I increased donations to charity in 2012. This deal limits my deductions so I, & many others, will likely donate less in 2013.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 1, 2013

[Brooklyn Mutt via parislemon]

“You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: Not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things.” —Todd Akin, speaking on the House floor in 2008. His campaign stands by the claim, which is based on a 1978 newspaper story. [BuzzFeed]

“I’m going to be frank. Orrin Hatch is not a bad guy. But he is an old guy… [He may] die before his term is through.” —Utah Democratic Senate candidate Scott Howell, in a fundraising letter. [ABC4 Salt Lake City, via Political Wire]

Our guest columnist was happily laboring in obscurity before Sunday.

We believe that life is something that comes from our creator. We’re made in his image. And all across America you see Americans that have a respect for life — it’s not a political debate, it’s not words, it’s how they live their lives. I remember in Sept. 11, rescue workers running into the building that’s about to collapse. They grabbed somebody that’s in a wheelchair, pick him up, they don’t check their ID to see whether they’re important or not. They just take them to safety and run back for more. They by their lives speak as Americans about what we think about the value of human beings and how much repeat we hold people with… That’s the very special thing about our country.

Todd Akin: ‘I’ve Not Yet Begun To Fight’ [TPM]

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times shares with us yet another anti-gay video from a church service. This time it features a young boy in Indiana who can’t be more than three singing “Ain’t No Homo Gonna Make it to Heaven” to a wildly cheering crowd of adults and children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agsAZcA3fU

As Bruni notes, it is important to see these videos because especially those of us who live in certain parts of the country can get lulled into complacency that this vile hatred and prejudice is not still out there.

Tellingly, when I searched for “suffer the little children” on Google to confirm that was the wording of the passage in the Bible, what came up after the KJV was a link to a 1968 documentary about institutionalized child abuse at the Pennhurst State Hospital in Pennsylvania.

[Bruni: Hatred You Can Hum To]

“[Public] game management is the last bastion of communism.” —James Kroll of Nacogdoches, Texas, now Wisconsin’s white-tailed deer trustee, or “Deer Czar”. [Lodi Valley News, via @dave_jamieson]