June 20^th

Rick Santorum has decided that the murder of nine people in a Charleston church is an attack on religion. That’s absurd, as is much of Santorum’s political agenda. We know that the killings in Charleston were racially motivated and not religiously motivated because the killer’s “manifesto” has surfaced and it is all about racial hatred. This won’t lead Santorum to change his mind about the motivation for the attack.

Santorum revels in finding sources of religious persecution. He finds these easily because he is a rigorously observant Catholic. Occasionally he has a problem as when he recently took issue with the Pope’s claims that something had to be done about climate change. Santorum responded that the Pope should leave such issues to the scientists not knowing that the Pope had a master’s degree in Chemistry. That doesn’t make the Pope a climatologist but it does make him better informed about science than someone with an MBA and a law degree. Santorum is on record as claiming that man-made global warming is not possible. Now we’ll see just how good a Catholic he really is.

Santorum was very unhappy that Jack Kennedy said he would not be legislating the Pope’s agenda if he was elected. Santorum claimed that no one should leave their religious principles behind when they take office. Fine, but that has nothing to do with what Kennedy said and now it seems clear that if Santorum becomes President he will follow the Pope’s orders…if he agrees with them.

Santorum is opposed to abortion and he is also opposed to contraception, even for married people. Surprisingly, he is also opposed to gay marriages which, if made legal everywhere would, at least for some marriages, eliminate any need for either abortion or contraception. Santorum was very unhappy with the SCOTUS decision in Griswold vs Connecticut which declared Connecticut’s law against contraceptives, even for married people, was a violation of the constitution.

Santorum claims that the separation of church and state is a communist idea. Say what? Perhaps there were communists influencing Thomas Jefferson when he wrote to the Danbury Baptist association in 1802 telling them he saw a wall separating church and state. Perhaps constitutional law was not Santorum’s strong point in law school. If he is in a position to control events, Jefferson’s ideas will be a thing of the past quite literally. As an indication of his views on the issue, he would like Creationism taught in the public schools. No, that’s not its pale sister Intelligent Design, that’s full blown biblical Creationism.