Campaign logic

Argumentum ad ignorentiam: "appeal to ignorance" (where "ignorance" stands for: "lack of evidence to the contrary") Argument from ignorance may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.

Argumentum ad Obaminem: special case of above or appeal to ignorance (where "ignorance" stands for: " all evidence to the contrary") May be used as a rationalization for libel or slander or accusation without evidence or most commonly: strongly contrary to all evidence or logic. An argument from authority in the absence of authority. Used frequently by Republican propagandists.

Argumentum ad Republican: A special pleading. It's only radical when Liberals like it or conversely: that argument doesn't apply to Republicans.

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Forget the Superbowl commercials or the half-time show. Forget football. The most entertaining event of Superbowl Sunday was Newt Gingrich trying to convince his audience that Barack Obama is at war with the Catholic Church. Parroting the sentiment that a secular government refusing to bow to ecclesiastical pressure as the secular constitution demands, is a declaration of war, Newt, Gingrich, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sunday, said the decision represented

“a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”

Well I hate to bring it up, lest anyone esteem me to be needlessly argumentative, but all religious people and their organizations have always been subject to the secular law of the land and by constitutional law, none of us can be held to any religious restrictions, taboos or responsibilities by the government. You see, that's why we don't have laws about blasphemy and punishment for heretics. That's why we're not held to the Biblical command against eating Cheeseburgers or chitterlings or watching football on Sunday - or divorce which of course Newt knows as well -- just as we know by all evidence that Newt is the consummate opportunist and a veritable prince of duplicity.

Yes, of course people are very protective of their beliefs and rituals and practices and in our country as well as in most of the civilized world, they are allowed to be and protected in that right but that's only because there are no official religious laws and no special protection for church policies that do not comply with our secular laws and our rights and our protection from faith-based tyranny. Newt is following in the muddy footprints of those who continually argue against the religious neutrality and secular nature of our Republic in spite of all evidence and despite the law itself.

Please forgive me for stating the obvious and writing as if for a child, but we're talking about Newt Gingrich here and I may be talking to some who do indeed think the government should indeed take such a dim view of our personal liberty as to allow clergymen to deny us birth control or having music on Sunday or divorce or living where and with whom we please. In many places they did after all get away with that for years.

We're talking about Newt Gingrich here who, after playing with several religions in his effort to bed many women including his own high school teacher, presumes not only to speak for but to dictate Church dogma to Roman Catholics who in very large part do not agree with it.

"Every time you turn around secular government is closing in on and shrinking the rights of religious America,”

Said Newt -- who has turned around about 200 years too late. The right of "Religious America" to be the law of the land by diktat was eliminated by the first Amendment, if the rage against such tyranny by the Founding Fathers wasn't already enough to put a stop to it.

In fact, 98% -- nearly all American Catholic women who have sex have used "forbidden" birth control methods and a solid majority think the Church policy is wrong. I don't think they're going to back this flim-flam Lothario who while indulging in it himself, tried to impeach a president for extra-marital fellatio in any bid to have Washington embargo the local drug store in the name of religious "freedom." Not any more than they would have the government outlaw the kind of bed hopping, marital leapfrogging Gingrich is noted for even if they frown on it. Don't we wonder why Newt thinks Catholics are so damn stupid that they won't notice he's arguing both sides of the question?

Organized religion is about many things, but personal choice and freedom of thought has never been thought of highly, to say the least, by any of them. To have to explain to someone with a Doctorate and a writer of history books, something a slow schoolboy should know, that professed belief or membership in some religious group does not convey legal authority in the US is laughable, but of course Newt knows it. He knows a principle and constitutional law that's been around since our beginning isn't radical and it isn't about Obama. He knows he's a lair even if he doesn't know he's a disgrace. I think the voters know too.