I had beer with a good guy from my small group at church who works for a Republican House member. His Legistlative Director came into the staff meeting yesterday and declared that Republicans will lose the House. This is hardly earth-shaking news as it has been the conventional wisdom for a week or so, but it is further evidence that Democrats are mounting an effective campaign.

My buddy's boss isn't going to lose his seat (won re-election with 91% of the vote in '04), but a few people in the office will. Democrats will take control of the committees and Republican committee staffers are the first casualty.<!-- technorati tags start -->

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While I am disturbed at the suggestion that some would do away with bringing their faith into political discussions, I am also concerned when people use their faith to demogogue. Harold Ford Jr. stepped way over the line in a remark this weekend and may have put a serious dent in his campaign.

I just received an e-mail from a buddy that left DC last week to go work for Democrats in Arizona. Here is his view from the trenches...

50 Congressional seats will NOT happen. A lot of Republicans are hyping up the numbers that they think Dems will by so that it can be seen as a failure when we don't achieve that number. Ann Coulter went on TV yesterday and said that anything less than a 60-70 seat gain by Democrats is a complete and utter failure. OK, she's saying this because she knows that attaining those numbers are impossible - there are only 54 competitive districts and even then there are only about 35 that are in play. My guess is a conservative one and I think that Dems will just barely pick-up the seats we need to win a majority. Say, 19 to 24 seats.

So sayeth one insider...

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Will has argued that blacks and socially-conservative Christians should stop being a forgone conclusion for their respective political parties.

Will says, "It is painfully obvious that the Republican party treats conservative Christians as a foregone conclusion." I couldn't agree more whole-heartedly. He seems to argue that since the Republican party has treated conservative Christians as a forgone conclusion that "Maybe we will start seeing the Christian community start rejecting the demogoguery and fear-mongering rhetoric that often comes from Republican politicians."

I would hope they do, but not because I am desperate to see socially-conservative Christians jump to the Democratic Party, but because I want to see less demagoguery and fear-mongering in the body politic.

I am pleased to welcome Dr. Andy Olree to the blog. Dr. Olree is a law professor at Faulkner University and has recently written the book, The Choice Principle: The Biblical Case for Legal Toleration. Dr. Olree has kindly sent a copy of his book for me to review. In the meantime, I have asked him to give us a brief synopsis of his book as a starting point for discussion. - Will Hinton

My central thesis is that the New Testament does not lend support for any strong program of legal moralism. Instead, to the extent the biblical text addresses such questions, it suggests that God ordains governments for the limited purpose of protecting citizens from victimizers who would directly harm others through force or fraud. This understanding would exclude legislation for other purposes, such as discouraging sexual impurity or the hoarding of wealth, or encouraging particular worship practices.

The Choice Principle suggests, in the tradition of Roger Williams, a legal toleration that is born of an uncompromising moral absolutism. I am hoping to demonstrate a coherent and biblical alternative to the current evangelical political orthodoxies of both the Right and the Left.

I conclude that an evangelical commitment to moral absolutes and the authority of Scripture need not entail government endorsement of religious truths or legislation of any particular view of what constitutes a virtuous life. I am suggesting that evangelical Christians may consistently and conscientiously oppose any governmental efforts to overtly connect itself to God, or to legislate God's moral code upon mankind, without embracing moral relativism in any form. I believe these conclusions cast doubt on the current political agenda of both the evangelical Right and the evangelical Left.

I thought this was an interesting admission from the BBC.

BBC admits: We are biased on religion and politics

Most executives admitted that the corporation’s representation of homosexuals and ethnic minorities was unbalanced and disproportionate, and that it leaned too strongly towards political correctness, the overt promotion of multiculturalism, anti-Americanism and discrimination against the countryside.

Sweden, sometimes considered a mecca of economic equality and social justice, has a stock exchange basically controlled by one family.

From the Economist: Sweden's enduring business dynasty

By the late 1990s the Wallenbergs controlled some 40% of the value of the companies listed on the Swedish stock exchange.

In the wake of David Kuo's story about the White House paying lip service to conservative evangelical Christians, I have given a lot of thought to how political parties treat their various constituent groups. It is painfully obvious that the Republican party treats conservative Christians as a foregone conclusion. And they are one of many groups like this. Isn't the Religious Left headed by Jim Wallis and his Sojournors organization a similar foregone conclusion for the Democrat party? Does anyone honestly believe that this group would ever vote Republican?

Flipping through this week's issue of Time, I was struck by an item in the letters section. Responding to a recent article by war correspondent Michael Weisskopf, who lost a hand in Iraq, reader Karen Howard of Redmond, Washington wrote:

"I very much appreciated Weisskopf's article and started to cry when I read about Specialist James Fair, the young man who suffered a brain injury, lost his eyesight and both hands. He weighs on my conscience because I have not reconciled myself to my responsibility for his injuries as an outspoken supporter of our liberation of Iraq. I have work to do on that, and it continues to keep me awake."

Submitted from Digg: $14,374,330,000,000 Total Increase in Household Wealth Since April 2003; $625,000,000,000 Total Increase in Federal Tax Revenues Since FY 2003;
$207,788,000,000 Reduction in the Deficit in the Past 29 Months Due to Stronger Economic Growth - There you have it. America is over-taxed. Reduce tax rates, increase tax revenue.

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