In June, the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College released a survey that reported 57 percent of Americans believe that religious leaders should not support political candidates during worship services. The findings of this poll had grave implications for anyone who decides to run for public office.

Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama should set an example by pledging never to attend a church service that is a front for a political rally. Too often, clergy have abused their office by making veiled endorsements—and in some cases explicit endorsements—of candidates for public office at a church service. Just as bad has been the practice of the candidates themselves making a pitch to the congregation from the pulpit.

In the Henry survey, not a single demographic category could marshal majority support for the proposition that “Clergy should be permitted to endorse political candidates during worship services.” The categories included the following: Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Latino Protestants, Black Protestants, Catholics, Latino Catholics, Other Christians, Other Faiths, Jews and Unaffiliated; subcategories were listed in some instances. Of all the groups, Catholics and Jews had the best record.

In this regard, the Catholic Church is a model for all other religions. While it is not uncommon for Protestant churches (especially African American ones) and Jewish synagogues to be used as a political forum, it is almost non-existent in the Catholic community. Moreover, unlike others, the Catholic clergy are barred from holding public office. In 1980, Pope John Paul II mandated that all priests withdraw from electoral politics; this stricture is recognized in Canon Law.

The American people have spoken and their voice was made clear. If McCain and Obama continue their practice of turning houses of worship into political playing fields, they should be roundly criticized for doing so.

On June 18, the funeral Mass for NBC correspondent Tim Russert was held at Trinity Church in Georgetown. Attending the funeral was Sally Quinn. She is a Washington Post journalist and founder and co-moderator of “On Faith”, a Washington Post andNewsweek blog.

Quinn, who was an atheist most of her life, posted on June 23 why she decided to go to Communion at the Mass: “Last Wednesday I was determined to take it [the Eucharist] for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I’m so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it.”

Quinn also admitted the following: “I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started ‘On Faith’ and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

Just reading what Sally Quinn said is enough to give any Christian, especially Catholics, more than a “slightly nauseating sensation.” In her privileged world, life is all about experiences and feelings.

Moreover, Quinn’s statement not only reeks of narcissism, it shows profound disrespect for Catholics and the beliefs they hold dear. If she really wanted to get close to Tim Russert, she could have found a way to do so without trampling on Catholic sensibilities. Like praying for him—that’s what Catholics do.

On June 19, the McClatchy Company, which owns 30 daily newspapers, completed a five-day series on the living conditions of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the reporting was based on an eight-month investigation. Needless to say, the series painted a negative picture.

Among the things that troubled McClatchy was “the Americans’ ignorance of Islamic customs and a pattern of interrupting prayers, shaving off prisoners’ beards and searching their copies of the Quran.” Now, this complaint would have struck us as legitimate if it had come from a source that was well known for its sensitivity to religious liberty issues. But this was not the case.

All of the following examples are from McClatchy outlets:

· A few months ago, a Miami Herald editorial opined against a proposal that would rid the Florida Constitution of its bigoted Blaine amendment provision barring public monies to religious schools.

· In 2003, in the Star Telegram (TX), one of its feature writers feared that if the Supreme Court allowed school vouchers to parochial schools, it would “demolish whatever is left of the wall separating church and state.”

· In April, an editorial in the Sun-Sentinel (FL) said that a proposed “I Believe” license plate “thoroughly demolishes the church-state wall.”

· Last year, an editorial in the Roanoke Times (VA) cited church and state concerns when it commented “Candidates prostrate themselves before the terrestrial thrones of Christian leaders seeking their blessings.” This same newspaper ran an editorial in 2006 on “Christmas Bullies” fighting the “War on Christmas.”

So when it comes to Christian concerns, McClatchy shudders over the collapsing church and state wall. But when it comes to suspected Muslim terrorists, it wants to make sure their prayers aren’t interrupted. Never mind that their prayer books—and the prayer rugs they kneel on for that matter—are paid for by the American taxpayers.

McClatchy’s blatant bias against Christianity was only par for the course. For years media outlets have taken a hands off approach when it comes to criticizing Muslims, but they hold no reservations when it comes to denouncing Christianity.

Scott Hahn & Benjamin Wiker: Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God, Emmaus Road Publishing

Is it time to crack down on religion?

After all, religion is responsible for all the trouble in the world, isn’t it? The September 11 attacks were in the name of religion. Galileo was silenced in the name of religion. Everywhere you look in the world, you see riots, and massacres, and wars—all in the name of religion. It’s not just one religion, either—it’s all religions.

Religion is at the root of every problem in the world. It’s time we got rid of religion.

Now, if all that seems like a shallow argument to you, it’s probably because you spent half a minute thinking about it. Many of the conflicts in the world today are religious, that’s true. But it wasn’t too long ago that the great danger facing the world was institutional atheism. Half the world was officially Communist and anti-religious. We can imagine that religion is the root of all evil only if we forget Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot.

Nevertheless, some of the brightest minds in the English-speaking world right now argue that religion is the problem. And we know they’re the brightest minds because they keep telling us they are.

Atheism is certainly nothing new. Long before the time of Christ, the ancient Athenians were charging inconvenient philosophers with “atheism.” So there was a word for people who didn’t believe in any gods—the same word we use today, in fact.

We hear charges of “atheism” at least as far back as the 6th century B.C. Plato talks about people who say that the universe arose “not through intelligence…nor through some god, nor through art, but…by nature and chance.” Plato’s own teacher Socrates was accused of atheism, although the Socrates who appears in Plato’s dialogues is far from an atheist.

Most of the ancient philosophers whose works have survived are not explicitly atheist, but some are close. Epicurus and Lucretius, for example, allowed for gods in their system, but not gods who cared at all about humanity. The universe was created by random collisions of atoms, not by an almighty Creator. Whatever gods there might be were indifferent to what we did.

These ancient atheists grew out of a pagan culture, so if they were rebels, they were naturally rebelling against the colorful stories of pagan mythology. The Middle Ages didn’t have time for atheist philosophy, so atheism died with the ancients.

Modern atheism arose about five hundred years ago in the midst of a Christian culture, and hence defined itself by an explicit rejection of Christianity. Some religious philosophers, like the Deists, rejected the Triune God of Christian doctrine, but accepted that there was a God. But there were others—pure atheists—who completely rejected belief in any deity at all. Both groups rejected and rebelled against Christianity.

The French Revolution showed what atheism is capable of when it combined theory with unchecked power. Bishops and priests were executed, religious rounded up, churches desecrated, all in the name of liberating the people from tyranny. Never mind that the people themselves were tenaciously religious. The people must be liberated in spite of themselves.

In the 1800s, Karl Marx and other thinkers systematized this anti-religious hostility. When the followers of Marx gained power in Russia, they were even more ruthless than the French revolutionaries in their suppression of religion. Similar horrors followed dogmatic Communism wherever it came to power.

But most of the English-speaking world was spared this excessive institutional atheism. The United States, in particular, has always zealously guarded the freedom of anyone to practice any religion that does not seriously interfere with public order.

That’s why we’re so surprised and baffled by what we call the New Atheism. For the first time in our relatively tranquil history, we’re facing a determined attempt not just to keep organized religion out of government (which most religious Americans agree is a good idea), but to suppress religion completely.

Led by the Four Horsemen, as they like to call themselves—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett—these New Atheists argue that religion, is simply delusion and at the root of all our problems. They have websites and well-orchestrated media events, and collectively they sell millions of books. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has been on the bestseller list since its release in 2006.

The New Atheists are positively evangelical. They want to make a convert out of you, although if you’re a “dyed-in-the-wool faith-head” they’ll settle for peppering you with insults and sarcasm instead.

But if atheists have always been with us, why are we worrying now? After all, the Church has engaged non-believers for over two thousand years.

What we call the “New Atheism” is a bit different than its predecessor. It’s more aggressive, and it has more power. The leaders of the sect are well placed in the academic world, and they have a strong determination to mold government policy.

And you wouldn’t like the government if the New Atheists molded its policy. Richard Dawkins has asserted that teaching your religion to your child is a form of child abuse and should be criminalized. Other New Atheists have argued that churches should have to post a sign reading “for entertainment purposes only,” since after all they’re no less a fraud than telephone psychics.

The New Atheists see religion as a disease to be exterminated. Their dream, in short, is not a government neutral to religion, but a government actively hostile to religion.

What is most worrying is that the New Atheists seem to gain the most followers precisely among the most ambitious and intelligent young people—the people who will be actively shaping government policy in the years to come. Attracted by the intellectual rebelliousness of the movement, young people fall for its insidious message: join us and you can be one of the smart people.

How do we counter the New Atheists where they’re doing the most damage?

First, we need to be polite. That’s all the more important when our opponents descend to the level of playground taunts. If a New Atheist joins our discussion, we need to be welcoming, not hostile. We need to act like Christians, which is all the harder when our opponents have no such limitations. But we must remember that, with truth there is strength. We Christians don’t need to resort to playground taunts, cheap shots, or to hostile defensiveness. We have the truth and we are called to share it.

Once we’ve determined to be polite, we need to answer reasoned arguments with reason. There’s a real need for good resources to counter the atheists’ favorite arguments. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker have blazed the trail in Answering the New Atheism, in which they counter Richard Dawkins’ surprisingly feeble arguments in The God Delusion.

This is a good way to start. Hahn and Wiker are never afraid to meet Dawkins head-on. They take his favorite arguments and show us where the holes are, meeting reason with reason. The New Atheists thrive on the impression that religion and reason are antithetical; we should never give them that ground. We need to demonstrate to the undecided that reason is on religion’s side.

We should also realize that, in many things, the aggressive atheists are on our side. We, the reasonable Christians who value freedom and stand up for the oppressed, should be their natural allies. They see the rabid fundamentalism that infects so much of the world with endless violence, and they deplore it. We deplore it, too. They see the poor oppressed by the rich, and they demand justice. We demand justice, too.

In many areas, our fight is not against the atheists, but against the mistaken perceptions of Christianity they promote. The evangelical atheists assume that religion must inevitably breed mindless fanaticism. Countering that image means not just answering the atheists’ arguments against God, but also correcting their false impressions of religion.

People who are most attracted to the New Atheism are likely to be people who think of themselves as good and reasonable. They genuinely care about people as human beings. When they see suffering, they want to help. If they think religion is the cause of the suffering, they turn against religion. And, after all, if they see Christians beating up Muslims, Muslims beating up Hindus, Hindus beating up Christians—well, what are they supposed to think? If they don’t know anything about our religion, then that’s what they think our religion is about.

But whose fault is it if they don’t know anything about our religion? True, they haven’t bothered to find out about it. But it’s just as true that we too often haven’t bothered to tell anyone about it.

Is the New Atheism a danger to the Church? Yes, it is. By substituting secularity with secularism—neutrality toward religion with hostility toward religion—New Atheists can make the world difficult for Christians to live in.

But the real danger is not from the fanatical atheists themselves, but from our own indifference. If we don’t make the effort to reach out to the people who are most ambitious, who are most intelligent, who care most about the shape of the world around them, then we deserve the punishment in Christ’s parable of the worthless servant (Matthew 25:14-30). What little we have should be taken away and given to someone who will make something of it.

We need to confront the New Atheism on its own turf, candidly admitting where we agree with the atheists, and explaining our differences patiently and reasonably. But beyond the argument of words, there is another, even better argument.

The Christian life has always been the most compelling argument for Christianity. Living like a Christian—loving our enemies and letting everyone see our joy in the truth—is the most convincing way of spreading the Gospel. When we face the New Atheists, we should look like Christians: not shouting, angry fanatics, but charitable, intelligent people who are willing to listen as well as to make pronouncements.

We have the power to guide what the people around us think about religion. What we say is important, but what we do is even more important. Even when right reason doesn’t prevail, living the Christian life will win the argument.

Mike Sullivan is president of Catholics United for the Faith and Emmaus Road Publishing.

In a letter to Bill Donohue dated May 12 (click here), Pastor John Hagee apologized for offending Catholics. “I want to express my deep regret,” he said, “for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.” Donohue was quick to accept the apology. On May 15, the two men met at Catholic League headquarters for the first time.

Hagee’s letter effectively ends the dispute the two men have had. The controversy started after Pastor Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for president. The Catholic League has long objected to some of Hagee’s comments about the Catholic Church, especially in relation to its dealings with Jews. That is why the league was critical of McCain’s embrace of Hagee. McCain subsequently distanced himself from Hagee’s objectionable remarks about Catholicism.

“After weeks of meeting with various Catholic leaders, and accessing scholarly literature on Catholic-Jewish relations,” Donohue told the media, “Pastor John Hagee has demonstrated an improved understanding of the Catholic Church and its history.” We were particularly pleased to see Hagee pledge “to provide a more complete and balanced portrayal going forward that will not reinforce mischaracterizations of the Catholic Church.”

Hagee made it clear that his invocation of terms like “apostate church” and the “great whore” were never meant by him to describe the Catholic Church. However, he acknowledges that anti-Catholics have long employed such language.

Donohue praised Hagee’s for his candor: “The tone of Hagee’s letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it. Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology. What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns. But he has done just that.”

It is a tribute to Catholics such as Deal Hudson of InsideCatholic.com that they succeeded in sitting down with Pastor Hagee over a period of weeks trying to bring about reconciliation. Hagee was able to access books he never read before, e.g., works by Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin that detail the heroic role of Pope Pius XII in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. These were the kinds of things that moved Hagee to write his letter to Donohue.

It is now hoped that traditional Catholics and evangelical Protestants will be able to work together more effectively on those moral issues where they find common ground: abortion, embryonic stem cell research and doctor-assisted suicide. It is a sure bet that this alliance will continue to gel.

When Sen. Barack Obama recently announced the formation of his Catholic National Advisory Council, he said he was “deeply honored to have the support and counsel of these committed Catholic leaders, scholars and advocates.” We quickly urged him “to dissolve it immediately.”

Of the 26 Catholic former or current public office holders listed as either National Co-Chairs (5), or as members of the National Leadership Committee (21), not one of them agrees with the Catholic Church on all three of the following public policy issues: abortion, embryonic stem cell research and school vouchers.

Indeed, on the issue of abortion, their record is disgraceful. Consider the scorecard as issued by the most radical pro-abortion organization in the nation—NARAL. Of the two National Co-Chairs who have a NARAL tally, one agrees with the extremist group 65 percent of the time and the other agrees 100 percent of the time. Similarly, of the 20 National Leadership Committee members with a NARAL score, 17 have earned a 100 percent rating. Of those who have less than a perfect score, not one is in favor of school vouchers.

“Practicing Catholics have every right to be insulted by Obama’s advisory group,” we said. We continued, “What is the purpose of having an advisory group about matters Catholic when most of its members reject the Catholic position?” Indeed, we said, “to choose Catholic dissidents to advise him about Catholic concerns is mind-boggling.”

William A. Donohue

Libel laws in this country divide the population in two: private persons and public persons. Following New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the former category is entitled to plenty of protection while the latter is not. In other words, if someone smears the average person, he or she can sue and has a good chance of winning. If someone smears me, I have to prove that the offender knew that what he was saying was false when he said it and that he had malicious intent. In other words, good luck.

Is this fair? Probably. After all, if free speech is to be prized, then those who hate me need to be protected in exercising their free speech rights. I am, after all, a public person. Imagine what it would be like if every time you wrote something about some public person whom you can’t stand you had to worry about being sued. You’d likely shut up. The loser, then, would be free speech.

Having granted all this, even though people have a legal right to bash me, no one has a moral right to misrepresent me. And this happens all the time, especially lately. Why especially lately? Because we are all over the place—TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet—we are riding high. And while our fans love it, our adversaries do not.

The Internet is a medium that can be used or abused. For researchers like me, I love it. But I also know that the quality, in terms of accuracy, ranges from A-Z. An undiscerning user can easily be misled, the results of which can be far reaching.

Recently, there has been a spew of articles, investigative reports, blog stories and immense chatter about the Catholic League. In one such instance, a pro-abortion group got a generous grant from an elite foundation to do a hit job on me. They looked for dirt but couldn’t find any. So what did I do? I wrote them a letter correcting their typos.

Those who write on obscure blog sites don’t bother me because only idiots would cite them as a credible source. But when the Washington Post allows bloggers to attack me with abandon, that’s another thing altogether. So it was with Anthony Stevens-Arroyo who wrote “Catholic League Shenanigans” on May 16.

Here is how he starts: “The Catholic League is not the ‘All Catholic’ League. It is not official Catholicism: still less does it speak for each and every one of the nation’s 60 million Catholics.”

That’s right, the Vatican is the “All Catholic” League and we never claimed to represent “each and every one of the nation’s 60 million [we’re actually closer to 70 million, but never mind] Catholics.” But I hasten to add that the Catholic League is listed in the Official Catholic Directory and is not, therefore, some wayward organization that goes about willy nilly slapping the name Catholic on its masthead.

The next part is priceless. “As someone who once endeavored to work with the League, I was disappointed to learn that it is run out of a single office by a single ego. So while I find newsworthy the recent exchanges between the League’s president, Bill Donahue [sic] and Evangelical pastor, John Hagee, they don’t amount to dogma.”

I asked our staff if anyone had ever heard of this guy, and no one had. So I take it that when he says he “endeavored” to work here, what he really means is that he didn’t get an interview. Perhaps that’s because he can’t spell my name. In any event, it is true that we don’t have multiple offices, but it is not fair to say that our office has just one ego—there are ten others. All of whom can spell my name.

Stevens-Arroyo questions why the Catholic League “waited until February of 2008 to become angered by Hagee’s career of bigotry over two decades?” He says it is because February was when Hagee endorsed McCain.

Now if he had bothered to read our website, he would have learned that I first wrote to Hagee in 1997. Therefore, the answer he supplies to his own question implodes. But this is small potatoes compared to this gem: “The Catholic League demanded the dissolving of Obama’s Catholic support committee, accusing all of the members of disloyalty to the faith and labeling the actions of the Democratic Senator as ‘Hitlerian.’”

In actual fact, I never made such an accusation. What I did was to report on the NARAL voting record of those members of Obama’s advisory group who were, or currently are, public office holders. And I never labeled “the actions” of Obama “Hitlerian.” What I said is that Obama made a “Hitlerian decision” when he voted to allow a baby who survives an abortion to die without attending medicinal care. I stand by that accusation.

Stevens-Arroyo makes a desperate, and failed, attempt to equate abortion with “major Catholic teachings like forgiveness of Third World debt” and other related issues. But there is no Catholic teaching on this subject, nor is there a listing for it (unlike abortion) in the Catholic Catechism.

So continue to use the Internet, but beware of the charlatans, demagogues and liars who populate it.

The following article was written by Deal Hudson, the publisher of the website, InsideCatholic. It first appeared on CatholicOnline on May 16 and is reprinted here with permission. Hudson, who attended the May 15 meeting with Bill Donohue and Pastor Hagee (along with Hagee’s wife and his associate, David Brog), recounts here what happened.

Today at 3:30 pm I had the pleasure of introducing Rev. John Hagee to Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, at Donohue’s office in Manhattan.

Pastor Hagee was in town for an evening speech at the United Nations on Israel and asked if I would introduce him to Donohue.

With Hagee was his wife Diana, who plays a significant role in the ministry of his church, and David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel.

As Rev. Hagee entered the office and started meeting people, I heard Donohue’s booming voice from around the corner, “I hear a Southern accent, it must be Pastor Hagee!”

Hagee, I could tell, wasn’t quite expecting that kind of smiling, gregarious welcome. I had told Hagee that he and Donohue would hit off, but I don’t think he really believed me. They did, in fact, hit if off and in a big way.

Donohue took the Hagees, Brog, and I into the library and showed them the view of the city from the 34th floor of his offices at 7th Ave. and 34th St. Then he invited all the staff of the Catholic League to meet the Hagees. The mood was jovial, warm, and welcoming. Any shadow of tentativeness on the Hagee’s faces immediately vanished.

We went into Donohue’s office for our chat, but first he showed the Hagees the window through which he saw the World Trade Center Towers fall to the ground on 9/11. He told the story of taking his staff to a local pizza restaurant where they prayed together, with the result that some Jews seated nearby asked if they could join in.

The conversation lasted about 45 minutes—Hagee had to get back to the UN for his evening speech. During that time Hagee and Donohue affirmed not only the reconciliation but also their future partnership on matters of importance to both them: life, marriage, family, and support for Israel.

Donohue said, “Pastor, you are my friend from this point forward and nothing’s going to change that. We have our theological differences but we Catholics and Evangelicals need to work together—that is the liberals’ worst nightmare.”

The Hagees couldn’t have agreed more with Donohue, and they talked at length about getting more Catholic support for Christians United for Israel. Donohue made it clear he shared their concern for supporting and defending the existence of Israel against Islamic extremism.

Hagee rose to leave, and he held out his hands and said “Let us pray.” We prayed in the style I learned as a Southern Baptist growing up in Texas. It’s amazing how quickly it all came back to me as we prayed for unity among ourselves and for charity in all that we do.

As we were leaving, a reporter from the San Antonio Express-News called Donohue for an interview. Donohue did the interview as we stood there. It was obvious that Donohue’s report on the meeting was not what the reporter wanted to hear. When the reporter asked if Donohue was trying to help John McCain, I thought the answer was unassailable: “If I am trying to help John McCain why would I have called Rev. Hagee anti-Catholic in the first place?”

What can you say to that? The answer is “nothing.”

The meeting of John Hagee and Bill Donohue may have started something that will create important repercussions in the months and years to come.

The following is an excerpt from Sam Roberts during the weekly New York Times podcast, “Only in New York.” The podcast ran on May 15:

“William Donohue’s calendar the other day was bookended by two historic events.

“Donohue is the president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights in Manhattan. Earlier in the day, he was scheduled to meet for the first time with the televangelist John Hagee, who had finally apologized for remarks that, he admitted, Catholics had ‘found hurtful.’ Hagee insisted that when he bandied about epithets like ‘the great whore’ he wasn’t referring to the Catholic Church…

“That night, Donohue planned to attend the opening of an exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of the Archdiocese of New York. It’s billed as the first to celebrate the common Catholicism of diverse ethnic groups.

“The juxtaposition of the two events raised an obvious question: Just how much progress have Catholics made in the 200 years since they were reviled and repressed by New York’s nativist majority?

“That question is addressed by the exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York and a companion book, Catholics in New York, published by Fordham University Press with essays by Terry Golway, Pete Hamill, the Times’s Dan Barry, by William Donohue—recalling his tenure at a Catholic school in East Harlem that since closed because of declining enrollment—and by the novelist Peter Quinn.”

The initial controversy over Sen. Barack Obama’s Catholic advisors is addressed in the Catalyst article, which can be accessed by clicking here.  The group’s response can be found by clicking here.  Please see Bill Donohue’s rejoinder below.

“The reason I mentioned only public officials who are part of Sen. Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council is the same reason I chose just three public policy issues: voting tallies are available on these advisors (but not on the others) and on these three issues. If I knew more about the others, no doubt some would have made the cut.

“It is more than embarrassing—it is shocking—to read how these Catholics view abortion. The Catholic Church regards abortion, as well as embryonic stem cell research, as ‘intrinsically evil.’ But not these folks. For them, abortion is merely ‘a profound moral issue.’

“Sadly, it has been apparent for years that many who fancy themselves ‘progressive’ Catholics do not treat abortion the way they do racial discrimination. No one in his right mind says that the best way to combat racial discrimination is by changing people’s hearts and minds, not the law. Which is why we do both. But when it comes to abortion—including partial-birth abortion—the progressives settle for dialogue.

“It is so nice to know that Obama thinks abortion ‘presents a profound moral challenge.’ Is infanticide another ‘profound moral challenge’? To wit: When he was in the Illinois state senate he led the fight to deny health care to babies born alive who survived an abortion. That, my friends, is not a moral challenge—it’s a Hitlerian decision.”