SMOKING GUN

The blowhards of the religious right have been telling us for decades that America was founded as a "Christian nation." Why until today have I never encountered this rather unambiguous bit of evidence to the contrary?

Ten years after the Constitutional Convention, the Senate unanimously ratified a treaty with Islamic Tripoli that declared the United States government "is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

Clear enough for you Jerry? Pat? And all the rest of you?

By the way, that's from a review in The New York Times of a new book by Brooke Allen called Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. The reviewer is that notorious left-winger George Will. Will thinks the book overstates its case somewhat, but he also calls it "a wonderfully high-spirited and informative polemic."