Sarah Sanders to Leave White House Position

Sarah Huckabee Sander - in my view, less truthful than a tawdry prostitute.

After Donald Trump himself, few among the White House staff has lied more often or more brazenly than Sarah Huckabee Sanders. A tawdry prostitute like has far more credibility when it comes to truth and veracity than Huckabee Sanders. Indeed, the only thing that can be said in her defense is that she was raised in a household where lying and scamming the gullible was part of her father's job description as a Baptist minister/scamvangelist and it obviously warped her ability to tell the truth from a lie.  How else to explain her indifference to objective facts and regular regurgitation of demonstrable falsehoods.  With Sanders leaving her position as press secretary, the only question is whether Trump has found someone even more willing to prostitute themselves and engage in non-stop lies. At the same time, Sanders' statement that she wants to spend more time with her school-age children leaves me wondering what moral harm she will inflict on her children.  With a morally bankrupt ,calculating lying for a grandfather and for their mother cut from the same cloth, one has to worry about these children.  One can only hope that history will be most unkind to Ms. Huckabee Sanders. A piece in Politico looks at Sanders much welcomed departure.  Here are article highlights:   

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose fierce loyalty to President Donald Trump and clashes with reporters defined her tenure, is stepping down at the end of the month.

[Trump] The president announced her departure on Twitter Thursday afternoon. Trump said she would be returning to her home state of Arkansas, adding that he hoped she would decide to run for governor.

Speaking to reporters in her office on Thursday, Sanders did not rule out a run for governor, something that her associates have been buzzing about for months. "I learned a long time ago never to rule anything out," she said. Sanders’ father, Mike Huckabee, was governor of the state from 1996 to 2007. She became a lightning rod for some of the Trump administration’s most controversial policies, for which she was called out by both reporters and the public.

Last June, the owner of a rural Virginia restaurant asked Sanders to leave, later citing the administration’s push to ban transgender people from serving in the military as a reason. “I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” Sarah Murray, the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., told The Washington Post.

In recent months, Sanders has refused to hold formal briefings, instead opting to appear on Fox News and brief reporters in the White House driveway, a Trump-approved strategy that has prompted fierce criticism from journalists.

Sanders' critics have repeatedly questioned her credibility, especially in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The report revealed that Sanders acknowledged to investigators that there was no basis for her 2017 assertion that “countless” rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in James Comey, a claim she used to rationalize Trump’s decision to fire him as the bureau’s director. Sanders told reporters that she hoped to spend more time with her school-age children this summer. She said she informed the president about her decision earlier Thursday. Her press team formally found out about her departure less than an hour before it was announced, in an apparent bid to keep the news from leaking. Sanders got her start in politics working for her father‘s first campaign for governor, and later served as national political director for his presidential campaign. She co-founded a consulting firm in Arkansas and later joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a senior adviser. She is the latest senior administration official to announce plans to leave the White House. Others recent departures include Shahira Knight, the White House legislative affairs director, and senior White House adviser Johnny DeStefano.

Good riddance and, again, I hope history will be most brutal on Ms. Huckabee Sanders who apparently subscribe to the Josef Goebbels school of propaganda - for Fox News viewers, Goebbels was Hitlers propaganda minister.  Yes, I am harsh, but despite her upbringing, Sanders could have opted for honesty and integrity, but she chose the "dark side." Shame on her.

Mike Pence: Trump's Accessory in Treason

Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence took oaths to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution and America.  In Pence's case, that oath did not include an oath to blindly follow Trump's lead even when Trump colludes with Vladimir Putin and, basically commits treason.  Despite his sworn oath, Pence  - who postures as a Bible believing Christian who ought to take a sworn oath seriously - Pence remains Trump's water carrier and repeats Trump's lies.   A column in the Washington Post focuses on Pence's hypocrisy and, in my view, just how untrustworthy and duplicitous Pence is in fact.  Here are column highlights:

The best film ever done on the Trump administration is called “The Death of Stalin.” It is a dark but wholly brilliant comedy about how Stalin’s closest henchmen maneuvered for power in the days after the death of their publicly revered but actually despised leader. The only one missing from this movie is Vice President Pence. 

With the possible exception of Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s homicidal head of the secret police, Pence could play all the other parts. He has just the proper attitude toward President Trump — fawning and patently hypocritical. Like Stalin’s closest aides, he knows his master is a dolt who cannot abide criticism. In Stalin’s case, criticism could be rebutted with a bullet. Trump is more tempered. He merely fires the person.

Following Trump’s fiasco in Helsinki — following, that is, Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his criticism of his own FBI, following the creation of what seems like a modern-day axis of Putin and Trump, following body language from Trump toward Putin that might have made Melania Trump jealous — Pence came to the president’s defense. 

But that loyalty has to be totally synthetic, no deeper than Stalin’s henchmen toward the old Soviet dictator. They were careerists, looking to succeed the old man or merely to stay alive. Pence is no different. His core identity, he has said, is as a Christian. No one in his or her right mind can say the same for Trump.

[S]ome time ago, I concluded that Trump is crazy. I use the word loosely, but accurately, since his behavior is often bizarre and his language is, shall we say, eccentric. Throughout his life, he has conducted himself in a squalid and dishonest fashion. He is completely incapable of sticking to the truth.

Not so Pence. He has come to represent all the Trump enablers. He now personifies much of the Republican Party, which is either so enthralled by Trump or so intimidated by him that it offers nothing but fealty. Republicans will say almost anything in Trump’s defense, piping up only when some debacle cannot be sidestepped. The separation of migrant families was one example. The Helsinki fiasco is another.

But this moment will pass. Pence has shown the way. He got on the Trump bandwagon early, and he is not getting off. He will ride it, he hopes, into the White House. His hypocrisy, his utter lack of political character and his bland vacuity have come to represent the Republican Party itself.

In “The Death of Stalin,” the functional Pence is played by the marvelous Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. He outmaneuvered the others to become the Soviet leader — and then denounced Stalin.  Watch it, Donald.

Pence: The Ideologue and Schemer Who Would be President

While America needs to be rid of the dangerous, and in my view, mentally ill Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  the nation dose not need to have him replaced by Mike Pence, a man who in some ways is perhaps even more extreme than the deranged Trump.  Hence my constant hopes that the Russiagate investigations will reveal that Pence was far more involved than he presents via his "Sergeant Schultz" that he knew nothing and saw nothing.  A column in the Boston Globe provides a good overview of what Pence is dangerous and also unfit for the White House.  Here are excerpts:

On the evidence of a lifetime, America’s vice president is not a complex man. Instead he is three extremely simple ones: an incompetent ideologue, an obsequious toady, and a self-serving schemer.

When Donald Trump selected Indiana’s governor to run with him, local observers were dumbfounded. They knew Pence as a comically ambitious, rigid, and inept right-wing evangelical — a climate-change denying, Darwin-doubting zealot who, before leaving Congress, had left no mark beyond his sulfurous opposition to reproductive and gay rights. And his accession to the governorship, meant to position him as presidential timber, had foundered on the fundamentalist verities that define his mental cul-de-sac.

A signal embarrassment was his embrace of a “religious freedom” bill designed to propitiate business owners who wished to discriminate against gays. This antagonized the state’s business community at large . . . . Shouldering Pence aside, the legislature reached a compromise to salvage Indiana’s reputation.

Facing electoral doom, this ostentatious Christian — who calls his wife “Mother” and refuses to be alone with another woman — prostrated himself to become Trump’s running mate, the bridge between evangelicals and a blatant libertine. 

Trump, not Jesus, became Pence’s personal savior: Cravenly, Pence proclaimed Trump a model paterfamilias and man of deep faith. To cognoscenti, the reflexive alacrity with which Pence swathed Trump in pieties confirmed a surreal obliviousness to his own moral smallness.

Pence’s duplicitous sequence of volte-faces began when Trump’s “Access Hollywood” recording revealed his boasts of grabbing women’s genitals. . . . Belatedly perceiving that Trump’s misogyny had provoked mass revulsion, he canceled a campaign appearance before vanishing altogether, after saying that he could not “condone [ Trump’s] remarks” — true moral leadership, that — but that “ we . . . look forward to the opportunities he has to show what is in his heart” in the debate the following night.

When Trump survived the debate, Pence wallowed in renewed self-abasement. “Proud to stand with you,” Pence tweeted, and grabbed Trump’s coattails once again.

His next oscillation came in the vice presidential debate. Resigned to second place, Pence began positioning himself for 2020, turning in a robotic appearance, heavy on right-wing talking points but exceedingly light on praise of Trump. . . . Little wonder that Trump expressed private discontent with his underling’s performance, which exposed the calculus of a climber who expected Trump to lose.

Instantly, Pence reverted to fawning puppet — even by the standards of vice presidents. Joe Biden supported Barack Obama without ever losing his dignity or integrity; Pence had neither.

Miming a servile staffer — Trump’s preferred mode of behavior for his underlings — Pence parroted Trump’s moronic talking points and outright lies, nodding and smiling as Trump spouted self-contradicting nonsense. 

It was utterly in character, then, when Pence kicked off the most excruciating display of synchronized sycophancy in memory — the chorus of praise from cabinet members upon their first meeting with America’s Dear Leader. “The greatest privilege of my life,” Pence intoned in his church organ voice, “is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people.” Sadly, perhaps it is.

But the palace contriver ever searches for vacuums. Because Trump knew no one in Washington, Pence curried favor with the right by helping seed the cabinet with conservative ideologues. And as questions about Trump’s survival burgeoned anew, Pence launched his own political action committee while cultivating restive legislators.

Who is Mike Pence? Take your pick of three. But one thing is clear — none of his personae are fit to be president.

Religious extremist, liar and hypocrite and scheming backstabber.  Pence makes George W. Bush look almost competent and thoughtful. 

Trump Model Management Knowingly Violated Immigration Laws

Among Donald trump's many unattractive attributes are his dishonesty, hypocrisy, willingness to use intimidation and underhanded tactics to screw contractors, and view that he is above the law.  The hypocrisy is particularly telling in the context of Trump's rantings about the non-enforcement of immigration laws - laws that his modeling agency ignored and flouted at will.  Mother Jones looks at Trump Model Management.  Here are story highlights (read the entire piece):

Republican nominee Donald Trump has placed immigration at the core of his presidential campaign. He has claimed that undocumented immigrants are "taking our jobs" and "taking our money," pledged to deport them en masse, and vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border. At one point he demanded a ban on Muslims entering the country. Speaking to supporters in Iowa on Saturday, Trump said he would crack down on visitors to the United States who overstay their visas and declared that when any American citizen "loses their job to an illegal immigrant, the rights of that American citizen have been violated." And he is scheduled to give a major address on immigration in Arizona on Wednesday night.

But the mogul's New York modeling agency, Trump Model Management, has profited from using foreign models who came to the United States on tourist visas that did not permit them to work here, according to three former Trump models, all noncitizens, who shared their stories with Mother Jones. Financial and immigration records included in a recent lawsuit filed by a fourth former Trump model show that she, too, worked for Trump's agency in the United States without a proper visa.

Foreigners who visit the United States as tourists are generally not permitted to engage in any sort of employment unless they obtain a special visa, a process that typically entails an employer applying for approval on behalf of a prospective employee. Employers risk fines and possible criminal charges for using undocumented labor.

Founded in 1999, Trump Model Management "has risen to the top of the fashion market," boasts the Trump Organization's website, and has a name "that symbolizes success." According to a financial disclosure filed by his campaign in May, Donald Trump earned nearly $2 million from the company, in which he holds an 85 percent stake. Meanwhile, some former Trump models say they barely made any money working for the agency because of the high fees for rent and other expenses that were charged by the company.  

Canadian-born Rachel Blais spent nearly three years working for Trump Model Management. After first signing with the agency in March 2004, she said, she performed a series of modeling gigs for Trump's company in the United States without a work visa.

At Mother Jones' request, Blais provided a detailed financial statement from Trump Model Management and a letter from an immigration lawyer who, in the fall of 2004, eventually secured a visa that would permit her to work legally in the United States. These records show a six-month gap between when she began working in the United States and when she was granted a work visa. During that time, Blais appeared on Trump's hit reality TV show, The Apprentice, modeling outfits designed by his business protégés. As Blais walked the runway, Donald Trump looked on from the front row. Two other former Trump models—who requested anonymity to speak freely about their experiences, and who we are giving the pseudonyms Anna and Kate—said the agency never obtained work visas on their behalf, even as they performed modeling assignments in the United States. (They provided photographs from some of these jobs, and Mother Jones confirmed with the photographers or stylists that these shoots occurred in the United States.) According to three immigration lawyers consulted by Mother Jones, even unpaid employment is against the law for foreign nationals who do not have a work visa. "If the US company is benefiting from that person, that's work," explained Anastasia Tonello, global head of the US immigration team at Laura Devine Attorneys in New York. These rules for immigrants are in place to "protect them from being exploited," she said. "That US company shouldn't be making money off you."

Two of the former Trump models said Trump's agency encouraged them to deceive customs officials about why they were visiting the United States and told them to lie on customs forms about where they intended to live. Anna said she received a specific instruction from a Trump agency representative: "If they ask you any questions, you're just here for meetings."

Trump's campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined to answer questions about Trump Model Management's use of foreign labor.

Kate, who worked for Trump Model Management in 2004, marveled at how her former boss has recently branded himself as an anti-illegal-immigration crusader on the campaign trail. "He doesn't want to let anyone into the US anymore," she said. "Meanwhile, behind everyone's back, he's bringing in all of these girls from all over the world and they're working illegally." In a recent interview, she said her experience with Trump's firm stood out: "Honestly, they are the most crooked agency I've ever worked for, and I've worked for quite a few." The three former Trump models said Trump's agency was aware of the complications posed by their foreign status. Anna and Kate said the company coached them on how to circumvent immigration laws. Kate recalled being told, "When you're stuck at immigration, say that you're coming as a tourist. If they go through your luggage and they find your portfolio, tell them that you're going there to look for an agent."

These days, Kate said, she believes that Trump has been fooling American voters with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, given that his own agency had engaged in the practices he has denounced. "He doesn't like the face of a Mexican or a Muslim," she said, "but because these [models] are beautiful girls, it's okay? He's such a hypocrite."

Ted Cruz's Hypocrisy on Christian Extremism

There's much to dislike - perhaps even hate - about most of the would be 2016 Republican presidential nominees.  But in many ways the most frightening is Ted Cruz. The man is not stupid, but then again, neither has Adolph Hitler.  Both are, in my view, equally mentally disturbed int their own way.  And both are only too willing to lie and play on prejudices to further their own egomaniacal ambitions.  With Hitler, the target of his hypocrisy and cynicism was the Jews.  With Cruz, it is gays and immigrants.   Perhaps Cruz's biggest lie of late (and there are so many) is that there’s “no meaningful risk of Christians committing terrorist attacks."   This after Cruz attended a gathering of hate filled extremists who want to execute gays.  Here are highlights from the Washington Blade:

Just days after attending an Iowa conference hosted by an evangelical media personality who called for the death penalty for gays, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz now says there’s “no meaningful risk” of Christians committing terrorist attacks.

“There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror,” Cruz is quoted as saying in the Washington Post. “If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation.”

The U.S. senator from Texas made the remarks Sunday in the early primary state of South Carolina in the context of explaining his view that Muslim refugees from Syria should be barred from the United States, but borders should be open to displaced Christians.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also said Sunday assistance for Middle East refugees should be focused on Christians.

“We should focus our efforts as it relates to refugees on the Christians that are being slaughtered,” Bush said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Cruz’s comments ignore the call made at the recent National Religious Liberty Conference by Iowa evangelical leader Kevin Swanson, who delivered a fiery tirade in favor of the government rounding up gay people and executing them in the name of Christianity.

Cruz appeared on the same stage as Swanson at the event along with fellow GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal. Each of these candidates has remained silent on the views expressed by Swanson and their campaigns haven’t responded to a request for comment from the Washington Blade on whether they’d repudiate the remarks.

The Cruz campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on why the candidate thinks there’s no “meaningful risk” of Christians committing terrorism in the aftermath of Swanson’s remarks.

CBS and AP Cite Liberty Counsel's Hate Group Label

Hate merchants Mat and Anita Staver

It drives me to distraction that all too often the mainstream media gives a platform to hate groups and their leaders - Tony Perkins and FRC are usual examples - and never disclose to readers and/or viewers the ugly reality about these individuals and groups.   Whether it is out of simple laziness or some sick sense of wanting to appear "balanced," the unwary are left with the wrong impression that these are simple "Christian" and/or family values advocates rather than hate merchants. Mat Staver and his equally deranged wife and their utterly misnamed "law firm" have been seeking to ride the Kim Davis circus all the way to the bank.  Thankfully, their effort has led to CBS News and now the Associated Press to look into and expose their sordid, hate filled, and lie filled nature and tactics.  As Joe Jervis notes, Liberty Counsel is finally being exposed for the generate of lies and hate that it has always been.  Here are highlights:

The Associated Press today published a story which rips the Liberty Counsel’s “imaginary” Peruvian soccer stadium story and points out that the SPLC has very good reasons for categorizing them as a hate group. Nothing in the story will be a bombshell to regular JMG readers, but it’s good to see the mainstream national media report on what we have known for years. Some excerpts:

Kim Davis’ lawyer stood onstage in a Washington D.C. hotel and pointed to a photo on the screen. It showed 100,000 people packed into a Peruvian soccer stadium, Mat Staver told the crowd, all there to pray for the Kentucky clerk battling against gay marriage. The crowd erupted. It wasn’t true.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Liberty Counsel as an anti-gay hate groups for spreading false information. “A group that regularly portrays gay people as perverse, diseased pedophiles putting Western civilization at risk are way, way over the line,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center. The Liberty Counsel has connected homosexuality to higher rates of promiscuity and incest, Potok said, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. The firm opposes laws banning hate crimes and supports discredited conversion therapies that purport to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. Staver once declared that the Boy Scouts would become a “playground for pedophiles” once it allowed gay troop leaders.

Having followed these "Christian" and "family values" groups for many years, there is literal no one who lies more and spreads knowingly false information about gays and others whom the "godly folk" view as "other."  If one wants a reason to walk away from the label "Christian," look no farther than these individuals and organizations.

"Wrong Then, Wrong Now" - White House Video Rips Cheney

There are few American politicians who reach the threshold of being truly evil.  Most simply put self-advancement over the interests of their constituents and others.  However, Dick Cheney, in my opinion, meets the criteria to be deemed truly evil.  He advocated lying to the American public to take the nation to war in Iraq, he convinced his idiot superior, George W. Bush, to authorize the use of torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and now he wants to take America to war against Iran.  The man is both evil and delusional.  Thousands of wasted American lives in Iraq and trillions of wasted dollars wasn't enough for Cheney.  Thankfully, in advance of Cheney's lying and disinformation speech against the Iran nuclear agreement, the White House has gone on the offensive against one of the foulest individuals in American history.  Talking Points Memo looks at the White House attack.  Here are highlights:

Timed to a speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney slamming President Obama's Iran deal, the White House released a video highlighting Cheney's continual defense of the Iraq war.

The two-and-a-half-minute video titled "Former Vice President Dick Cheney: Wrong Then, Wrong Now" -- which was featured prominently on the White House homepage Tuesday -- spares no punches.

It begins with a Fox News host asking Cheney last week why anyone who believes Cheney was wrong on Iraq should listen to him about the Iran deal.

"Because I was right about Iraq," Cheney said.

It then segues into the abundant news clips from the run-up to Iraq War in which Cheney offers scores of claims first urging then defending military action -- from touting the presence of weapons of mass destruction to predicting that Iraqis would great American troops "as liberators."

No one benefited from the Iraq War except perhaps Halliburton.  Oh, and did I mention that Cheney has lots of Halliburton stock?  I guess he wants to make another fortune off the squandered lives of our military personnel and wasted taxpayer dollars.  The man is a war criminal and needs to be tried as such.  Would the death penalty be too much?  Not in my opinion.

It's Time for Pope Francis to Sack Archbishop Nienstedt

Despite his far greater public relation skills than his Emperor Palpatine look a like predecessor and his occasional statements that reflect a realization that the Roman Catholic Church needs to move out of the Middle Ages, Pope Francis to date has failed completely when it comes holding the Church hierarchy accountable for the worldwide sexual abuse of children and youths.  Now, with a documented scandal exploding around Archbishop John Nienstedt, Francis has a perfect opportunity to not only send a strong message that he is serious about addressing the sex abuse scandal, but also to rid the hierarchy of a man who is a pillar of hypocrisy and malfeasance.  An editorial in the New York Times makes the case that Francis needs to sack Nienstedt now.  Here are highlights:

When Pope Francis met earlier this month with victims of rape and sexual abuse by priests, he vowed to hold bishops accountable for covering up the scandal instead of confronting it.

A good place to start is with the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, where calls are mounting for the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt, a warrior against same-sex marriage who, it turns out, is facing accusations that he indulged in improper sexual conduct in the past with priests, seminarians and other men. 

The archbishop has denied the accusations as “entirely false,” saying they date back over 10 years and do not involve minors or criminal conduct. But he felt obliged to hire a law firm to investigate them. 

Meanwhile, his handling of the pedophilia scandal is under fire from all sides. This week, an affidavit from Jennifer Haselberger, the former canon law chancellor for the archdiocese, accused the archbishop and his ranking prelates of systematically ignoring warnings about abusers in a five-year period, while failing to inform civil authorities of possible criminal acts. 

In the affidavit made public Tuesday, Ms. Haselberger, who resigned last year, said every time she tried to warn the archbishop and his deputies about abusive priests who were still serving in parishes, her “concerns were ignored, dismissed, or the emphasis was shifted to what was best for the priest involved.” 

The situation was only worsened by another deposition from a former vicar general of the archdiocese, the Rev. Peter Laird, who in conferences last year with Archbishop Nienstedt twice suggested that the archbishop consider resigning. Concerned Catholic parishioners, individual clergy members and university professors have also called for the archbishop to resign as the best solution. Instead, the archdiocese has made a mockery of accountability. 

Hundreds of American priests have been forced from service because of pedophile crimes, but the parallel need for accountability among those who covered up the scandal has been shamefully avoided. In promising closer attention to this issue, the pope should not overlook the church’s leadership disarray in the Twin Cities.

Southern Baptist Hypocrisy - Compare Gay Marriage Opposition to Abolition Effort

The shocking hypocrisy of the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") knows no bounds.  How else to explain the statement made at a panel discussion held at the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty forum that compared the SBC's fight to block same sex marriage to the abolition movement to end slavery.  The problem is that the Baptists who became the SBC opposed abolition and broke from the rest of the Baptist convention because they sought to continue slavery.  They even claimed that the Bible justified slavery - .i.e., it was "biblical."  Here are more details via Joe Jervis:

Evans, a Christian writer, was tweeting from a panel discussion held at the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty forum. Here's the "ironic" history of how the Southern Baptist Convention came to be:

Largely comprised of slaveholders, the gathering at the First Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, in May 1845 publicly pled their case. Slavery was biblical. Therefore abolition was sinful, and Baptists of the North were wrong to oppose slavery. Abolitionists of the North were responsible for the Baptist division; southern Baptists had been patient with the agitators, but enough was enough. Pledging allegiance to slavery, they vowed “we will never interfere with what is Caesar’s” (a biblical allusion implying it was their moral and legal responsibility to uphold the legal institution of slavery). And for good measure, the delegates expressed outrage that a northern Baptist missionary had “actually remitted money to the United States to aid in the assisting of slaves to ‘run away from their masters.’” (See Proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1845.) From this point forward, white Baptist leaders in the South through the end of the Civil War openly and insistently championed and defended white supremacy and black slavery, along the way migrating into a form of Christian nationalism heretofore foreign to the very Christian denomination that had been the most vocal champions, since the seventeenth century, of the separation of church and state.

Oh, and let's not forget that the SBC strongly opposed desegregation.  One has to wonder why anyone decent and moral pays any attention to these people.  They are liars and bigots and have been since the SBC's founding.