"If you think the US has been out of line on human rights issues up to now, you just wait and see how appallingly bad they will get if the religious right in the US has complete control of the judiciary. And make no mistake... that is exactly what they intend to have happen."

Having kept my gimlet eyes on the activities and intentions of the religious right for some time now (decades, in fact), I have to share Carol's apprehension.

These people are the ones who want a huge, index of books pulled from library shelves (Catcher in the Rye [four-letter word implied, even if not spelled out], the whole Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series [Tarzan and Jane, living together in their tree-house, were not married], the Lord of the Rings series [wizards], the Harry Potter series [wizards and witches as heroes], and huge mounds of non-fiction). They also get very upset by movies like "Bambi" (talking animals), children's television shows like the Teletubbies (Tinky Winky speaks with a boy's voice, but he wears purple, which they seem to think is a "gay" color, and they think the magic bag he sometimes carries looks like a purse) and SpongeBob SquarePants, whom they also claim to have reason to think is "gay." They are constantly trying to get courses pulled from schools and universities (many science courses, particularly anything that has to do with evolution, anthropology, and cosmology), and a whole range of literature and philosophy courses, and they work like beavers to get their own people on school boards so they can dictate curricula.

And, among other things, they want to supervise what goes on in bedrooms all over the country—all over the world, if they can manage it—and control your coming into the world and your going out of it. And as long as you behave they way they want you to, you can bloody-well starve to death in between those two events.

The reason that they have not been totally successful in achieving the things they want is that they have been blocked by the judiciary (even most truly conservative judges) and its general tendency to follow the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But now, they're trying to work it from the top. They have secret agents in the U. S. government. But not really all that secret, if you're paying attention:   little sweeties like Tom DeLay in congress, and—I could lay out a whole list, but this post would run to several screens if I did, and you can do that just as well as I can, so let's just leap to the top, okay—George W. Bush in the White House.

Make no mistake, the spirit of the Taliban, the spirit of Cotton Mather, and the spirit of the Inquisition, is still very much alive in the world.

I know, Doug. "The sky is falling!!"

Don Firth