Democrats welcomed back a powerful (and sometimes capricious) eminence last night who once had led them to the promised land and looked with favor upon his people.
Yes, Bill Clinton returned from the wilderness. God came back, too.
Under fire from conservatives for omitting God from the party's national platform, Democratic delegates kinda sorta (but not really) voted him back in. They also kinda sorta (but not really) voted to declare Jerusalem Israel's capital.
As you can see from this video, the amendments didn't seem to garner the required 2/3 vote, which proves, once and for all, that God is more powerful than Robert's Rules.
The AP says that sources say that President Obama personally intervened to make the changes. And here a DNC official told us yesterday that all this was a “faux controversy.” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz described the amendments as a “technical change.”
The Jerusalem line, which Arab-Americans don't like, had been part of almost every Democratic party platform since 1972.
GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan had criticized the Dems' godless platform. But the Catholic congressman himself got schooled by a nun about Catholic social teaching last night. Ryan also said that he supports prayer in public schools.
No to be outshone, Clinton strode center stage last night and preached a half-wonky, half-love-thy-neighbor speech last night.
As Jacques Berlinerblau writes in WaPo:
In many ways night two of the Democratic National Convention was a coming out party for the New Democratic Theology, a liberal theology, a theology of togetherness (and a theology whose internal tensions were evident in a disastrous day two).
More than 100 Muslim delegates are at the DNC meeting in Charlotte, according to a Muslim advocacy group, four times as many as in 2004.
The U.S. Catholic bishops' point man on sexual abuse said the church's credibility on fixing the problem is “shredded.”
The Rev. Benedict Groeschel has lost his EWTN show after calling some victims of clergy sexual abuse “seducers” and saying first-time abusers should not be jailed.
New Jersey's attorney general told Muslim leaders that the NYPD is no longer surveilling Muslims in New Jersey.
Berlin's justice minister said that parents will not be prosecuted for circumcising their children as long as they sign a document acknowledging the risks and asserting that they have a religious motivation.
Microbrews are getting big in the Holy Land.
Yr hmbl aggrgtr,
Daniel Burke
