• Did the alleged Fort Hood shooter advise the Obama transition? Ummm, no ... but that hasn't stopped WorldNetDaily from trying to cash in on it.
• Adele Stan: Thousands of Right-Wingers Rally at Capitol to Hear Lies About Health-Care Reform, Courtesy of Bachmann and GOP Leaders.
• Speaking of which, at least some in the crowd ought to now be very thankful for government-run healthcare.
• And apparently the event was such a smashing success that they are organizing yet another one  ... for tomorrow.
• Not surprisingly, Joel Osteen shares the Religious Right's views about gays.
• Finally, Jon Stewart sure does care deeply about Glenn Beck's appendix  ... and America:

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• Marco Rubio appeared on Janet Porter's radio program yesterday.
• Sarah Palin really does have control issues.
• Tony Perkins goes all Glenn Beck as he explains that healthcare reform is literally a "bailout" for Planned Parenthood.
• Is the Right really still trying to sink David Hamilton's nomination by claiming he's an ACORN activist? Didn't we already debunk this?
• It looks like the Christian Twitter is off to a rough start.
• I can't wait to find out how this ends.
• Finally, a Texas teacher is in danger of losing her job for refusing to provide her fingerprints, which she won't do because fingerprinting is a mark of the Beast.

Once again Religious Right leaders are linking up with Lou Engle and The Call for prayer and fasting, this time in an effort to stop healthcare reform. 

Tony Perkins, Mat Staver and others are scheduled to participate in another Engle-led prayer vigil/conference call tonight seeking God's intervention in order to stop this "unreighteous legislation":

This crisis demands divine intervention. We must pray and fast. Esther’s fast gave a king a sleepless night and the Persian death decree was changed in three days. People across America fasted in some measure for twenty-one (21) days for the vote in Maine. Was God involved in the victory in Maine? With all our hearts we believe the answer is yes. Some reporters in Maine were saying in the last moments that same-sex marriage was upheld, but a “sudden change” took place. If we pray, God could give wavering pro-life Democrats and Republicans a sleepless night or a dream and turn their hearts for LIFE.

The Bible shouts to us across the ages “we have not because we ask not”. Therefore, on November 6th, we are calling a Friday “Night of Petition” prior to the potential vote on Saturday November 7th. Join Mat Staver, Ron Luce, Tony Perkins, Lou Engle, and other key leaders at 8:00pm EST with thousands of concerned believing citizens for a national prayer conference call to cry out to God for mercy and ask for the restraining of this unrighteous legislation.

Conference Call Dial in number:

218-486-1400

Participant Pass code:
67107#

Last week it was reported that in February, James Dobson would be leaving his daily radio show and thereby essentially cutting his last remaining tie to Focus on the Family.

Earlier this week, Dobson shared that message with his radio listeners and explained that he had actually been asked to resign by Focus on the Family's board in order to facilitate the transfer of control over to the organization's new president, Jim Daly. 

In this edited clip, Dobson explains that God made the decision and communicated to everyone involved that it was time for the Dobson and the organization to move on, while assuring Dobson that He still has big plans for him:

Earlier this week we noted that Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission was planning a rally to challenge the recently enacted hate crimes law expanding protections for sexual orientation.

It looks like Rick Scarborough of Vision America will be joining him and has decided to announce his participation via an incoherent press release linking the issue the shooting at Fort Hood:

Referring to the man being held in connection with the deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas yesterday, Scarborough observed: "We know that Dr. Hasan is a devout Muslim who once told a fellow officer that 'Muslims have a right to stand up against the U.S. military.' Clearly, yesterday's rampage was not motivated by love. Given Hasan's worldview, it's probable that he was motivated in part by an animus toward Christians and Jews. Assuming that murder charges are brought against him, will Hasan also be charged with a hate crime?"

Scarborough said this highlights the absurdity of hate crimes laws. "If convicted, Hasan could face life in prison or the death penalty. Fanatics are not deterred by the prospect of an additional penalty for hating."

Scarborough predicted that the expansion of the federal Hate-Crimes statute, signed into law by President Obama recently, will not prevent crimes like the Fort Hood shootings, but will instead be used to silence dissent.

"Gay activists will use it against preachers who present the Biblical view of homosexuality. Muslim groups will use it against those who speak the verifiable truth about Islam. The federal Hate Crimes Law doesn't target crime, but free speech," Scarborough charged.

Scarborough said Hasan's case also illustrates an entrenched double standard, noting that the Army psychiatrist had received poor fitness reports for proselytizing his patients for Islam. "If a Christian doctor witnessed for Jesus to his patients, I can guarantee he would have been discharged from the United States Army in a New York minute," Scarborough stated.

Rev. Scarborough will lead a demonstration of pastors and other clergy in Washington, D.C., on November 16, where they will preach the Gospel and hold a press conference enumerating their objections to the recently passed Federal Hate Crimes Law. Will the U.S. Attorney General prosecute them for violating the expanded Hate Crimes law?

If, as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words," then this video from Randall Terry showing yesterday's Tea Party rally on The Hill is priceless:

A few weeks ago, we noted that Liberty Counsel was trying to force its way into the lawsuit over Proposition 8 in California, while the Yes on 8 lawyers have been trying to keep them out.

While Yes on 8 welcomed Liberty Counsel and other radically anti-gay groups during the election, they have been trying to keep them at bay ever since so that they can portray their post-election efforts as mainstream and reasonable. 

But Liberty Counsel, representing the Campaign for California Families, isn't giving up and is essentially forcing the Yes on 8 lawyers to admit that their efforts are driven by anti-gay animus in order to prevent Liberty Counsel from having any grounds to intervene. 

Basically, Liberty Counsel is arguing that the Yes on 8 defense is not sufficiently anti-gay and therefore they should be allowed to intervene in the case so that the militantly anti-gay message is adequately represented, forcing Yes on 8 to argue that their efforts are already plenty anti-gay as it is and Liberty Counsel's involvement is not needed:

Try as they might, lawyers from one anti-gay rights organization just can't get any love from judges in California.

After being barred from intervening in the federal challenge to Proposition 8, the Campaign for California Families tried their luck Wednesday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But a conservative panel sitting at Stanford Law School didn't appear any more likely to let them into the case.

Matthew Staver, whose advocacy group Liberty Counsel represents the campaign, repeated arguments previously made to Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker: that the official Prop 8 forces weren't adequately litigating the case and had stipulated away far too many facts.

Ninth Circuit Judge Pamela Rymer had a hard time understanding how Staver's goals conflict with those already advanced by the Yes on 8 campaign, which Walker allowed to be the primary defendant in the case.

"How is your, your interest -- your particular interest -- affected?" she asked Staver.

If Prop 8 is upheld on some narrow ground, the stipulated facts still make it harder to prevent homosexuals from becoming a suspect class, Staver said. The Yes on 8 forces won't fight the idea that homosexuality is immutable, he said.

Judge M. Margaret McKeown pounced on this point, and began to read from one of the Yes on 8 filings. "'We will dispute plaintiffs' claim that homosexuality is immutable,'" McKeown intoned, whereupon Rymer started shaking her head.

...

Staver's appeal put the official Yes on 8 campaign in a bit of an awkward position, since it has tried to position itself as a defender of traditional marriage -- but not hateful or insensitive. But for purposes of defending against Staver's appeal, it had to show how many facts it was ready to contest, some of which are deeply offensive to same-sex marriage advocates.

Howard Nielson Jr. of Cooper & Kirk said his side hadn't actually agreed to stipulations, only that they were open to a discussion. They may still argue, for instance, that sexual orientation is amorphous.

"We are simply not giving away the store on that," Nielson said. 

Back in September, Mike Heath of the Maine Family Policy Council suddenly announced that he was leaving the organization, right in the middle of the fight over marriage equality in the state.

Heath had been finding himself being pushed aside in the Religious Right's activism and mobilization efforts, presumably because of the rabidly anti-gay insanity he'd been spreading, as the Yes on 1 side worked to portray itself as tolerant and mainstream.

Heath then all but disappeared from the scene ... but now that Yes on 1 has been victorious in Maine, Tip-Q points out that he has popped up on Peter LaBarbera's Americans for Truth website declaring that gays are sick and calling for reinstatement of Maine's anti-sodomy laws:

Homosexuality has absolutely nothing to do with marriage. Homosexuality is a sickness. It’s a sin.

We need to stop putting up with it. There is nothing civil about hiding the truth from those we love. And the truth about sex outside of marriage is that it hurts, it’s bad for us. We need to avoid it.

We need to choose life over sex. Sex is for life … it creates life. Sex and life must be connected in our thinking. We come together sexually in the context of marriage to celebrate creation, the creation of a unique individual human life. It is perilous to disconnect sex from creation. It is even more perilous to pretend that pleasurable sex should be associated with acts unspeakable.

In the interest of protecting and affirming all of Maine’s people, especially our children and grandchildren, we must repeal domestic partnership laws that provide benefits on the basis of homosexuality, we must de-fund the so-called “civil rights teams” [pro-homosexual student groups] and remove “sexual orientation and gender identity” from the Maine Human Rights Act and the Maine Civil Rights Act. It would also be prudent to reinstate Maine’s anti-sodomy law that was quietly removed from our criminal code in the late 1970s.

• Our latest Right Wing Watch In Focus is now available: Right Wing Leaders Foment Racial Resentment and Point Fingers to Avoid Accountability.
• Everything you need to know about today's Tea Party rally on The Hill.
• Alan Colmes: Right Wing jumps the shark.
• Kathyrn Joyce on the rise of the "men's rights movement."
• Somebody should tell Bill Donohue that the Colbert Report is satire.
• Americans United: California Teacher Wants To Require Christmas Carols In School.
• Finally, I am guessing that this is going to be extremely awkward for everyone involved.

• Mike Huckabee continues to lead in the 2012 polls.
• Hey, Ted Haggard has a new church ... in his house.
• Why am I not surprised that Tony Perkins was involved in today's Tea Party on The Hill?
• Focus on the Family spent over $200,000 fighting equality.
• How is it possible that Ralph Reed had managed to re-establish himself as a legitimate political commentator?
• Bill Donohue tells those seeking marriage equality that it's time to "pack it in."
• Efforts are now underway to repeal marriage equality in New Hampshire.
• Finally, did you know that if you work for the Liberty Counsel you'll "reap the eternal rewards of making a difference for God's kingdom"?

Back when President Bush was in office, one of the standard right-wing tactics for putting pressure on Democratic Senators to confirm his nominees was to accuse them of being anti-whatever the specific nominee happened to be.

When they opposed Bill Pryor, it was because they were anti-Catholic; when they opposed Miguel Estrada, it was because they were anti-Hispanic; when they opposed Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown, it was because they were anti-women; and when they opposed Leslie Southwick, it was because they were anti-southern white male.

Now President Obama is in office and making his own nominations ... but nothing has changed, as Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice is now accusing him discrimination because Obama has made a handful of nominations and not one has been a white southern male:

Yesterday, President Obama nominated Albert Diaz and James A. Wynn of North Carolina to the Fourth Circuit of the second highest court in the land, the United States Court of Appeals ...Their nominations bring to six the number of U.S. Court of Appeals nominees President Obama has named to the southern circuits – the Fourth, Fifth, and Eleventh – and to the handful of southern seats outside those circuits (note that circuit nominees virtually always hail from the state to which the corresponding circuit seat is informally assigned). None of these six southerners is a white male. So once again we have to wonder whether a Democratic bias against southern white men serving on the federal appeals courts is at work. (In addition to Diaz and Wynn, the six include Andre M. Davis, Barbara Milano Keenan, Beverly Baldwin Martin, and Jane Branstetter Stranch).

Does President Obama or his advisors believe that southern white men are likely to be bigoted, making them unfit to serve on the second most powerful court in the land? We hope not and readily concede that it is difficult to know if any such stereotype lurks in the White House. The absence of southern white male circuit nominees could, instead, be an innocent coincidence or the not-so-innocent byproduct of a judicial selection process dominated by racial and gender preferences.

But regardless of the reason for the pattern we noted in 2007 and again now, even the appearance that Democrats are biased against southern white men is a potential problem for the party generally, and for President Obama’s goal of transcending old racial divisions. At the very least, the pattern merits further thought and discussion, both outside and inside the White House.

White male judges currently hold 20 of the occupied 37 seats on the three southern circuits that Levey cites, and hold 95 of 157 of all the circuit court seats.

It looks like the Right, fresh off its "victory" in backing Doug Hoffman in New York, is now focusing its attention on the Florida Senate primary race between Gov. Charlie Crist and right-wing darling Marco Rubio.

Mike Huckabee endorsed Rubio months ago and he's already received support from the National Review. Now the Club for Growth is getting involved in the race:

The Club for Growth took a major step Thursday toward backing Marco Rubio in Florida’s GOP Senate primary, launching an ad against Gov. Charlie Crist.

The ad criticizes Crist for saying this week that he didn’t, in fact, support President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.

“Since Charlie Crist helped pass Barack Obama’s spending program, nearly 200,000 Floridians have lost their jobs,” the ad states. “Unemployment is the highest in decades. Personal income’s down. And the deficit in Washington is three times larger.”

The ad is not yet on TV but is slated for an ad buy, a Club spokesman said.

And today, the Family Research Council Action PAC officially endorsed Rubio as well:

Today FRC Action PAC, the political action committee connected to Family Research Council Action, is endorsing Marco Rubio for the U.S. Senate representing Florida. Tony Perkins, President of FRC Action, made the following statement:

"Marco Rubio has been a true friend of the family and the culture of life as a state legislator in Florida. Senators who will fight to defend the family against the radical leadership in the Senate are crucial to the future of our country.

"Rep. Rubio has fought to protect mothers and their unborn children. He supported pro-life legislation that would require doctors to complete ultrasounds before performing abortions thus giving the mother an opportunity to assess the consequences of her actions. Rep. Rubio also understands the importance of adult stem cell research in treating patients. He also endorsed legislation to ensure that taxpayers aren't forced to fund embryonic stem cell research.

"Rep. Rubio knows how taxes and out-of-control government spending burden our families. We believe he will stand up to the White House and Senate leadership as they attempt to saddle our children and grandchildren with an overwhelming mountain of debt.

"Rep. Rubio's many years of advocacy on behalf of pro-family causes will serve him well in the Senate. FRC Action PAC believes that Marco Rubio will be a true advocate for the issues that best uphold and strengthen families. We are proud to support his candidacy," concluded Perkins.

TPM reports that a few thousand Tea Party activists have gathered on Capitol Hill today ... all thanks to the efforts of Rep. Michele Bachmann:

Absolutely amazing.

By the way, do you think it is just a coincidence that this is happening today?

Maggie Gallagher says that those who fought for marriage equality in Maine wasted their time and money because the voters in the state were smart enough to know that it is gays who are the real bigots and haters:

The $4 million spent to pass gay marriage in Maine was wasted. Even Americans in liberal states do not believe that two guys pledged to a gay union are a marriage. Politicians can pass a bill saying a chicken is a duck and that doesn't make it true. Truth matters.

Americans have a great deal of goodwill toward gay people as friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. Most of us do not want to hurt them or hate them or interfere with anyone's legitimate rights to live as they choose. But we do not believe gay marriage is a civil right; we think it is a civil wrong. And we do not appreciate the increasingly intense efforts to punish people who disagree with gay marriage as if we were racists, bigots, discriminators or haters.

Case in point: Don Mendell, a school guidance counselor at Nokomis Regional High School in Maine, now faces ethics complaints for his decision to appear in a TV ad for the Yes on One campaign in the closing days of the contest. If substantiated, the ethics complaint could lead the government to yank his license as a social worker and, therefore, threaten his livelihood. What kind of movement spurs people to act like this? Meanwhile, a teacher of the year who campaigned for gay marriage faces no such threat to her livelihood. Is gay marriage really about love and tolerance for all?

The people of Maine are certainly entitled to wonder.

Appearing on MSNBC, Bishop Harry Jackson insists that the Religious Right's fight against marriage equality is really part of a two-pronged effort to protect marriage as an institution, with the second prong being the fight against divorce. 

I don't know about you, but I don't recall having seen them dump millions of dollars into the latter.

Speaking of the vote in Maine, Jackson said "the church was the engine behind the [GOTV] machine, but the argument was sociological in that people really believe that the society would be tampered with, that this is an experiment that we can't afford to have at the expense of children at schools around the country":

Via Joe.My.God.