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Liberty University announces that even though its internship program is under new management its goal remains the same:

[T]o train and equip young leaders by providing students with practical training and educational opportunities in and around the nation’s capital.

According to Director Carrie Barnhouse, participants will gain academic internship credit as well as valuable life skills.

“Our goal is to see students learn and grow through experiential education opportunities provided in D.C.,” she said. “Our chancellor has often referred to these students as being on the front lines. They are fighting the cultural war by conquering the capital.”

In the spring, Liberty students participated in internships at the White House, Concerned Women for America headquarters and the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

“With the changes taking place in Washington with the recent election, it is more important than ever to ensure our students are being mentored, trained and equipped to help make a difference,” Barnhouse said.

She said more than 100 students have participated in this program during the past three years and nearly half of them have been offered jobs.

“When they get to D.C. they make contacts and develop relationships with networks that help secure employment later in life,” she said.

We’ve written before about the Right’s plan to unleash the “biggest culture war battles ever” should Barack Obama become president and now we have Matt Barber urging right-wing activists to be like Christ and storm “into a temple and started kicking over some tables and throwing some people out of there”: 

A pro-family activist is encouraging Christians to become and stay involved in the culture war no matter the outcome of the presidential election …

"We have too many Christians who are kind of sitting on their hands, being in the world but not of the world. Well, that doesn't mean that you don't get involved in the process and that you don't stand up for your religious liberties," he contends.

"We have this notion of Christ as being kind of passive and allowing himself to be pushed around. Well, as I recall, Christ at one point went into a temple and started kicking over some tables and throwing some people out of there....I'm not advocating violence -- but it's time for people to start standing up for their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms."

The interesting thing about this OneNewsNow article is how it describes Barber.  Noting that his claim to fame is having been fired from Allstate Insurance after penning anti-gay screeds for right-wing “news” outlets, Barber landed a gig at Concerned Women for America and recently became “director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel and also the associate dean of the Liberty University School of Law.”  As ONN put it, he “now serves full-time on the front lines of the culture war.”

Imagine that?  Someone who makes their living serving on the “front lines of the culture war” and ginning up right-wing outrages is planning on continue to do just that regardless of who wins the next election.

One of the claims frequently made by Religious Right leaders is that so-called "values voters" do just that: vote their values rather than vote for one particular party.  In their view, Republicans have historically been better on the value issues they care about and that is why the Religious Right has been such a key part of the GOP's base of support. 

Considering that the values voter's loyalty is supposedly to God and his values rather than to the GOP, what are we to make of this quote from Mat Staver?

By contrast, in 2008 evangelical voters' final get-out-the-vote push is more of a shove against a candidate they don't want in the White House. They have never trusted Arizona Sen. John McCain, who once called some of the movement’s leaders "agents of intolerance," but they see Tuesday’s decision literally as a lesser-evil choice — and for some of them, Barack Obama is worse than Satan himself.

"Barack Obama could be running against the devil and you'd still have high turnout among values voters," said Mat Staver, founder of the religious conservative group Liberty Counsel.

"Obama has, by virtue of his liberal positions on values issues, energized values voters to show up and cast a vote against him," Staver added.

So there you have it:  "values voters" are so committed to their non-negotiable religious principles that they would vote for Satan rather than Barack Obama.

You know, the first five or six times you see right-wingers screaming that America will be doomed, cursed, or destroyed if Barack Obama is elected, it’s kind of entertaining.   But then it just starts to get annoying.

Here’s the latest [PDF] from Mat Staver and Liberty Counsel:

The future of America is at stake and its future rests with us … If we elect leaders who will not stand up for innocent unborn children, then America will be cursed. If we elect leaders who will not defend marriage as one man and one woman, the people will groan, and our great nation will decay … We could not have a more important election about America’s future than the one will we face this year. I am so burdened about this Country and our future that I cannot begin to express my concern. We already have the most liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Congress in the history of America. We cannot afford to unleash an unbridled leftist, secular, anti-religious agenda on America and our children. We must stand up now! … God has called each one of us to the Kingdom for such a time as this. Each of us are called to different roles, but all of us are commanded to be good citizens. To be a good citizen, we must vote. It is not an option. And, we must vote our Christian values. The future of America, our children, and grandchildren, are depending on us.

Fortunately we only have to put up with four more days of this … which will then be followed by four more years of it.

Robb and Robin Wirthlin are fast becoming right-wing celebrities as they turn their horror stories about what happened to their family as a result of gay marriage in Massachusetts into a warning to the rest of the nation.

You see, their son was read the book "King and King" in school and ... well, that's about it.  But that was enough to get them featured in this video about the dangers of gay marriage from the Family Research Council: 

And now they have taken their tale of woe on the road, heading down to Florida to urge its citizens to pass Amendment 2 and prevent such tragedies from befalling their own families:

Massachusetts parents Robb and Robin Wirthlin don't want parents in Florida to have the same experience as they did when their seven-year-old son was taught from a book advocating "gay marriage" in his second grade public school classroom in the wake of that state's legalization of same-sex marriages.

"It's troubling and it's disturbing. We don't want this to happen to any other family," Robb Wirthlin, joined by his wife, said at a Tallahassee news conference Oct. 22.

The Wirthlins, also joined by a Hillsborough County teacher, a First Amendment attorney, and religious leaders urged Floridians to support the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment (also known as Amendment 2 on the November ballot) to protect traditional marriage in order to avoid the negative educational and religious liberty ramifications that have arisen in other states with "gay marriage."

"If we had a million dollars to give the campaign we would because we don't want anyone to go through this-what we've been through," Robb Wirthlin said.

...

The Wirthlins unsuccessfully appealed to their son's teacher and principal to receive prior notice before such subject matter is taught or to opt-out of such lessons. Later, a federal lawsuit also failed to protect the parents' rights, and the Wirthlins have been subjected to ridicule and hostility by other citizens in Lexington.

But just in case that wasn't enough to scare Florida voters straight, Anita Staver, wife of right-wing uber-lawyer Mat Staver, issued some terrifying predictions of her own: 

Anita Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and co-author of the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, told reporters: "We don't need a crystal ball to tell what's going to happen in Florida if Amendment 2 does not pass. Normalizing same-sex marriage will suppress speech and religion. The ultimate goal for those opposing Amendment 2 is to silence all opposition to same-sex behavior and the homosexual lifestyle."

Noting the "gay marriage" debate is "really a battle over the freedom of speech," Staver listed 10 examples in schools, churches and private businesses in which persons opposing homosexuality have been discriminated against, usually in states and countries where "gay marriage" has been legalized.

"Florida, we've had ample warning. To prevent similar travesties from coming to this state, we need to get ready. We need to vote yes on Amendment 2," Staver said.

Somehow we missed this story a few months back about Central Alabama Pride suing Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford for discriminating against the group when he refused to allow city workers to hang Gay Pride Week banners.

For his part, Langford had a rather novel church-state defense:

Langford on Wednesday reiterated his position against signing a proclamation for the event because he said it is inappropriate for a government to endorse a lifestyle that God opposes.

"The bottom line is I don't condone the lifestyle and what they were asking me to do in my official capacity as mayor was to issue a proclamation which in essence endorsed the gay lifestyle," Langford said. "If I had issued such a proclamation, I would in essence be saying that God's position is wrong and I wouldn't dare take a position against God. So as opposed to suing me, they need to be suing God, and the last time I checked, he can defend himself. End of story."

Apparently, in Langford's view, the role of government is to please God and the determination of what is pleasing to God is made entirely by whether Langford personally approves of the the issue at hand. 

Presumably, Langford realized that that sort of defense wasn't going to stand up well in federal court, which is why he's now getting legal representation from Jerry Falwell's Liberty Counsel:

Stephen M. Crampton, a lawyer with Liberty Counsel, has filed notice that he will appear as an attorney of record for Langford. The Liberty Council is a nonprofit legal organization with ties to a fundamentalist Baptist University in Virginia.

Last week, we noticed Tony Perkins blaming the current financial crisis on a “breakdown in the family” and the idea that social issues are somehow behind our current economic woes seems to be gaining traction among the Right.

Today, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel blasted Google’s opposition to California’s Proposition 8 by declaring that it will hurt their bottom line and cited WaMu and Wachovia, which both failed recently, as evidence:

"Google should focus on technology instead of warring against marriage and family values held by the majority of people worldwide," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law. "Marriage between a man and a woman is the norm throughout the world. Google executives should be searching for ways to make the Internet more usable rather than promoting a radical redefinition of marriage.

"Companies that promoted anti-family policies have learned the hard way that such policies are bankrupt," Staver continued. "K-Mart learned its lesson several years ago. Washington Mutual and Wachovia, both of which actively promoted the homosexual agenda, have come to realize that anti-family policies will bankrupt the bottom line."

Maybe instead of fighting over a bailout of Wall Street, Congress should just outlaw the homosexual agenda, since that is obviously what is causing our current economic panic.  

But OneNewsNow informs us that there is some good news to come out of all the chaos:

A well-known pastor and author says the current economic crisis facing the United States should be a wake-up call for Americans to turn to Christ.

Dr. Charles Stanley is pastor of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia, and founder of In Touch Ministries. He says there is no question that America needs a spiritual awakening -- and he believes the ongoing economic woes could cause some in the country to turn to the God of the Bible.

"When God gets a hold of Americans' money -- whatever messes with our money gets people's attention, but we need enough heartache that drives us to God," Dr. Stanley contends.

Now if only Congress would start listening to the Religious Right instead of all those egghead economists and just get Americans to turn to Christ, stop having abortions, and defeat the homosexual agenda, all of our economic problems would be solved.

For the last several days, there has been a story floating around the right-wing media sites about some instructor at some college in Colorado who reportedly instructed his students to write a critical essay about Sarah Palin … or something like that.  I hadn’t really been paying attention because it seemed like just another one of those bogus pseudo-scandals that the Right likes to concoct every chance it gets. 

But then I came across this article in the Examiner that shed some light on it:

Blogs are abuzz about what they claim is the latest example of a liberal college instructor imposing his views in class.

Instructor (not “Professor,” as many accounts have it) Andrew Hallam allegedly assigned students in one his Metro State freshman writing classes to write an essay critical of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He reportedly later broadened the assignment so that students could write about any candidate.

Basically nobody outside the class seems to know what the assignment was and the only person willing to discuss it is one student named Jena Barber:

One student said the instructor singled out Republican students in the class and allowed others to ridicule them.

"I was shocked. I was 'Holy cow, this is just an open door for him to discuss politics with us,' " said Jana Barber, a student in the class.

Barber shared the assignment with CBS4 on Wednesday. Instructor Andrew Hallam asked students in an English course to write an essay to contradict what he called the "fairy tale image of Palin" presented at the Republican National Convention. Hallam declined an interview with CBS4 News on Thursday.

And wouldn’t you know it, she just so happens to be the sister of Matt Barber:

Jana Barber is the sister of Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs for the conservative Liberty Counsel legal organization. Until June, Matt Barber held a similar title with Concerned Women for America, another conservative Christian organization.

Of course, the story has already shown up in WorldNetDaily and now Matt Baber is sending out press releases announcing that his sister will appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” tonight to discuss it.  

Why is it that every time the Right manages to gins up some phony outrage, Matt Barber seems to be involved?

After a private meeting with John McCain, Ohio Religious Right icon Phil Burress remained a little ho-hum about the candidate he felt obligated to support, but soon enough—after McCain announced his support for California’s anti-gay marriage amendment, anyway—Burress was bubbling over with excitement:

He says McCain was courteous and took detailed notes on what the six had to say about issues such as the sanctity of life, marriage, and judges. "It was so refreshing to me because he was so different than any other politician that I have ever met," describes Burress. He says McCain is not swayed like other politicians. …

"...[I] left there a changed man," he admits.

Burress wrote to his supporters that after the meeting, “40 Ohio Pro-Family Forum leaders … have decided to move forward and start working to educate Ohio Values Voters about the vast differences between McCain and Obama.”

I was once one of those people who said "no way" to Senator John McCain as President. No longer. The stakes are too high. And if Obama wins I need to able to get up on November 5th, look at myself in the mirror, and when I pray, say, "Lord, I did all that I could."

And today, Burress joined a hundred other activists—including far-right heavyweights Phyllis Schlafly and David Barton—in Denver to commit to campaign for McCain:

"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy. …

The group included leaders like Phyllis Schlafly, the long-time leader of Eagle Forum; Steve Strang, the publisher of Charisma magazine; Phil Burress, a prominent Ohio marriage and anti-pornography activist; David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders and Donald Hodel, a former secretary of the Interior, who previously served on the board of Focus on the Family. Jim Dobson, the head of Focus and an outspoken critic of McCain, did not attend. The McCain campaign was also not directly represented at the meeting.

A second person who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said that the group was motivated principally by a desire to defeat Barack Obama. "None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion." …

On a recent swing through Ohio, McCain met with a group of religious leaders and activists, including Burress, who has previously been critical of McCain's lack of outreach to Christian conservatives. According to two participants at the Tuesday meeting in Denver, Burress spoke out strongly in favor of uniting behind McCain's candidacy.

Staver said the McCain campaign was making progress but still had more work to do. "I think that the outreach to the community has to increase significantly," he said. "There is a clear enthusiasm."

On Saturday, Coral Ridge Ministries—the televangelism empire of the late D. James Kennedy—broadcast a special program to encourage pastors to involve their churches in this year’s elections. While the panelists—Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defense Fund, and Gary DeMar of American Vision—offered the usual admonishments that there’s no such thing as separation of church and state, the theme of the evening was that Christianity is being “suppressed” in this country by liberals and the “militant homosexual agenda.” Watch "Pastors, Pulpits, and Politics":

This is the persecuted majority syndrome: the idea that it’s a whole lot simpler to convince people to join your political program if you convince them that their faith is “under attack.” This has been one of the Religious Right’s dominant themes over the last few years through campaigns such as FRC’s “Justice Sunday,” a series of televised, church-based rallies to support President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees, who the Right claimed were being opposed because of their religion. Perkins picked up on that theme on Saturday:

The idea that there should be no religious test ... that has been turned on its head to say that if you have a particular faith or denomination in which you actually believe it and apply it to your lives, therefore, if that's the case, you can't serve in government. You have to somehow choose between actually believing in what you believe and serving in government. That's how this is being applied today and it's totally wrong.

And we're losing the Christian foundation of our nation. And if you want to see a totalitarian government, you want to see rights that are lost and freedoms abused, then you lose the Christian heritage of this nation and you go down the path that the liberals are taking us. And that's where it'll be found.

Several articles have appeared in recent months suggesting that Mike Huckabee is some sort of “new breed” of evangelical – one who is not committed only to opposing abortion and gay rights, but also cares about the environment and the poor.  And Huckabee has worked hard to play up the idea that he is nothing like traditional demagoguing Religious Right preachers such as Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell.  

As Huckabee likes to say, while he may be conservative, he’s “just not angry about it” – or, to put it another way, he drinks “a different kind of Jesus juice. To the press, this seems to be enough to qualify Huckabee as a “different kind of evangelical,” and exempts him from having to explain himself when he proclaims that we need to “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.” 

An example of this sort of coverage appeared on the New York Times over the weekend:

Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday.

They say they like Mr. Huckabee for the same reason many of their elders do not: “He reaches outside the normal Republican box,” Brett Harris said in an interview from his home near Portland, Ore.

The brothers fell for Mr. Huckabee last August when they saw him draw applause on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for explaining that he believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal “life” and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of “life.” “It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position,” Brett Harris said. Alex Harris added, “And we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.”

The article noted how Huckabee’s rise in the polls has occurred “without the backing of, and even over the opposition of, the movement’s most visible leaders, many of whom have either criticized him or endorsed other candidates.”  While Religious Right powerbrokers like Tony Perkins, James Dobson, and Gary Bauer have credited Huckabee for energizing evangelical voters, all have made clear that they do not support his candidacy and seemingly have no intention of doing so.

But just because the most prominent right-wing activists are reluctant to climb aboard the Huckabee bandwagon doesn’t mean that those already on board are in any way moderates or representative of some sort of new, more moderate evangelical movement.  In fact, most of Huckabee’s backers are even more radical.

A federal judge ruled this week that the school district of rural Annapolis, Missouri could no longer let Gideons International hand out Bibles in an elementary school, and Pat Robertson is none too pleased. From yesterday’s “700 Club”:

According to Robertson, the ACLU doesn’t have enough to do since it lost its “raison d’etre,” Communism, and so now “they say their main goal is to take religion out of the public square.”

Robertson also complains that “one or two atheists can strip a whole community of its deeply-held religious views.” As a matter of fact, the parents who sued the school board are Christians, but in any event we expect Christianity to survive in eastern Missouri even without the local government working to convert fifth-graders.

The right-wing Liberty Counsel, which represented the school, plans to appeal.

Liberty Counsel announces that is has launched its "Fifth Annual Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign."

"Just like" with Harriet Miers, says Liberty Counsel head.

In her series "God's Warrirors," CNN's Christiane Amanpour visited Liberty University where she learned that, though greatly pleased with the confirmations of Justices Roberts and Alito, they are training the "next generation of pit bulls" to "keep fighting at the Supreme Court until we have a new day. We never ever, ever give up."

Transcript below the jump: