Let's start with the now immortal words of former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who during a February 2002 press briefing tried to explain the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups: "[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know, we don't know."

Here are some things "we know that we know" about William Donohue: he has been president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for nearly twenty years; he's quick to accuse anyone criticizing the Catholic hierarchy as being a Catholic-basher; he relishes publicity -- always ready for his Fox News Channel close-up; he's a stalwart defender of all things Catholic; he's gruff and likes to throw his weight around; he's mean-spirited and prone to making outrageous comments; he's a serial gay-basher; he has been a staunch apologist for priestly child abuse, claiming it was the result of having homosexual priests; and, he has a predilection for dumping on Jews.

One of our "known unknowns?" Why does Donohue feel he can dump on Jews with impunity?

Despite massive cultural changes, young people coming out an at earlier age, more support groups, greater awareness of and attention paid to bullying as exemplified by the powerful It Gets Better Project, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens continue to face incredibly difficult times in their homes, schools and communities.

A new Human Rights Campaign (HRC) survey finds that "Official government discrimination or indifference along with social ostracism leaves many teens disaffected and disconnected in their own homes and neighborhoods."

Colonel V. Doner begins his new book "Christian Jihad: Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America," with a startling confession: "In November 1963, as the public address system at a high school in Orange County, California, solemnly announced the assassination of President john F. Kennedy, a fifteen-year-old boy shot from his seat, stunning his classmates with his spontaneous outburst that JFK was not assassinated, `He was executed for treason,' he claimed, referring to his `soft on communism' policies. This youngster, already well trained in a Christian worldview that allowed for no gray areas or nuances in diplomacy, knew one thing: JFK was a liberal, and liberals were clearly betraying God, America, and all of Western civilization."

That youngster, Colonel V. Doner ("Colonel" is his name, not a military rank), had fired his first open shot across the bow.

Doner, who describes himself as once being a "rock star" of the Christian Right, and who was a frequent spokesperson for the movement on numerous "talking head" programs, maintains that he has now given up the "culture wars," and wants to promote "civil dialogue."

This is a story about fraud. It is a story about Christians deceiving Christians. It is not, as you might expect, a story about a conservative Christian pastor or ministry bilking its followers. Rather, it is about liberal Christian non-profit organizations falling prey to a silver-tongued, well-credentialed man who didn't deliver on his promises. It is a tale about a man whose past included jail time for previous fraudulent financial projects.

It's not as huge a story as the saga Bernard Madoff. It doesn't involve either the amounts of money Madoff dealt with, or his mostly upper crust clientele. National media hasn't covered this story. Nevertheless, in the world of struggling non-profit liberal-oriented Christian organizations, Rev. Steven E. Clapp's transgressions have had an enormous impact. This story ends tragically, for everyone involved.

For decades, conservatives have been pushing the notion that African Americans have a lot more in common with their views than with liberals. Conservative foundations, anti-gay groups and faith-based organizations have spent millions of dollars supporting black conservative pundits, columnists, and organizations.

Nevertheless, over the years black conservatives and their white supporters have been marginal figures in African American communities; rarely having a substantial political impact. The last great white hope for conservatives has been to forge partnerships with conservative black clergy.

When President Barack Obama finally evolved enough to announce his support for same-sex marriage, many conservatives were, in their heart of hearts, ecstatic. They were contemplating a severe backlash amongst African Americans that might result in myriad political opportunities. Would Obama's support for same-sex marriage drive a significant number of African Americans away from supporting his reelection? Might African Americans flock in unprecedented numbers to the Republican Party?

Writing in the May issue of Vanity Fair magazine, journalist Todd S. Purdom warns that "just because [Glenn Beck] may have fallen off your radar" since his glorious days at Fox, "doesn't mean that millions of faithful listeners don't still harken to his every dog-whistle warning."

Not only does Beck's plate runneth over with a See's Candies-like assortment of religious ramblings, politically polarizing schemes and entrepreneurial undertakings, so too does his bank account, which, as Forbes magazine has pointed out, hovers around the $40 million-a-year mark.

Since Beck has seized the title of the "busiest man in show business" from Ryan Seacrest, it may behoove you to allow him back into your life!

Less than ten days after taking office in January 2001, President George W. Bush gathered a host of religious folks at the White House and announced his faith-based initiative, the cornerstone of his compassionate conservative agenda.

It became, as The Christian Science Monitor's G. Jeffrey MacDonald recently termed it, "one of the flash points of the culture wars that raged as he came to office in 2001."

However, the clashes of Bush era culture wars pale in comparison to the enmity of Religious Right activists who denounce President Barack Obama's all-out "War On Religion." This flies in the face of reality, since less than a month into his presidency, President Obama signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Over the past few months, there have been hunks of bad news about Groupon, the original "Deal of the Day" web site, which currently has 16 million users. According to Reuters, the once innovative company "has lost more than half its market value this year on concern about waning demand for its daily deals and the company's accounting troubles."

Now, Morality in Media, a longtime Christian conservative organization is adding to Groupon's woes by launching a nationwide boycott of the company, claiming that Groupon is shamelessly offering discounts to businesses involved in hardcore pornography.

He was on his school's tennis team and the student-athlete honor roll, but now Kevin Forts, rather than preparing for his college graduation, is banned from his college campus for the foreseeable future. Forts' banning is due to either his arrest for assaulting his girlfriend on campus, and/or his recent acknowledgement that he an admirer of Anders Behring Breivik, the self-confessed Norwegian mass murderer. Breivik is now on trial in Norway for last July's bombing in central Oslo that killed eight people, and a shooting rampage at a political youth camp on the island of Utoya that killed 69 others, most of whom were teenagers.

Forts, a student at Assumption College, a Catholic college in Worcester, Massachusetts, recently garnered a huge chunk of his fifteen-minutes by claiming, in an interview with a Norwegian tabloid, that Breivik is a patriot and that his action "demonstrates a sense of nationalism and a moral conscience."

He is a billionaire several times over, a supporter of conservative causes, candidates, and organizations, including campaigns of the anti-immigrant former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and the Intelligent Design-peddling Discovery Institute, and he's been a backer of anti-gay rights initiatives. He owns The Weekly Standard, a highly partisan conservative magazine, recently sold the conservative Examiner newspapers, but rarely will speak to the press.

After devoting years of building a massive Disneyesque entertainment complex in Los Angeles called L.A. Live - which tapped into tens of millions of government dollars -- he now has his eyes on building a $1 billion stadium in L.A. and securing a National Football League team for the city. He's also been putting the finishing touches on a deal that would have his company running the Coliseum complex in Oakland, California.

He is a native Kansan, and although he's not related to the multi-billionaire Kansas Koch Brothers, he certainly shares many of their interests.

We're talking Philip Anschutz, who, in 1999, was labeled the nation's "greediest executive" by Fortune magazine.

FROM the Who-Knew-It/They-Still-Existed Dept:

In the land of second and third and fourth acts comes the stories of the Promise Keepers and Jim Bakker.

THE PROMISE KEEPERS -- yes those Promise Keepers -- recently held their first 2012 event in Orlando, Florida. Raleigh Washington, PK's president and CEO, said that "1,000 men experienced the presence of God's Spirit in a very masculine way."

MEANWHILE, The once high & mighty televangelist Jim Bakker, disgraced by multiple scandals that included ripping off his flock -- for which he served time in prison --and cheating on his wife, the late Tammy Faye Bakker, is back on national television.

On a recent episode of his program, he offered viewers a "love gift." The imagination runs rampant thinking about what Bakker's "love gift" might consist of.

A more realistic reading of the recent Christianity Today headline "Will Evangelicals Vote for a Mormon Candidate?" might be, "Do Bears Shit in the Woods?" It's hard to imagine that such a politically savvy Christian magazine thought that it was posing anything other than a rhetorical question with its headline.

In any case, the answer to that question is the same answer it has been for quite some time; Christian conservative evangelicals (especially white men) appear duty bound to vote for Republican Party presidential candidates.

And this year, after Cain fumbled, Perry mumbled, Gingrich tumbled, and Santorum crumbled, Mitt Romney, despite faring poorly among evangelical voters in many primaries (particularly the early southern ones), will undoubtedly wind up receiving the vast majority of evangelical votes.