (and I have not changed my opinion on that at all). I had hopes that he’d get in office and stand up for some principles…but no such luck. There are several reasons for my dissatisfaction.

• He has failed to support gay civil rights.

• The Stupak amendment to the health care bill seems to be sailing through unopposed.

• His cozy relationship with Wall Street.

• And now, his expansion of the war in Afghanistan, and his support for a corrupt and failed state.

Looking at his record (which isn’t just his problem: the Democratic Party has failed to promote a Democratic agenda), I see the real problem. Despite all the screamers on the right accusing him of being a socialist, what actually happened here is that we elected another Republican to office. A moderate Republican, to be sure, but not someone who has the kinds of priorities I want in my president.

We’re going to be marking time until the 2012 campaign starts up. I’m hoping their will be some viable, liberal alternative to our crappy incumbent, because I really don’t want to have to choose between Republican Lite and Republican Lunatic in the next election.

Clemmons was the Jesus-loving lunatic who murdered four police officers in Tacoma, and was shot and killed by the police. He was also the recipient of a pardon from Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, egotistical god-walloping incompetent.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m all for mercy, I reject the abuse of our penal system as a vehicle for vengeance, and I oppose the death penalty without reservation. A governor’s clemency can be a good thing, as when it should be used to correct miscarriages of justice (isn’t it odd, though, how the most Christian of governors avoid using it for that purpose?). But there are also cases where justice and mercy are best served by incarceration or mental care, not by turning killers and dangerous psychos loose on the streets.

Clemmons was a monster. He murdered people and he raped children. He was insane. He believed he was Jesus Christ. Yet Mike Huckabee pardoned him. Why? Because Huckabee did not care about the evidence. What he thought was sufficient was a profession of piety and the testimonials of religious men. Clemmons played him.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee’s tendency to believe such pious testimonials. “I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak,” he explained in his clemency application in 2000. “I’m still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family’s name … I have never done anything good for God, but I’ve prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I’m humbly appealing to you for a brand new start.”

Mercy is not a wicked thing, and there are good people in prison who could turn their lives around if given an opportunity. There are also evil, damaged people in prison who would use freedom as an opportunity to do harm. What is necessary is the rational analysis of evidence to determine who deserves freedom in those cases, and Huckabee does not and cannot do that; his religiosity short-circuits his capacity for critical evaluation, and his ego makes the pardon a tool for feeding his own delusions of christ-hood. Tristero has an excellent summary.

First of all, it is Huckabee’s delusion that he is Jesus Christ, not genuine compassion, that spins the Clemmons case as a miscarriage of justice against a hapless juvenile. It is clear from the record that Clemmons was then, and continued to be, an extremely troubled person with a propensity for extreme violence. Huckabee ignored this, focusing – Christ-like – on an opportunity to show mercy towards a young sinner who showed what Huckabee misapprehended as signs of redemption. The issue is Huckabee’s lack of judgment.

If you argue that it is unfair to sentence a juvenile to life in prison for an armed robbery committed when he was 16, I won’t disagree with you. But that is not the issue here. The issue is Huckabee’s spectacularly bad judgment and his failure to take responsibilty for his behavior. The justice system, for all its incredible faults, has numerous mechanisms, including but not limited to commuting a sentence, for dealing with mitigating circumstances, like the age of an offender, signs of redemption, and an unfairly long sentence. Flawed they surely are, imperfect and inadequate no doubt, but they exist. Huckabee, imitating Christ, chose to deal with the Clemmons case in a very particular way, showing not mercy, but simply awful judgment that set into motion further tragedy.

The incredibly cruel, incredibly unjust way that juvenile offenders are treated in the United States has nothing to do with the fact that Huckabee behaved the way he did. It simply gave him an excuse to exercise his egomania, his delusions of grandeur, and his incompetence. As a result, innocent people died.

Huckabee wants to be our president. I wouldn’t trust him to be my dishwasher.

Hang on here—the same wingnuts who are up in arms about the University of Minnesota proposing to screen out bigots from teaching are proposing an ideological litmus test for their own party?

Ten members of the Republican National Committee are proposing a resolution demanding candidates embrace at least eight of 10 conservative principles if they hope to receive financial support and an official endorsement from the RNC. The “Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates,” is designed to force candidates to prove that they support “conservative principles” while opposing “Obama’s socialist agenda,” according to The New York Times’ Caucus blog. The proposal highlights the ongoing tug-of-war for the ideological soul of the Republican party, and has been met with skepticism both inside and outside of the party.

While I’m sympathetic to the idea that a political party should have some principles, the ones they are pushing seem ideal for marginalizing Republicans even further as the party of kooks. Case in point: anyone who talks about “Obama’s socialist agenda” cannot be taken seriously. Obama is a moderate-to-conservative centrist! Does no one know anything of Eugene Debs? There was a socialist American.