• Marge Baker @ US News: There Is a Judicial Confirmation Crisis, and the GOP Is Causing It.
• Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion: Gen Boykin: Muslims are “Precious… I Respect Them and Their Right to Worship.”
• Jillian Rayfield @ TPM: Bachmann, Coulter Named As Witnesses In Suit Over Alleged Tea Party TV Scam.
• Leah Nelson @ Hatewatch: Nativist Leader Recasts Immigration Fight as Religious Crusade.
• Marie Diamond @ Think Progress Health: North Carolina GOP Lawmaker Calls For Bringing Back Public Hangings, Starting With Abortion Providers.
• Andy Kopsa: Iowa for Israel?

• Liberty Counsel seems quite pleased with the "success" of its Purity Bear video.
• Lila Rose says it is okay for her to lie in order to carry out her anti-abortion agenda because people in the Bible did it too.
• Matt Barber goes to war with Matt Drudge.
• Did you know Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones is running for president?  Alan Colmes interviewed him last night - you will be shocked to learn that Jones is also a Birther.
• Finally, the quote of the day from James Robison: "This year’s election is far more than a choice between candidates or parties. It is often between night and day, good and evil, a biblical worldview that puts God at the top and security that can be found only in the shelter and shadow of the Almighty or a worldview that puts man first with dependence upon an anti-God system, an ever-increasing, all-powerful federal government continually making promises that cannot be fulfilled while destroying the prosperity and blessing God offers through its uncontrolled excess and damaging entitlements."

A new study estimates that 7% of Americans carry the human papillomavirus (HPV) in their mouths which has been transmitted by oral sex and that this may be responsible for the rise in mouth and throat cancer over the last twenty five years.

And Bryan Fischer knows just who is to blame: Bill Clinton

Writing in The Washington Times today, Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute went on a vicious rant, condemning what he calls President Obama’s “deep contempt for Christianity and democracy” and concluding his diatribe with a call for Catholics to “engage in civil disobedience” in order to fight Obama’s “relentless campaign to destroy America’s Judeo-Christian values.” Kuhner is upset about the Obama administration’s recent decision in favor of near-universal contraception coverage in insurance plans with narrow religious exemptions, which Kuhner described as part of an effort to “smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing the sexual revolution,” contending that “the pill and the condom are the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism.”

He went on to attack Obama for supporting legal abortion by repeating the debunked charge that the health care reform law subsidizes abortion, which he said makes “Christians complicit in infanticide.” Kuhner also knocked Obama for “transforming the armed forces into a vast laboratory for social engineering” through the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and accused him of constructing a “repressive state” by “eroding the First Amendment.”

Like many leftists, President Obama has deep contempt for Christianity and democracy. This is why his administration has declared war on the Catholic Church and religious liberty.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently went ahead and approved last year’s decision to mandate that many religious organizations provide health insurance plans to their employees that include contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization coverage - and this must be done without charging a co-pay. In other words, Mr. Obama has done something that is ominous and unprecedented: compelling religious groups to embrace and subsidize free birth control. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities must either betray their fundamental social teachings or drop insurance coverage for their employees, thereby triggering massive financial penalties under Obamacare. The choice is simple: Abandon Catholic doctrine or go out of business.

…

The church teaches that the primary purpose of sexual activity within the sacred bonds of marriage is procreation - to perpetuate humanity from one generation to the next. For nearly 1,500 years, such thinking underpinned the Christian West. That was then; this is now. Since the 1960s, modern society is obsessed with contraception, abortion and sexual hedonism. The results have been declining birth rates and shrinking native populations. Literally, the West is dying. As the late Pope John Paul II put it, we are in the grips of “a culture of death.” Birth control is a key pillar. It is a seminal aspect of the socialist drive to establish a secular utopia - smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing the sexual revolution. The pill and the condom are the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. Decades ago, the Vatican warned that birth control eventually would lead to the West’s demise. A civilization unable - and unwilling - to reproduce itself is doomed.

…

Mr. Obama is the most radical president in our history. He is spearheading a liberal social revolution, not just an economic one. He supported partial-birth abortion - the heinous procedure of killing babies just before they are to be delivered. His administration refuses to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act. He has enabled homosexuals to serve openly in the military, transforming the armed forces into a vast laboratory for social engineering. His signature legislation, Obamacare, allows for the federal funding of abortion. Hence, Christians will be forced to have their tax dollars subsidize the mass murder of unborn children - a direct attack on their most basic religious tenets. He is making Christians complicit in infanticide.

…

Mr. Obama is a militant secularist. His aim is to purge religion from the public square, forcing it to retreat into the private sphere - making it nothing more than a personal lifestyle choice. He wants us to leave our faith at the door when engaging in civic life. Yet religion is natural to human beings. The only way radical progressives can forge a secular social order is through a repressive state.

The Obama administration is eroding the First Amendment, assaulting the conscience rights and religious liberties of Catholics and waging a relentless campaign to destroy America’s Judeo-Christian values. Catholics must engage in civil disobedience. Otherwise, Mr. Obama will succeed in dismantling our republic. Today, he is coming for us. Tomorrow, it will be you.

Today on Washington Watch Weekly with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) laced into President Obama, whom he called the “abortion president,” for appointing “radically pro-abortion” people to the government who are promoting “evil” with an “anti-child, anti-woman mentality.”

Smith: When you have the coercive power of the state in the hands of the abortion president who litmus tests virtually everybody in his administration to ensure that they are radically pro-abortion and very often come right out of the ranks of Planned Parenthood or NARAL or EMILY’s List to hold these positions and then they do their dirty work every day of the week and then they fund non-governmental organizations like Planned Parenthood who then continue promoting this evil, and this anti-child, anti-woman mentality.

Smith went on to tell Perkins that the Obama administration seeks “to remake America as the culture of death” and if he wins re-elections, it “will be significantly worse in terms of extremism in promoting both the abortion issue as well as the homosexual agenda.”

Smith: They are very coercive in this administration, there is nothing benign or ‘come along and let us try to convince you,’ they tell you under power of huge penalties, and that is what ObamaCare is all about, it is riddled with penalties, everyone knows about the one if you don’t buy health insurance you can get fined. But when it comes to the moral issues, they seek to remake America as the culture of death.

…

The second four years, the second term of a Barack Obama will be significantly worse in terms of extremism in promoting both the abortion issue as well as the homosexual agenda.

I don't know what has gotten into Religious Right leaders lately, but seemingly all we are hearing about these days is how we are literally facing the extinction of Western Civilization if America does not turn back to Christ, push back gay rights and defeat President Obama.

A few weeks ago, Mat Staver was on a local Florida talk show where he said that we are engaged in a spiritual battle as both America and Israel were under attack from enemies with common goals.  Staver asserted that "what we're facing in our lifetime, and I make no exaggeration about this, is literally the survival of Western Civilization" because attacks on religious liberty and marriage are "designed to destroy our core foundations" and, once they go, everything else will follow suit:

Yesterday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared on a conference call with Champion the Vote, a nominally non-partisan group that focuses on mobilizing Religious Right voters. Dobson spent much of his time on the call criticizing the gay rights movement for disingenuously using the “human rights and anti-discrimination” message and the “‘live and let live’ concept” for advancing “homosexual adoption, homosexual marriage [and] requiring foster parents to attend classes so they can indoctrinate the foster kids that they have with the gay and lesbian concept.”

Dobson reserved his most heated attacks for California’s SB48 law, which ensures that schools cover the accomplishments of prominent LGBT historical figures, calling it “the most egregious state law that is on the books today.” According to Dobson, “five year-olds toddling off to schools on their wobbly little legs” in California are now forced to hear teachers tell “them about adult sex perverse behavior.”

Listen:

Dobson: One reason that the gay community is so successful and it was a strategy that was worked out in the 1940s but one reason that they’ve been so successful in making their argument is because they have made a very compelling case for human rights and anti-discrimination, I was kind of referring to that a minute ago, and obviously we all agree with that and Christians do not want any of their fellow human beings to be denied basic rights and human rights and be subjected to discrimination. Christians see the logic in that argument but that ‘live and let live’ concept makes it easier for gays and lesbians to fight for the agenda of their cause, including homosexual adoption, homosexual marriage, requiring foster parents to attend classes so they can indoctrinate the foster kids that they have with the gay and lesbian concept.

And what’s going on right now in California and Massachusetts which is without question the most egregious state law that is on the books today where, speaking in California, from kindergarten to grade 12, every single year and in most classes, the teacher is required to teach the contributions and the great benefits not only of homosexuality through the years but bisexuality and transgendered sexuality and lesbianism, and it starts in kindergarten! Can you imagine this! We’re talking about five year-olds toddling off to schools on their wobbly little legs and they get there and a teacher with all the authority that can be invested in an adult stands before them, and they are sitting on the floor with their legs crossed, and begins telling them about adult sex perverse behavior. I mean, that takes my breath away!

Pyllis Schlafly had David Noebel, founder of Summit Ministries, on her Eagle Forum Live radio program on Monday to talk about the ongoing threat of communism to America and the world. When a listener called in to complain that communist-hunter Joseph McCarthy is now “demonized” in schools, Schlafly and Noebel agreed that McCarthy was, in fact, a “hero”: 

Caller: I remember learning in school about McCarthyism, and they demonized him, essentially, is what they did. And probably he was more of a hero than he was a villain. So I just wanted to get you guys’ take on that. Thanks.

Schlafly: Well, plenty of us thought he was a hero. What about you, David Noebel?

Noebel: I think he was a hero. Now look, I was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Remember, he was from Appleton, Wisconsin, just 20 miles away. He was a hero.
 

Later in the program, Noebel warned that the central tenets of communism have been “nearly fulfilled” in the United States today:

Noebel: If you read the manifesto, the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, Marx and Engels come out with no God, no private property, no family – traditional family – no inheritance, graduated income tax, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. In fact, if you read the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto, you’ll be surprised at how we have nearly moved into every one of those areas. And later on, about 1958, Cleon Skousen came out with a book called “The Naked Communist,” and he listed 45 goals in 1958 of the communists and today we have nearly fulfilled every one of them. So people say, ‘This can’t happen.’ But it’s happening right in front of us. Right in front of us, and we can’t even…we just don’t seem to see it.

While appearing on AFR Mornings with host Frank Turek on the American Family Association’s American Family Radio, anti-gay activist Michael Brown said that gay rights advocates are making LGBT youth who commit suicide “pawns in a larger political agenda” because they know “it’s a whole lot harder” for their opponents “to look at a kid and a family where there’s a suicide.” Brown, who blamed gay rights supporters for the murder of California fifteen year-old Lawrence King, told Turek that increased attention to suicides by LGBT teenagers are making people ignore other teenagers who commit suicide.

Of course, Brown offered no evidence to back up his claim that concerns about suicide among LGBT youth are undercutting efforts to prevent suicide in general. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center reported in 2008 that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth “are nearly one and a half to three times more likely to have reported suicidal ideation” and “nearly one and a half to seven times more likely than non-LGB youth to have reported attempting suicide,” noting that “stigma and discrimination are directly tied to risk factors for suicide.”

Later, Brown called gay rights advocates “completely intolerant” and Turek, who has called homosexuality a “road to destruction,” labeled them “the most intolerant people out there.”

Watch:

Brown: For every one kid, gay teen, that commits suicide because of bullying or because parents say ‘homosexuals go to hell’ or because they just feel ‘I have no future, I have no hope, I can never marry’ and so on, these should be weighty issues to us as Christians, this should hurt us, what if it’s our own kid? That’s why we need to look at every kid. But for every one that commits suicide for that cause, there are--is it dozens, is it scores, I don’t know the exact stats how it breaks down--but a whole lot more kids who commit suicide for other reasons, we never hear about them in the news! We don’t hear national campaigns about them!

So for me what is so concerning is these kids become pawns in a larger political agenda because it’s a whole lot harder to look at a kid and a family where there’s a suicide, it’s a whole lot harder to look at that and hold to our convictions than it is to look at say two forty year old men that want to be married. So we need a compassionate response but boy is this being utilized to push a whole agenda on our society and then an agenda that is completely intolerant, you cannot hold to your views.

Turek: The folks who say they are fighting for tolerance are the most intolerant people out there.

On Wednesday, Newt Gingrich held a conference call with faith leaders during which he declared that the push for marriage equality is an example of "the rise of paganism" while his supporters warned that failure to elect Gingrich would quite literally spell the end of America and Western Civilization.

On Thursday, the Mitt Romney campaign held its own conference call with its own faith leaders who ripped Gingrich for his arrogance, recklessness, and "despicable behavior":

The Mitt Romney campaign held a conference call this morning with social conservative Republicans in Florida, touting the former Massachusetts governor's integrity and values and contrasting him to Newt Gingrich. Leading the call were Pastor David Janney of Orlando Baptist Church, the largest church in Orlando, former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon of Indialantic, and Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and a prominent advocate for religious freedom.

Pastor Janney said he's watched Romney being vetted and noted his marriage of 42 years, five children and 16 grandchildren: "When I look at his life I'm not concerned about being embarrassed or distracted by his personal issues."

Weldon said he was one of the members of congress who tried to oust Gingrich as U.S. House Speaker. "With Newt it was kind of like every day we didn't know what he was gonna say, we didn't know what he was going to be doing, he was just a little bit unpredictable," Weldon said. "It worries me the idea of him being in the oval office."

...

State Rep. Dennis Baxley, former leader of the Christian Coalition of Florida, also spoke on the call, saying Romney "shares our Christian values and will protect our religious freedom."

"When your choosing a leader it's about integrity. The hardest thing to maintain in any leader is those essential qualities of humility and purity. ... I'm very concerned about Newt Gingrich on that front." Baxley called Gingrich "very arrogant on his moral failure - calling the press despicable for covering him instead of humbly seeking the forgiveness of his former wife and others for his own despicable behavior."

After first going after Girl Scout cookies, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is now attacking the game Star Wars: The Old Republic for allowing same-sex relationships. Stephen Reid of Bioware announced that players in the MMO (massively multiplayer online game) could have “same gender romances with companion characters” as part of “a post-launch feature.” But enabling players to be in same-sex relationships is too much for Perkins, who in a radio bulletin entitled “Rebel Fleet Surrenders to Gay Empire” slammed the game for having “gone to the dark side.” He said that parents are angry “that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking,” urging members to “join them by logging on and speaking up. It's time to show companies who the Force is really with!”

In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it's launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that "gay" and "lesbian" don't exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren't. On the game's website, there are more than 300 pages of comments--a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It's time to show companies who the Force is really with!

• PFAW: PFAW Statement on Ocean City Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast.
• Faiz Shakir @ Think Progress Security: West Point Defends Decision To Invite Islamophobic General Because Cadets Deserve To Hear ‘Broad Range Of Ideas.’
• Carlos Maza @ Equality Matters: Meet Ken Hutcherson, Spokesman For Anti-Equality Groups In Washington.
• Kevin Drum: Newt Finally Fesses Up to Brazen Debate Lie.
• Timothy Noah @ TNR: Dole's Sweet Revenge.
• Jillian Rayfield @ TPM: Christie On Gay Marriage: Southern Blacks Would Have Been Psyched To Have Vote On Their Rights.

• After inundating Ohio legislators with heart-shaped balloons and teddy bears, Janet Porter has now turned to roses in an effort to get her "Heartbeat Bill" passed.
• Liberty Counsel is now threatening to sue the Wisconsin high school that pulled a student op-ed opposing adoption by gay parents that repeatedly cited Biblical passages calling for gays to be put to death.
• Brent Bozell delivers a ridiculously bombastic warning to the media.
• Randall Terry says NBC Chicago is refusing to run his Super Bowl ad ... and, of course, it is all President Obama's fault.
• Finally, we imagine that this quote from Gary Marx will come in handy the next time the Right starts screaming about some bogus campus outrage: "No university should be forced to put in place an institutionalized formal entity on a campus that would specifically undermine the values that that campus is committed towards teaching."

Pamela Geller yesterday returned to The Janet Mefferd Show to discuss her claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is “infiltrating” the Department of Justice. In her last appearance, she accused President Obama and the DOJ of attempting to restore “the universal caliphate.” Now, Geller says that “we see an Islamization of the Department of Justice,” which she claims is working with “Muslim groups” to try “to impose Islam on a secular society”:

Where is the line to the Muslim community, reaching out to the jihadists and calling the problem what it is; what the problem really is. I mean I don’t see any of that being done, everybody is blaming the messenger, if you talk about this Janet you’re going to be smeared, you’re going to be defamed, and anybody that talks about it—but what about the it? What is being done about it? This is what I find so confounding and bemusing that nobody will address the jihadists, nobody. My contention is these Muslim groups are very much in line with the objective and the objective is to impose Islam on a secular society and we see it, we see an Islamization of the Department of Justice.

But Geller wasn’t done. The anti-Muslim activist went on to claim that Obama may start a war as an “election ploy,” and derided the media as a “propaganda arm for the über-left and Islamic supremacists”:

Obama, people don’t think he’s going to be re-elected, but you know I’m sure you’ve heard of these movements, the troop movement in Kuwait and he may very well go into Iran, and I do believe it would be an election ploy and I think that it would work, I really do, I think that it would work if we removed—and I’m a big believer, just so you know huge supporter of removing nuclear sites there. So the country really is under attack from within and I think the first thing people really need to do is first learn everything, you must learn everything, because there is so much disinformation and the media is just criminally negligent, they have absolutely abdicated their role in the dissemination of news and information and have become a propaganda arm for the über-left and Islamic supremacists.

Yesterday, Newt Gingrich held another conference call for Religious Right supporters, seeking to mobilize them ahead of the Republican primary in Florida.

The call was hosted by Jim Garlow and featured several other of the Gingrich campaign's Faith Coalition leaders explaining why they had decided to support Gingrich ... and the consensus was that if President Obama wins re-election, it means the end of Western Civilization:

Mat Staver: I believe that if Speaker Gingrich wins Florida next Tuesday, he wins the nomination. If he wins the nomination, he beats President Barack Obama and we have not a cloud hanging over us in November and December of 2012 but we begin to see the clouds dissipating and some ray of sunshine of hope return to this land.

Jim Garlow: At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the United States as we know her will cease to exist as will, then, Western Civilization. Those who are discerning, those who are intuitive to what is happening morally and economically in our nation understand the truth.

George Barna: As you mentioned Jim, for the last twenty years I have steadfastly refused to endorse any individuals or organizations or products. But as I've analyzed the severity of America's situation today, I've come to believe that such self-restrictions are a luxury that we can no longer afford. So after carefully studying all the candidates in regards to the needs I just described and assessing their ability to win in November, I concluded that Newt Gingrich is the best man for the job.

Jim Garlow: We are in a situation that is so crisic in America, I'm actually stunned that President Obama could do this much destruction to the nation in a three year span. I never anticipated that this much harm in the moral and economic arenas of our nation could be brought on by one particular president.

Don Wildmon: This is not a typical election. This is an election unlike any ever held in our country. We're not just voting for a president; we're voting for the continuation of Western Civilization. If those who are listening think that what we enjoy, the freedoms we enjoy, the right to practice our Christan faith, is merely an accident and is there, it's not, people paid for it. And we can lose it, and we will lose it, if we lose this next election. What's at stake is everything that the human race, Western Civilization, has fought for for the last two thousand years.

When Gingrich joined the call, the thrice-married candidate served up some red meat to the audience by declaring that efforts to grant equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians are "pagan behaviors":

It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Finally, Gingrich explained that he didn't really have any interest in being president but decided that he had to do so because all the other Republicans are so terrible so that he had a moral obligation to step up and save this nation and that he would just magnanimously have to suffer the insults that come his way:

I want people to understand, I'm a volunteer. Callista and I had very long talks for over a year and then we talked with our two daughters and our two son-in-laws because we knew if we tried to offer help the country that we would be subjected to news media assaults, we'd be subjected to vicious gossip, we'd be subjected to people on the web saying horrible things and we'd be subjected to negative ads from our opponents. And we concluded that we are in so much trouble and we are in such grave danger of losing the America that we grew up in and the lack of Republican ability to articulate and communicate and defend is so great that both of us - this was a dual decision - we both concluded that we had a moral obligation to endure whatever comes and to at least offer, as citizens, to try and be of service.