Title: “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics”

Author: Ross Douthat

Rank: 51

Blurb: “Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation’s political and economic crises. He argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.”

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In addition to his more confrontational tone with Obama this week, Romney has also sought to be a bit more personable.

Earlier this week he sat down with four married couples for a staged outdoor picnic in Bethel Park, Pa., and suggested that Obama should do the same.

“This is a president who doesn’t understand what the American people are experiencing,” Romney said. “He needs to sit down with folks and understand how difficult these years have been and take responsibility.”

Am I reading too much into the above excerpt, or is it evidence that, at least on reporter at the Washington Post, thinks that Mitt Romney is as much of a douchebag as the rest of us do?

Then again, I guess sitting down to a staged picnic with four carefully screened couples is no less valid a way of learning about the economic travails of the unwashed than turning to his wife for insight on the day to day struggles and hardships of ordinary women whose husbands aren’t worth $250 million.

For the funniest local news story about the annual 4/20 smoke-out in Golden Gate Park, I present to you San Francisco’s Stanley Roberts.  Not many other reporters would say things like “Never have I seen so many ways to ingest weed” or “For some reason I’m starving,” let alone feature a gas mask bong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgImSIxPmNw

It’s official! Andrew Breitbart died of a terminal case of raging asshole:

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger whose posting of a sexually explicit photo of former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner led to the congressman’s downfall, died of heart failure, the Los Angeles County Coroner said in an autopsy report released Friday.

The news broke late Friday afternoon, so we may have to wait another day for the conspiracy theories to kick in. Meanwhile, we’d like to note a few remarkable things from CNN’s lead paragraph.

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“RNC members and state GOP chairmen were welcomed into the private reception [with Romney] only after signing a form pledging to support Romney as a delegate to the national convention in Tampa.” [CNN]

In this corner, Montana Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer:

[It’s] kinda ironic given that [Romney’s] family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy… [Women are] not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.

And in this corner, the Washington Post:

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[Mediaite]