Conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs, the poll qualified the question by first telling respondents that the "1973 Supreme Court ruling called Roe v. Wade made abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal."

But, that's not true.

"Roe v. Wade allows absolutely no limits on reasons for abortion until nearly six months into pregnancy," explains National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson....The AP story "paint[s] a greatly exaggerated picture of public support for the Supreme Court's abortion policy," Johnson indicated.

The poll, which found that two-thirds of respondents don't want President Bush to appoint pro-life judges who will overturn Roe, flatly contradicts previous polling data.

A Wirthlin Worldwide poll commissioned just after the presidential elections, found 55 percent said they took a pro-life position and only 40 percent took one of three positions in favor of legal abortions.

Pro-abortion advocates would still be free to legalize abortion through the democratic process. It was the Roe decision that took the matter out of the people's hands in favor of judicial decree. And this judicial decree was issued in complete contravention of the Constituiton by the creation, out of whole cloth, of a constitutional right to privacy, which a majority of the justices found hiding in the "emanations and penumbras" of the Bill of Rights.

In Wisconsin, where the first efforts to harvest embryonic stem cells for medical research took place, pro-life activists are battling the state's Democratic governor over his plan to spend $375 million to advance the controversial scientific technique....Right to Life does support adult stem cell research, Armacost added. "Let's go forward with good stem cell research that is ethical," she said, explaining that information about the adult stem cell alternative will be included on a soon-to-be-launched website dedicated to stopping Doyle's plan.

Doyle, however, does not see embryonic stem cell research as life-threatening. He views it as a key component in developing treatments and possible cures for debilitating diseases such as Parkinson's, which afflicts his own mother.

How is it that so many evangelicals--including some of the most respected leaders in the movement--now reject the traditional doctrine of hell in favor of annihilationism or some other option? The answer must surely come down to the challenge of theodicy--the challenge to defend God's goodness against modern indictments.

Modern secularism demands that anyone who would speak for God must now defend Him. The challenge of theodicy is primarily to defend God against the problem of evil. The societies that gave birth to the decades of megadeath, the Holocaust, the abortion explosion, and institutionalized terror will now demand that God answer their questions and redefine himself according to their dictates.

In the background to all this is a series of inter-related cultural, theological, and philosophical changes that point to an answer for our question: What happened to evangelical convictions about hell?

The first issue is a changed view of God. The biblical vision of God has been rejected by the culture as too restrictive of human freedom and offensive to human sensibilities. God's love has been redefined so that it is no longer holy. God's sovereignty has been reconceived so that human autonomy is undisturbed. In recent years, even God's omniscience has been redefined to mean that God perfectly knows all that He can perfectly know, but He cannot possibly know a future based on free human decisions.

There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous. Meanwhile people like John Stott, who are actually important, get ignored.

It could be that you have never heard of John Stott. I don't blame you. As far as I can tell, Stott has never appeared on an important American news program. A computer search suggests that Stott's name hasn't appeared in this newspaper since April 10, 1956, and it's never appeared in many other important publications....Stott is so embracing it's always a bit of a shock -- especially if you're a Jew like me -- when you come across something on which he will not compromise. It's like being in "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," except he has a backbone of steel. He does not accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle, and of course he believes in evangelizing among nonbelievers. He is pro-life and pro-death penalty, even though he is not a political conservative on most issues.

Most important, he does not believe truth is plural. He does not believe in relativizing good and evil or that all faiths are independently valid, or that truth is something humans are working toward. Instead, Truth has been revealed.

By some measures, the state has the most obstacles to divorce. It is one of a handful that does not allow one spouse to unilaterally end a marriage. It is also one of the few without some form of one-step, no-fault divorce for couples like the Jacobs.

There are all sorts of theories about why New York has been so conservative on matters of family law and has held out on this issue. The Catholic Church has objections to easier divorces, and women's groups are concerned about the economic harm to women from inequitable financial settlements. Divorce reformers have spent years focusing on other issues, including distribution of assets, child support and custody and domestic violence. Then there is the generally sclerotic Legislature, where some members still recall the bruising fight over this issue 15 years ago, when the Assembly defeated a no-fault bill.

But now, matrimonial lawyers, bar associations and judges are pushing to have the law changed, saying it is archaic and heightens hostilities between spouses, which particularly hurts children. Both the New York State Bar Association and the city bar are backing a legislative change in Albany to add no-fault grounds, and several powerful legislators appear to be receptive.

The truth is, if you depend on the Christian right for your theological sustenance, you probably won't recognize the Jesus of the Gospels.

Jesus was quite a troublemaker. In fact, I'm thinking the Bush administration would have a special place for Jesus were the swarthy Nazarene to take up his ministry today in the U.S. of A.--in a cell with other Middle Eastern men awaiting deportation.

Let's recall what the Jesus of the Gospels espoused. "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you," the sandal-wearing rabble-rouser was known to say....

Holy class warfare! No wonder Republicans have switched out the Jesus of the Gospels for a low-rent moralizer preoccupied with what other people are doing with their bodies.

Proponents of gay marriage in Connecticut say the high court's decision could help efforts to pass legislation next year that legalizes marriage between same-sex couples or allows civil unions.

"The bottom line is, states are free to recognize same-sex marriages if they choose to," said Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Lawlor said there is a lot of support for civil unions in the Connecticut legislature and that could be "the starting point" for the new session that begins in January.

Gay marriage opponents are expected to propose a Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA that would allow marriage only between a man and woman.

Americans as a people are losing their ability to distinguish right from wrong.

There are many reasons for it, but it is undeniable that the ties that bind us are breaking down and have been for the last 40 years.

For at least that long, forces within our society have been persuading Americans -- through the schools, the universities, movies, TV shows, advertisements, the press, pseudo-scientific research and a thousand other means -- that there is no objective truth, that there is no ultimate morality, that there is no authority higher than government to which we as individuals are accountable.

These forces now represent a greater danger to us as a nation and as individuals than do all foreign threats combined.

For certain, far more Americans are dying as a result of this unholy relativist, ultra-secularist jihad than are being killed by the Islamist holy warriors.

American Greetings Corp. has about 10 Hanukkah-Christmas line offerings this year.

"It’s an interesting market," said Kathy Krassner, editor of Greetings Inc., a trade magazine. "But it’s a limited market."

The newest player is Chrismukkah. Ron Gompertz founded the company this year with his wife, inspired by an episode of the popular Fox series "The O.C." in which character Seth Cohen, whose mother is Protestant and whose father is Jewish, coins the term.

"It’s a little bit of both," Gompertz explains.

As with anything addressing religion, though, card makers are careful not to offend. Chrismukkah even offers a disclaimer: "We respect people’s different faiths and do not suggest combining the religious observance of Christmas and Hanukkah."

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. (emphasis mine)

No one is suggesting children should be forced to pray as part of their public school Thanksgiving celebrations, but they should not be denied learning an important lesson in American history. The founders of this nation were a deeply religious people, and Americans remain among the most religious people in the world. Religious faith has guided the development of our democracy and imbues our leaders still with a belief in the worth of every man, woman and child. When we sit down to our Thanksgiving feasts, we should remember and thank God for that.

It remains to be seen exactly how the measure will work in practice. But the intention, plainly, is to curtail further already dwindling access to abortion and even to counseling that mentions abortion as a legal option. It denies federal financing to government agencies that "discriminate" against health care providers who choose for any reason to disregard state mandates to offer abortion-related services. This represents a vast expansion of the "conscience protection" that federal law currently gives to individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training.

The affront to women's rights, moreover, should not obscure the serious threat to the First Amendment involved in enacting what is likely to evolve into a domestic "gag rule" as, one by one, health care providers order doctors they employ not to provide patients with information about the abortion option. This echoes the way Mr. Bush reimposed a blanket Reagan-era gag rule for providers of reproductive health services abroad on his first full day in office back in 2001.

For [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi's information, Roe v. Wade had to do with the right of states to regulate abortion. It had nothing to do with forcing health care providers to perform abortions.

It's bad enough that the courts have, essentially, created a federal constitutional right to abortion in certain categories of cases for those who freely choose to engage in the procedure. But it's even worse for the government to force unwilling health care providers against their will, and oftentimes against their consciences, to engage in the abominable practice.

Besides, I thought the pro-aborts insisted on being referred to as pro-choice. But how can they maintain a shred of intellectual honesty in this matter when they want to force unwilling institutions to provide abortions? Keep in mind that for the most part we're not talking about health issues here, but elective abortions.

Readers were jolted around the world that such a question should leap from the cover of National Geographic. Hopes surged for a few seconds among skeptics of evolution, until they turned to David Quammen's article, which answers with a loud, triumphal "No!" Quammen's piece unfolds as a glittering showcase for Darwinism, a reassuring mini-museum in print. Ten pages of text--more in the genre of high school cheerleading than sober analysis--are embedded in a lush gallery of 22 pages of glossy pictures, including an amazing array of nine separate "sidebar" mini-articles.

If we imagine the "clash of two theories"--the older notion of "separate creations" by a supremely wise designer, versus Darwin's "common ancestry" of all life, driven by natural selection--it appears here that the younger system has utterly crushed the older. Sketched in terms of a basketball tourney, Quammen paints a complete rout--a 118-0 shutout.

The results of the presidential election are still being parsed for what they say about the electorate's supposed closer embrace of traditional cultural values, but for the network television executives charged with finding programs that speak to tastes across the nation, one lesson is clear.

The supposed cultural divide is more like a cultural mind meld....

So if it is true that the public's electoral choices are a cry for more morally driven programming, the network executives ask, why are so many people, even in the markets surrounding the Bush bastions Atlanta and Salt Lake City, watching a sex-drenched television drama?

Jewish tradition holds, with Ecclesiastes, that there is a time to love *and* a time to hate. The Hebrew Bible enjoins us to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and to love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19), but that love has its limits. We are not expected to love savage thugs or to ask God's mercy on them. On the contrary, we loathe the unrepentantly cruel because we believe God loathes them too.

It defies reason and upends morality to claim that God loves both Saddam Hussein and the innocent Kurds he gassed to death -- that He bestows His love on Osama bin Laden no less than on the 3,000 souls he butchered on 9/11. Of course we should pray that an evildoer will realize the awfulness of his ways and atone for his crimes. But to love him even if he doesn't? To bless him when he dies? God forbid! To bless the Hitlers and the Arafats of this world is to betray their victims. That we must never do.

It may also be true that the radical right will never achieve its stated legal goals--the overturning of Roe v. Wade, passage of the Human Life Amendment, a constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage, the reinstatement of prayer and Bible reading in the schools--much less such dystopian dreams as making Christianity the national religion, abolishing public schools and banning the Pill and divorce. But that's like saying the left got nothing from FDR because it didn't get socialism. The fact is, anyone who thinks the GOP is stiffing its "moral values" backers hasn't been paying attention: George Bush, for one, has been paying them back for the past four years. He's promoted a raft of anti-choice legislation--including the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and a law making it easier for health professionals to deny women abortions and even birth control for "reasons of conscience." He's packed the federal bench with antichoice reactionaries, and he's seeded the federal bureaucracy and the government's international agencies with hard-line social conservatives like the faith-healing Dr. W. David Hager of the FDA reproductive health panel. These people wield immense power over regulations and funding and the flow of information. It did not take a Senate majority to keep emergency contraception from being sold over the counter; all it took was compliant Mark McClellan, willing to overlook the recommendation of his own expert panel and the overwhelming weight of medical opinion.

It is safe to say that NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political arm of the abortion rights movement, is facing its biggest fight since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973....Polls have shown that a majority of Americans favor keeping abortion legal. But the Nov. 2 election has strengthened the antiabortion conservative religious right. Newly reelected Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in line to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Bush's judicial nominations, has faced extraordinary grilling over the last several days by Republican leaders for a comment he made suggesting that antiabortion nominees would have a hard time getting confirmed by the Senate, and religious conservatives are furiously lobbying against him.

Keenan said NARAL Pro-Choice America's job, aside from the expected battle over the Supreme Court, will be to energize and mobilize a new generation of leaders and activists -- young people who grew up with Roe v. Wade -- who will help in the grass-roots efforts for reproductive rights for women.

Though the details differ across cultures, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth-consuming, hostility-provoking, fecundity-forfeiting rituals of religion. All this presents a major puzzle to anyone who thinks in a Darwinian way. We guessed why jays ant. Isn’t religion a similar challenge, an a priori affront to Darwinism, demanding analogous explanation? Why do we pray and indulge in costly practices that, in many individual cases, more or less totally consume lives?...

Darwinian selection sets up childhood brains with a tendency to believe their elders. It sets up brains with a tendency to imitate, hence indirectly to spread rumors, spread urban legends, and believe religions. But given that genetic selection has set up brains of this kind, they then provide the equivalent of a new kind of nongenetic heredity, which might form the basis for a new kind of epidemiology, and perhaps even a new kind of nongenetic Darwinian selection. I believe that religion is one of a group of phenomena explained by this kind of nongenetic epidemiology, with the possible admixture of nongenetic Darwinian selection. If I am right, religion has no survival value for individual human beings, nor for the benefit of their genes. The benefit, if there is any, is to religion itself.

Please read this as an unambiguous call for evangelical Christians to set aside all embarrassment over putting such an emphasis on issues like abortion, homosexuality, and traditional marriage....

So what makes the debate about abortion, homosexuality, and traditional marriage quite different from the debate about the other issues? The answer is amazingly simple--and don't let anyone talk you out of that fact! The answer is that on the issues of abortion, homosexuality, and marriage, one side is claiming that certain behavior is just plain wrong, while the other claims it is not only right, but to be defended. On the other issues, the debate is not about right and wrong, but about extent and about appropriate methodology.

Where, for example, among mainstream conservatives or evangelical Christians do you find those who are affirming the moral rightness of racism? Where do you find those who say we should expand oppression of the poor, or withhold justice from them? Most of us, to be sure, might be rightly charged with having insufficient concern for the ravages of racism or for walking by on the other side of the road when we see our brothers and sisters in need. But that is quite different from proclaiming that disinterest as a virtue.

What I'm getting at, in this land of free speech and home of brave Marines, is my unequivocal belief that Marine X committed no "war crimes" in that fortified Fallujah mosque last week where he shot and killed a prone and wounded terrorist. He was just doing his job -- his hellishly dangerous job -- and thank God for him.

This is hardly the consensus view, at least not the one that is actually spoken out loud. And I don't mean just on Al Jazeera, where the NBC News "get" of the week -- a video sequence of the Marine in question shooting a wounded Fallujah fighter after shouting that the man was "faking" his incapacity -- has been airing at half-hour intervals as if it were the Lost Episodes of Abu Ghraib. "Enlightened" people everywhere are clucking -- but not over the heinous execution of CARE's Margaret Hassan, the mutilated bodies found on Fallujah's streets, the beheading chamber discovered by U.S. soldiers, the Taliban-like decrees threatening death for Fallujah women who don't "cover," or the bomb-making workshops seized before creating more craters of carnage. They emote over the death of a terrorist dedicated to all of the above.

The American Civil Liberties Union has threatened to sue the state of Louisiana because a state website promoting abstinence mentions God.

In a six-page letter, the ACLU claims the state abstinence program has violated a 2002 court settlement by invoking the name of God and quoting biblical passages on the program's taxpayer-funded website, reported the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The most shocking thing about Nicollette Sheridan exposing her back (but not her backside, alas -- where are the outtakes?) and jumping into Terrell Owens' arms is that anyone could have been shocked by it.

Such delicate flowers we are.

Clucking over the "Desperate Housewives'' promotion featuring Sheridan and Owens that opened "Monday Night Football'' this week.

Clucking over it every time it is rerun on ESPN so it can be castigated once again.

Clucking over it every time it is downloaded from the Internet to see just how disgraceful it was.

Going into the election, 37 states had enacted laws or approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, most of them before the start of the Goodridge suit in Massachusetts, which won seven same-sex couples the right to marry.

''The religious right wanting to deny rights to gay people has been a consistent theme," she said. ''We have always been cautious, but the worst thing to do right now is to stop the public conversation."

Besides, Bonauto said, polls of voters on Election Day give advocates of same-sex marriage cause for optimism. More than half of those surveyed favored extending rights to same-sex couples, an indication, she said, that voters are more willing to recognize gays and lesbians than the 11 electoral defeats suggest. Most of those 11 states had marriage bans in place, and she and other advocates said they had not expected the issue to be a close call in any state except Oregon, where same-sex marriage opponents prevailed with 57 percent of the vote, the smallest of the 11 margins.

The fact is, for most people marriage is not an expression of hatred against homosexuals. The existing definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman was not formulated to persecute or discriminate against gays and lesbians. Most people who oppose a redefinition of marriage are not engaged in a conspiracy to deny gays inheritance and hospital visitation rights. There are millions of people who oppose same-sex marriage yet bear no ill will toward their fellow Americans who are homosexuals.

Instead many of these people voted for the idea that ideally children should have both fathers and mothers, that there is something unique about the arrangement syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher has described as "men and women coming together to make the future happen" worth upholding as a shared social norm. A high percentage of these same people would oppose policies that deliberately make gay and lesbian couples' lives harder, and indeed favor offering them some benefits associated with so-called civil unions as long as it isn't simply marriage without the name. Instead of demonizing these people and enlisting the courts to bully them, maybe gay activists would do well to appeal to their sense of fairness and try to change their minds.

The Palestinians stuck in the miserable refugee camps were always instruments only of Arafat's power. Better for him that the Palestinians should live in poverty than in a state where they could flourish and prosper. Palestinian poverty became a public-relations weapon.

The generous offer made at Camp David in 2000, the best his people could ever expect -- 97 percent of what he had asked, by one estimate -- was turned down in an exercise of breathtaking cynicism. Cruel though he was to the Israelis, his abuse of power was even more hurtful to his own people. He deprived them of a peace delivered through politics unaccompanied by death and destruction. He nevertheless manipulated world opinion with a boffo performance before a world eager to be manipulated.

Following days of spin and commentary, we can confidently declare a new urban legend: George W. Bush was elected by right-wing, science-hating, vengeful Christian zealots -- "revved up by rectitude," as one pundit put it -- and America is embarked on a hatchet-wielding jihad against heathens, pagans and infidels....

The debate, meanwhile, about whether "moral values" was the compelling force behind Bush's victory seems slightly off point. Exit polls showing "moral values" as the most important issue for voters (22 percent cited it) were refuted subsequently by other polls, leading some to insist that the election wasn't about values after all.

What they mean, probably correctly, is that the election wasn't only about far-right concerns such as same-sex marriage, abortion and stem cell research. But of course it was about moral values -- what's right and what's wrong, from war to national character -- and the vote took us right of center.

Islamic militant groups that are behind many suicide bombings dismissed on Tuesday a call from interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to halt attacks in the run-up to a Jan. 9 election to replace Yasser Arafat.

Abbas, who is trying to work out a deal with rival Palestinian groups on a cease-fire and possible power-sharing, resisted a call by the groups for a share of power despite their planned boycott of the election.

The "faith factor" problem of some Democrats is not that they do not have faith. It is that some have faith in the wrong things.

The Democratic gospel preaches an all-encompassing faith that politics and government will solve our personal problems. Not earning enough money? Don't have a high-school diploma? Not happy with your insurance policy or retirement plan? Is your daughter pregnant? Feel in general that your life is out of control? Turn to President, Senator or Congressman Democrat and get it solved.

Many Democratic leaders and pundits are expressing consternation at Republican Party claims that it is the party of values. They claim that Democrats have the moral high ground and that their problem is communication. But check out what they call values: Government-run health care, government-run schools, government-run personal retirement and a politically defined and managed overall sense of social justice.

"We are encouraged by our continued progress in reducing births to teens of all ages, but we’re particularly pleased to make this kind of progress in such a young and vulnerable group," said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

This report, Births to 10 to 14 Year-Old Mothers, 1990-2002: Trends and Health Outcomes, is the first ever analysis of births to this group of very young mothers, and was prepared by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Between 1990 and 2002 almost 137,000 of these young mothers delivered a live birth. This number has declined steadily from a peak of 12,901 in 1994, to the current low of 7,315. If the 1990 rate had held through 2002, there would have been 34,336 additional births to the youngest teens.

According to a transcript of the show, Keillor said, "I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians. [enthusiastic audience applause] Just a little project of mine. My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven, that is where there (sic) citizenship is, [laughter] is in heaven, it's not here among us in America. ..."

According to a report in the University of Chicago's Chicago Maroon, Keillor told the audience: "If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?"

Brace yourselves. The movie, Kinsey, opened in theaters last Friday, introducing a new generation of Americans to the infamous "father" of sex research in America. Yet, the movie is really not a true portrait of Alfred Kinsey at all. Instead of portraying the twisted and tormented mind of this propagandist for the sexual revolution, the movie presents Kinsey as an angel of light who brought America out of repression and darkness....

Alfred C. Kinsey is one of the most controversial figures in American history--and for good reason. An entomologist by training, Kinsey turned from his intense fascination with the gall wasp to the study of human sexuality. He burst upon the American scene with his pioneering 1948 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Eventually, Indiana University was to establish the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, and the name "Kinsey" was to be associated with progressivist sex education, opposition to traditional sexual morality, and liberation from fixed concepts of "normal" when dealing with human sexuality. The Kinsey Institute has what many consider to be the world's largest collection of pornography, sexually explicit art, and various sexual objects. What the institute does not advertise is its links to data gathered by child molesters and sex criminals.

With Bush's election, Dobson has won a major battle. But success brings its own perils. It's quite possible that Dobson, his hopes having been raised, will find them dashed. After all, Republican strategists will surely realize that too strong an anti-gay stand could further alienate moderates and independents (groups that John Kerry actually won this year). Dobson himself predicted future disappointment during an appearance on ABC's This Week last Sunday. Asked whether Bush would fail evangelicals, Dobson replied, "I'm sure he will fail us. He doesn't dance to our tune." If that's true, and Dobson believes his words about putting principle ahead of power, then his new bond with the GOP may already be in jeopardy.

Perhaps more damaging is the possibility that Dobson gets what he wants. Maybe the GOP will establish an anti-abortion Supreme Court, overturn Roe v. Wade, stamp out gay rights, ban stem-cell research forever, and shut down MTV and cancel The Bachelor. Voters may not be so pleased with the Republican Party after that. Despite the qualms they showed about gay marriage this year, there's no reason to think they want anything like Dobson's Utopia, and they could see a replay of, say, 1998, when the perception that angry culture warriors were running the GOP damaged the party at the polls. In one of his books, Dobson has written of the gay-rights movement that "[e]vil has a way of overreaching." So does the far right.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

The fawning world leaders saying this seem oblivious to the obvious paradox. If he was such a great leader, how is it that he left his people so destitute, desperate, wounded and bereft that only his passing gives them a hope for a fulfillment of their deepest aspirations?

Arafat's apologists explain this by saying that is because he had one weakness: indecisiveness. In the end, he just could not pull the trigger. When offered the deal of the century by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David 2000, he was somehow too conflicted, too ambivalent to say yes.

Ambivalent? Nonsense. Yasser Arafat was supremely decisive and single-minded. He was not complex and, regarding Israel's fate, never conflicted. Indeed the reason for his success, such as it was -- creating the Palestinian movement from which he derived fortune, fame, and reverence -- was precisely his single-mindedness. Not about Palestinian statehood -- if that was his objective, he could have had his state years ago -- but about the elimination of Jewish statehood.

Europe today has little in common with Red State America. For, even as Americans were rejecting gay marriage, Spain followed Holland and Belgium in granting homosexuals the right to marry, divorce and adopt.

But how far are we behind Europe in entering this brave new world?

Since World War II, divorce has become routine in the United States. Cohabitation among unmarried couples increased tenfold in the last 30 years. Abortion and sodomy are now constitutional rights.

Gay marriage has become the civil-rights cause of the college campuses. California has voted to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Assisted suicide has been voted into law in Oregon. De-Christianization of our public schools and institutions, begun half a century ago, proceeds apace, sanctioned and ordered by our federal courts.

For presidential candidates to garner the conservative Christian vote -- which is the block of voters we're mostly talking about here -- they can't get too far by just promoting any issue and wrapping it in the language of morality....Conservatives don't claim that same-sex marriage and abortion are the only moral issues. And I wish liberals would quit superciliously asserting that only they care about the environment, war and peace, poverty, and health care.

Conservatives just have a different approach to these issues. They abhor war, but believe it is sometimes necessary and morally justified. They believe their approach to poverty is actually more compassionate because it is more effective. And it is largely liberals who reduced market forces in health care, which led to much of the escalation in cost. And liberal darling Bill Clinton, after feverishly campaigning to solve the forty million uninsured problem, didn't put a dent in it.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.

The world is a better place today because that cold, calculating monster is no longer in it. He is meeting his eternal judgment. And I hear it is crazy cold down there.

Why don't I agree with the New York Times, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and others who are actually mourning this degenerate pervert?

Yasser Arafat was a murderer of Christians, Jews, Israelis and Americans -- including U.S. diplomats, tourists, innocent women and children. Yasser Arafat was an unrepentant terrorist -- the modern-day inventor of Arab terrorism, an inspiration for Osama bin Laden and others. Yasser Arafat was an exploiter of his own people, keeping them in squalor and perpetuating their hatreds while padding his own Swiss bank accounts.

While I hope that the president does nominate judges who respect the Constitution, instead of remaking it in their image -- and that the Senate confirms them -- I worry about the priorities of those values voters who regard themselves as Christian conservatives. Throughout history, the church has demonstrated the least power when it aligns itself with temporal government. It has exercised the most power (that is the power to change lives) when it aligns itself with its Leader and a kingdom "not of this world."

How morally compelling is an institution collectively known as the church when it preaches "traditional" marriage but practic