The Bible has a liberal bias

At least according to conservatives.

The Gospel of Luke records that, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus showed his boundless mercy by praying for his killers this way: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Not so fast, say contributors to the Conservative Bible Project.

The project, an online effort to create a Bible suitable for contemporary conservative sensibilities, claims Jesus' quote is a disputed addition abetted by liberal biblical scholars, even if it appears in some form in almost every translation of the Bible.

The project's authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.

"Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it's professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible," said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project's online home.

Yes, he's related. Continuing from the AP link ...

This liberal slanting, Schlafly argues, ranges from changing gendered language - Jesus calling his disciples to be "fishers of people" rather than "fishers of men" - to more subtle choices, like the 2001 English Standard Version of the Bible, which uses "comrade" and "laborer" more often than the conservative-friendly "volunteer."

And this from the Right Wing Watch link (the original source's link, the Nashville Tennessean, appears to have expired):

The most radical change in the Conservative Bible might be dumping two passages of familiar Scripture.

One is the long ending of Mark's Gospel, which includes verses about snake handling and the story of the woman caught in adultery. Neither is found in most of the oldest Greek manuscripts used to translate the Bible. Schlafly says that adultery story, in which Jesus says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" should be cut because it portrays Jesus as being soft on sin.

"It's a liberal addition, put in by people who wanted to undermine the reality of hell and judgment," he said.

Now I frankly had more than enough quarrels with Christianists without learning of this devolution.

The "best" part is the substitution of 'Pharisees' with 'intellectuals', and also 'liberals'.

Conservatives have their own news network to tell them how to think; they are vigorously denying and reinventing their own science as it relates to climate change and evolution; why, it's simply a "logical" extension to find them rewriting the Bible in their own (craven, misguided mental) image.

The Locke campaign's self-immolation

We're nearing the merciful end of a bad campaign run by a really bad candidate and some truly awful staff.

Parker campaign manager Adam Harris called the claims from Tejano Chair Sandra Puente and black Dems' leader Gabrielle Hadnot "twisted and misleading." Using the same spreadsheet from which Locke's team compiled its findings, Harris calculated that more than 71% of the Controller's Department staff is composed of minorities.

As Martha notes, one day the candidate says this:

“I am not going to go into issues of race, issues of sexuality ...”

And the next day his campaign says this:

“It is unacceptable that in this day and age, a citywide elected official would employ such discriminatory hiring practices,” said Sandra Puente, HCTD Chair. “Annise Parker is not someone we can trust to lead our city. The leadership of her office does not reflect the great diversity of our city.”

Imploding in a foul-smelling morass of lies, bigotry, and disgraceful conduct is no way to run for political office, people. You highly paid out-of-towners can now be dismissed to pack up and move on, and you locals need to line up to be deloused.

Update:

A day after black and Hispanic groups criticized Annise Parker's record of hiring minorities in the city controller's office, the diversity record of her runoff opponent's law firm has been called into question.

A January 2007 report compiled by four minority attorney organizations shows that Andrews Kurth, the law firm in which Gene Locke is a partner, scored a "D" under a formula the groups developed to assess minority representation in 21 of Houston's largest law firms.

The report, which was emailed anonymously to me, showed that Locke, an African-American, was one of 116 minority partners -- 5.2 percent -- at Andrews Kurth in 2006, when the figures were gathered. The scoring formula gave greater weight to partners than to lower-ranking attorneys. Winstead Sechrest & Minick had the highest proportion of minority partners at 17.4 percent.

The overall score for Andrews Kurth was 64 on a scale of 100, the sixth-lowest among the firms included. Weil, Gotshal & Manges was the winner with a score of 100.

Kimberly Devlin, a senior strategist for Locke, said his campaign didn't issue the statement criticizing Parker and would have no comment on the law firm diversity report.

Poor Sandra. Muse has the coup de grace.

One-stroke penalty for grounding your club in a hazard

It may be OK this time to hate the playah and not the game ...

Tiger Woods said he let his family down with transgressions he regrets “with all of my heart,” and that he will deal with his personal life behind closed doors.

His statement Wednesday follows a cover story in Us Weekly magazine that reports a Los Angeles cocktail waitress claims she had a 31-month affair with the world’s No. 1 golfer.

“I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves,” Woods said on his Web site. “I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.”

The cocktail waitress, Jaimee Grubbs, told the magazine she met Woods at a Las Vegas nightclub the week after the 2007 Masters — two months before Woods’ wife, Elin, gave birth to their first child. Grubbs claims to have proof in 300 text messages. About three hours before Woods’ statement, the magazine published what it said was a voicemail — provided by Grubbs — that Woods left her phone on Nov. 24, three days before his middle-of-the-night car crash outside his home in Florida.

Shorter Grubbs (for once, the paramour has an appropriate name): Gee, I'm sorry I sent the voice mail and the 300 text messages to the media and I'm sure this has severely damaged your squeaky clean reputation and could cost you your marriage and hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements alone, but I sincerely hope we can remain good friends.

The voice mail?

“Hey, it’s, uh, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone. My wife went through my phone. And, uh, may be calling you. If you can, please take your name off that and, um, and what do you call it just have it as a number on the voicemail, just have it as your telephone number. That’s it, OK. You gotta do this for me. Huge. Quickly. All right. Bye.”

This story isn't quite as ridiculous as the Balloon Boy Caper or even the Salahis crashing the White House state dinner, but it does reveal a continuing American fascination with lurid distractions. I used to blame the media exclusively for it, but the truth is that in a miserable advertising environment they're just chasing ratings (or clicks, as the case may be)...

We in the respectable media are not interested in Tiger Woods' car crash for prurient reasons. Oh, no. We don't care about what a celebrity, but a private citizen, may or may not have been doing with his extracurricular time. Nor do we care about the rush of viewers and readers—like you there, who came to this article by Googling "Tiger Woods car crash affair rumors"—and how good it will make us look to our advertisers if we indulge it.

No, we care only for high-minded reasons. It's about, um, the business impact of the story on the lucrative sports-endorsement business. It's about, um, the ever-changing culture of American celebrity. It's about, um, traffic safety! How many more innocent trees must suffer? Wait, no! It's about the media coverage itself! That's the ticket! So here is a blog post about the media coverage itself! ...

But whenever a story like this breaks, the first thing that gets exposed is the gap between media outlets, like TMZ, that unashamedly love this kind of story and cover it well, and more-traditional media outlets, who are either uncomfortable with or unsuited to the story, yet finally can't ignore it.

These outlets aren't blind, either to the news or to the interest in it. They are as capable as you of seeing, for instance, that the most searched term at the New York Times website is, as of this morning, Tiger Woods.

And yet the "serious" news outlets can't just wholeheartedly revel in the human filth of the story. Not just for high-minded reasons, either: there are cold business reasons. As with so many things today, traditional media are caught between a newfangled audience, with new expectations, and an old-fashioned audience that expects old-fashioned standards of propriety.

All too true. The reason we -- you and me; American citizens -- cannot focus on the critical topics like healthcare or Afghanistan is because we are all too willingly distracted by the titillating gossip and celebrity scandal, not to mention the wannabe reality-show contestants trying to clock in on their 15 minutes or the cocktail waitresses digging for gold.

So we can wring our hands and cluck our tongues and bemoan the loss of role models or the weakness of the male of the species and how they (we) think with our little heads too often, but we probably can't whine any longer about stories like this not being 'news'.