Tired of all this God stuff...

While the media pay a ridiculous amount of uncritical attention to religion in politics and public life, they ignore the gazillions of violations of the Constitutional separation of church & state made today by politicians and tax-exempt religious organizations. Politicos (Bush, Romney, Huckabee, Dobson, Perkins et al) who rail against secularism, and who try to cram God and Jesus into every public nook & cranny should be portrayed in the press for what they are - anti-American demagogues. Every time some religious huckster proclaims that "the founding fathers understood America to be a Christian nation" or that "our Constitution has to be amended to fit God's standards" the media should reply "That's utter hogwash! The founding fathers intended no such thing! You are a bunch of constitution-warping charlatans!". Jefferson was crystal clear in his writings - he left God and Jesus out on purpose. Jefferson explained that the 1st amendment's religious freedom clause means exactly what it says - that our public space should be secular and free of religion. Jefferson hated the idea of religion mixing with politics, and he hated the idea that politicians would wrap themselves in churchical vestments. Several quotes of note (from the many, many available here - http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1650.htm):

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21

"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.

The religious right counts on the meekness of the media and Joe Bob citizen's ignorance of the the Constitution, as they gleefully tear down the Constitutional wall of separation between church and state. The "Christian" proclamations of Huckabee, Romney, Thompson et al. are more than just tactics in the campaign game (the legacy of Karl Rove), they're part of a theocratic push to deny Jefferson and establish The United States of Jesus. As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, America is not to be a Christian or any other religious flavor of nation, and they would have been dismayed to hear Romney's campaign assurances that Mormons aren't devil worshipers (thank god for that :) because they established in article 6 of the Constitution that there is to be no religious test for political office. Not even for devil worshipers. Every time some politician claims that God is on our side the media should cry out, with megaphones and 72 point fonts "No sir, you are wrong! There's no God in the Constitution and America is a secular nation! Jefferson wrote the 1st amendment to keep folks like you from trampling on the rights of Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians, atheists, etc. with those big clunky Christian Majority ($19.95 at Walmart) sandals. Now cut it out."

Or maybe we should hold a seance, and bring Jefferson back from the dead to explain these things for himself...?

JR