The fact that all candidates have some sort of "pastor problem" I think is a good thing for reason/rationality overall. Clinton has Coe who looks to Hitler/OBL for Leadership pointers, McCain has Hagee who says Hitler was sent by god to "hunt" the jews, and Obama has Wright who says the government created aids.

Can we just chalk all of these up to why religion=irrational? Perhaps religions got a bit audacious during bush years, and now are being seen for the xenophobic irrationality that they really are.

The starbucks one is hilarious.

On the literature one:

The initiative follows a similar exchange between the US and Russia involving To Kill a Mockingbird and Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich...

I'm not trying to be a snob, but don't we Americans have something a little better than Harper E. Lee to stack up against the almighty Tolstoy?

Harper E. Lee

Dammit! Drop the 'E', I'm mixing up my Lees...

Re McCain cuts ties to Pastors:

Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.”

And yet McCain was uwilling to reject Hagee when he was told that Hagee had said the following about Catholics?

"A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years produced a harvest of hate."

John McCain did not reject Hagee's endorsement when he know that Hagee had said that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, punishing New Orleans for "a level of sin that was offensive to God." and was due to a "homosexual parade".

McCain did not reject Hagee's endoresement until he found out that Hagee said something awful about Jews.

Someone left a hilarious David cross link on the Pharyngula site: angels drive in heaven.