Let’s kick things off with Helen (of Margaret and Helen) in “Summer of Love”:

Honestly folks. If we paid as much attention to the sexual activities of Catholic priests as we do to homosexuals wanting to marry, we probably could have saved a lot of children from years of guilt, shame, anger and pain.

(Some Catholics definitely feel the same – and for a more somber treatment, here’s a wrenching article and video on the abuses in Ireland.)

Steve Benen has a good post on Rick Santorum’s “advice” to Obama on marriage and being an African-American leader. (You just know that won’t end well.) Meanwhile, TBogg takes on a Santorum op-ed in “How I Would Have Won The Superbowl by Ryan Leaf,” which starts out brutally funny and then goes all the way up to 11. Just read the whole thing.

That Ryan Leaf reference leads nicely to Thers, who fact-checks a Chuck Norris piece about supposedly persecuted Christians, and also delivers this:

…Here’s the best part of Chuck Norris’s silly article:

Broyles appropriately responded, “If the county thinks they can shut down groups of 10 or 15 Christians meeting in a home, what about people who meet regularly at home for poker night? What about people who meet for Tupperware parties? What about people who are meeting to watch baseball games on a regular basis and support the Chargers?”

People in San Diego who gather to watch baseball games and cheer on the Chargers should not be allowed to operate motor vehicles, period, as they’re too potty to even know what fucking sport they’re watching.

It’s not exactly a secret that Newt Gingrich is a shameless liar, but if there ever was any doubt that he’s irony- and conscience-free and a complete asshole, attacking Sonia Sotomayor as a “racist” while visiting friggin’ Auschwitz and twittering about the dangers of “evil” should clinch it. (And no, his sleazy non-apology doesn’t make things better.)

Eric Erickson of Red State compares rejecting Rush Limbaugh to denying Jesus (!), which Maha takes apart, as do Blue Texan and VA at Whiskey Fire. Erickson fares no better under the acid wit in of Roy Edroso in “The Conservative Comeback Part 56,729″:

Bonus quote from Erick Son of Erick on how the purges are going:

Their typical means of ostracism is to condemn the rest of us for daring to say nice things about them. Reasons abound for this. Many of these weak minded fools are not really fellow travelers. Like a vulture flying in flock with swans, they benefit from the work the rest of us are doing to gain themselves credibility. The media plays along calling the vultures swans so others, they hope, see ugly ducklings around the vultures instead of swans.

It’s like a six-year-old discovering the power of metaphor. I’m not the vulture, you’re the vulture!

Long live the Judean People’s Front.

Damn.

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)