Palin: forget the personal stuff, this is serious

Forget Sarah Palin’s private life. Who cares.  The issue to watch is Troopergate.

Fatwa envy

A new term for a new phenomenon: Christians who wish they could use Muslim scare tactics

If this is how they run the campaign, why let them run the country?

PZ Myers in Morris, Minnesota has been using his award-winning science blog, Pharyngula, to report on the extremely heavy-handed policing at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities.  This is very disturbing indeed.

• Shame on Minnesota – August 30, 2008: large scale police raids in the Twin Cities area

• Thugs at work – September 1, 2008: Peace and human rights activist Amy Goodman arrested on “probable cause for riot”

UPDATE: PZ says The Minnesota Independent is keeping up to date on the latest news from the RNC.

Religiosity appears to correlate negatively with social health

• Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies – A First Look by Gregory S. Paul, Baltimore, Maryland

American voters to churches: “Stay out of politics”

The Pew Research Center has a new survey up showing a very marked trend among American voters–and it’s a surprising one.  Since 1996 the proportion of voters favoring involvement by churches in social and political matters has fallen consistently from 54 per cent, and in the past two years that trend has accelerated.  The figure now stands at 45 per cent Meanwhile the proportion of those opposing such involvement has risen from 43 per cent to 52 per cent.  The tables have turned.  Now a narrow majority opposes involvement of religions in politics.  The main shift has been in the opinions of conservative voters.  Four years ago, just 30 per cent of conservative voters opposed involvement of churches in politics.  Now that figure is 50 per cent.

The churches have received their marching orders.