There are few things in life as enjoyable as an enormous belly laugh. Not just the little snickery kind, but the sort that you can’t stop, with tears running down your cheeks, and the occasional snort as you try to suck in and out the air past the loud laughter. If I had a dollar for every time Molly Ivins work forced a loud, public guffaw out of me, I’d never have to worry about my 401(k).

I’ve been re-reading Bill of Wrongs, her last book with Lou Dubose, in preparation for Saturday’s book salon at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT, and this popped right out at me:

The idea that man is the product of evolution rather than God’s hands never seemed quite right to Rick Santorum. After the Supreme Court banned the teaching of the queerly oxymoronic "creation science" in the nation’s public schools, Santorum started promoting "intelligent design" — which looked suspiciously like creation science in drag. This sanitized version of creationism holds that "forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact, fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings…"…

Santorum wasn’t the only marquee Republican preaching the gospel of intelligent design. President George W. Bush is a Methodist — a denomination associated with moderation, particularly in Texas, where the loopier religious right is defined by firebreathers like San Antonio’s Reverend John Hagee, who has proclaimed from his pulpit that Hurricane Katrina was proof that God was angry with homosexuals in New Orleans.

Now, as we know, Sen. McCain was busy receiving a birthday cake from George Bush in the early days of the disastrous unfolding of Katrina’s wake in the Gulf Coast region, but I’d love to hear him answer — on the record — exactly what he thinks of his new bestest buddy John Hagee’s anti-homosexual pronouncement about the reason for the storm.

And while we’re asking questions, perhaps Sen. McCain can explain why he believes in evolution. Oh wait, now he says he doesn’t completely and intelligent design ought to be taught in American classrooms if states think it is science. Now he says he doesn’t think so at all, that he does believe in evolution (depending on what the meaning of "evolution" is). Now he says he maybe kinda sorta doesn’t again. And how that squares with Rev. Hagee’s "intelligent design" designs.

Or about Rev. Hagee’s pronouncement that it isn’t a matter of "if" we go to war with Iran, but "when."

Or Hagee’s push for Armageddon which makes John Bolton look milquetoasty. Or Hagee’s thought that the United Nations is just a front for the anti-Christ and that we are all doomed by freaky computer chips by which we will be marked (via Glenn Beck’s Headline News show…no, I’m not kidding):

BECK: Do you believe that — do you believe that we, you and I, will see these times?

HAGEE: We will not see the antichrist. In Christian theology the next thing that is to happen, because the signs of the time say that we are the terminal generation, is that Christ is seen to appear. There’s not another Bible scripture that has to be fulfilled for Jesus Christ to come in what is called the Rapture of the Church.

Many people confuse the Rapture of the Church with the Second Coming. The Rapture of the Church happens where all of the people who believe in Jesus Christ are taken into heaven.

Then the next thing that happens immediately is the appearance of the antichrist. The appearance of the antichrist, he comes as a man of peace, as the prince of peace to the whole world.

Daniel says he will destroy wondrously with peace. That means he’s going to make peace treaties, never intending to keep them, but he has the world in a state of peace. He will create a one-world government. We see something of that going on in the United Nations. He will bring about a one-world currency.

BECK: He’ll do this all in seven years?

HAGEE: All in seven years. He’ll do it quicker than seven years. Every person will have to receive his mark in their right hand or forehead, without which they cannot buy nor sell. You cannot buy a loaf of bread…

BECK: How freaked out were you when you saw the chips now that we can implant that are RFID chips that will do that very thing? And they’re even making them, I understand, to fuse with the body because they’re afraid of theft.

HAGEE: Yes.

BECK: So once they’re implanted in you, you cannot cut them out.

HAGEE: That’s exactly right.

BECK: When I heard that, I went, oh, that’s not good.

HAGEE: All of the technology is just in place. There will be you a one-world government, a one-world currency, a one-world religion. This lines up with what your researchers are talking about.

The Bible then says he will understand dark sentences, which means he will have a demonic anointing to know the unknown.

So, um, is there something about John McCain’s foreign policy that we need to know about now in light of Hagee’s endorsement of him? Because that reads like a laughable Omen movie reject plot. When I was a kid, we had a Sunday School teacher who got kicked out of teaching our youth class because he was obsessed with trying to get us to take every bit of Revelations literally and our pastor told him to can it with the "scare the kids" crap. (Not quite those words…)

Guess Pastor Hagee doesn’t feel that way. Wonder how McCain feels? Shouldn’t someone ask him on the record if he’s so excited to get Hagee’s endorsement and all? Because if his foreign and domestic policy is aligned with Pastor Hagee’s view of the world, I think we all have a right to know. In detail.


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