Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald writes:

The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam

The McCain/Hagee story is growing, though still not as much as it ought to. My new friends from the Catholic League emailed earlier to advise that Bill Donohue was being interviewed for tonight's program of The Situation Room on CNN. Blogs at The Washington Post and ABC News today covered the growing scandal from the anti-Catholic bigotry perspective, with the latter actually featuring the unbelievably inflammatory You Clip -- found by Ann Althouse, which I posted yesterday and which is now being distributed by the Catholic League -- of a shirt-sleeved Pastor Hagee spewing the creepiest, most hateful bile imaginable about Catholicism ("This is the Great Whore of Revelation 17").

As The Post noted, Catholics United, a less reactionary group than the Catholic League, has now also denounced McCain's warm embrace of Hagee and demanded that he repudiate his endorsement. Thus far, it is Hagee's anti-Catholicism which is being featured -- largely because when Bill Donohue issues press releases, the media jumps to cover it. While that angle has substantial political ramifications -- Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote in 2004 as the most vital to the GOP's electoral successes -- the reality is that Hagee's hateful and twisted extremism extends far beyond that realm. In sum, John McCain has aligned himself with one of America's purest -- and most powerful -- haters, and that ought to be the story here.

Days since Mission Accomplished: 1766

According to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, the ultimate cost (to the United States alone) of the Iraq war and occupation: $3 trillion.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.