That the end of the world should perhaps come sooner rather than later, was pointfully illustrated by an Israeli MP, who has blamed parliament's tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently. Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave "legitimacy to sodomy".
Benizri made his comments while addressing a committee of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, about the country's readiness for earthquakes. It is clear that the serious business of trying to come up with emergency plans, can only be sidelined by ridiculous comments such as these. Indeed, he used the platform to call upon lawmakers to stop "passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes".

Responding to complaints from the Religious Right, Congress has passed legislation mandating that the phrase "In God We Trust" be moved from the edge to the back or front of the new presidential dollar coins.

President George W. Bush signed the measure into law December 26, 2007. It was tucked into a $555 billion domestic spending bill after having been pushed by US Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Brownback and other Religious Right conservatives have been complaining about the new coins since the series started last year.
The US Mint has been releasing gold-coloured dollars honouring each non-living US president. Four coins are released per year. The first four coins, honouring George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were issued in 2007.

Under a mandate from Congress, the Mint was required to place the national mottos "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum" along the edge of the coins. The idea was to allow for more dramatic portraits on the obverses of the coins and better art elements on the reverses.
But many in the Religious Right went ballistic after a batch of coins was inadvertently produced without the mottos on the edge. They also complained that the words were hard to read and that they would wear off over time.
Officials at the Mint say the dies for the 2008 coins, which honour James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, have already been produced, so the change will not be visible until the 2009 series is produced. Those coins will honour William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor.

Although there was never any evidence that the Mint was considering removing the motto, many Religious Right activists insisted that relegating "In God We Trust" to the edge of the coins was some kind of nefarious plot to ditch the phrase altogether.
"I certainly can't imagine growing up in a country and under a government that is atheistic and denies the existence and dependence upon God," said Dave Stotts, who hosts a program for Focus on the Family called "Drive Thru History."

Stotts and other motto boosters fail to note that the phrase did not appear on coins until 1864. The motto was stamped on coinage after a Pennsylvania pastor suggested it to the Mint, arguing that the Civil War was a punishment from God.
The phrase was removed from coins briefly during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt when new coins were designed. Its use was not mandated on paper currency until 1957, one year after Congress declared "In God We Trust" the national motto.

After seeing the movie "I Am Legend," in which a manmade virus turned 90 percent of the human population into flesh-eating mutants, I realized that it's important to figure out which of my friends, colleagues, pets and so forth would be useful during a hypothetical apocalypse.
To preface, I will be going by the "I Am Legend" apocalypse because it inspired this column, so forget about "12 Monkeys" "28 Days Later" or any other hypothetical apocalyptic world. So in case you didn't see the movie, Will Smith is the last man in New York City, but there are lots of flesh-eating rabid mutant humans who die if they're in the sun. But there is vegetation that grows wild and animals that are edible, but need to be hunted.
Also, this movie has convinced me that we should not try to solve cancer because every time humans come up with a cure for cancer, it ends up creating some death-sentence virus. At least that's what happens in movies, and if we haven't realized that life imitates Will Smith movies, than we haven't learned anything at all. Take, for example, "Men in Black" and "Independence Day."

So after the inevitable apocalypse occurs, the survivors will have to a) survive by hunting and gathering; b) repopulate the Earth; c) avoid flesh-eating mutants; and d) find a cure to the flesh-eating mutant virus.
And if the scenario of the apocalypse upsets you, look on the bright side: a) you probably won't survive it; b) you will no longer have your basic functions of taking your kids to school, paying taxes or if you're under 18 - no more school! So there are some positive things about the apocalypse, well minus the flesh-eating mutants, but they only come out at night.

Anyway, back to surviving. Can you hunt animals? Are you a world-class scientist able to find cures for flesh-eating mutant viruses? Can you identify things that can be eaten? Can you build a shelter? People who can perform any of these tasks are whom I am deeming needed during the apocalypse.
In case you're wondering what makes me qualified to decide who will be useful during the apocalypse, I do have qualifications. First I have moderate animal-tracking abilities, which means that I can find animals to hunt, and I can also find flesh-eating mutants so we can trap and cure them.
I also am decent at identifying edible plants, have a green thumb, my elementary-aged coaches always said I was a good leader and my last work review said that I rise to the occasion (it also said I need to get more Internet-savvy - but that won't matter anymore! Ha!).

And while we won't be able to choose who survives, we can put some people away in those hidden fallout shelters throughout the country. If we do choose to repopulate the Earth, we would want some women of prime breeding age. Yeah, I know, not that polite, but it's a basic fact of life after the flesh-eating virus takes over.
Oddly enough, Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts will also be very valuable, at least the ones who didn't do any of those lame projects. You know, we'll need the ones who can really build a fire, a shelter, fish (oh, the rivers will be safe to eat from) and so on.
So besides women who can give birth, we'll need some people who can hunt, trap, fish and so forth. And while some people may think that we need a cook, we really don't. Yes, we will be able to forage through people's homes, markets and restaurants for spices, I'm sure that some survivors will be able to cook well.

Now if you've made it this far through the column, you may not be that upset about a hypothetical apocalypse. And if you are reading this and you are upset, let's face it, the apocalypse will only happen if we solve cancer or AIDS, and we're not even close to doing that. But then again we've always got the nuclear war scenario...

> David Ertischek is the former editor of the Watertown TAB & Press.

In his Times column for the first day of the new year, "In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm," columnist John Tierney took a close look at the global warming debate and found that the climate change scenario being peddled by Gore and his legion of followers is anything but the settled scientific fact they claim, with the sole doubters being the equivalent of those who believe the earth is flat. Tierney, critics say, has nailed the climate alarmists and exposed their propaganda!

Tierney begins his myth shattering column by telling his readers: "I'd like to wish you a happy New Year, but I'm afraid I have a different sort of prediction. You're in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change - and that these images are a mere preview of what's in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet."
Tierney cautions that he cannot be more specific. "I don't know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather."
Noting that "there's bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn't ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah's sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard)." Those interpreting the weather nowadays, Tierney explains "are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness - burning fossil fuels."

Tierney recalls that last year British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year's end, however, he writes that "even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record - it was actually lower than any year since 2001 - the BBC confidently proclaimed, '2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.'
"When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed."

The "availability cascade," Tierney writes, "is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and 'The China Syndrome,' minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy."
Once such a cascade is under way, he adds "it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there's not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting - or why the globe's other pole isn't melting, too."

Tierney writes that Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, "recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.
"Guess which paper jibed with the theory - and image of Katrina - presented by Al Gore 's 'Inconvenient Truth'?"
The answer: "the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December - by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize."

Tierney recalls that in his speech accepting the Peace Prize, Gore "didn't dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate." Nor, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been in his roundup of the 2007 weather. Instead, Tierney notes, "he alluded somewhat mysteriously to 'stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,' and focused on other kinds of disasters, like 'massive droughts' and 'massive flooding.'
"In the last few months," Mr. Gore said, 'it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.' But he was being too modest," Tierney says, adding, "Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."

The angel Moroni allegedly appeared in the 1820s to a young American treasure hunter called Joseph Smith, and led him to some golden plates buried on a hillside near his home in western New York. Allegedly written in an otherwise unknown language called Reformed Egyptian, and deciphered with the aid of two stones called Urim and Thummim, these texts became the Book of Mormon, regarded by Mormons as divine revelation alongside the Bible. "Mormon", Smith explained in a letter to a newspaper, derives from the Reformed Egyptian word mon, meaning good, "hence with the addition of more, or the contraction mor, we have the word Mormon; which means, literally, more good".
In this holy book, North America was described as "a land which is choice above all other lands" (II Nephi 1:5), and 19th century Americans were assured, in a kind of retrospective prophecy, that "it shall be a land of liberty" (II Nephi 1:7). What is more, if the Native Americans converted to the true faith, they would have the chance to become again "a white and a delightsome people" (II Nephi 30:6). (The official online version has corrected this to "a pure and a delightsome people".) Adherents of this Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can, by their own strenuous efforts and good works, themselves aspire to become gods. Failing that, they can aspire to become the next best thing - president of the United States.

One leading Republican contender for the presidency, Mitt Romney, professes to be a devout Mormon, and his religion has become an election issue. According to a profile in the New York Times, Romney's father, George, was born in Mexico "in a colony of Mormons who had fled a crackdown on polygamy ... As a Mormon missionary, he was assigned to proselytise in London from a soapbox in Hyde Park, where he developed a gift for salesmanship that became the hallmark of his career". Mitt Romney did his own Mormon missionary work in France.
Romney's Mormonism is a problem for many evangelical Christians from the religious right, who would otherwise be his natural constituency. Instead, they seem to prefer the Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee, who merely takes the book of Genesis literally.

To fend off this threat, Romney delivered a speech that drew the line in another place, not between Mormons and true Christians, but between everyone of faith and the godless rest. Only the former, he implied, can be true Americans: "We should acknowledge the creator as did the founders - in ceremony and word."
"You can be certain of this," he attempted to reassure US voters, "any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me ... we do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith."

So it really doesn't matter what belief you have as long as you have some belief. The Romney formula is EBA - Everyone But Atheists.
This will not lose him many Republican votes, but as a recipe for a free country it's unacceptable. At the very least, religious politicians in free countries must find a language that gives equal footing in the public square to those of all faiths and those of none. Even in Britain, there are now these attempts to suggest that "faith" is somehow intrinsically superior to a lack of religious belief. Just before Christmas the former home secretary Charles Clarke emailed the text of a lecture he had delivered on this subject. Clarke's lead proposition was that "first and foremost, faith is generally a force for good".

Whether as a historical or contemporary statement, this does not hold up. Since for most of history most men and women have had some faith, and even in the modern world most still do, almost everything done by humans to humans, or to the natural world, has been justified by one faith or another: a lot of very good things; and a lot of very bad things. It's as ahistorical to deny that people have done what secular liberals would consider to be good out of what they believed to be religious motivation, as it is to deny that people have done terrible things out of what they believed to be religious motivation.

The problem with Romney is not that he has faith, or is a Mormon. It is that faith and politics have a track record of problems - the latest being Bush and Blair's religious stance in which they claim that they "knew" they were "right" to invade Iraq, knowledge they acquired because of their religious beliefs - and that in the search for more votes, the likes of Blair withheld their beliefs, and Romney is redefining boundaries, in which apparent incompatibility is smoothed out, and what is in essence an inter-faith struggle, is made into a battle between the religious and the non-believers. The age of faith versus science, the Vatican versus Galileo, is once again upon us?

More Americans believe in a literal hell and the devil than Darwin's theory of evolution, according to a new Harris poll. It is the latest survey to highlight America's deep level of religiosity, a cultural trait that sets it apart from much of the developed world.
It also helps explain many of its political battles which Europeans find bewildering, such as efforts to have "Intelligent Design" theory - which holds life is too complex to have evolved by chance - taught in schools alongside evolution.

The poll of 2,455 US adults from November 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005. It further found that 79 percent believed in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, while 72 percent believed that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Belief in hell and the devil was expressed by 62 percent.
Darwin's theory of evolution met a far more sceptical audience which might surprise some outsiders as the United States is renowned for its excellence in scientific research. Only 42 percent of those surveyed said they believed in Darwin's theory, which largely informs how biology and related sciences are approached. While often referred to as evolution it is in fact the 19th century British intellectual's theory of "natural selection."
There are unsurprising differences among religious groups. "Born-again Christians are more likely to believe in the traditional elements of Christianity than are Catholics or Protestants. For example, 95 percent believe in miracles, compared to 87 percent and 89 percent among Catholics and Protestants," according to the poll. "On the other hand only 16 percent of born-again Christians, compared to 43 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Protestants, believe in Darwin's theory of evolution."

What is perhaps surprising is that substantial minorities in America apparently believe in ghosts, UFOs, witches, astrology and reincarnation. The survey, which has a sampling error of plus or minus two percent, found that 35 percent of the respondents believed in UFOs and 31 percent in witches. More born-again Christians - a term which usually refers to evangelical Protestants who place great emphasis on the conversion experience - believed in witches at 37 percent than mainline Protestants or Catholics, both at 32 percent.

Reviewing his decade in power, Tony Blair in the BBC Documentary "The Blair Years" said politicians who talk about religion "get into trouble". Hence, Blair avoided talking about his religious views while in office for fear of being labelled "a nutter". Still, he said that his faith had been "hugely important" to his premiership.

American politicians use their religious affiliation to gain votes; in Britain, religion and politics are largely separated. His ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell once told reporters: "We don't do God." Campbell has now acknowledged that his former boss "does do God in quite a big way", but that both men feared the public would be wary.
British voters imagined that leaders who were informed by religion would "commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say 'Right, I've been told the answer and that's it'". In the case of Blair, such a conclusion seems to be the correct one.

Though Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, merely suggested that Mr Blair may not have been so politically successful had the relationship between his beliefs and his actions in office been better known. "The public might have been less willing to give him the triumph of three consecutive general election victories if they'd known the extent to which ethical values would overshadow pragmatism," Campbell said.
But the documentary made it clear that as time progressed, Blair constantly felt he was "right", no matter what his colleagues or the public felt or knew that was right. This became apparent with Iraq, but came to the boiling point in August 2006 and Israel's attacks against Lebanon. Here, Blair's conviction of being "right" clearly revealed his religious convictions, not any humane or moral considerations, as thousands of innocent people were killed. It was this incident, and no doubt that 10, Downing Street was run by a religious zealot, not a pragmatic politician, that made his colleagues decide to push or Blair's exit as soon as possible, rather than allow a Christian fundamentalist to remain in power.

The fact that the earth has warmed a tick or two on the thermometer is undisputed. The cause of this phenomenon is in great dispute. As the politicians wrestle this volatile issue, those who know and read the Bible have no doubt of an eventual cataclysmic "global warming." And hence, the oh so scientifically sounding consensus of global warming is a welcome "fact" that proves to many believers the end is nigh.
God promises a scorching sun as one of the bowl judgments near the end of time. Revelation, chapter 16, verses 8-9, says, "the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory." For the religiously inclined, that is Bible-speak for "global warming", and a precursor for worse things to come.

A new study has for the first time suggested that global warming might lead to warlike situations in the world. The study points out that current and future climate change may result in widespread global unrest and conflict.
An example of this new link between war and changing global temperatures was put forward by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently, when he referred to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan. According to him, "This conflict grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation, and a scarcity of resources."
For the new study, Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, and colleagues in Hong Kong, China, and the UK scanned worldwide historical records on food prices, population levels and conflicts dating back to 1400 and compared this data with long-term temperature records.
"We found that anecdotes of climate changes leading to conflict seem to fit a broader pattern," said Brecke. "Our basic model is that deviations in temperature can hamper crop production, which in turn, has three effects: increasing food prices, a greater risk of death from starvation, and increased social tension, which leads to violent conflict," said Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US.
Though the research team acknowledges that temperature is not the only factor that causes wars, they believe that it can certainly aggravate the conditions. For example, cooler temperatures during the Little Ice Age caused a drop in crop yields which intensified conflicts.
Although the world is now predicted to get warmer, not cooler, the researchers point out that forecasts suggest global warming will lead to long-term food shortages much as cooling did during the Little Ice Age, by disrupting global water cycles.
Brecke cautions that though modern societies have more mechanisms to cope with these problems, they might fail if society is forced to cope with a whole slew of environmental problems at the same time, as is predicted by several major environmental reports. "If other problems emerge that impede our ability to address food shortages, we may well see warfare erupt, and it should not be that big a surprise," New Scientist quoted Brecke as saying. 

A "torrent" of negative stories has been revealed by a study of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the British media, according to a report. Research into one week's news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, who commissioned the study, said the findings were a "damning indictment" of the media and urged editors and programme makers to review the way they portray Muslims.
"The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west," he said. "There is a scale of imbalance which no fair-minded person would think is right." Only 4% of the 352 articles studied were positive, he said.

Livingstone said the findings showed a "hostile and scaremongering attitude" towards Islam and likened the coverage to the way the left was attacked by national newspapers in the early 1980s. "The charge is that there are virtually no positive or balanced images of Islam being portrayed," he said. "I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims."
Among examples in the study was a report which claimed that Christmas was being banned in one area because it offended Muslims, which researchers said was "inaccurate and alarmist". The report said that Muslims in Britain were sometimes depicted as a threat to traditional British values, and the coverage weakened government attempts to reduce extremism.

Egyptian and Saudi nuclear ambitions, on top of Iran's atomic drive, will lead to an "apocalyptic scenario", Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the English-language Jerusalem Post newspaper. "If Egypt and Saudi Arabia begin nuclear programmes, this can bring an apocalyptic scenario upon us". Lieberman is one of those who believes Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation to possess nuclear weapons, for nuclear technology in any other hands will be used against Israel - he believes.

"Their intentions should be taken seriously and the declarations being made now are to prepare the world for when they decide to actually do it," said the minister, responsible for coordinating Israeli efforts against a nuclear Iran. On October 29, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced a programme to build several nuclear power stations - the country having abandoned an atomic energy programme in 1986 after the Chernobyl disaster.
Jordan, one of only two Arab countries with Egypt to have signed peace deals with Israel, as well as Algeria, Libya, Yemen and all six pro-Western Gulf states including Saudi Arabia have also announced peaceful nuclear ambitions.

One country with no only nuclear technology, but weapons, is Pakistan. Unremarkably, therefore, Lieberman, who heads the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, also told the Jerusalem Post that Pakistan could pose a major threat to Israel.
"If the Taliban or (Al-Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden get control (of Pakistan), they will have nuclear weapons for terror use and they don't hide their opinions about Israel," he said.
Lieberman also joined the chorus of Israeli criticism against the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, over comments from the Egyptian that Iran's nuclear acitivites pose no immediate danger. "He is part of the problem, not part of the solution," said Lieberman, who is also a deputy prime minister.

Israel, which belongs to the UN nuclear watchdog but is not a signatory to its key Non-Proliferation Treaty, is widely considered to have the Middle East's sole - if undeclared - nuclear arsenal. It considers Iran its chief enemy after repeated claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that the Jewish state should be wiped off the map.
Lieberman is known for extreme nationalist views. He advocates a land swap in which Israel would annex its largest Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian land and transfer Israeli territory with a large Arab population to a future Palestinian state. He also once sparked outrage by advocating the execution of Arab Israeli MPs who had dealings with Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organisation but which controls the Gaza Strip.

The verdict is in about police culpability in the death of Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22, 2005. An innocent man followed for a still unknown reason, then shot several times at point blank in a metro station. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, who, as confirmed by the report of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), tried to disable a proper investigation and fed lies to the public. A prosecution who cannot prosecute except for "health and safety" breaches. The verdict: no-one in particular is guilty; it is a failure of the system.
Who is responsible for the failure of the system? Not the man at the head of the system, apparently, in which various members of the Labour Party have publicly aired their support for the head of the Met.
Amidst political party word slinging contests, what is being missed, is that this is the first undeniable confirmation that Britain has become a Big Brother police state... if Blair were to remain in his position. In a police state, the police are beyond the law; a systematic failure, in this case meaning that there were no less than 19 catastrophic problems, is done away with by statements that Sir Ian Blair has also done "much good". Would Holocaust survivors appreciate it if Hitler was declared innocent of war crimes, because it was a problem of his regime, not Hitler personally... and if this conclusion was "supported" by statements that Hitler loved his dogs, wife and several children, so he wasn’t "all bad"?
Innocent people have been shot at point blank, yet no-one is guilty. It is carte blanche for the police - and a tell-tale sign of a police state.

Bush has invoked - yet again - the spectre of "World War III" to justify a proposed aggression against another country. Despite all the rhetoric about how Iran's president is supposedly apocalypse-obsessed, it seems that Bush is as much under the influence of far-right dispensationalist Christian ideas about the "end times" scenarios.
A French newspaper recently reported that a few weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, Bush had told Jacque Chirac, the French president, that the Biblical prophecy of "Gog and Magog" was unfolding in the Mideast and that the biblical prophecies were unfolding. A "stupified" Chirac then had his office contact a theology professor at the University of Lausanne to explain the story of Gog and Magog to them.
But Bush would not be alone in having an apocalypse complex: there are reports that US troops are being "force fed" Christian religious indoctrination, and Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who gave speeches at churches while in uniform that disparaged Islam and defined the war on terror in fundamentalist, "end times" terms, was not fired but promoted.
Senior religious leaders in Israel are predicting a "Great, Miraculous war" on Iran. Even the pro-Israeli lobby has embraced this nuttiness: The apocalypse-spewing Reverend Hagee, Bush-confidant and head of "Christians United For Israel" was a star speaker at a recent AIPAC convention, where he shared a podium with current and former US officials as well as presidential candidates including John McCain. Hagee has led an intense lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to present government officials with his message of Armageddon, and his efforts have been praised by President Bush and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. In his book entitled "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee has presented his apocalyptic visions of a nuclear showdown with Iran: "The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching.... Rejoice and be exceeding glad - the best is yet to be."
Despite all the talk about how Iran presents a nuclear threat, the potential dangers of this sort religious Armageddon obsession by Bush should be obvious when one considers the fact that President Bush has already explicitly threatened Iran with nuclear first-strikes.

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann says the realistic threat of terrorism is being so overstated by the Bush administration - and in turn, by Fox News - that it's downright funny.

"What happens when the culture of fear begins to inspire not terror or outrage, but laughter?" asked Olbermann. "Am I being too optimistic, or has giggling now passed paranoia in response to the president and these macabre parrots working at Fox?"

Olbermann cited a report yesterday carried by Fox News which suggested that Al Qaeda may be the true culprit behind the rash of recent California wildfires. Basing their coverage on an article it said ran "five days ago" in the Arizona Republic, the Fox and Friends morning program discussed an FBI memo stating that an Al Qaeda detainee had brought up the possibility of such a plan.

Calling the report "almost all wrong," the host took the network to task for grossly misreporting the age of the memo: "The memo was reported not... five days ago, but six days ago - plus 1,560 more days ago," said Olbermann. "The memo is from July 11, 2003. The Arizona Republic is a newspaper. Congratulations, Fox. But it has not been carrying the story... the guy who reported it doesn't even work there anymore."

Later in the program, Olbermann made up his own terror rumour about Al Qaeda's far-reaching powers: "I heard Al Qaeda causes night to fall," he warned.

Air America radio host Rachel Maddow, a guest during the segment, said reports like Fox's helped to aid a White House that profited from fear. "They have to come up with superhuman powers for Al Qaeda because they want to use Al Qaeda to justify a super-extreme agenda for the United States of America," said Maddow of the Bush administration.

Mike Huckabee on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 during the Republican debate in Orlando claimed that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen." One out of 56 equals 'most'? No, it doesn't. Not even close.
Only one of the 56 was an active clergyman, and that was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). A few more of the signers were former clergymen, though it's a little unclear just how many. The conservative Heritage Foundation said two other signers were former clergymen. The religion web site Adherents.com said four signers of the declaration were current or former full-time preachers. But everyone agrees only Witherspoon was an active minister when he signed the Declaration of Independence.
We'd like to give Huckabee every benefit of the doubt, but even if you consider former clergymen among the signers the best you could come up with is four. Out of 56. That's not "most," that's Pants-on-Fire wrong.