Sunday School 2/25/24

Your Sunday School for this week starts with Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) who talked with Martha Raddatz in the This Week classroom. 

Their conversation started with the activist Alabama court ruling that frozen embryos are people, too. That ruling has caused some IVF facilities in the state to suspend services as they try to figure out what the risks are, and whether they can continue offering services. 

We've seen this before, of course, when abortion clinics closed in many states as providers simply aren't willing to take the chance of facing criminal charges for treating their patients.

Duckworth wasn't surprised by the ruling - it's more than that. She's been afraid of this - and talking about it - since 2018.

I said if Neil Gorsuch gets put on the Supreme Court, if Amy Coney Barrett gets put on the Supreme Court, we're going to have an erosion of Roe v. Wade, and even back in 2018, I said, IVF is next. They said they're coming for IVF. So, unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised. I’m devastated for those families that are trying to start families, but I was not at all surprised.

Raddatz noted the decision doesn't overtly ban IVF, but Duckworth, speaking from experience, said that by ruling a fertilized egg is a child, it puts the treatment in jeopardy. Both of her daughters were conceived via IVF; three of the five fertilized eggs were nonviable. With her consent, her doctor destroyed them, and under the Alabama ruling, 

that would be considered potentially manslaughter or murder. Basically, Republicans have put the rights of a fertilized egg over the rights of the woman, and that is not something that I think the American people agree with.

Duckworth has introduced a bill "multiple times and in multiple congresses", most recently last month, that would protect access to IVF nationwide. Raddatz noted that the Republican Senate campaign team "is instructing their candidates to, quote, clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF," and wondered if there'd be enough support now to pass the bill.

It's been crickets since the Alabama ruling. And let's make it clear. Republicans will say whatever they need to say to try to cover themselves on this, but they have been clear and Donald Trump has been the guy leading this effort to eliminate women's reproductive rights and reproductive choice...not a single Republican has reached out to me on the bill... let's see if they vote for it when we bring it to the floor.

She said the Dems will run on this. And speaking of running, Raddatz brought up Trump's 20-point win in the South Carolina primary. Duckworth, who's a co-chair of the Biden/Harris campaign, said it doesn't really change things.

I think what we talk about, again, is that Donald Trump has been very clear about what he's doing. He's not running for president for the American people. He's not running for president to take care of working families. He's running for president for himself. That's all he cares about every single day. President Biden, in contrast, gets up every day and works hard to protect the American people and works hard to make sure he delivers for working families across this country. The choice is very clear and we just need to continue to hammer home that message.

She agreed with Raddatz that exit polls do give them pause (veterans voting for Trump, for example, after his ridiculously insulting "where's her husband?" stuff), but then, Duckworth said, that's not new. And she reiterated that Trump has

shown us over time who he is, and he's a guy who cares about no one but himself. You know, I have often thought when I go into work with my colleagues, and I assumed they loved America as much as I love America, that we just look at the problem from different perspectives, but we can come to a compromise. Donald Trump cares about one thing, Donald Trump. 

I think most of them think that - or, maybe they used to think that, pre-MAGA. 

Down the hall in the Face the Nation classroom, Margaret Brennan talked with Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI); their first topic was this Tuesday's primary and how the state's large Arab/Muslim population might impact the voting.

Brennan said there's a "protest effort underway to vote uncommitted" to let President Biden know they're unhappy about what's happening in Gaza, and she asked if this could damage Biden. Dingell explained there are actually two protests.

One is an 'abandon Biden' campaign, but the other, the major campaign that has made over 100,000 calls – we'll see how many people vote on Tuesday – (is) trying to make sure the president hears them.

Their concerns? Family in Gaza; family members they have lost (20 or more, in some families); the lack of food, medicine, and water (the salt water they're drinking is almost gone); and more.

I don't sleep at night... The sanitary conditions on the ground, there's – I mean, one woman, the aunt of somebody, goes to the bathroom once a day. There – a month ago, there was one toilet for every 220 people, one shower for every 15,000 people. It's a nightmare. And they're scared for their families and they're worried.

A cease-fire is needed, and "when we get a cease-fire...then we sit down... and talk." Until then it's personal, not political. Brennan said she understood that, but at the same time, she noted that Benjamin Netanyahu said "that he is going into Southern Gaza whether President Biden likes it or not," and she wondered if Dingell thinks we're "doing enough to get Americans or families of Americans out of harm's way."

Dingell noted that we don't know what's happening in the various negotiations that are going on, with involvement from the CIA, the National Security Council, and others, including the president.

People need to understand that – what is going on in Rafah right now. The population of Gaza is approximately 2.2 million people; 1.5 million of them have been forced into Rafah... you know, we can argue about the numbers. Nobody denies that 12,000 children have already died... Doctors Without Borders have talked about 1,000 children who have lost limbs, the number of children that don't have families. It would be outrageous for further innocent civilians to be killed. I know that the White House is working very closely with a number of other countries to make it clear that we cannot continue this loss of life.

She's been assured by the White House that "the president is very engaged in delivering very direct messages," and that "in private conversations...he's working towards a temporary cease-fire."

Brennan asked if it was "a mistake" for Biden to not meet with anyone from the Arab/Muslim community. Dingell believes "he is going to need to do that" and that "this community is pretty angry right now." She said she gets protested, even though she's one of the folks who has been "the most empathetic and has been working this issue very hard." Biden did send people out, and

they developed relationships or connected with people that from both sides I've heard that they've got ongoing conversations. And that's got to continue.

And Dingell explained that Michigan's a purple state, and "It's been a purple state as long as I've been doing presidential elections." The Israel-Gaza war is a "very important issue here" but there'll be other ones too. Dingell fought to have Michigan be an early primary state for things like this.

I want to be talking about this issue now, in February -because it will matter in November - and not on October 15th, which has happened too many times in previously presidential elections, that issues that matter in November aren't talked about early.

Touching on the Alabama decision, Brennan asked "Is the concern about reproductive health care access enough to cancel out these negative headwinds?" Dingell noted the state's "unprecedented turnout two years ago" when abortion was on the ballot, and said they've got work to do again this year.

We've got to get young people, we've got to get women, and we've got to go into union halls. And it's great that we've got the union presidents and the union organizations endorsing, but we've got to go in those union halls and draw the comparison, remind people about what Donald Trump did and didn't do, he talked, didn't deliver, and about what Joe Biden has delivered on.

Dingell sees this issue as similarly motivating for voters. especially women who might have thought they were safe and their rights were protected

and now we've seen what the Alabama court has done in terms of IVF... I think a lot of women are going to be very emotional about their women's health decisions should be made between them, their doctor, their faith, and their family, and the federal government's got no business in it. Or state government.

I can't argue with her on that.

See you around campus.

Sunday School Extra Credit 5/3/20

In our Sunday School post this week, we heard from five governors In this Extra Credit post, we'll give the medical folks their turn.

First up? Dr. Deborah Birx, who talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Now Birx has been a regular on the shows, replacing Dr. Fauci as the face of Trump's medical and household disinfectant task force, so we'll move here stuff pretty quickly. (As an aside, I miss Dr. Fauci.)

• She thinks the gating criteria and the phased reopening guidelines are a "pretty firm policy" even though no state has met them and many are reopening anyway. And she said that states have been asked to make all of their data public, including where they are with the gating criteria. She pointed to Florida, a state that has had issues around reporting COVID-19 data, as a example of a state doing that right.
• Protesting without masks is "devastatingly worrisome" to her personally, and people need to protect each other while voicing discontent. We'll have to see if that happens; it seems unlikely based on what we've seen so far.
• On paper, at least, it's possible there'll be a vaccine by January of 2021, by moving forward with multiple candidates and compressing the phases without sacrificing safety. But, "it's whether we can execute, and execute around the globe."  

Next up we have Dr. Tom Inglesby talking with Chuck Todd on MTP. Inglesby's from the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He expressed some concern about states moving forward, while recognizing that they're not all the same from a COVID-19 standpoint. He focused on areas being able to "rapidly isolate and trace contacts" and diagnose everyone who has symptoms of the virus as being the 'least risky" places to begin reopening. He said it's going to be two or three weeks before we'll know the impact of the reopening, due to the incubation period of the virus.

He said that "it's like a patchwork across the country" in terms of access to and "the operations around" testing, in contrast to what the White House has maintained. He noted in some places the percentage of people testing positive is very low, while in others it's very high, and said "that's worrisome." And more diagnostic testing is important because we're not capturing the mildly or moderately sick folks now, so we "can't break their chains of transmission."

Finally, on whether he's worried about a "bad fall outcome" if we don't see advancements on treatment or a vaccine, Inglesby is worried even before we get to fall. 

Nothing has changed in the underlying dynamics of this virus. If we stop social distancing all together tomorrow, we would recreate the conditions that existed in the country in February and March. So what we need to do is continue, to our best possible effort, all the individual efforts we're making around social distancing...the extent to which we're able to do that over the next couple of months will dictate how we do as states and as a country.

Because, as he reminded us, in the fall we'll still have COVID and we'll have the flu, at the same time, and together they'll impact hospitalizations, and

...I don't think people should think that there will be a lull. That just because the summer's coming we're going to have a lull before the fall. It'd be wonderful if that happens. But I don't think we should at all assume that at this point given the nature of this virus. 

Dr. Ingelsby was not the only expert sitting down with Chuck; he also talked with Dr. Scott Harris from the Alabama Department of Public Health and Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, who's with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Harris said that they reopened in Alabama in a very gradual way, not a full 'phase 1' thing like was in the WH guidelines, given how things were going there. He also said that testing is "really unevenly distributed" with folks in rural areas facing more barriers, such as transportation or access to a health care provider.

In Michigan, Dr. Khaldun said, they have seen burdens on hospitals, capacity not being where it needs to be and testing also falling a little short. He's "cautiously optimistic" but they "need to be very careful." They're looking at regional data on a daily basis, tracking outbreaks, and also paying attention to hospital capacity and what not - basically, every region of the state is different.

Chuck asked them if they were feeling pressure to move things along and speed things up. While Khaldun said no, Harris said the pressure is "significant," noting that lots of folks in his state don't have an option to make a living now, and they need to try and "balance the health of the economy with the health of average Alabamians." He agreed that, with Georgia being more aggressive with reopening, they have to be careful and he plans to watch what happens there closely. And, he said,

...we certainly will consider dialing things back if we see an increase in cases... I think that's the approach - that probably all states would want to take.

And finally, Chuck had Sir John Bell, from Oxford University to talk about a vaccine that's being tested there that shows some promise - and is ahead of some of the other vaccine projects. Referring to a colleague saying there was an 80% chance their vaccine would be "at least somewhat successful, in the next year," Bell was a little bit more circumspect. He said that was high, but the likelihood of success goes up every day.

They're looking to start some human trials, so they need to be able to test where there are outbreaks. Bell said there's no shortage of disease in the UK, and they've already given the vaccine to around 1,000 people, but they want to ramp up quickly.

We've consolidated a phase one and two programs because we are pretty confident that the vector itself is safe because it's been used in about 5,000 people already up to now. So that's allowed us to really accelerate the phase one program, and we hope that there would be enough disease that we would get evidence that the vaccine has efficacy by the beginning of June.

Chuck wondered if there was any chance their drug could be used as a therapeutic if it doesn't work as a vaccine, or how helpful the therapeutics like remdesivir are in terms of developing a vaccine.
Bell said remdesivir works completely differently than what they're doing, so there's probably no connection between them, but "both could be helpful steps" to get the virus under control.

On whether everyone's going too fast, and if safety protocols could be overlooked and what's being done to prevent that, Bell said that the efficacy of the vaccine, to generate "strong antibody responses" is good, but "the real question is whether the safety profile's going to be fine." And that's what the clinical studies focus on. They did all the preclinical work, he said, including "mouse, ferret, primate" tests which it sounds like some others might not have done.

And now, we're being very careful in the clinic to try and monitor exactly what's happening. But, you know, that doesn't mean there won't be safety signals, because there may well be. And we'll be on the alert to see if we can see them.

He said that there'll be data on the primate tests this week, referring to it as "an important milestone." After that, they'll look to see whether the vaccine worked to "largely eliminate" the disease in test group compared to a placebo group. 

...we'll probably get a signal based on current levels of the disease. We'll probably get a signal in early June. We're ready to move trials overseas if the disease peters out in the U.K. So we've got sites already in play in other bits of the world where it's active. So we're pretty sure we'll get a signal by June about whether this works or not.

And whether this will be like the annual flu vaccine, or just used to protect against this particular coronavirus, Bell said

... I suspect we may need to have relatively regular vaccinations against coronaviruses going into the future. That... of course remains to be seen, but that's my bet at the moment, is that this is likely to be a seasonal coronavirus vaccine.

 So, there you have it, from a host of experts:

• reopening is going to happen (hopefully carefully and with respect the relevant regional data), whether we're ready for it or not;
• we're not going to see a national policy on who can do what when, all we have are the guidelines we've already been given;
• there's a chance we'll see a vaccine sooner than later, although we don't know what kind it is; and
• we must continue to practice social distancing for the foreseeable future. 

You know the drill - wash your hands, cover your face, keep your distance - and I'll see you around the virtual campus.

TGIF 9/6/19

Time for our weekly look at the good week/bad week ledger.

Let's start with Debra Messing, who had a bad week, if you ask me. Aside from her retweeting a racist post, something she clearly should have known better than to do, there was the whole kerfuffle about political donors.

Messing suggested (with others piling on in agreement) that the list of donors to the president's upcoming Hollywood fundraiser should be made public. But here's the thing: when she called for a list of Trump's donors, she didn't simultaneously release a list of the political contributions that she's made, nor did she demand that Democratic donors are similarly publicized. Shame on her - let's be all about transparency and equality and publish all of them. Or conversely.

Moving on to the great state of Alabama, rarely have so many been talking about a state - people who have about as much intention of visiting Alabama as, well, as Dorian did. I'd guess that more folks can now find Alabama on a map than at any other time in recent memory, maybe no.

The president is making a bad week worse by doubling down, having his Cabinet members double down, and literally making an ass of himself. He's acting like the proverbial four-year-old who picks up his toys and goes home when he doesn't get his way.  On the plus side, though, his Sharpie-doctored map has spawned a whole lot of creativity in the Twitterverse, with loads of drawings of all kinds of Trump-related stuff being hilariously marked up. Search the #SharpiePresident hash tag for some fun. FYI, there's some NSFW content there, so be careful.

We also learned which projects the Pentagon was going to ignore, instead misappropriating the money for Trump's Mexican-funded border wall, leading all of us to try once again to understand exactly how Mexico is paying for the darn thing. We're paying for it, of course - the military, and FEMA, so far, are having a bad week as money is pulled to help make sure that Trump gets 500 miles of wall built by the 2020 election. Because a political promise is more important than our three branches of government, dontcha know. Mexico is having a good week, I think.

James Comey had a mixed week. On the one hand, he's not being charged with any crimes, but on the other, he violated FBI policies in a couple of ways, we were told, including sharing his memos with a friend who shared them with the press. Rabid Trump fans are demanding he be jailed for life or longer, maybe jailed for life AND stoned in the public square and stuff, as if any company would to that to an employee. Heck, in some circles, he'd be considered a protected whistle blower.

Boris Johnson had a bad week, suffering embarrassing losses in his first couple of votes as the UK's Prime Minister. Worse than that, though, the 'British Donald Trump' lost the confidence of his little brother Jo, who resigned as a member of parliament and as a minister in his brother's government. In a tweet, he pointed to an "unresolvable tension" between loyalty to the family and the national interest.  Which leads me to declare that Ivanka Trump also had a bad week. Now that she knows it can be done, she can stop being complicit in her father's nonsense, and the longer it takes for her to do it, the worse her weeks become.

And finally, on a sadder note, the number of people suffering from serious lung illnesses stemming, it seems, from their vaping habits continues to grow, as does the number of deaths, with five reported. Some are calling for Ned Sharpless, the acting head of the FDA, to do something or resign.

I'm not sure there's anything he can do - or should do - to solve this problem, other than offer thoughts and prayers. You know, like we do with mass shootings. Good for the goose, and all.

Wondering on Wednesday (v180)

Happy first Wednesday of September.

Let's start with Alabama, Dorian, and the president. Here's my wondering: If Alabama was a blue state, would Trump have put it inside the cone of uncertainty at any point? Would he have defended that move, if he made it, even as the National Weather Service was tweeting disagreement in order to calm fears that had been raised for no reason?  And who the heck drew the Sharpie cone over Alabama in the first place?

There was a lot of consternation on the left that the president supposedly cancelled his visit to Poland so that he could stay home and monitor Dorian directly, when in fact he spent a couple of days at his golf course in Sterling, VA. "Shame on him for golfing during a potential crisis," was the message - as if President Obama didn't play golf back in '16 when Louisiana was flooded. I wonder why there was so much outrage? Dorian was not threatening the US at the time - Alabama had nothing to fear while the president was assaulting the golf course.

Besides, he was monitoring the storm. Take a look at this article from the New York Times.

Over the long weekend, President Trump monitored Hurricane Dorian from a golf cart at his club in Virginia, calling for regular updates from an aide trailing him around the course. By 8 p.m. Monday, as Dorian churned toward Florida and Mr. Trump’s boarded-up Mar-a-Lago resort, the president had golfed twice and since Saturday morning pelted the American public with 122 tweets.

By all means, slam him for making money again from his presidency, but I think we can all back off from the criticism of golfing during a crisis. I also wonder who or what he would have been tweeting about had he not had Dorian to keep him occupied.

Speaking of making money from his presidency, how about that visit by Pence and Mother (and his actual mother and his sister) to Ireland? Pence needed an hour-long motorcade, another hour on Air Force Two, and then another short trip by car to get to his meeting with the Irish President.

The lengthy commute was necessary because of Mr. Pence's choice of hotel: Rather than spending Monday night in Dublin, the vice president stayed 181 miles away by car on the other side of Ireland - at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg. The person who suggested he stay there was the hotel's owner himself, President Trump.

 "I don't think it was a request, like a command," Marc Short, Mr. Pence's chief of staff, told reporters travelling with the vice president. "I think it was a suggestion."

The Times notes that this just the way things are done in the Trump Administration.

In total, nearly $20 million has been spent at the Trump family hotels since 2015 by various mostly Republican political groups, including Mr. Trump’s own political committees, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics. 

Nice work if you can get it, right? I wonder how anyone can pretend that he's not making money off his presidency?

And finally tonight, let's wonder how many more Republicans will not be running for re-election next year. A short time ago, another one - Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, declared he's done.

I've said all along I'd know when the right time came and I've come to the conclusion that it has. There is nobody running against me. Nobody can say they've pushed me out. I'm doing this on my own terms. 

Sensenbrenner, 76 years old, has served for 42 years. And he's the second one to announce today; earlier, Rep. Bill Flores said he's not running again, becoming the fifth Texan to bail. 

Now, I wonder how we can get Republican Senators to make the same decision...

TGIF 5/11/19

Friday again, already? Let's dive in to our good week/bad week review.

On the bad week side of the ledger, let's took at Rand Paul, the irony-blind junior senator from Kentucky, who's been known to have a battle or two with the Senate leadership, including the other senator from Kentucky, what's his name, the guy who's married to Trump's Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao? Oh, Mitch McConnell, that's the guy.

The other day, Paul tweeted that his colleague, North Carolina's Richard Burr, must not have gotten the memo that the case is closed on the Mueller investigation per an edict from Mitch McConnell.  Does Paul wish that his colleagues would have sent him a reminder about what McConnell thinks is right? I suspect not, but you never know.

Burr, you see, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to come chat with the Committee. Lots of people are confident that Trump Jr. lied during his testimony to Congress, but you know how things go -- you don't question anything that a Trump does if you value your political future.

And while the Senate Majority Leader had not responded to requests for comment, that's not a problem because if you can't get the Majority Leader himself, you get the next best thing - no, not the Transportation Secretary, you get one of his donors. I kid you not.

But a top McConnell donor, who is also close with the Trump White House, told Breitbart News that McConnell must intervene to end Burr's decision to go rogue. 

"What Burr's doing isn't just a slap in the face to the President and his family, it's a slap in the face to Americans across the country," the top McConnell donor said. "It's incumbent that Leader McConnell steps up to the plate and strips Senator Burr's Chairmanship of the IntelCommittee. If he refuses to do that, then he shoulders just as much blame for this travesty of justice as the Senator from North Carolina. 

To which I say, as an American across the country, "hit me with your best shot" and "thank you sir, may I have another?" And I'll also add that, as McConnell is the least popular senator according to his constituents (34% positive/50% negative), he darn well better listen to whoever this top donor is if he wants to get re-elected, by golly.

Need the Address for A Special Place in Hell?

I last wrote about "a special place in hell" about a year and a half ago, when some prominent feminists let me know that as a woman I was obligated to help another woman - Hillary Clinton - get elected, otherwise I'd end up in that special place.

At that time, I identified some of the people I thought deserved such a place.

People who harm children. People who kill animals, like the two most heinous recent cases in my neck of the woods one involving a horse, another a family's dog. Pedophile priests. The folks who put Bruce Springsteen and Beethoven on Muzak. The people who 'gummied' the world. Those who prey on senior citizens. The people who make up drug names. Whoever it was who decided that sagging pants and side boob are fashion statements.

Ivanka Trump apparently agrees that people who harm children, particularly child predators, belong in that special place. In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, the president's special advisor said this of the controversy swirling around Alabama Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore:

There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation, and I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts.

Her comment is laudable and remarkable, particularly given it is in sharp contrast to her father's statements, including a recent bout of indecision on whether he would actually campaign with Moore.

I'll be letting you know next week. But I can tell you, you don't need somebody who's soft on crime, like Jones.

Well, the president let us know today - or, he had his mouthpiece let us know - his plans in that regard.

Q: Thanks, Sarah. On the Senate race in Alabama. Does president Trump plan to campaign for Roy Moore?

A. The president is not planning any trip to Alabama at this time. And, frankly, his schedule doesn't permit him doing anything between now and Election Day. 

Q. Over the weekend, the president weighed in about this race on Twitter. Does the president continue - does he have plans to continue his campaign against the Democrat in Alabama, Doug Jones?

A. Look, I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth from the podium. As you know, I've declined that opportunity many times. But I can tell you that the president obviously wants people to make America better -- to improve our education system, to grow our economy, to continue to fight against ISIS, continue growing the economy. Those are the president's priorities, and he wants people in place that are going to help and support those priorities.

Between announcing his indecision before Thanksgiving, and now letting us know he wouldn't be going on the campaign trail with Moore, the president didn't have any issues campaigning for Moore on Twitter.

So - back to that special place in hell Ivanka mentioned? Well, it's clear her father has an idea where it is: East Capitol St NE & First St SE, Washington, DC 20004.

Religion and Government, Iowa Style

As I noted the other day, Alabama and Iowa are having fun with religion and government in their own way, completely apart from the Supreme Court decision in the Town of Greece v. Galloway case, in which the right to 'legislative prayer' was upheld by a 5-4 vote.

Alabama's apparently been taken over by Someone Else, aka the Christian God.  Iowa has its own traditions to uphold, and they have a bunch of Senate candidates doing their darnedest to out-Christian each other in efforts to appease those traditional voters.

For example, there's this guy, Representative Tom Shaw. He was unhappy with the unanimous 2009 decision of Iowa judges that gay marriage was constitutional.  Five of the judges were no longer around by the time Shaw put forth his proposal to cut the pay of the four who were left in 2013 from around $160K to $25K.  That'll teach em to mess with marriage, darn it!

Shaw announced in January that he would not be running for re-election this fall. In a letter to supporters, he noted

Honor to God, fidelity to the Constitution, as seen thru the prism of the stated purposes contained in the Declaration of Independence, is my foundation.  These guiding principles helped me in determining my votes...votes place on behalf of 30,000 Iowans. No man is perfect, but I tried to serve ethically, honorably and truthfully during my tenure. 

My "no compromise" approach did not always set well with others.  However, in his book Confrontational Politics, author H. L. Richardson, retired California State Senator, states "When we give in to liberals, even an inch, we're not compromising, we're abdicating our rights and our honor. When our legislators likewise, they are abdicating our right and their honor.  

His 'no compromise' approach  -- voting againstt a bill banning late term abortions, because he would only support a ban on all abortions -- that kind of thing,did not set well with his own party, so I'm thinking they might be OK with his decision not to run again.

But lame duck Mr. Shaw is not the only Republican in Iowa with a religious streak a mile wide. Three candidates who are running to fill the US Senate seat of another lame duck, Tom Harkin, who is not running for re-election when his term expires -- and they're trying to out-religious each other in the worst way.

When the topic of federal judges came up, three of the candidates indicated they'd look for judges who adhered to 'natural law' or who professed faith in God. (The video is here if you care to watch.)

• First, there's Sam Clovis, a college professor, who  has "a very firm litmus test" on judges: "Can that judge explain to me natural law and natural rights?" 
• Next, there's Iowa State Senator Joni Ernst who agreed with Clovis and added that judges should understand that the Constitution and all our laws came from God and that senators (considering candidates for the federal bench) should "make sure that any decisions that they have made in the past are decisions that fit within that criteria."
• And then there's Matt Whitaker, a former federal prosecutor who (like Tom Shaw) felt his fellow Republicans didn't go far enough - he would demand that nominees for the federal bench are "people of faith" and "have a biblical view of justice." He noted that "As long as they have that worldview, they'll be a good judge. And if they have a secular worldview, where this is all we have here on earth, than I'm going to be very concerned about how they judge." 

This type of thinking, and the type of thinking that's prevalent in Alabama (where Someone Else controls the state), and the type of thinking that allows 'strongly held religious belief' laws which institutionalize discrimination, is not consistent with what I thought we stood for.

Religion and Government, Alabama Style

With much less fanfare than that generated by the Town of Greece v. Galloway case, Iowa and Alabama are having their own fun with religion and government. And by fun, I mean fun house crazy mirror fun.

First, Alabama.  Remember 'The Ten Commandments Judge', Roy Moore?  He was the judge who was ordered to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS refused to hear his case, and ultimately, he was fired.  The group that removed him from office, other judges, lawyers, and non-lawyers, decided unanimously that

Moore put himself above the law by 'willfully and publicly' flouting the order to remove the 2.6 ton monument from the state judicial building's rotunda... 

Moore, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and again in 2010, and is well-known on the religious circuit, won re-election to the Alabama court in November 2012, and at his swearing-in ceremony a couple of month later, noted that

We've got to remember that most of what we do in court comes from some Scripture or is backed by Scripture.

And he went on to note, according to the article, that the court system was created by God and that the basis for law is outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy. (Seems I have some reading to do.)

Even more interesting than Moore's own comments, though, were those of Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, who said this (referring to Moore and an associate justice also sworn in at that time)

We have common beliefs and we believe in the same God. And we worship that same God. And I am honored to serve with two men like this and men and women on this court. It is a true honor. And I truly believe that the people of Alabama are better off when we believe we have men and women who believe there is Someone else who controls their lives and controls this state. 

"Someone else who controls this state."  Uh-huh.

Fast forward a year, to January 2014. Justice Moore was speaking at a luncheon in Mississippi, where he reminded us that

Buddha didn't create us, Mohammed didn't create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures...They didn't bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship, the Mayflower..Let's get real, let's go back and learn our history. Let's stop playing games.... 

And that the 'pursuit of happiness' meant following God's law, because regardless of pop songs suggesting otherwise,

...you can't be happy unless you follow God's law, and if you follow God's law you can't be unhappy.... It's all about God...

Here's more Moore if you're interested in watching his speech.

It should be noted that Moore has clarified his position on the First Amendment and Christianity. Speaking earlier this week, after his January lunch and learn comments came to light, he stated that

It applies to the rights God gave us to be free in our modes of thinking, and as far as religious liberty to all people regardless of what they believe.

To recap:  the once fired  but now resurrected judge believes (but only when questioned about it) that the First Amendment does in fact apply to folks other than Christians, all his other statements to the contrary, and the governor believes Someone Else controls the state of Alabama, that Someone Else being the same God worshiped by Judge Moore who was fired for parking the Ten Commandments in the middle of a government building, only to be re-elected and set free to tell us about God and God's law.  

To answer the age-old question, I guess that means that yes, the circle will be unbroken.   But does this feel like the right relationship between religion and government?