Check out a new pro-Lieberman blog:

http://www.lieberdem.blogspot.com/

and engage in some healthy debate. Tell them Sundog sent you. But be nice, they seem to be rather tender flowers there.

Hillary Clinton, I'm calling you out. Do you endorse fellow DLC leader Marshall Wittmann's constantly-expressed, spittle-flecked hatred of the netroots? I will not vote for you unless I know how you feel about the opinions of the Limbaugh clone in our midst.

Of course, in truth, he and his blogosphere and MoveOn.org buddies have only one issue, the war. They seek an American defeat.

What could be more traitorously anti-Democrat than to join the throng of barbarians and declare the big lie that the left simply desires America's defeat? What on Earth kind of Democrat is that?

Hillary Clinton, you are a leader of the DLC. I want to know how you stand on Wittmann's constant, slobbering slander of the netroots. Should you end up the candidate, I will not vote for you unless I am clear on your feelings towards the netroots.

I'm dead serious, Ms. Clinton. I want to know if you share Wittmann's intense, seething hatred of the netroots... and if not, why you happily share a prominent platform with him.

So why does Moose Marshall Wittmann have abundant vitriol for everyone he considers leftwing Lieberman haters except his own thinktank-mate, Democratic Leadership Council leader Hillary Clinton?

The Moose daily excoriates, with language straight out of Karl Rove's playbook, Democrats who he views as traitorous to his faux-centrist cause. Where's the patented Moose/Rove-style attack on Hillary? Why isn't she due for a dose of Moose Crap?

Hillary has said she'll support he outcome of the primary. Will you, Moose? Will you support the judgement of the Democratic party, or will you take your ball and go home? And if you don't support the winner of a Democratic primary, what possible claim do you have to any role in the party whatsoever?

Andrea Yates explained today why she did it:

"In their innocence, I thought they would go to heaven," Yates told Dr. Lucy Puryear about five weeks after the June 20, 2001, drownings. "I just -- since they were so young," she stammered before trailing off and starting to cry.

Every once in a while when channel-surfing I flip past a repeat of that investigative show about the church deacon in the seventies that killed his whole family because he felt they were slipping away from God.

And then of course there's that oh-so-inspiring story from the Bible about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son because voices in the sky told him to. That story scared me to death as a child: God might order my Dad to kill me, and if he was a believer, he'd have to do it? I defy you to explain to me with a straight face the fundamental difference between this story and the Andrea Yates story. Sheer lunacy.

Experience shows us that the more fervent and fundamentalist the religion, the nuttier and more socially dysfunctional are its adherents. On the other end of the scale are the religious social liberals whose religion is very much moderated from the literal words in the Bible by the need to coexist with society.

One would think the conclusion is obvious; apparently not. The obvious conclusion is that religion is literally an insane state of mind, and people who express it to its logical ends, who follow God's imaginary instructions to them to the letter, usually wind up in mental institutions. Those who don't then become the father of several religions, that is.

Andrea Yates was a victim of the brainwashing of simple faith. She really and truly believed... that's all. When her depression convinced her that the world was an unbearable place, that was enough.

I have an idea that most Christians don't really believe what they profess to believe - they can't possibly buy all that nonsense and remain a functional human being. I think most Christians go along with the social norms and the moral guidance and sort of accept the basic premise as a given, just mouth the words, without ever really giving it much thought. But REALLY believe? Pin your life or the life of your loved ones on a steadfast faith that God will save you? Reject the chemotherapy and pray? Kill your children because you know they'll wake up in a better place than this?

Nonsense, of course. Faith is faith, but there's the real world to contend with when it comes down to standing on the side of sky-fairies or standing on the side of reality. When push comes to shove, most people will take the chemotherapy over the laying on of hands. Most people will be just skeptical enough about heaven to let their children live.

And let's all be thankful for that, because it's all just a matter of degree.