Today's Belle

So, if I'm expecting the federal education dollars to dry up, how do I go about securing what few dollars will come my way?

Maybe I could issue a Request For Proposal to provide thousands of bibles to Oklahoma schools that almost absolutely guarantees that Trump gets a cut?

Of course, first, we have to get around a few roadblocks.

Further 'Round The Bend

There're only a coupla ways this ends.

1. At the ballot box, before it goes too far
2. In a bunker, where fanatics are poisoning their children and then painting the concrete walls with their brains.

Vance Links Up With Christian Extremist Who Called Harris a ‘Jezebel’ Practicing ‘Witchcraft’

Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA have been working to recruit swing-state Christian pastors to Trump's cause

Fresh off an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s extremist election tour, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is set to sit for a Pennsylvania town hall hosted by far-right Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau.

Wallnau will be hosting Vance as part of the “Courage Tour,” a collaboration with the right-wing activist group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) aimed at ushering in “the dawn of our nation’s Third Great Awakening,” by recruiting “civically enlightened” pastors to lead their flock into the fold of the MAGA movement — a project that could run afoul of legal prohibitions barring churches and nonprofits from engaging in campaign activities.

The tour has concentrated on generating turnout for Donald Trump in critical swing states, and melding the evangelical right with the growing Christian nationalist movement within the Republican Party.

Vance is their biggest get to-date. Wallnau, who will host the town hall, was a major figure driving evangelical support for the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement, and promoted the deification of Trump as a figure akin to the biblical King Cyrus.

Wallnau has pushed a litany of extreme views, including that Vice President Kamala Harris of embodying “the spirit of Jezebel.”

“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau said earlier this month. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination — especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth — you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit.”

“So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation,” he added.

Christian nationalist MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau says Kamala Harris is under an occult spirit and blames her success on the seduction of witchcraft: "What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel." https://t.co/E5glJN6h4R pic.twitter.com/3Aqkr15M5H

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 12, 2024

Disdain for women is just one shared position between Wallnau and Vance, who has sparked intense criticism for a series of comments maligning women without children as something he finds “disturbing” and “disorienting.”

Both Wallnau and Vance have described the right to abortion care in apocalyptic terms.

Vance has asserted that he would “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” compared abortion to slavery, and referred to pregnancies resulting from rape or incest as “inconvenient.”

In December, Wallnau expressed frustration with the fact that the overturning of Roe v. Wade had allowed some states to enshrine reproductive rights into state law. “For those Christians like myself who thought we had a victory regarding abortion at the Supreme Court, we need to face the fact. The Court merely sent abortion policy back to the states — where referendum after referendum has been approving wildly liberal abortion laws,” he said. “Republicans at the RNC have no messaging campaign for Life. We better come up with one on our own or our pro-life victory will be a pro-abortion victory for 2024 and the White House is in the balance.”

In a statement provided to Rolling Stone, Harris Campaign Spokesperson Sarafina Chitika wrote that “it should come as no surprise J.D. Vance, who has spread Trump’s election lies and has said he would not certify election results, is campaigning alongside a January 6 rioter and conspiracy theorist.”

“While Vance and Donald Trump are peddling lies, stoking division, and clinging to the past because they have no solutions to lead us forward, Kamala Harris is leading us into a future of opportunity for all Americans. That’s the leadership Americans deserve, not the distraction and dysfunction the Trump-Vance ticket has to offer,” she added.

The meeting of these two conservative minds is unsurprising. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism has deeply — if quietly — shaped his profile as a politician. In recent years, Vance has melded his political philosophy with a rising movement of conservative Catholicism melding traditionalist dogma with the increasingly violent nativism of the political right.

“For Vance, Christianity and the church are not the problem but the solution to the ills of the political-religious project called the United States of America,” Catholic theologian Massimo Faggioli wrote in LaCroix International earlier this year.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and the main backer behind the Courage Tour, has adopted a similar philosophy. Kirk and his organization have invested heavily in imbuing Christian congregations with pro-conservative political activism, and has offered resources to pastors seeking to “challenge the IRS.”

According to Wallnau, TPUSA’s work has already recruited 2,500 churches “to stand with an America First Agenda.” It’s clear that the fervent hope of Wallnau and his allies is that under a TrumpVance administration, Christian nationalism will become the law of the land.

Today's Wingnuts

They're not fuckin' around. These assholes are very influential, and they're talking openly about ruling - crushing their enemies - rewarding their friends.

The only difference between these jagoffs and the Taliban is the brand name.

Democrats know they're called to serve.

Republicans think they're entitled to rule.

Slouching Towards Nuremberg

There's always a double-digit percentage of true believers open to being further radicalized.

IOW: There's a sucker born every minute, and two sharpers to take him.

BTW:

What does the Bible say about Christian Nationalism?

Scripture does not support the idea of Christian nationalism. Any people or group that claims their nationality places them under Jesus Christ's favor and blessing deny the Gospel's truth. Any citizen who places their devotion to Christ on the same level as their allegiance to their country is guilty of idolatry.

A Letter To Louisiana

Who knew you could solve all of society's problem with a single simple idea like posting the 10 commandments.

Won't wonders never cease.

Upside Down & Backwards

I wanna say it's odd, but it's not - because the Daddy State takes everything good and pretends it's bad, and then takes everything bad and pretends it's good.

They need Trump and The State and The Church to be one integrated thing.

So they need Trump to be their Jesus, but they know Trump's not a good guy. So instead of trying to get Trump to aspire to the example of Good Guy Jesus, they take Jesus and turn him into a not-so-good guy in order to better elevate Trump to "our lord and savior".

And we get a look at the process when the one guy says, "... the apostles were pretty much all trash ... and even Jesus was dating a hooker."

Daddy State's Gonna Daddy State

I was listening to part of a podcast by Joe Walsh, and he made the point that he came from MAGA (he voted for Trump in 2016), and now that he's left the movement, and makes a habit of speaking out against it, his old colleagues and friends and fellow travelers have basically told him to fuck off - just because he's not with them anymore and he "blasphemes" against their belief in trump as the chosen one.

And that seems to be the default setting - you're either on your knees licking the shit off Trump's boots, or you're a heretic and an outcast to be attacked and condemned. You're an apostate.

It strikes me as another glaring example of MAGA / Christian Nationalist hypocrisy, because nobody's more Muslim-hating than MAGA, but there's nothing more Muslim-like than the shunning of - and the pursuit of vengeance against - apostates.

Apostasy in Islam

Commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion[1] or abandoning religion, but also blasphemy or heresy by those who consider themselves Muslims, through any action or utterance which implies unbelief, including those who deny a "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam, An apostate from Islam is known as a murtadd (مرتدّ).

While Islamic jurisprudence calls for the death penalty of those who refuse to repent of apostasy from Islam, what statements or acts qualify as apostasy and whether and how they should be punished, are disputed among Islamic scholars. The penalty of killing of apostates is in conflict with international human rights norms which provide for the freedom of religions, as demonstrated in human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provide for the freedom of religion.

It's also a very strong reminder of why the separation of church and state is a bedrock tenet, and mission-critical element of good government.

Today's Quote

Keep your imaginary friends

out of my government

About That Bible

You knew there had to be something hinky about those fuckin' bibles. Had to be.

Amendment Abolishing Slavery Missing from Trump's Bible

Trump's endorsed God Bless the USA Bible omits other key constitutional provisions

The God Bless the USA Bible that Trump endorsed and began selling for $59.99 a pop during Holy Week, packages the King James Version Bible along with the lyrics to God Bless the USA, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Pledge of Allegiance. As it turns out, Trump's Bible is missing some key pieces important to voters.

Multiple video reviews analyzed by MeidasTouch revealed that notably missing from the Constitution in Trump’s Bible are the amendments following the Bill of Rights which make up the Constitution's first 10 amendments. Trump's Bible jumps from the original Constitution to the Bill of Rights and then to the Pledge of Allegiance, skipping constitutional amendments 11-27.

That means Trump's Bible is missing the amendments abolishing slavery and granting women and Black people the right to vote from the volume's back matter.

That's a pretty big oversight. Yes, those amendments were added at later dates, but Trump's God Bless the USA Bible contains the lyrics to God Bless the USA which was released in 1984 and the version of the pledge of allegiance containing "under God" which appears in Trump's Bible is from 1954.

Only one amendment to the Constitution, the 27th Amendment, was ratified in 1992, 7 years after the release of God Bless the USA song in 1984. The other amendments were ratified before Greenwood's song was release.

Greenwood has been selling his God Bless the USA Bible since 2021. There is no good reason for Trump's Bible not to includes the amendments abolishing slavery and securing voting rights for all people.

Here's a list of some of the more notable amendments that Trump's Bible leaves out:

12th Amendment - Electoral College

This amendment spells out how the electoral college votes. With all the false elector schemes Trump's people pushed, no wonder he endorsed a Bible missing this part.

13th Amendment - Abolished Slavery

This amendment formally abolished slavery in the United States except for those convicted of a crime. Trump's Bible / Constitution combo doesn't include this one. That's a big deal.

14th Amendment - Post Civil War loyalty, etc

It may come as no surprise that the Constitution in Trump's Bible leaves out the Insurrectionist clause. This was the amendment that lawsuits were using to remove Trump from the ballot in reaction to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and sending his mob to descend on the Capitol on January 6th.

No wonder Trump's endorsed Bible leaves this amendment reacting to the seditious Confederate traitors out.

15th Amendment - Those once enslaved can now vote

The amendment banned using "race, color or previous condition of servitude" to keep people from voting. This granted Black people the right to vote. If Trump is trying to win the Black vote, why does the Bible that he endorsed leave this amendment out?

19th Amendment - Women can now vote

This is an important one too. The 19th Amendment ensures women have the right to vote in the United States. Now, some MAGA people wish women couldn't vote. Those people probably like that Trump endorsed a Constitution devoid of that right.

22nd Amendment - Limits presidents to only serving 2 terms

Trump said he wants to be a dictator on day 1. He has also posted memes of campaigns signs implying he will be in office for a long time, longer that 2 terms. The Trump endorsed the God Bless the USA Bible didn't print the amendment restricting him to 2 terms.

24th Amendment - Bye bye poll tax

We needed an entire amendment because racists were changing Black people a fee to vote. Those racists didn't think the 15th Amendment was clear enough. You'll never read about this amendment abolishing poll taxes in Trump's endorsed Bible.

26th Amendment - 18 year olds can vote

This amendment grants 18 year olds the right to across the country. Young people tend to not vote for Republicans and are by and large turned off by Trump and his awful rhetoric.

The more young people who vote, the worse off it is for Republicans. Is this why this amendment doesn't appear in Trump's Bible?

Trump endorsed a Bible that is missing some of the key constitutional amendments out there that shape the nation as it is today. The $59.99 God Bless the USA Bible doesn't include the abolishment of slavery, and establishing voting rights for all people. So much for the GOP being the "party of Lincoln."

Pushback

This guy seems to be a bit miffed about things.

Christian pastor has had enough of politics being brought into the church
byu/Romano16 inPublicFreakout

Today's TweeXt

Flynn is still an advocate for Trump, and a likely candidate for a cabinet-level position. And it has to be obvious what the plan is for Trump 2.0

Trump’s former (and future?) national security adviser Mike Flynn: “If we are going to have one nation under God which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God”

pic.twitter.com/yQRqENq1AM

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 1, 2024

Today's Wingnut

No matter what else, the god-knobbers always bring it down to, "That's what god told me, so that's what all of you have to go along with it."

It doesn't matter that the founders wanted to keep god and religion out of government. It doesn't matter that they wrote it down. The bible-thumpers are going to revise that history, in order to make the claim that this is a Christian nation, and therefor its government must be imbued with Christianity.

Today's Wingnut

Sen Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

I can't confirm this one

(I also can't confirm there's a banjo playing in the background)

This one -

with the White Power hand sign -

is official

I imagine Marsha's C Street Family gang is quite proud

The Fellowship (incorporated as Fellowship Foundation and doing business as the International Foundation), also known as The Family, is a U.S.-based nonprofit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies, attend prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.

The Fellowship has been described as one of the most politically well-connected and one of the most secretly funded ministries in the United States. It shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy. The Fellowship's former leader, the late Douglas Coe, and others have justified the organization's desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting that they would not be able to tackle diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention.

The Fellowship holds one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast, which is in Washington, D.C. Every sitting United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during their term.[citation needed]

The group's known participants include ranking United States government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and high-ranking politicians from across the world. Many United States senators and congressmen have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having worked together to pass or influence legislation.

Doug Burleigh is a key figure in the organization and has taken over organizing the National Prayer Breakfast since the death of his father-in-law, Doug Coe.[citation needed] The current president of the organization (starting in 2017) is Katherine Crane.

In Newsweek, Lisa Miller wrote that rather than calling themselves "Christians", as they describe themselves, they are brought together by common love for the teachings of Jesus and that all approaches to "loving Jesus" are acceptable. In 2022, Netflix released a documentary called The Family which depicts the organization's influence on American politics throughout history.

History

The Fellowship Foundation traces its roots to Abraham Vereide, a Methodist clergyman and social innovator, who organized a month of prayer meetings in 1934 in San Francisco. The Fellowship was founded in 1935 in opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. His work spread down the West Coast and eventually to Boston.[9][dead link]

The author Jeff Sharlet described the beginning of the Family as a reaction to union activities of Harry Bridges, "The Family really begins when the founder (Abraham Vereide) has this vision, which he thinks comes from God, that Harry Bridges, this Australian labour organiser who organised really the biggest strike in American history, a very successful strike, is a Satanic and Soviet agent."

- more -

Church & State

We put our hand on the bible

and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.

We don't put our hand on the Constitution

and swear an oath to uphold the bible.

--Jamie Raskin (D-MD08)

 

Faith

It ain't what it used to be.

Over their individual lifespans, 24% of Americans have changed religious affiliation, with the biggest chunk moving into the 'None' category.

56% simply no longer believe in The Great And Powerful Pixie In The Sky.

30% have left their churches because of negative pronouncements against QueerFolk.

17% say it's because their church became too political.

Guess why the MAGA gang is always screaming, "This is a Christian nation!!"

It's probably got something to do with the fact that the numbers are heading south in a big hurry.

The percentage of Americans identifying with any Christian religion is off by more than 30 points since the early 70s - and it's headed for 'Minority Christian' status way sooner than anybody ever thought possible. Which, of course, scares the fuck out of the God-Knobbers because they're about to lose a big reason they've been able to wield the outsized political power they've spent 50 years nurturing and exploiting, so they have to pretend even harder that they still are - and will remain forever - top dog.

White Christian Supremacy is fast becoming a relic of glories past. And instead of understanding that maybe that's as it should be, since their dominance was based on lies and magical thinking, they're concentrating on their own bad feelings of being perceived as the failed generation - the people who lost the empire.

Fuck 'em.

Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year – probably accelerated by Covid

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple are fighting the religious right

The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

“The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again,” said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research.

“In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures probably similar to 2019 or possibly higher, as there’s been a really rapid rise in American individuals who say they’re not religious.”

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

The younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted
Scott McConnell, Lifeway Research

Some of the reasons were “logistical”, McConnell said, as people moved away for college or started jobs which made it difficult to attend church.

“But some of the other answers are not so much logistics. One of the top answers was church members seem to be judgmental or hypocritical,” McConnell said.

“And so the younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted by those at church.”

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues, McConnell said.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Stephen Bullivant, author of Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America and professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, said in the Christian world it had been a generational change.

While grandparents might have been regular churchgoers, their children would say they believe in God, but not go to church regularly. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion.

In the Catholic church, in particular, the sexual abuse scandal may have driven away people who had only a tenuous connection to the faith.

“The other thing is the pandemic,” Bullivant said.

“A lot of people who were weakly attached, to suddenly have months of not going, they’re then thinking: ‘Well we don’t really need to go,’ or ‘We’ve found something else to do,’ or thinking: ‘It was hard enough dragging the kids along then, we really ought to start going again … next week.’”

Bullivant said most other countries saw a move away from religion earlier than the US, but the US had particular circumstances that slowed things down.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

“I think that dampens it down until you get the millennial generation for whom the cold war is just a vague memory from their early childhood.”

When people leave, congregations dwindle. And when that gets to a critical point, churches close. That has led to a flood of churches available for sale, and a range of opportunities for the once holy buildings.

Brian Dolehide, managing director of AD Advisors, a real estate company that specializes in church sales, said the last 10 years had seen a spike in sales. Frequently churches become housing or care homes, while some of the churches are bought by other churches wanting to expand.

But selling a church isn’t like selling a house or a business. Frequently the sellers want a buyer who plans to use the church for a good cause: Dolehide said he had recently sold a church in El Paso which is now used as housing for recent immigrants, and a convent in Pittsburgh which will be used as affordable housing.

“The faith-based transaction is so different in so many ways from the for-profit transaction. We’re not looking to profit from our transactions, we’re looking for the best use that reflects the last 50 years or 100 years use if possible.”

The closures aren’t spread evenly through the country.

In Texas, John Muzyka of Church Realty, a company that specializes in church sales, said there were fewer churches for sale than at any point in the last 15 years. He believes that is partly down to Texas’s response to the pandemic, where the governor allowed churches to open in May 2020, even when the number of new Covid cases was extremely high.

“I would say if a church stayed closed for more than a year, it was really hard to get those people to come back. When you were closed for three months, you were able to get over it,” Muzyka said.

That aside, closures are often due to a failure of churches to adapt.

“A church will go through a life cycle. At some point, maybe the congregation ages out, maybe they stop reaching young families.

“If the church ages and doesn’t reach young people, or the demographics change and they don’t figure out how to reach the new demographic, that church ends up closing.

“Yes, there’s financial pressures that will close a church, but oftentimes, it’s more that they didn’t figure out how to change when the community changed, or they didn’t have enough young people to continue the congregation for the next generation.”

It's A Contagion

James Madison

The purpose of separation

of church and state

is to keep forever from these shores

the ceaseless strife

that has soaked the soil of Europe

in blood for centuries.

Theocratic shit keeps breaking out all over the damned place, but this too shall pass. Not before we see more damage done - but it'll start to fade as more people wake up and realize maybe politics is something they can't afford to ignore.

We should be able to expect better from people, but "better" is a very subjective term. So if we want good government - and no, that's not an oxymoron - we'd best be paying attention to the shit some of these good Christian folk are trying to pull.

You have the right to worship your god - or some oil spot on the garage floor that you think looks just like the Virgin Mary's tits - or anything else - or nothing.

But you don't have the right to impose any of your weird beliefs on me - because I have the right to expect you to keep your imaginary friends to yourself, and out of my fucking government.

One Family Has Spearheaded Montana’s Unflinching Conservatism

Three members of the Regier family now hold leadership positions in the Montana Legislature as the state’s conservative shift has left even some Republicans wary.

During a legislative hearing in 2011 that was a prelude to Montana’s debates on abortion, State Representative Keith Regier displayed an image of a cow and made the argument that cattle were more valuable when pregnant.

The comparison drew a prompt rebuke from some women in the room, but Mr. Regier, a Republican, declined to apologize. Over the years, the former schoolteacher and sod farmer has seldom demurred from his growing brand of combative Christian-oriented politics, in which the Ten Commandments are the foundation of good law and some of the biggest battles have been with moderates in his own party.

Mr. Regier has now emerged as the patriarch of a new family political dynasty that has injected fresh conservative intensity into debates over abortion, diversity training and, this spring, transgender rights. Mr. Regier chairs the Senate’s powerful judiciary committee, while his daughter, Amy, leads its counterpart in the House. Mr. Regier’s son, Matt, has risen to speaker of the House. The trio of legislators, each wielding a similar brand of unflinching conservatism, were among the most powerful proponents of a set of bills that took particular aim at the rights of transgender people.

It was Matt Regier who led the move to bar one of the legislature’s only transgender representatives, Zooey Zephyr, who had spoken out vociferously on the House floor last month against a measure banning hormone treatments and surgical care for transgender minors. The proposal was one of several new laws that passed recently, including one prohibiting adult-oriented drag shows on public property and another creating a strict definition of a person’s sex.

At the close of the legislative session on Tuesday night, fellow lawmakers gave Mr. Regier a standing ovation. “There were many times of sunlight, and there were also times of shade, but overall it’s been an incredible ride,” the speaker said.

The Regier family hails from the Flathead Valley of northwest Montana, a majestic region of glaciers and fir forests around Kalispell that has become a destination for conservatives looking to flee urban life and liberal politics in other states. Militia groups and far-right religious leaders have also found a home in the valley, some of them drawn to the notion of establishing what is often called a “redoubt” in the American Northwest.

Keith Regier and his wife settled there in 1975 after he obtained a degree in physical education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. At the time, Democrats dominated much of state politics, in part because of strong labor organizing in the state’s expansive mining and timber industries.

Keith Regier taught sixth grade in Kalispell for nearly three decades. Matt was a quarterback for the high school football team, taking it into the state playoffs. Amy earned a degree in nursing and began working at the hospital.

Keith Regier said he had not seriously considered running for office until he retired from teaching, telling The Daily Inter Lake news outlet in 2005 that he planned to focus on sod farming with his son and perhaps do some writing. But by 2008 he had won a seat in the State House, promising to lower taxes, protect the death penalty and undermine labor unions by converting Montana into a “right to work” state.

“This country was founded on Judeo-Christian values,” he said. “Just read the Declaration of Independence. It’s very obvious.”

His unyielding approach gained traction in the state capital of Helena — including his beliefs on abortion — and he rose up to become majority leader in 2015.

That was a surprise to Bob Brown, a longtime former Republican lawmaker from the Flathead area who once ran for governor. At his home where he displays artwork featuring former Republican presidents and a plaque thanking him for contributions to the party, Mr. Brown said he had noticed a shift since his days at the State Capitol: Republican lawmakers no longer wanted leaders who were looking for compromise, he said.

“They just want to implement their own concept of what is right,” he said. “I think Keith Regier is a pretty good example of that.”

The Regiers’ views appealed to the growing movement of extreme conservatives who were gaining traction in the region, said Frank Garner, a former police chief in Kalispell who later represented the area as a moderate Republican in the Legislature. That included not only militia groups but also people like Chuck Baldwin, a pastor with apocalyptic views and a Constitution Party candidate in the 2008 presidential election who had moved his family to the state seeking refuge from what he predicted would be escalating conflict elsewhere in the country. Mr. Baldwin used his pulpit to celebrate the Regiers’ brand of conservatism in Helena.

“They were philosophically the right people in the right place at the right time,” Mr. Garner said.

In 2016, Matt Regier joined his father in running for office, saying he was motivated to do so after the local school board added gender identity to its anti-discrimination policy. He said he feared that the rise of transgender advocacy was threatening traditional values.

Amy Regier ran in 2020, sharing her perspective as a nurse about the societal dangers of coronavirus pandemic restrictions and vowing to cut taxes. In the primary, she defeated a veteran Republican lawmaker, Bruce Tutvedt, who characterized the new Republican stance as “very authoritarian politics, top-down — no tolerance for a Republican like me.”

While the Democrats had held onto the governor’s office for 16 years, that ended in 2021 as Republicans steadily gained ground.

The Regiers turned their attention not just to defeating Democrats but to ousting Republicans who did not fall into line.

In one race, the Regiers joined with anti-abortion activists to create a political action committee called Doctors for a Healthy Montana. Matt Regier was the treasurer, according to campaign finance records. Keith and Matt Regier accounted for two of the group’s five donors.

Among the committee’s targets was Representative Joel Krautter, a Republican from the eastern Montana community of Sidney who had voted to expand Medicaid. The committee leased a large billboard that showed a picture of a baby with the message: “Joel Krautter voted for taxpayer funded abortions.” Mr. Krautter, who opposes abortion, objected to the characterization.

“I thought it was bogus, but these people don’t care too much,” Mr. Krautter said. He lost in the 2020 Republican primary to a more conservative candidate.

Then last fall, in a private caucus vote, Matt Regier narrowly emerged as House speaker. It was a result that shocked some Republican lawmakers. Some were queasy about the direction that the party was set to take.

It did not take long: A text message went out inviting Republican women to a meeting in Mr. Regier’s office, according to two people who were in attendance.

Mr. Regier wanted to talk about Ms. Zephyr, who had been newly elected from Missoula. He asked the women what steps the House should take to manage the chamber’s bathrooms in Ms. Zephyr’s presence.

Mallerie Stromswold, who was among the Republicans at the meeting, said she was surprised that such an issue was one of Mr. Regier’s first orders of business. But some of the women in the room expressed concerns about sharing private quarters with Ms. Zephyr, she said, and a decision was made to add locks to the bathroom so that one person could use the whole facility, with several stalls, in private.

“I was the only one who openly had a problem with the conversation,” said Ms. Stromswold, who has since left the Legislature.

Once the session began in January, Keith Regier caused a national stir when he submitted a draft resolution calling for Congress to investigate alternatives to reservations for Native Americans; the resolution said the current system had caused “confusion, acrimony and animosity.” He later withdrew it.

Republicans also began advancing the bills on transgender issues, moving many of them through the Regier-led judiciary committees. As the bill prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors moved toward passage, Ms. Zephyr warned that the measure would be “tantamount to torture.”

“I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” she said. Matt Regier responded by refusing to recognize her in floor discussions. Later, a crowd began shouting, “Let her speak,” and Mr. Regier ordered people to clear the chamber. Ms. Zephyr raised her microphone in solidarity with the demonstrators.

Ms. Zephyr was barred from the House chamber and spent the rest of the session in a hallway. Matt Regier confronted her there last week and tried to have her moved to an office, but she remained outside near the snack bar.

Ms. Zephyr said the effort to “silence” her was an “affront to democracy” and vowed to fight it.

“The Montana State House is the people’s House, not Speaker Regier’s, and I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard,” she said in a statement.

Keith Regier said he had long been misunderstood for his remarks all those years ago about pregnant cows, offered in support of his bill to make it a homicide to harm a pregnant woman whose fetus then dies.

“If unfinished buildings and unborn calves have a value in Montana, shouldn’t unborn children have a value?” Mr. Regier said as part of his cow analogy.

But opponents saw the 2011 legislation as a back door effort to undercut abortion, and it was vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor. His successor, also a Democrat, allowed a diluted version of the bill to become law two years later.

Republican lawmakers under the Regiers’ leadership have approved several new abortion restrictions, including a ban on the procedures after 20 weeks. The courts have ruled that the state’s constitutional right to privacy protects access to abortion, and new lawsuits are pending.

Keith Regier also defended Republican House members’ vote to bar Ms. Zephyr from the floor, saying her “blood on your hands” remark was inappropriate, and that she had taken it further by encouraging protests in the chamber.

“We need to be careful of what we say,” he said. “If we are offensive, you say sorry.”

Ms. Zephyr never apologized, but she did file a lawsuit, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana and others, to regain access to the chamber before it recessed. A judge rejected the effort.

For this round, the Regiers had won.

Keith Regier said he and his children were doing no more than what they had been elected to do. “I guess people know our family and identify with our values and want us to come and represent them.”

...for I have sworn

upon the altar of god

eternal hostility

against every form of tyranny

over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson

Today's Tweet

This might be a good time to hear from them Satanic Temple fellers.

Praying in the Capitol rotunda, Lauren Boebert stated that Jesus “went to hell in our place.” pic.twitter.com/A6D6BZEawV

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) March 19, 2023

Today's Wingnut

Kari Lake, Arizona loser

First the absurdities:

You're already convinced there's a "divine plan", so Ms Lake invites the inference that the divine plan gives you a divine right to win elections (cuz that's what god's perfect plan calls for).

Then she points to the evil-doers who are thwarting god's plan - and just leaves it up to the faithful to go ahead and take it from there (aka: Stochastic Terrorism).

BTW, ignore the logical contradiction that god's perfect plan would include evil-doers thwarting god's perfect plan, and you'd be interfering with god's perfect plan were you to step in and fight those evil-doers who are thwarting god's perfect plan in accordance with god's perfect plan, which of course has to include the righteous stepping in to put god's perfect plan back on track, because a perfect god with a perfect plan could always use a little help, and that's about when all the "thinking" stops and the shooting starts ...

... and then the atrocities:

When battling evil, you must be willing to take up the devil's own sword - to wield it against him, and all others whom god now commands you to smite hip and thigh, and blah blah blah.

Today's SCOTUS Fuckup

Standing at midfield after losing another football game and offering up a little prayer is one thing. Making it a spectacle - which puts pressure on others to do likewise - is another thing altogether.

It's not about you having the right to express your commitment to your imaginary friends. It's about some kid who will eventually get beat up for not having the "right" religiousness, or for resisting the pressure outright, or for stating his own belief that there is no god.

We know it's going to happen because it's been happening for more than 20 centuries.

By looking the other way while a school district employee passive-aggressively proselytizes kids, the administration puts its imprimatur on the establishment of religion.

There's a rule against that, and SCOTUS just chipped away at it.

AlterNet:

'Beyond shameful': Legal experts slam Neil Gorsuch for using 'flat-out, knowing lie' in SCOTUS ruling

Many people from legal experts to court watchers to journalists to ordinary Americans on social media are criticizing Justice Neil Gorsuch for his majority opinion in a decision siding with a former high school football coach. That coach sued after the school district ordered him to stop praying after every game at the 50-yard line. Justice Gorsuch’s opinion, as many are noticing, appears to be based on facts that are false. Several are accusing Gorsuch of just plain lying.

Justice Gorsuch claimed the coach’s First Amendment rights were violated, and that he was merely engaging in “quiet personal prayer” as he knelt.

Gorsuch uses the word “quiet” 14 times, as The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman notes.

“Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks,” Justice Gorsuch writes as he begins his majority opinion. “Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District disciplined him anyway. It did so because it thought anything less could lead a reasonable observer to conclude (mistakenly) that it endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s religious beliefs. That reasoning was misguided.”

“The contested exercise here does not involve leading prayers with the team,” Gorsuch continues (despite photos that appear to suggest otherwise), “the District disciplined Mr. Kennedy only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his students after three games in October 2015.”

These are the photos of Coach Kennedy that Justice Sonia Sotomayor included in her dissent:

“They aren’t even trying to use reason anymore,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade laments:

And Vox’s Ian Millhiser makes clear what just happened: “The Supreme Court hands the religious right a big victory by lying about the facts of a case.”

Calling the decision “a big victory for the religious right,” Millhiser writes that’s “only because Gorsuch misrepresents the facts of the case.”

- more -

Bring on the Satanic Temple.

Everything you need to know about the Satanic Temple, which the US government just officially recognized as an organized religion

• The US government has recognized the Satanic Temple as a tax-exempt organized religion.
• The Satanic temple is a non-theistic religious group.
• It is based out of Salem, Massachusetts, but it has branches across the US and world.
• Founded in 2013, it has roots in political activism.
• It is different from the Church of Satan.