Are you ready for some real gold? "The Judiciary: Overruling God," this afternoon's panel on the conference's pet issue, judicial activism, was a delight.

It opened with what I thought was going to provide me with a few moments' escape from the pretty frightening scene around me: Representative Todd Akin opened his speech by saying, "Imagine you are at a baseball game."

I can do this, I thought. I can picture pretzels and summer and no-hitters and all that instead of a room full of ridiculously backward Christianists. [  ]

Fortunately, Jauregui provided a three-point plan to judicial success: prayer, appointments and accountability. Those last two as what he calls "two wings on an eagle--you need them both." Yeah. Like two wings. I see it now. So is prayer the head or the tail or what? [   ]

A bunch of the panelists also mentioned raising money for Senator Rick Santorum as part of some large-scale winning strategy, which was confusing for some pretty obvious reasons. He's not even on the Judiciary Committee! Whatever.

That's my growing attitude toward these people: whatever. I'm sitting here listening to people who assign a nasty, political agenda to Jesus and get standing ovations for it. In fact, they even get standing ovations just for walking into the room, or for quoting the Bible in the middle of a speech. Here's another important lesson learned: conservative Christianists LOVE standing ovations.

I've yet to mentally process the conference's final speaker, the down-right crazy Alan Keyes. Check back later for more after I regain a bit more sanity. [   ]

As DeLay drew to a close, he received some words on comfort from Scarborough, who assured him that "God always does his best work after a crucifixion."

Fire-and-brimstone Lutheran Pastor Laurence White followed DeLay with a speech that was somehow mostly about Germany. Although Scarborough promised White would be our ticket to glory, the only part of White's speech worth listening to was the opening anecdote in which White told us that every time he looks at his "lethal" 50-pound yellow lab, "I think of Tom DeLay."

Tom DeLay--Jesus being crucified or big, scary dog? I'm not sure. Maybe we should have a poll or collect votes or something to help figure this one out, because I'm getting some conflicting information here. [     ]

After the lunch portion of the event that Annika will surely be writing on, I went and asked the man in the George Washington outfit for a photo. He said yes and we snapped one and he then invited me for another. It was at this point we got on our knees and he asked me for my name, he prayed to God to bless me, and I laughed. This was one of the wierdest and finest moments of my life. I was being blessed by the originial George W.

This gives you some idea of the sort of reports that these bloggers generated. These are probably college students having a little fun on a college oriented website. It should be noted, however, that this is not simply a random blog, but a blog supported by a big player in progressive political circles, the Center for American Progress.

All this raises some questions about how secular and religious progressives should publically write about the Christian Right. Although humor is always good, maybe we should reflect more on how the darker side of humor (mockery, ridicule, disrespect) can sometimes be counterproductive to our overall critical project.