“Asked what he thought needed to change culturally in America, he said, to applause: ‘First and foremost [it] is what this country was based on: one nation under God. The more that we can get back to that [the better].’ ”

Hate to break it to you, Mr. Tebow, but this country was not based on one-nation-under… That phrase was added to the pledge of allegiance on the 1950’ when anti-red fever was running black-list high.

This country was based on … what, then?

I like to think it was a conviction that people are capable of being responsible citizens AND pursuing their own individual happiness. Works for me.

September 18 of 08, four of us drove from MA to Caraway [chick road trip!] staying overnight two miles by road, half a mile by land, in a stone cottage that looked like the cottage in a postcard sent to me years ago picturing a stone cottage in France. We had Chris over for a loaves-and-fishes dinner, where a meal materializes from a bare larder in an unfamiliar place, and we talked ponies. I mostly listened.

When I spoke of my yearning to relocate, a friend told me I seem rootless. Yes, that is so. Luckily she meant appealing, even if not emulated.

Perhaps this generation-long resurgence of repression is the flaring up of a candle before it goes out forever.

May it be so!

Speaker Boehner: “This attack … on religious freedom in our country cannot stand and will not stand.”

Really? Religious freedom? To deny birth control to women in the 21st century in a “free” country?—

While that ridiculousness prevails on the religious right, the opposing counsels from Bush v. Gore joined forces to argue the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 in California, and winning. Lead counsel Ted Olson, on the Rachel Maddow show: “…this is an issue of american justice, american freedom, american equality… the principle that all men are created equal in this country. We have got to get there.”

That’s more like it.

Tax the rich! was the headline, in the less purple (or yellow) style of Reuters. Soundbyte reporting: lazy.

That was the night of the SOTU. In the morning, now, the headline on Reuters reads: “For Obama 2012, it’s all about the 99 percent.”

As well it should be: as FDR said, the President is there to give voice and power to those who have none.

Remember West Wing, and the rebuttal of the (alas fictional) President to those who were waving their holy book regarding same-sex love, but not regarding the touching of pigskin on the Sabbath? Leviticus.

So here we have it again, someone whose religious views convince them that religious law is an absolute.

The oddest part of Margaret Court’s outburst is this “The bible will always be the TV guide to my life.”

I think that statement is something incredibly telling (and admirably succinct!) about the religiousity assault on and resistance to human rights.

The TV Guide to their lives… yikes.