Alaska Left Behind ...

The Mudflats bloggers were Left behind in Alaska when former Gov. Sarah Palin "was raptured by the far right fringe" to Hong Kong where the Asia Times reports she received to a mixed reception. Economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman observed that her analysis in that speech suffers from an absence of any facts to back up her claims.

Nonetheless inspired, Frank Walker at decidedly Catholic PewSitter.com invented a Palinesque "common sense:"

The honesty and simple wisdom of Sarah Palin is rejuvenating. Many who lead the Catholic Church will hopefully take notice. Today there are bishops worldwide who will go to almost any lengths in the name of social justice. Often when they do, they reveal their allegiances and their worldliness. This week the social justice arm of the USCCB, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is under intense light again for its openly political, anti-Catholic, and corrupt beneficiaries. In Vienna Cardinal Schoenborn recently tried to squelch a pro-life rally and then forbad clergy to participate. Notre Dame, the pre-eminent American Catholic University, continues to prosecute eighty-eight pro-life demonstrators, including Norma McCorvey, following the Obama honors last spring. In August Boston's O'Malley scandalized the world with a funeral for anti-life pariah Ted Kennedy, and this past week Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien railed in the press about global catastrophes, millions of refugees, and the poor before a climate meeting at the UN.

What hath transcendence of Alaska made her then, but a vessel to be filled by conservatives in need of someone about whom to rapture. Factlessness, no object.

She is her brother's keeper, as she learned at Daddy's knee

It is not only moral but also smart to help your neighbor argues Susan Jacoby. She writes"

A society cannot prosper if economic survival depends on whether you were born into an affluent (or a middle-class) family. When I was 15 and enamored of the heartless economic philosophy of Ayn Rand, my father sat me down and explained the basic principle of progressive taxation. He pointed out that even though the rich pay higher rates, they still have more money left over afterward than Americans living on ordinary incomes. What a shame that Dad didn't have a chance to give Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and every Republican in the House of Representatives the same talk. I guess what they heard at their daddys' knees was that great American principle, "I've got mine and you've got yours to get."

The rest is here.

Stimulus act anti-Religious in its impact on institutions of higher education?

Red meat for the religious right, that claim came recently from former Arkansas Gov. and Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee.

Tobin Grant of Southern Illinois University — Carbondale, writes:

In the final version of the stimulus bill, funds for higher education are included as part of the block grants to states. Not only does the bill state that these funds may be used to renovate facilities at private institutions, it also states that governors may not consider "the type or mission" of a college or university. The states must consider religious institutions along with public and other private colleges and universities.

The funds may not be used for facilities where admission is charged and the buildings must be religiously neutral in purpose. Thus neither football stadia nor chapels my be renovated using stimulus funds. No one should plan to renovate a department of divinity with them. Yet college and university student religious life is unaffected, as it has been in the half century that current law, as included in the stimulus bill, has been applied.

The restriction is on individual facilities, however. Funds may go to support religiously neutral structures at religiously affiliated colleges and universities.

Grant, who is coauthor of Expression vs. Equality: The Politics of Campaign Finance Reform and dozens of academic articles on politics and religion, explains in Christianity Today:

In the nearly four decades since [the 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decision] Tilton v. Richardson, the constitutionality of federal funding for projects and programs at religious institutions has been upheld in the courts and supported by Congress. In the last Supreme Court case to consider public funds and religion at colleges, Rosenberger v. University of Virginia in 1995, the court found that as long as the purpose of a facility is religiously neutral, students have the right to use that facility for religious purposes, even at public universities. If a college allows students to use a conference room for any social function, it must allow them to use it even as a place to pray and study the Bible together.

Thus inclusion in the stimulus bill of the language over which Huckabee and others made such a fuss, ensured that there is no adverse impact on religion.

The entire uproar over that language was a canard.

Stimulus Bill Includes Funds for Faith-Based Initiative

From Religion Clause:

Among the many items in the proposed economic stimulus bill, HR 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is a provision for funding of $100 million for grants to faith-based organization through the Compassion Capital Fund [at pg. 141 of bill].

Read it all here.