In her new book, Palin gets down and nasty with just about everyone

This is truly the season of Sarah Palin. This past Sunday, The New York Times Magazine ran a very friendly full-length profile of Palin -- accompanied by a handsome cover photo -- and her team of advisors, aides and assistants. Her daughter Bristol danced in Monday night's "Dancing With The Stars" finale, and she wound up finishing a respectable third. The second episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" has aired - see http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/sarah_palins_alaska/?story= /ent/tv/2010/11/22/sarah_palin_s_alaska_recap_episode_2_open2010 for a Salon recap.

A new Quinnipiac University poll has Palin as the top contender for the Republican Party's presidential nomination: she's on top with 19 percent of Republican support, Romney has 18 percent, Huckabee, 17 percent and Gingrich, grabs 15 percent. The poll also found President Obama leading her in a head-to-head matchup, 48 percent to 40 percent.

And earlier this week, Palin kicked off a 16-stop book tour promoting her new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, in Phoenix, Arizona.  

America has a love/hate relationship with the former Alaska Governor. While her new series, 'Sarah Palin's Alaska' set opening night records for TLC, a recent Gallup Poll finds her negatives have jumped over the 50% mark. What to make of it all? As Palin might say, 'Oh my gooooooosh.'

When I saw her beaming face in the audience at 'Dancing with the Stars' on Monday night, I couldn't help thinking, 'OMG, this woman is everywhere!'

Right wing Israelis recently launched its own version of the Tea Party movement. With 'Saying no to Obama' as its organizing slogan, its main goals appear to be the destruction of the peace process, more building on the West Bank, and a more muscular response to Iran.

You say the Tea Party is a purely American phenomenon? You say it wouldn't translate well to other countries? Well think again my friends. If a group of right wingers have their way, a homegrown version of America's Tea Party movement will be taking root in Israel; hitching itself to the slogan, "Saying no to Obama."

After all, how can you have a tea party without slamming President Obama!

But "saying no to Obama," appears to be merely an entrée point for Israeli Tea Party organizers. The nascent movement appears to be equally about protesting the continuation of a moratorium on construction in the West Bank, thoroughly destroying the severely wounded peace process, and angling for a more muscular response to Iran.

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has a lot on her plate these days. Although consumed by working to build Liberty Central, her new Tea Party-type organization, and defeating Democratic candidates in next week's election, she recently took some time to leave a voice message for Anita Hill.  

Given Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' now oft-testified-to predilection for big breasts, and his wife's seemingly unrestrained desire to resurface questions about her husband's fondness for pornography, this story could easily be called "A Tale of Two Boobs." However, it is also a story of the agglomeration of raw political power through the garnering of unlimited, and undisclosed, financial resources.  

A few weeks ago I learned that one of the two Baptist churches Sharron Angle attends, the Fellowship Community Church in Reno, hosts one of two known chapters of a small ministry called "Task Force Patriot." The ministry slogan? - "Christ is our Commander-in-Chief." The ministry logo? - an American flag, a Christian flag, and between them a cross. Under is a slogan, "The Mission Comes First." It's an emblem for an aggressive, militarized form of Christian nationalism. But Task Force Patriot is notable for another reason.

Over at least the past thirty years, conservatives have been trying to convince Jewish voters that they would be wise to cast the Democratic Party aside and move on over to the GOP.  During the past few weeks, the Republican Jewish Coalition "launched campaigns targeting Jewish communities in eight states," the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. The campaign, which  includes television advertisements, outreach in Jewish newspapers, and direct mail, will "cost more than $1 million and will feature in competitive races in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois and Washington." At about the same time, the Emergency Committee for Israel, a newly launched group founded by neoconservative William Kristol and Religious Right leader Gary Bauer also unleashed a campaign aimed at "Democratic candidates it perceives as weak on Israel," the Jerusalem Post reported.  

Mulitple conservative outreach projects to Jewish voters might seem like deja vu all over again, except that this time around, GOP forces have a lot more money to work with, and they just might be playing to a more receptive audience.

Are Jewish voters so dissatisfied with the Obama Administration that they will finally turn their back on the Democrats on November 2?

With unemployment still high, the economy not yielding relief for most Americans, health care reform not yet providing supportive numbers for the Dems, and the Democratic Party on the defensive, it would seem like a Republican slam dunk in the mid-term elections. Nevertheless, GOP supporters and strategists are continuing to search for wedge issues to arouse their base. Will some voters go to the polls on the basis of a candidate's support, or lack there of, for Israel? A new poll, taken by a Republican pollster, and commissioned by a new right wing organization, claims that they just might.

Many of America's future military officers are being taught, courtesy of a Department of Defense curriculum, the O'Donnell/Angle view that the principle of church-state separation isn't in the Constitution. In 2007, I exposed what Junior ROTC students across America were (and, it would seem, still are) being taught about church-state separation - "It is not found in any governmental American document."

American media is ridiculing Delaware senate candidate Christine O'Donnell for her claim that the principle of separation of church and state is not found in the United States Constitution but as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post observes, Nevada senate candidate Sharron Angle, who might actually win in November, holds a similar view - which is actually quite widespread in the country.

The anti-gay organization founded by Maggie Gallagher has been on a bus-tour across California this past week, stumping for the GOP's Senate Candidate, Carly Fiorina. Similar to its nationwide anti-same-sex marriage bus tour last summer, this one is also drawing tens of  people!

There is one thing you can say for certain about the National Organization for Marriage; it's always up to something ... and that something invariably has to do with The Gay.

If it isn't sponsoring state-wide initiatives banning same-sex marriage, it's intervening in electoral campaigns around the country. If it isn't briefs in support of California's Proposition 8, it's filing a suit against the state of Rhode Island so it won't have to reveal the names of its donors. If it isn't bringing other anti-gay organizations - including the San Marcos, California-based Ruth Institute -- under its wing, then it's joining a coalition called the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. If it isn't in the process of creating some very weird anti-gay television advertising spots, it's launching another cockamamie bus tour.

And sometimes it seems, given its apparent trunk full of treasure, NOM is doing all of the above at just about the same time.

'Moral failure in our ranks has become an epidemic-and the only solution is a heaven-sent spiritual housecleaning,' writes Charisma magazine contributor J. Lee Grady

The case of mega-church black minister Bishop Eddie Long - the charismatic pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta who is being accused in lawsuits filed by four men of coercing them into having sex with him - is not an anomaly. And the Long scandal is raising a number of serious issues within the evangelical movement including the absurd amount of wealth accumulated by some successful charismatic preachers, and their predilection for sexual shenanigans.

The tales of evangelical preachers involved in sexual scandals pops up fairly often over the course of any given year; think Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard and, more recently, the Lakeland revival's Todd Bentley. According to the Associated Press' Tom Breen, "none [of the previous scandals] has involved a leader as prominent as Long. Over the last 20 years, Long, a black conservative, became one of the most powerful independent church leaders in the country. He led New Birth as it grew from a suburban Atlanta congregation of 150 to a 25,000-member powerhouse with a $50 million cathedral and a roster of parishioners that includes athletes, entertainers and politicians."

Stephen Mansfield and David Holland's new book The Faith and Values of Sarah Palin: What She Believes and What It Means for America examines and analyzes the faith of the former Alaska governor. According to Publisher's Weekly, the book "sheds some light on the topic, but not much."

These days, it doesn't take a Peretz Hilton-like character to recognize that Sarah Palin is, as my mother might have put it, "the cat's pajamas." Her celebrity is indisputable; everywhere she goes she draws crowds. Her earning power is unmatched by most of her political contemporaries. Her political endorsements have helped carry a number of conservative candidates to victory. Her Fox News Channel appearances are, well ... Fox News Channel appearances.

Two years ago, before she was picked by Senator John McCain as his vice presidential running mate, most people hadn't heard of her. We've learned about her life, her family, her clothes, and her grizzliness.

And now, we are going to learn about her faith. At least that's what is being promised by veteran author Stephen Mansfield who has visited the faith terrain many times before.

In the early eighties Southern Baptist prominent figures like Bailey Smith, Charles Stanley, James Robison, Ed McAteer, Adrian Rogers and W. A. Criswell helped start the religious right ball rolling.  According to Paul Weyrich's recollection, the formula for motivation was not what we had believed.  The late Weyrich, one of the founding fathers of the movement, commented on what shocked him about the excitement he found in their hostility against a fellow Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter.  Weyrich claims the groups he met with were not that interested in abortion or gay rights. It was Carter's stand denying government support for Christian segregated schools.1  Weyrich, like others have surmised, said the race card provided the momentum.