And under siege. On Sunday, 4/24/05, Senate Majority leader Bill Frist will join the Family Research Council and other "Culture of Life" folk at a mega-church in Kentucky to do a telecast accusing democrats who oppose President Bush’s (previously rejected) right-wing judicial appointments as conducting an assault on “people of faith”. In the wake of the agonizingly protracted play-out of Terri Schiavo’s legal battle to die with some dignity, Republican strategists have decided to play the religion card again. Democrats unfairly discriminate against these fine men and women because they are people of faith, they opine. Democrats are beginning to feel punch drunk with force-fed irony.
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No matter that there is separation of Church and State. According to Tom Delay , that was not the intent of the Founding Fathers, anyway.

"I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution," said DeLay, a Republican from Sugar Land.

No matter that the “Culture of Life” people are unable to see the disconnect between being Pro-Life and Pro-Death penalty, and were incensed at the activist judges who decided we should stop executing children.

"Allowing lower courts to reinterpret the Eighth Amendment whenever they decide enough time has passed for a new snapshot leaves this court's decisions without any force," Justice Scalia writes. He also criticized the majority opinion for including references to international opposition to the juvenile death penalty. "Only seven countries other than the United States have executed juvenile offenders since 1990," Kennedy writes. "Since then each of these countries has either abolished capital punishment for juveniles or made public disavowal of the practice."

No matter that the liberation of Iraq has caused the death of 1500+ American servicemen and women, and more than 100,000 Iraqis .

"The plain fact is that an estimate of 100,000 excess deaths attributable to the invasion of Iraq is alarming. That is already half the death toll of Hiroshima. Apart from the practical arguments, the principled ones stand and will always stand. Have we not learnt any lessons from the history of sweeping alarming numbers of deaths under the carpet? This is not something about which there can be any political discretion 60 years after Auschwitz."

No matter that we are winning the war on terror so well, that Condi Rice won’t release this year’s numbers of global terrorist attacks. It seems they won’t jibe no matter how she tries to twist them. Last year, then Secretary of State Powell had to nearly double the number after their release.

WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

No matter that the new head of Fish and Game was previously the chief lobbyist for Safari Club International (SCI), an extreme trophy hunting organization that advocates the killing of rare species around the world.

The Arizona-based SCI has made a name for itself as one of the most extreme and elite trophy hunting organizations, representing some 40,000 wealthy trophy collectors…To complete all 29 award categories, a hunter must kill a minimum of 322 separate species and sub-species - enough to populate a large zoo. This is an extremely expensive and lengthy task, and many SCI members take the quick and easy route to see their names in the record books. They shoot captive animals in canned hunts, both in the United States and overseas, and some engage in other unethical conduct like shooting animals over bait, from vehicles, with spotlights, or on the periphery of national parks.

No matter that John Bolton, the nominee for U.S. representative to the U.N. has publicly stated the U.N. is worthless and ineffectual.

"There is no such thing as the United Nations ... There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interests and we can get others to go along. And I think it would be a real mistake to count on the U.N. as if it is some disembodied entity out there that can function on its own." _Global Structures Convocation, Feb. 3 1994.

"The (United Nations) secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today it wouldn't make a bit of difference." _Global Structures Convocation, 1994.

I wonder if it’s possible to overdose on irony?