"An evangelical pastor from Atlanta announced Thursday that he would not give the benediction at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony..."

"... after a sermon he gave on homosexuality in the mid-1990s resurfaced earlier this week."

In that sermon, the Rev. Louie Giglio called for Christians to “firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” of some in the gay community and warns that widespread gay marriage ”would run the risk of absolutely undermining the whole order of our society.”

Protestants are no longer the majority in America... and sectlessness doubles.

It's the other Pew survey that just came out — the religion one.

Do you accept the word "sectlessness"? It's pretty much my coinage, but I'm going to promote it as a good, short headline word to refer to the absence of a religious affiliation. I originally had "atheism," but it's the wrong word, because many of the people who say they belong to no religious group also say they believe in God and even that they pray and have what the Washington Post refers to as "regular spiritual routines." I'm trying to picture those routines, and I don't know, I'm just seeing a blank. Hmm. Seeing blankness — that could be a spiritual routine. What do you think? Seems zen, doesn't it? Yeah, that's the ticket. I'm spiritual. Seriously, what do you think these regular-spiritual-routines folk are doing? Anything fancy with bread and wine or just gazing at nature and feeling aglow?

I'm reminded of my father, who when asked (by me) why he didn't go to church, said you can commune with God anywhere, for example, on the golf course. He liked to golf. Sorry, am I being too puritanical? Either participate in some official group ritual or lay off the claims of worship? No, I don't really think that. I'm just skeptical. Hell, I'm skeptical about whether the people who go to church (or other place of worship) really believe what the ritual is supposed to demonstrate. I think many people are there to honor the tradition they feel part of or to keep in touch with a social circle or to facilitate the efforts at community organizing. Maybe the sectless souls with spiritual routines are more sincerely religious.

Ah, well. It's American etiquette to accept whatever people say about their religion and move on to more easily debatable topics. Within that scheme, I'm being rude.

Back to the Pew survey: 79% of Americans named "an established faith group" that they belong to. The 21% — atheists, agnostics, and "nothing in particular" — skew strongly toward the Democratic Party.
This group is the Democrats' "largest... faith constituency" — at 24%. Or so the WaPo says, but that's only if you split Protestants into groups like "black Protestants" (16%) and "white mainline Protestants" (14%), which, added together, is 30%. Note that "white evangelicals" — also Protestants — are viewed as a separate "faith constituency," and these folks skew Republican. 34% of Republicans are white evangelicals.

The study presents a stark map of how political and religious polarization have merged in recent decades. Congregations used to be a blend of political affiliations, but that’s generally not the case anymore. Sociologists have shown that Americans are more likely to pick their place of worship by their politics, not vice versa.

How awful! What are you supposed to do when your family's traditional religious group is one that channels politics you don't like? Can you stand to attend services and sit through lectures (sermons) about politics blended with religion? You're supposed to change your religion to accord with your political ideology? That should lead many sincerely religious persons to stay away... and insincere politicos to gravitate toward the like-minded crowd.

***

I did mean to allude above to our President's religion. For context, let me repeat my own summary of  Chapter 14 of Obama's "Dreams from My Father":

While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.

Madonna "was being ironic on stage" when she said we have "a Black Muslim in the White House."

“Yes, I know Obama is not a Muslim — though I know that plenty of people in this country think he is. And what if he were? The point I was making is that a good man is a good man, no matter who he prays to. I don’t care what religion Obama is — nor should anyone else in America.”

Should on-stage performers dumb it down for the people who aren't sophisticated enough to process humor?

I'm sure it's all very amusing for Madonna, who gets big publicity and looks "edgy" again. People call her stupid, and then she one-ups them and can seem — certainly to herself — to be quite smart. (Did you hear she has an IQ of 140? Same as Hillary Clinton. And Shakira.)

Others wielding humor have more to worry about. Like Romney with his "trees are just the right height" and, more recently, about those airplane windows that "don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that." People aren't going to get it if they don't want to get it, if they're looking for material to use to say you're an idiot.

And Romney can't make the Madonna move and call his antagonists dumb. Mitt Romney — who, like Madonna, was born in Michigan, where the trees are just the right height — has an estimated IQ  in the range of 130 to 139, which is smart enough to choose whether to dumb it down in self-defense.

ADDED: Look at how Paul Ryan's antagonists are trying to hurt him by pretending not to get his sense of humor. Are they stupid or pretending to be stupid? Tobin Harshaw writes:

There is no underestimating the literal-mindedness of the American reader: Years ago when I worked at the Times we published a satirical op-ed column by Steve Martin riffing on the idea that a NASA Mars probe had discovered millions of kittens on the Red Planet. Shortly thereafter, a subscriber sent a terse letter to the editor asking us to "inform your science correspondent" that the lack of oxygen on Mars made kitten infestation highly unlikely.

Wait. Why is Harshaw assuming the letter-writer wasn't doing humor?

AND: Wait. Ryan never even made those "Stench" remarks. A Politico writer made them up and intended it as satire.  I thought they were good enough jokes to be believable as the casual humor of a relatively young man, and I would have appreciated them as such. Harshaw is attacking Ryan's antagonists as so hostile that they didn't pick up that it was humor. I didn't pick up that it was humor, and I was defending Ryan. That's all very odd.

ALSO: I like the way Drudge is putting it: "MEDIA 'SATIRE' HIT PIECE ON PAUL RYAN BACKFIRES.../O'Donnell, Krugman 'fooled'..." Drudge is, I think, insinuating that Politico's Roger Simon intended to be misunderstood, for the Ryan quotes to be believed, and then to reveal that it was satire after the damage was done.

MORE: Fake quotes live on as real. Remember Sarah Palin's most famous quote: "I can see Russia from my house."

Harry Reid goes holier-than-thou, Mormon-style, on Mitt Romney.

Is that okay? Because if that's okay, should we dissect Obama's religion?

Should we go at both Romney and Obama for how well they embody the religion they espouse?
	Sure!
	Only Romney. Not Obama.
	Only Obama. Not Romney.
	No. Neither. It's a bad approach to political debate.
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"[I]t is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided..."

"... just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ call to love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history. I don’t believe such doubts make me a bad Christian. I believe they make me human, limited in my understandings of God’s purpose and therefore prone to sin. When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations — whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion."        

Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" (2006)(pages 349-350, Kindle Edition).

Obama adopts Newt Gingrich as a surrogate crybaby.

Strange! This is an official Obama ad. Watch for Gingrich at the end.



It's also weird in that it shows Romney making his harshest attacks on Obama.

It's also dishonest. The idea is to portray Romney as a hypocrite for attacking Obama when he also makes attacks. But the material at the beginning — "Is this the level that the Obama campaign is willing to stoop to? Is this up to the standards expected of the presidency of the United States?" — refers to the Obama campaign's making deceptive statements about Romney and Bain Capital. Has Romney ever lied about Obama? Has he ever made statements that are proven false without correcting them and apologizing? That's the comparison that needs to be made. That's what Romney said was beneath the standards of the presidency.

ADDED: I was curious about Romney's statement — in the ad — that Obama wanted to make America a "less Christian nation." I found this:

In February, Romney criticized the relationship between Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in a radio interview with Sean Hannity. Hannity had played a clip for Romney in which Obama had said “given the increase in diversity” in America, “the dangers of sectarianism are greater than ever. Whatever we once were we are no longer a Christian nation ...“ Hannity abruptly cut off the clip there, editing the president’s quote in a manner that distorted its meaning, and asked Romney for his thoughts.

“I think again that the president takes his philosophical leanings in this regard, not from those who are ardent believers in various faiths but instead from those who would like America to be more secular,” Romney told Hannity in that interview. “And I’m not sure which is worse, him listening to Rev. Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation.”

Asked Thursday what he had meant when he said President Obama was trying to make America a less Christian nation, Romney said he could not recall the context of the remarks.

“I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was,” he told reporters at the hastily scheduled press availability to respond to the New York Times report. “I’ll go back and take a look on what was said there. The focus of my campaign is going to be, as I’ve just suggested, on the future and on who can do best to build an America that has great promise and great opportunity for fulfillment of dreams.”

He declined to respond to a question about whether he believed President Obama’s world view was shaped by Rev. Wright and whether he saw any evidence of Wright’s influence in his policies....

In the February radio interview, Hannity cut off the president’s statement mid-sentence. In the full quote, the president did not say that the United States is no longer a Christian nation; he said that the nation is made up of Christians, people of other faiths and nonbelievers.

"Mitt and Ann Romney’s marriage is strong because they believe they will live together in an eternal afterlife..."

Writes Jodi Kantor in the NYT, citing "relatives and friends" as the source of information. It's a whole long article about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith.

Fascinating! But what I'd like to know is what Barack and Michelle Obama are picturing for the afterlife. NYT, can you clue me in? Because I feel like there are so many things we never found out about Obama the first time around in 2008. How about now?

But, of course, Jodi Kantor published a whole book about the Obamas. It's called "The Obamas." I bought it. On Kindle! So let me do a little search for an answer to my question. How are the Obama's planning to spend their eternal life? Do they believe there's a heaven, and do husbands and wives stay together there?

Word searches in "The Obamas" that returned 0 results: afterlife, afterworld, immortality, immortal, beyond the grave....

Other fruitless searches: eternal (2 matches, both to Obama's calling himself "the eternal optimist"), eternity (some short period of time is referred to as "an eternity in presidential time"), heaven (at the inauguration, Beyoncé Knowles sang "At Last" to the Obamas — "Life is like a song... Here we are in heaven").

In fact, there are only 2 occurrences of "religion" in the text of "The Obamas."
The first is not a reference to Obama's religion, just Obama saying that "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country" (rejecting opposition to building a mosque near the World Trade Center site). The second is a reference to a poll that showed 18% of adults and 31% of Republicans thought Obama was a Muslim:

Only a third said he was a Christian, down substantially from the prior year, and another 43 percent said they did not know his religion at all. It was astonishing— some of the same people who had criticized him as being in the thrall of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his former pastor, now believed him to be a devout follower of the prophet Muhammad.

Wait! They didn't say they thought he was devout. They might simply have thought that he was Muslim by inheritance through his father, a cultural matter, which would be quite true. Why make fun of the people who are stuck within the constraints of a poll question? And why act as if that idea — Obama is a Muslim by cultural inheritance through the father — is inconsistent with the criticism of his attachment to Jeremiah Wright? Those criticisms had to do with anti-Americanism and left-wing ideology, not Christian doctrine. (I think I know why. Don't you?)

Some Democrats cried malpractice at the White House for not countering the Muslim rumors with professions of Christian faith: Could aides please just stick a Bible in the president’s hand once in a while? Get him to join a church already? Early in the presidential campaign, Obama had heavily marketed his own religiosity; he won his critical primary victory in South Carolina in part by speaking in churches and distributing literature showing his head bowed in prayer. But ever since the Wright scandal, the Obamas had tried to argue that their faith was a private matter, off-limits for public discussion. Inside the White House during the summer of 2010, as outsiders quietly begged for the president to showcase his Christianity again, there was virtually no serious discussion of the matter, said David Axelrod and others. Telling the president that his staff had been strategizing about his religiosity “wouldn’t be taken well,” Axelrod explained. Since the Obamas had arrived in the White House, they had attended church intermittently, they would continue to do so, and that was that. There was no creative brainstorming about ways to underscore the president’s Christianity for the public, another aide said, because all discussions had to take place within the category of things Barack Obama might actually be willing to do.

And now the Romney campaign is doing the same thing, as Kantor's article says in the third paragraph:

... Mr. Romney speaks so sparingly about his faith — he and his aides frequently stipulate that he does not impose his beliefs on others — that its influence on him can be difficult to detect.

But....

Outside the spotlight, Mr. Romney can be demonstrative about his faith: belting out hymns (“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”) while horseback riding, fasting on designated days and finding a Mormon congregation to slip into on Sundays, no matter where he is. 

And...

Just as Ronald Reagan deployed acting skills on the trail and Barack Obama relied on the language of community organizing, Mitt Romney bears the marks of the theology and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints....

Mormons have a long tradition of achieving success by sharing secular versions of their tenets, said Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People,” citing Stephen R. Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” which he called Latter-day Saint theology repackaged as career advice. ...

Mr. Romney is quick to uphold rules great and small. During primary debates, when his rivals spoke out of turn or exceeded their allotted time, he would sometimes lecture them. When supporters ask Mr. Romney to sign dollar bills or American flags, he refuses and often gives them a little lesson about why doing so is against the law. 

Doing things by the book has been a hallmark of his career in public life. When Mr. Romney took over the Salt Lake City Olympics, which were dogged by ethical problems, he cast himself as a heroic reformer. As governor of Massachusetts, he depicted himself as a voice of integrity amid what he called the back-scratchers and ethically dubious lifers of state government....

Isn't this pretty much exactly the role we want religion to have in government? It's a strong foundation for commitment to principle and ethics. I'm not saying it's the only foundation, or that religions always support the best principles and ethics, but religion is the moral foundation for most people. It's still up to the individual to make sure that he is using religion for the good, especially if he goes into politics. There's no evidence that Romney has misused his religious values (or that the stranger aspects of Mormonism have anything to do with the way he would govern).

Jeremiah Wright says he was offered $150,000 in 2008 from "one of Barack’s closest friends" to stop preaching until election.

Edward Klein reports on his interview with Wright.

“Did Obama himself ever make an effort to see you?”

“Yes... And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’

“And what did you say?” I asked. “I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive.’

“Barack said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem to have. That’s a good problem for all preachers to have. That’s why I could never be a politician.’

"He's good. I can see why you'd sit and listen to him."/"He gets you going, doesn't he?"

Said I and Meade, respectively, listening to that new Jeremiah Wright video that's making the rounds.

The Democrats' "jewbag" problem.

Have you noticed this controversy? It's the kind of thing that makes you want to say that if Republicans made a misstep like this we would never hear the end of it. It would be a "macaca" moment.

The staffer for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz who posted the controversial 'Jewbag' photo on her Facebook page in 2006 is no anonymous aide -- but the daughter of Mark and Nancy Gilbert, two major Florida donors who have raised more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign.

Danielle "Dani" Gilbert, according to party sources, was tapped by Wasserman Schultz to serve as a liaison to the Jewish community, even though party officials and people close to Obama told her that more senior Democrats were already handling those responsibilities.

Wasserman Schultz has thus far refused to fire or discipline Gilbert, whose gallery of candid photos and personal commentary has since been removed from her public Facebook page, according to Democrats.

(Also on POLITICO: Wasserman Schultz says Mormonism off limits)...

Thanks, Politico. Thanks for inserting Wasserman Schultz's banal pronouncement about that other religion. I guess there's some relevance. Let's read that:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired back Wednesday at Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s claim that Democrats would attack Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith in the fall election, saying the charge was “nonsense” and that the issue of religion was off-limits....

“That suggestion is utter nonsense. Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him – birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian,” Wasserman said. “For them to suggest that religion will be injected [into the election] by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step.”

Well, I hope she's right about that, but of course, there will be many things the DNC won't control. It's hasn't been the RNC going after Obama over his religion, has it? And I seem to remember John McCain going out of his way to put Obama's religion far out of bounds, even declining to use the terribly juicy anti-American spoutings of Obama's pastor.

ADDED: What does "jewbag" mean? Urban Dictionary has definitions like "cheap; selfish person," "A greedy jew or a handful of greedy jews," and "someone who screws over another person on an extreme level." The "conservative web site" referred to in the Politico article is The Washington Free Beacon, which says:

The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.”

I'm inferring that the "-bag" part refers to moneybags, rather than — to point to other meanings of "bag" —  

1. an "unattractive or elderly woman," which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, goes back to 1924 (P. Marks Plastic Age xviii. 202,   "I don't... chase around with filthy bags or flunk my courses"); or...   

2. "scrotum," which the OED locates back in the 1598 writing Frenche Chirurg: "The Scrotum, which we call the bagg wherin the testicles are contayned," which is the use of "-bag" in the present-day political slang term "teabagger," though I note that the 4th most-approved-of definition of "jewbag" at Urban Dictionary includes a second meaning "the action of tea-bagging a jew or someone of jewish descent."

"The fervor of the sixties penetrated law schools quite passionately."

Strikingly sexual imagery from a 2005 article called "Introduction to Clinical Legal Education" (which I'm reading in connection with my law school's "self-study" of its clinical program). (PDF.) Here's the quote in context:

During the second wave of clinical legal education - a period spanning from the 1960's through the late 1990's - clinical legal education solidified and expanded its foothold in the academy. The factors that contributed to this transformation included demands for social relevance in law school, the development of clinical teaching methodology, the emergence of external funding to start and expand clinical programs, and an increase in the number of faculty capable of and interested in teaching clinical courses. Perhaps the most powerful of these factors was the zeitgeist of the 60's, which produced "student demands for relevance." In reflecting on the growth and direction of clinical legal education, Professor Dean Hill Rivkin has noted: "It was the societal legacy of the sixties . . . that most shaped clinical legal education. The fervor of the sixties penetrated law schools quite passionately."

ADDED: Speaking of passionate fervor, I love Wikipedia. It has an article titled "Relevance." Excerpt:

During the 1960s, relevance became a fashionable buzzword, meaning roughly 'relevance to social concerns', such as racial equality, poverty, social justice, world hunger, world economic development, and so on. The implication was that some subjects, e.g., the study of medieval poetry and the practice of corporate law, were not worthwhile because they did not address pressing social issues.^{[citation needed]}

Of course, that passage contains many links to other Wikipedia articles, including this one called "Social justice." Excerpt:

The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in 1840 based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and given further exposure in 1848 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.... It is a part of Catholic social teaching, the Episcopalians' Social Gospel, and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. Social justice as a secular concept, distinct from religious teachings, emerged mainly in the late twentieth century, influenced primarily by philosopher John Rawls. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum....

Ah! Religious roots. I note the resonance with Rick Santorum's observation that President Obama believes in "some phony theology." Sorry. The 60s penetrated me too passionately, and I've still got the fervor for relevance.

"My entire taxable income, plus some, went to the payment of taxes."

"This does not include real estate taxes, sales taxes and other taxes I paid for 2010."

Oh? We should care? He's 1%. He should pay. Jesus wants him to pay.

Anyway, the key word is "taxable." Throw all the deductions back in and he's only paying 20%. Obviously, then, he should be paying even more. Jesus wants him to pay more.

"For me as a Christian, it... coincides with Jesus's teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required," Obama said, quoting the Gospel of Luke.

"President Obama and his family headed out to church this morning for the third time in a month..."

"... the latest sign that the president may be using religion to boost his image as the campaign heats up."

37 Christmas trees in the White House.

And, yes, they persist in calling them "Christmas trees"... as if they hadn't noticed how divisive such terminology can be... in Wisconsin.

Obama's religion-free Thanksgiving address.

"As Americans, each of us has our own list of things and people to be thankful for. But there are some blessings we all share....

But no matter how tough things are right now, we still give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny. The problems we face didn’t develop overnight, and we won’t solve them overnight. But we will solve them. All it takes is for each of us to do our part. 

And God's help? I'm noticing the lack of religion in the address. The closest he gets is the use of the word "blessings."

With all the partisanship and gridlock here in Washington, it’s easy to wonder if such unity is really possible. But think about what’s happening at this very moment: Americans from all walks of life are coming together as one people, grateful for the blessings of family, community, and country.

If we keep that spirit alive, if we support each other, and look out for each other, and remember that we’re all in this together, then I know that we too will overcome the challenges of our time.

Again, an absence of God. We'll solve our problems by coming together as a community, not with the help of God, though you are free to conceptualize this coming together in religious terms. I'm not criticizing, just taking note.

Here's what Thomas Jefferson said about Thanksgiving:

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises... Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government.... But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises, which the Constitution has directly precluded them from... civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

Obama said, “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people to work."

He was disapproving of Congress spending time voting to reaffirm "In God We Trust" as the national motto.

(I don't really get the theology of it. Does the President purport to know what legislation God wants Congress to pass? And if God is big on people helping themselves, why should government intervene with attempts at help? I know... it's just a joke about God. Obama is using the Lord's name to jab at people who are using the Lord's name. I need a reading on whether God likes any of that.)

Obama does a great job reacting to a heckler who calls him the Antichrist.

He waits calmly, while the crowd defty shifts from denouncing the heckler to chanting "4 more years." When he finally deigns to speak, Obama has the presence of mind to say — responding to the heckled "Jesus Christ is God, Barack Obama is the Antichrist!" — "I agree. Jesus Christ is the Lord. I believe in that." And then he evinces concern that the heckler, who was apparently dragged out, has left his jacket behind. This concern about clothing harmonizes nicely with his recent attention to appropriate footwear.

Great job?
	He's calm, perhaps because he is the Antichrist.
	He's cool, as ever, because he's a cold fish.
	He's blank and empty, which is not enough to count as a good job.
	Yes, I agree, Althouse. He did a great job here.
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Presidential prayer demeanor.

Head bowed/head uplifted.

Would this be a better picture if Michelle Obama's head did not appear to be a bulbous extension of Obama's head? And if Bush's head didn't seem to be a weight hanging from Obama's neck? At first I thought yes, but now I think it's utterly fascinating, symbolically and graphically. Note that we only see Obama's body, so the other 2 heads seem like growths on that body. His wife would pull him back, perhaps with excessive braininess, and his predecessor would pull him down, with all the regrets and burdens of the past. With effort, he lifts up his head...

But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.

That's not the Psalm Obama read at the ceremony, which was Psalm 46. This is Psalm 3.

LORD, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.”...

Arise, LORD! Deliver me, my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.

Lord, take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

President Obama reads Psalm 46 at the NYC 9/11 ceremony.

Come, behold, the works of the Lord, who has made desolations in the earth...

Rush Limbaugh puts the Resurrection in perspective.

Today, Rush Limbaugh went off on Obama for saying this about Easter:

We are reminded that there's something about the Resurrection, something about the Resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.

It's not the most eloquent or insightful thing anyone ever said about Easter, but, good lord, let it go. But Rush does not let it go:

I've just never heard [the Resurrection] discussed this way.  When he discusses the call to prayer in the Muslim world as being one of the sweetest sounds in the world, I mean that's an eloquent way to describe the Muslim call to prayer.  Here we're talking the Resurrection.  There's something about that....

You know, after hearing him describe it that way, I'm actually surprised that Obama doesn't think of Easter as the day a big rabbit comes out of his hole and, depending on whether he sees his shadow or not, tells us if we're in for a long winter.  

Rush repeats the line "puts everything else in perspective" 13 times in that segment. The only reason for getting that worked up about the casual, nonspecific way Obama talked about the Resurrection would be if you if you felt profound reverence toward it. But if you felt profound reverence about it, you wouldn't use it for cheap political leverage against the President.