A great speech (via NRO)by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida:

“I haven’t been here long enough to think that any of this stuff that’s going on is normal.”

“If we had a billion dollars for every time I’ve heard the words ‘Tea Party extremist’ we could solve this debt problem.”

“Compromise that’s not a solution is a waste of time.”

Interesting paper from The Heritage Foundation on “poverty” in the United States, “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?”

For decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty,” but the bureau’s definition of poverty differs widely from that held by most Americans. In fact, other government surveys show that most of the persons whom the government defines as “in poverty” are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term. The overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care. Some poor Americans do experience significant hardships, including temporary food shortages or inadequate housing, but these individuals are a minority within the overall poverty population. Poverty remains an issue of serious social concern, but accurate information about that problem is essential in crafting wise public policy. Exaggeration and misinformation about poverty obscure the nature, extent, and causes of real material deprivation, thereby hampering the development of well-targeted, effective programs to reduce the problem.

This story from James Oliphant at the Los Angeles Times is just hilarious. It just shows such a glaring ignorance of basic Christian history and theology he should be embarrassed. But he obviously doesn’t know enough to be embarrassed.

Taking a page from President Obama’s political playbook, Michele Bachmann has formally left a church in Minnesota accused of holding anti-Catholic views.

Wait, hold on a minute! The Lutheran Church is “anti-Catholic”? Hasn’t this been the case since, oh, 1517 or so? Has Oliphant ever heard of Martin Luther? Churches have theological disagreements. To talk about this fact as if it can’t be based on anything more than some invidious prejudice is ridiculous. It only demonstrates the ignorance and/or prejudice of the writer. Liberals always preach “diversity”, but then they portray any disagreement as bias or prejudice.

The controversy began when someone doing opposition research on Michele Bachmann read a statement on the website of her former church in Minnesota.

Earlier this week, the Atlantic reported that that the synod’s website contains a statement that equates the pope with the antichrist. The writer, Joshua Green, also spoke with [Joel] Hochmuth [a spokesman for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod], who explained the statement thusly:

“Some people have this vision of a little devil running around with horns and red pointy ears. (Martin) Luther was clear that by ‘antichrist’ [he meant] anybody who puts himself up in place of Christ. Luther never bought the idea of the Pope being God’s voice in today’s world. He believed Scripture is God’s word.”

The comparison of the Protestant Reformation to the rants of Obama’s racist pastor Jeremiah Wright is also a nice touch.

Obama left his church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, in May 2008 after incendiary sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced in the heat of his bitter presidential fight with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton

Can Oliphant really not see any difference between a centuries-old theological disagreement and Wright’s contemporary racist, anti-American rants?

It’s pretty typical for secular liberal journalists to be ignorant of religion, this is just one glaring example out of many.

Excellent article today from Charles Krauthammer. The House needs to pass a bill. Not talk about a bill, not negotiate a bill, pass a bill.

Is there any good counter argument to his proposal? Boehner could have this done by the end of the day.