Kyle Mantyla's blog

Shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, James Dobson weighed in to declare that the shooting was evidence that God has "allowed judgment to fall upon us" because the nation has turned its back on him by accepting things like abortion and gay marriage.

Those remarks, not surprisingly, generated some controversy and so, last Friday, Ryan Dobson sought to set the record straight on "Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk" radio broadcast where he asserted that his father's remarks were taken out of context and that he is the victim of an agenda-driven effort to smear him:

Some of our listeners may have seen some of the buzz on-line, especially on our Facebook page, surrounding comments made by my dad right here on the Family Talk broadcast following the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy that took place on Friday, December 14th.  But believe it or not, people with their own personal agenda have splattered all over the internet and the blogosphere that my dad, Dr. James Dobson, said that God caused the murder of those children and those adults and let me tell you that is a lie, and I believe that is an intentional distortion of my dad's words and it's taken totally out of context.

There have been a lot of accusations aimed at my dad over the years; he is called hateful and a bigot, all kinds of vile things that I would never repeat on the air and I always ask people [to] just quote him. Show me where ... I mean, if he's that hateful, if he's that mean of a person, he's been on air for thirty-five years, he's written over eighty book, if that's who he is, you should have volumes of evidence to bring forth, but there's nothing there!

I just want to say to our friends and our listeners, if you see something distributed about my dad that is outlandish, please consider the source. A lot of these bloggers and online columnists have an agenda and they are just throwing bricks at a man who is making a stand for righteousness.

Of course, our entire original post was built on directly quoting James Dobson himself saying that Sandy Hook was God's judgment:

Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election;  I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition.  Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. 

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that's what's going on.

• Michael B. Keegan @ Huffington Post: Imagining Supreme Court Justice Robert Bork.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: NRA's LaPierre slips into performance art.
• Igor Volsky @ Think Progress: NRA Blames Everything Except Guns: Outdated Video Games, Hurricanes, And Corporate Media Led To Newtown.
• Adam Serwer @ Mother Jones: NRA Chief Calls for More Guns Everywhere.
• Andrew Sullivan: Enough!
• Towleroad: Chuck Hagel Apologizes for 'Insensitive' Anti-Gay Remarks , Says He is Committed to Open Service, LGBT Military Families.

• Despite the fact that it is 2012, WND has named Ron Paul it's "Man of the Decade." What decade?  2002-2012? Who hands out awards like that?
• Sadly the Birther chairman of the Arizona Republican Party says he won’t seek reelection.
• Obviously, it was Satan who carried out the attack on Sandy Hook.
• The Christian Film & Television Commission is demanding that the MPAA change the rating of Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" from R to NC-17.
• Finally, judging by the emails we've been receiving from Religious Right groups lately, they have bought into the Obama campaign's findings that emails with a "casual tone was usually most effective," because we're pretty sure that L. Brent Bozell does not normally sent out emails titled "Yo":

We have to admit that things are getting very confusing when right-wing gun advocates are now worrying that criticism of their agenda is putting them at risk of becoming victims of hate crimes:

Statements made by broadcasters including CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, as well as comments on social media have contributed to an environment of hate directed against law-abiding Americans who are being demonized for a crime they did not commit, said Joseph P. Tartaro, the president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.

Morgan called one national gun rights leader Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America: “an unbelievably stupid man,” he said.

Matthews suggested gun owners are, “..people on the far-right (who) never lose their passion…Normal people have other interests like their spouses, their lives, their children, and even their generalized politics isn’t driven by one issue,” he said

...

“This kind of rhetoric does not contribute to any rational discussion,” [Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF executive vice president] said.

“Vitriol like this only promotes hate, but apparently it’s okay to perpetuate bigotry so long as you are an anti-gunner, and a liberal. If anyone is harmed as a result of this hate campaign, we expect them to be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws,” he said.

“If this hate speech leads to hate crimes,” Gottlieb concluded, “people like Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews will be partly responsible.”

Of course, actual hate crimes legislation only applies to crimes commited on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability; gun ownership does not qualify.

Bradlee Dean, whose close ties to Rep. Michele Bachmann are well-known and well-established, published a column in WND (Rick Santorum's new home) suggesting that, just as the Nazis burned the Reichstag, the shootings at Sandy Hook and in Aurora, Colorado were orchestrated by the government:

The Sandy Hook shooting occurred just days after Sen. Rand Paul sent out an alert that the U.N. was set to pass the final version of the Small Arms Treaty, supported by Obama the day after election.

Part of the treaty bans the trade, sale and ownership of all semi-automatic weapons … like the one Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and 6 adults.

The “Batman shooting” in Aurora, Colo., also happened to coincide with the same time as negotiations of the U.N. Small Arms Treaty.

The timing is impeccable.

As we reflect upon massacres such as Sandy Hook, Aurora, the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, Tuscon, Ariz., and Columbine, we cannot help but see the similarities: conflicting news reports on what happened, who did the killing and the number of shooters. Eyewitnesses in all of these massacres said there were more shooters than the media maintain, indicating the shootings were coordinated and planned.

When the “fire” is started, these government gun banners are right there to strip away your rights in an attempt to gain control under the guise of “putting out the fire.”

Adolf Hitler was responsible for attacking his own Reichstag to start a world war. Hitler was also responsible for sending his brownshirts to incite the people so he could play the role of solving their problems. No one believed Hitler was guilty of these crimes until after the fact.

Then it was too late.

It turns out that not only was the government behind these two shootings, but also Columbine, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11, according to this new video produced and narrated by Dean:

• Tim Murphy @ Mother Jones: Preppers Are Getting Ready for the Barackalypse.
• Noah Rothman @ Mediaite: Fox & Friends Asks ‘Santa’ For His Thoughts On The ‘War On Christmas.’
• David Weigel @ Slate: The Ghosts of Benghazi.
• Nicole Flatow @Think Progress: Iowa’s GOP Election Official Has Found Only 6 Examples Of Voter Fraud Out Of 1.6 Million Votes Cast.
• Joe.My.God: Maggie Gallagher To Defend Jewish "Ex-Gay" Group Against SPLC Lawsuit.
• David Edwards @ Raw Story: Mosque arsonist tells court: ‘I only know what I hear on Fox News.’

• Ken Ham is not happy that even other conservative Christians don't seem to buy his "scientific" proof that the earth is only six thousand years old.
• WND names Pat Buchanan its Man of the Year.
• Meanwhile, Human Events names Gov. Scott Walker its Conservative of the Year.
• Peter LaBarbera says that for all of his organization's constant railing against homosexuality,  "we fail to convey how dysfunctional, superficial, and destructive it actually is."
• Finally, Religious Right political activist David Lane announces plans to launch an effort telling members of Congress to "vote to restore the Bible and prayer in public schools or be sent home. Hanging political scalps on the wall is the only love language politicians can hear."

Franklin Graham called in to American Family Radio today to talk with the AFA's leading conspiracy theorist Buster Wilson about a variety of issues, including last week's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which Graham blamed on television and music and video games before inevitably blaming the supposed removal of God from our schools and public places, saying "these politicians in Washington; we've taken God our of our school, we've taken him out of our government and now we seem shocked at all of these things.  Why are we shocked? We shouldn't be shocked.  This is what happens when a society turns its back on God":

On the most recent episode of the Generals International "God Knows" television program, "respected prophet" Cindy Jacobs and her husband Mike were discussing the existence of an "invisible realm [that] is populated with powerful angelic hosts that want to take care of you."

Case in point was the time when Jacobs traveled to Venezuela and arrived just as the airport was closing, only to find that there was nobody there to pick her up.  Not speaking the language or having any local currency, Jacobs was trapped ... until a literal angel appeared with a calling card to help her make hotel and travel arrangements:

What Newt Gingrich you get - the seemingly reasonable conservative commentator or the egotistical bomb-throwing partisan - seems to be determined by whether or not there is an election on the horizon. 

When he is not running for office and there are no elections at stake, Gingrich likes to present himself as a reasonable, rational conservative who is attuned to reality, leading to comments like this new one where he says the GOP has to adjust to changing opinions on marriage equality:

On gay marriage, meanwhile, Gingrich argued that Republicans could no longer close their eyes to the course of public opinion. While he continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, he suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a "marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state" -- the latter being acceptable.

"I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with," he said, noting that the debate's dynamics had changed after state referenda began resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage. "It is in every family. It is in every community. The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to ... accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states -- and it will be more after 2014 -- gay relationships will be legal, period."

Now compare that to the bomb-throwing Gingrich who ran for president last year and did all he could to gin up Religious Right support for his campaign by calling for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the grounds that it is a perfect example of "the rise of paganism" and a "fundamental violation of our civilization":

So you'll have to forgive us if we're a bit skeptical of this apparent change of heart, coming from a thrice-married serial adulterer who ran for president as a champion of traditional marriage and family values.