Apropos a conversation I'm having elsewhere:
I have no problem mocking religion, mine or anyone else's.  I think there's a LOT of humor-material in any religious creed and PERSONALLY, if someone is wound so tight that they can't laugh at themselves or their sacred cows (see what I did there?) that almost makes them MORE worthy as a target.

HOWEVER, if you're going to make fun of someone for something, and you deliberately choose to make fun of the person that you KNOW isn't going to react, that just makes you a wuss.

If you want to tell a 'challenging' religious joke in mixed company, fine.  But then 'pick on somoene your own size'; tell one that challenges the frothing fundamentalist standing right there who might take a swing at you, not the octogenarian lutheran lady that's just going to be uncomfortable but too polite to even say anything.

So yeah, make jokes about Christianity.  God gave us a sense of humor, after all.  Just don't be an intellectual coward about it.  (And REALLY don't then be a hypocrite and claim "that" certain indigenous faiths are 'protected' from mockery simply because they're brown people, that's just naked PC bs.)

I think Congress as an entire group should be impeached and removed from office.  Both parties, all members.  The GOP controls the House, they would lose that.  The Dems control the Senate, they lose that too.  This is not a partisan issue - it is a (lack of) competence issue.

The entire 'budget' dance since summer 2011 - the deal, the commission, sequestration - is all patently unconstitutional.

CONGRESS (you know, the people who control the purse strings) made a deal to
- set a small commission who would agree what would be cut.  OK, it's a farcically stupid idea with today's politicians but lets assume that it worked - Congress is VOLUNTARILY giving up its control as a body to a smaller body, selected not elected.
- if this commission couldn't decide, automatic broad cuts would take place.  Again, they are not fulfilling their jobs, they are simply mandating a mechanism that obviates their role entirely.

Sequestration is not "them doing their jobs, just badly" - it's not even that.  It is like your gardener (who has allowed your garden to become grossly overgrown with weeds) saying, "I really don't want to go through the hard, tedious, and painful work of sorting out the good plants from the bad, so I'm just going to cut EVERYTHING 6"."
From a gardener, it would be absolute incompetence.
From Congress, this should be criminal.


I grant that calling it unconstitutional may be overstepping.

The Constitution states that "...The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;..."  Conceded, it does not assert a method.

But if Congress took to paying our budget by pulling bingo balls and randomly allocating funds, I suspect we seek some recourse to impeach them for failing to conscientiously exercise the duty assigned to them.  What they are doing now is no better (and frankly, no more effective).

We need to punish incompetence in our politicians, not re-elect 90%.