Richard Dawkins has just made public an email he received from Intelligent Design exponent William Dembski in 2003:

In 1981, Tim LaHaye turned his attention to violence in society and in US culture:

Newt Gingrich is launching a new and ambitious committee aimed at re-making American society in the neoconservative image. But just below the surface lurks an assault on the doctrine of separation of church and state that has been dear to his heart for decades.

Here's the Interfaith Alliance press release on this Sunday's upcoming show with Mickey Weinstein, on the scandal surrounding the discovery of an evangelical recruiting video filmed inside the Pentagon.  

Based on their latest season's greeting email, the conservative Manhattan Institute appears to now be a part of the nefarious war against Christmas ~!

-----Original Message-----
From: Manhattan Institute [mailto:tmi@manhattan-institute.org]
Subject: We wish you a Joyous Holiday Season

We wish you a
Joyous Holiday Season
and a
Happy New Year

from the Manhattan Institute
Communications Department

Lindsay Young Craig, Executive Director, Communications
Clarice Z. Smith, Press Officer
William G. Zeiser, Press Officer
Samara M. Klar, Press Officer

communications@manhattan-institute.org * 212-599-7000
www.manhattan-institute.org

The Manhattan Institute is a think tank whose mission is
to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster
greater economic choice and individual responsibility.

The Left Behind video game (LBVG) was the lead item on Jay Seculow's radio show yesterday, in which he decried the campaign to get Walmart to stop carrying LBVG. Typical Sekulow comments were that the game was only rated T13 appropriate for teens, and where were the campaigners when the Grand Theft games were being brought out? The kids are going to play shoot-em-up games, so why not a Biblically based one? Also, that the game is based on Revelation, and that the so-called Christians objecting to the game don't believe in this chapter and in much of the rest of the Bible. Also, that people objecting to the game weren't Christian, and were trying to persecute Christianity. And so on...

I didn't hear much of the call-in comments.
For the archived program, see:
http://www.aclj.org/OnTheRadio/Archive.aspx
12/14/06 show

Dobson is loose again - on this occasion in Time magazine , using the Cheney pregnancy as a springboard to spread more misinformation about gay families (ht Aravosis ). In this latest assault, rather than relying on his usual "in-house" fraudulent research, Dobson cherry-picked and distorted the work of reputable professionals: psychologist Carol Gilligan, an NYU professor formerly at Harvard, and Kyle Pruett, a Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at Yale. Gilligan is well known for her research on moral development. Looks like Dobson picked on the wrong people this time.

James Dobson continued his trip around the corridors of Republican punditry this week with a two part interview with Michael Medved, a radio talk show host and regular outspoken critic of American popular culture.  Is a dinner date with Rush Limbaugh far behind?

Two stories in The New York Times, "Pastor Quits After Revealing Same-Sex Relations, and "Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance," (the former story blogged earlier on No God Zone), may be of interest to readers of TTA.

Terry Fox, a Wichita icon for the rabid right, announced in today's edition of the Wichita Eagle that he has an anonymous donor in the wings ready to pony up one million in matching funds for a church to built on the property of a new amusement park being built north of Wichita--Wild West World.  He believes that this will give his new church access to the unsuspecting visitors to the amusement park--and I believe he is correct in this assessment.  His flock of over a purported 900 people already meets at the Johnny Western Theater on the park's grounds.  Jesusland seems to be being constructed here in the heartland--what would Jesus ride?  The roller coaster or the merry-go-round?  I will check the scriptures.....more to come.

The title of today's front page article in the New York Times, Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by Taxes, gives  you a taste of what we're in for. It's a thorough, comprehensive look at Bush's faith-based programs and the reaction of the courts.

In this very long article one sentence jumped out at me.

The basic architecture of these initiatives has so far withstood constitutional challenge, although the Supreme Court agreed on Dec. 1 to consider a case on whether taxpayers have legal standing to bring such challenges against the Bush administration's program.

Am I understanding this correctly? Is the Supreme Court considering outlawing challenges to the faith-based programs? Why else would they take such a case?

The London Times reports that Left Behind: Eternal Forces is available in British stores in time for Christmas.