"What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous ... it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God. Get out of that seat ... You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

-- Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), speaking to atheist Rob Sherman

If Rob Sherman was a Jew or a Muslim or a Methodist or anything but an atheist, Representative Monique Davis would be openly castigated from every direction (and deservedly so).  But it's okay to hate atheists here.  Welcome to my country.

Mr. Sherman was testifying to the Illinois House State Government Administration Committee about a one million dollar grant slated to go to a Baptist church that was trying to rebuild from a fire.  As you know churches already don't pay taxes, so it seems rather curious that anyone would think it okay for tax money to go to a church--especially in a country where church and state are supposed to be separate.  The grant money story is pretty smelly all on its own, but I am not at all surprised that any outspoken atheist would have an opinion on the matter, and might choose to testify to government bodies on the matter.

But Monique Davis feels otherwise.  She feels atheists have no right to testify to the American government.  And for that matter we are destroyers, and dangerous to children.  And it's okay to censor or silence us.  Oh and the country was founded on Christian principles.

How does someone like this even get elected in the first place? Shame on you Monique Davis.  You madam, are no Democrat.

Hat tip to the excellent science blog Pharyngula for the story.  You won't be hearing about it on Fox.

He's not exactly eloquent, but he's clearly a decent, intelligent, man.  He's also the only member of the US Congress who is an Iraqi War Veteran, having served the military as a paratrooper captain before running for office against a Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania and winning despite all expectations to the contrary.

One of my favorite NPR/WBUR programs "On Point" had a 45 minute call in interview with Congressman Murphy yesterday, and it was fascinating.  Murphy pulls no punches on his opinion of the Iraq war, his informed opinion of some of the hawkish nonsense arguments that crop up whenever getting troops out of Iraq is discussed, and touches on everything from veterans support, to whom he's backing for President.

It was so refreshing to hear a congressman talking so straight and with so much candor and making sense.  Just listening to it gave me hope.  The interview is available as a podcast, and I recommend you give it a listen.

Well I hit the polling station this morning on my way to work and did my civic duty.  I stared at that ballot for a long hard time trying to decide what was most important to me.

I like both of these candidates, and I have an admiration for them both.  In the end, in what was to my mind, a battle between practicality and idealism, practicality won, and Hillary Clinton got my vote.

But I think Barack will be the winner, and that's okay too.  I'll be just as happy to vote for him on election day.

After voting I asked the election observer if I could photograph the polling station.  She called her boss and checked and said that I could do so but only if I stood "behind the rail" which put me in an awkward position, leading to the overly wide crop you see above.  But that's okay, I was still happy to take the shot.  I think it came out pretty good considering I was rushing.  Two different wards vote here, 2B and 2A.  I'm in ward 2A.  Turnout, according to the volunteers and staffers present, had been slow.  When I put my ballot in the counting machine said it was number 67 for the day.  One of the volunteers said the weather was contributing to the slow turnout and that she thought it would pick up later.

I would hope so!

I had heard on Save Fitchburg that someone would be present collecting signatures for a petition to revisit the charter of the City of Fitchburg for possible revision.  The charter hasn't been updated since the early 1970's, but nobody was there doing that when I showed up.  Hmm.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I handed out a couple of my photography business cards while I was there!  Hopefully something good will come of that.

Well voting day is here, and I am still undecided.  The youthful idealist in me wants to vote for Obama.  The practical realist in me knows it's better to vote for Clinton.  What's a person to do?  Were I registered an independent I might vote McCain just so I can vote against Romney--it amazes me that people who thought Kerry was a flip-flopping panderer think Romney is an okay guy.  Talk about insincere!

But I'm a registered democrat and I couldn't in good conscience vote for McCain.  So that leaves Barack or Hillary, or as it has become crystalized in my mind idealism versus realism, experience versus enthusiasm.

I was originally going to vote for Hillary, but when I listened to Barack's victory speech in South Carolina I teetered over to him.  The man is a powerful orator and he has a strong message of hope.  Then I listened to the debate in California and I was swayed by Hillary's grasp of the facts, she really is very experienced (and why wouldn't she be after 8 years in the White House?)

There's always a candidate who rides on a desire for change, but that's not enough, and personally, I'd like to know where that change is going.  Deval Patrick ran on a message of hope, and I voted for him.  If he had run on a message of casinos, I would have stayed home.

For what it's worth, I think Obama is going to win here in Massachusetts.  And he certainly seems to have the momentum.

I hear a lot of people complaining that Hillary responds to opinion polls and is not genuine.  I suppose she does respond to opinion polls, I've seen her do it.  And sometimes it seems to me that she does it a little too much.  But then she is running for office.

Urrgh.  This is making me nuts.  Two historic possibilities here.  Which one will I cast my vote for?  Just this musing has me leaning toward Hillary again.

I guess I'll find out when the ballot is in front of me.  And then later you'll find out.

I really need to learn how to use exposure lock on my camera, then I might not need to do this to my pictures in order to get the sky to look properly exposed.  I suppose this would work better if I shot at the waterline instead of above it, but that wasn't possible in this case, and this modification was an afterthought.  Maybe today at lunchtime I can get out and experiment with exposure lock for a few minutes.

Took this shot while in the (now public) portion of Devens, MA, and contemplating the sacrifices of our military for our nation.  It's a sacrifice we should never squander.  I feel so badly about supporting the Iraq war these days when I think of all the lives lost in it, considering what we've learned in the meantime.  I refuse to "update my rhetoric" and take to heart all the new excuses for our presence there.  I was lied to, but I refuse to lie to myself.  I couldn't call myself a patriot if I did.

The jobs don't pay a lot, and you take most of your pay in self-esteem, but somebody is always trying out for village idiot or village atheist. Often they're one and the same...

-- Wesley Pruden, Revival time with the village atheist, (Washington Times)

In a classic pot-and-kettle scenario, Wesley Pruden has done disservice to the readers of the Washington Times with an irrational screed mocking atheists for writing "irrational screeds mocking those who have the faith the authors clearly envy."  The saving grace for these unfortunate atheists is that the average Times reader is probably too smart to be taken in by such drivel.

Pruden has nothing constructive to offer in his screed.  He merely calls atheists names and cites examples of atheists saying bad things about people who deserve to have bad things said about them.  This is what his article boils down to:

• Did you know that there are atheists living among you?
• Atheists are idiots.
• Atheists hate people of faith because they don't have faith but desperately want it.
• Atheists say the darndest things.
• Atheists are getting more attention than I am and it pisses me off.

Mr. Pruden apparently doesn't concern himself with the facts regarding persons atheists have spoken ill of, or even facts about the atheists themselves.  I mean really, who among us who has actually read The God Delusion would use the word "irrational" to describe it?  I've been struggling with the book myself and have found it incredibly dense, repetitive, and belaboring of points, but irrational?  Rationality is the coin of the atheist realm.  The author has got it backwards... it is faith that is irrational.

The article is clearly calculated to incense the readership, as opposed to communicate any meaningful argument as to why atheists are idiots, or naughty, or whatever else he's trying to say.  He notes Christopher Hitchens' reference to Mother Theresa as "the ghoul of Calcutta", without bothering to say why.  He notes Pulitzer prize winner Paul Greenberg's mention of Reverend Falwell's one "decent" moment on record, without bothering to say why.  Apparently the "why" doesn't concern the unencumbered-by-a-Pulitzer-Prize-Pruden.

A rational person will find little of interest in this yawn-inspiring rant against atheism, except perhaps an appreciation of the irony by which the author reveals himself to be the shrill irrational caricature that he tries to paint atheists as.  Beyond that, there's nothing to see here.

"... A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded [...] We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights. [...] In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms [...] Too often, the courts have been biased against religious believers. This anti-religious bias must end ..."

-- Newt Gingrich, speaking at Liberty University
Gingrich: Challenge 'radical secularism' (AP via Pioneer Press)

How much of our history is merely perception colored by those seeking to attain power?  This nation was not founded on Christianity, why does that simple fact continue to elude these twits?  Shall we go back to Jefferson and check... AGAIN?

"Believing... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:281

"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67
 

(Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government -- Freedom of Religion)

The great Virginian Thomas Jefferson understood that our country must espouse no religion, in order to protect them all.  Theists who hold their religions near and dear (especially Christians) should be very wary of those who want to infuse their religion into politics.  I discussed this last October in my article Looking Into the Abyss:

...If you are a religious person, and if you believe that politics is largely despicable, then it follows that you may believe that getting your religion into politics will improve the state of politics and make it less dirty.  But, like the mixing paints, doing so will also infuse the dirt of politics into your religion.  Priests will become politicians, and politicians will become priests, each less suited to their role than they were before.  Keeping your religion away from politics is the best way to keep politics away from your religion... if you don't eventually you'll find that the power-hungry have invaded your churches and turned them into something they were not intended to be.  Mixing the two leaves you with neither...

Southern Baptists, at least the ones who cheered Newt on at Liberty University, are pushing this nation toward theocracy.  It desperately concerns me that they haven't thought this through.  For his part, Newt is considering a run for president in 2008.  And so once again, the power hungry tell the religious what they want to hear in order to win votes.  Jefferson understood this too:

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
 

(Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government -- Freedom of Religion)

Fellow citizens, we have our work cut out for us.