Hagel was the only Republican who could have given Barack or Hillary a run for their money.
Instead we got Ulysses S. Grant and the Church Lady.

Heheheh, pbg – make that HERBERT HOOVER and the Church Lady and you got yerself a *ticket*!! ;o)

~A

By the way Chuck – you would have made a great VP choice – for Obama !

Sen. Hagel prove [sic] that Republicans are not as stupid as we’d all like to believe they are.

Hmmmmm…. funny, isn’t it, how the SMART Republicans are on *our* side…?

While I disagree with Hagel on a number of issues (primarily stem cell research, a woman’s right to choose & GBLT rights), the US Senate and thus our country will be poorer upon his retirement. Why? Although I wholeheartedly disagree with him on his aforementioned stands, Chuck Hagel is a thoughtful, honest and principled politician not bound by partisan politics.

And in the GOP those are in exceedingly short supply.

-AF
Andrew Sullivan Is A Fraud

http://www.light-to-dark.com/palin_and_mccain_wage_jihad.html

Atheism kind of implies confidence in the absence of a God.

Agnosticism implies an assurance that one cannot know either way.

The words you quote don’t sound very confident to me. They sound rather despairing. I can’t speak about Mother Teresa’s spiritual journey, but if her words are any indication, they don’t differ much in kind from those of other spiritual figures and saints throughout history. That’s one difference between truly spiritual people and the pharisees we have running the religious right today — those who have supreme confidence in their faith and the God are generally not in touch with them.

¶ AIO

A n a l y z i n g
her deeds and achievements, John Paul II asked: “Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart.”[70] Indeed, in private Mother Teresa endured the classic dryness and desolation of mystics, a purgation and test of faith known as the dark night of the soul,[71][clarify] which for Teresa lasted nearly fifty years until the end of her life during which “she felt no presence of God whatsoever”[72]—”neither in her heart or in the eucharist” as put by her postulator Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk.[72] Mother Teresa expressed grave doubts about God’s existence and pain over her lack of faith:

“ Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul … How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, … What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.[73]

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Mother_Teresa#Declining_health_and_death

Besides, this female “tool” of the rightwing who flashes her legs around during all of the interviews as though they mean something, denegrates qualified women everywhere. This is like some sick takeoff on “9 to 5? or something….teased up bouffant, Tammy Faye makeup three layers thick, CFMN pumps, and the crossed legs. Why doesn’t Sycophant Sarah wear a pantsuit?? We know that answer. But now all of this “staging” is totally working in reverse with american women as well as the men who see her for what she is….An Airhead with Legs!
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What makes this whole scenario truly hilarious for me is that it’s the woman from Alaska who’s wearing the skirt.

I used to be a sales representative for a major company — one that was very conservative, and required “professional business dress” for all of their sales and marketing personnel.

Our representative who had been assigned the Alaska territory dutifully started calling her on customers when she first arrived in Anchorage, wearing a professional virgin wool suit — with a skirt. She was received politely by her customers, but got a bunch of rather odd looks from people until finally one of her customers clued her in. “Uh…you’re obviously new here, and you probably don’t know that the only women who wear skirts in these parts are the hookers.” Needless to say, this rep started wearing sharp, business-like pantsuits.

This was a new one for me, a resident of the lower 48. And I doubt most of us have heard that wearing slacks is more customary for women up there. I’m wondering what Alaskans are thinking as they see their governor these days.

I read her final words, and some letters from the days before she died. They sounded like a very solid rejection of her faith to me.

As for Darwin, he was a trained minister, or at least, had trained for the ministry before science took his fancy. I don’t think he would have recognized the divide between his work and the church that today’s Christianists proclaim exists.

He became an Agnostic, and I’m pretty sure that the current Catholic view on Evolution is different from Darwin’s by only a certainty in a Creator (Darwin was uncertain).