Miscellanea Agnostica

As I blogged about already, the US Department of Justice had, under Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, become an engine of theocracy. Gonzales’s successor, Michael Mukasey, has finally weighed in on this scandal and decided to take no action on it:

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey said Tuesday that the Justice Department had no plans to bring criminal charges in connection with hiring abuses that took place under his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales.

Mukasey said the findings in two recent reports by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine — that a group of influential Gonzales aides considered politics and ideology in hiring career employees and summer interns — were “disturbing.”

The aides violated civil service laws and department regulations, Mukasey said, but they did not commit crimes that could send them to jail.

“Where there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we vigorously investigate it. And where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” Mukasey said in a speech to the American Bar Assn. in New York. “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.”

The decision not to prosecute means that some of the best-known figures in the scandal — such as Monica M. Goodling, a lawyer and public affairs officer who became a powerful gatekeeper in the department under Gonzales — will likely emerge relatively unscathed.

Mukasey’s statement — that not all violations of the law should be prosecuted — is an interesting one. I wonder how might it work out, if an ordinary citizen were to put it into practice, in some ordinary situation? One could contest, say, a speeding ticket in court, by saying, “Your Honor, according to the US Attorney General, not all violations of the law are crimes, so don’t convict me of speeding.” How well might that work?

Answer: It wouldn’t!

Mukasey is essentially giving the theocrats who lurked in the Department of Justice a “pass,” permission to violate long-standing hiring procedures and the Constitution itself. After all, anything is acceptable if done in the name of theocracy!

Pastor Rick Warren, multi-millionaire author of the insipid and trite “Purpose-Driven Life” book franchise, is hosting both presidential candidates for some kind of forum (it’s not a debate, exactly … I have no idea what it is … I’m not even sure they know what it is). Warren is setting himself up as the nation’s pastor, with the tacit approval of the media, as seen for example in this Reuters story:

It’s the evangelicals, stupid.

Commentators who have written off U.S. evangelical voters as a relic of the Bush era should take notice of this Saturday’s “Civil Forum on the Presidency” moderated by famed evangelical mega pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain will each spend about an hour taking questions from Warren and will only share the stage briefly. …

Evangelicals account for one in four U.S. adults making them the country’s largest religious group and a key battleground faith.

Other media outlets are running stories about Warren becoming something of a religious “elder statesman” in the US. Supposedly Warren is opening the door for the candidates to introduce themselves to evangelical Christians, who largely distrust McCain as being not-religious-enough, and consider Obama too liberal for their taste.

This marks a new strategy by the Religious Right™. Previously their tactic had been to select one political party — in 1980 they chose the Republicans — to promote and push into power, then use that party to impose their religiosity on the country and build a theocracy. With the collapse of the GOP, Warren has modified this tactic, to embrace both parties’ candidates. No matter who wins in November, Warren will be able to take credit for that victory in the name of America’s evangelicals, and force the winner to adopt the evangelicals’ agenda.

I must say it’s clever, and Warren is not without critics among the Religious Right™, but I know the rise of dominionism when I see it … and now you do, too.