Today...

Jeff Jacoby (rightly) took to task a disparate collection of commentator for their unseemly anti-Mormon utterances vis-a-vis Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy.
The Globe's own Laughing Young Senescence trots out some god-awful woswer from wa-ay down south and the usual postings at Moveon.org.
However, Jeff errs mightily when he compares Mitt's religious woes to those of presidential candidate John Kennedy circa 1960.
Then, Kennedy argued that his religion ought to pose no threat to the polity and then went on to reaffirm his belief in a rigorous separation of church and state.
Today, the "separation of church and state" is regarded as a dangerous remnant of Stalinist thinking on the part of most of the GOP's base and leadership.
For candidate Romney to come out in favor of such a notion would instantly brand him an apostate and some sort of dangerous tree-hugging agnostic weirdo.
Moreoever it is an article of faith in today's GOP that a bumptious blatting wowserism is a sort of super-qualification for the US Presidency.
Far from affirming a high way between church and state, most of the current republican presidential roster are openly promising only to take orders only from the Little Baby Jesus hisself once elected.
Therefore like all Mike Huckabee and all the other political parsons in the race, Mitt is making a great too-do about his close personal relationship with the big bearded spook in the sky.
Well if Romney (among others) is gonna make a gross public spectacle of his own pietism then it ought then it ought to be legitimate to ask politely and insistently as to where this christian politics is taking us?
Frankly if Mitt Romney wants to believe all that nonsense in the Book of Mormon, that is his business. If however he wants to publicly assert that his Bishopric in the LDC somehow gives him a profound insight into the spiritual needs of the nation, then I'm sorry that makes his Mormonism a legitimate line of inquiry.
At the very least, perhaps Bishop Romney would like to enlighten his future serfs as to whether or not the bible supercedes the constitution (as many of his fellow republicans profess to believe) and what steps he will take to impose Mosiac law on the USA.
I mean, why is his triffling with the US constitution at all, with the little baby Jesus telling him and everyone else presumably how to run things?
A crude formulation to be sure, but it's as good a start as any to the debate.