On Monday, President Obama will reportedly reverse George W. Bush's draconian restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research. But while coverage in press outlets including CBS, Politico and the New York Times has focused on a "controversy" that is "certain to draw criticism from anti-abortion and religious groups," lost in the consensus media narrative […]

Over the last several months, new polling data has shed light on the intersection of religion and partisan politics in the United States. While a Gallup survey revealed the most and least religious states generally followed the 2008 electoral map, the Pew Research Center offered a detailed look at Obama and McCain voters by faith […]

As the beaten and battered conservative faithful gather at the CPAC event in Washington, casual incitements to violence against the President, Democratic leaders and liberal Americans once again are filling the air. While former UN ambassador John Bolton produced guffaws with the specter of Obama's hometown being destroyed in a terrorist attack, Joe "the Plumber" […]

What do Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin have in common? As it turns out, two centuries after their shared February 12th birthdays and on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's theory, today's Republican Party largely rejects the achievements of each. Of course, from basic science and global warming to economics 101, the GOP's […]

The Vatican may have chosen the wrong week to protest President Obama's reversal of the Mexico City policy banning federal funds from international family planning groups. Even as a Vatican spokesman blasted Obama's decision as "the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death," Pope Benedict XVI […]

When it comes to Americans' reproductive rights, it's amazing what a difference one week - and one new president - makes. On Sunday, President Bush offered a final parting gift to anti-abortion extremists in the form of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." But by Thursday, President Barack Obama marked the 36th anniversary of the […]

When he famously proclaimed Christ his favorite philosopher ("because he changed my heart") during a 1999 Republican debate, George W. Bush was signaling the outsized role the religious right would play in his presidency. Now as his disastrous tenure in the White House draws to a close, President Bush has offered Christian conservatives a final […]

Just days after Bristol Palin officially became the poster child for her mother's failed abstinence-only sex education policy, a new report from the CDC revealed that in 2006 Alaska experienced the nation's fastest growing teen birth rate. While Mississippi suddenly surpassed Texas to earn the dubious leadership distinction, it comes as no surprise that the […]

Beaten and battered, the Republican Party long ago was reduced to an irony-producing machine. But for sheer productivity, Monday's hypocrisy generation by leading lights of the conservative movement was impressive. In the span of 24 hours, would-be RNC chairman and distributor of "Barack the Magic Negro" Chip Saltsman announced his party needed to improve its […]

While the controversy over would-be RNC chairman Chip Saltsman's distribution of a CD featuring a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" continues, the transformation of the GOP into a Southern rump party appears to be virtually complete. After four decades in which race-baiting became a central Republican electoral strategy, Saltsman's gambit is finding both quiet […]