Science-religion-politics Sunday!

* The Vatican has officially forgiven the late John Lennon for a off-the-cuff joke he made forty-two years ago. Let no one doubt the magnanimity of the Catholic Church.

* The "broken windows" theory has apparently been experimentally verified. Giuliani '12? Via MeFi.

* Science confirms the Livia Soprano Theory of the Universe: it's all just a big nothing. Also via MeFi.

* Science confirms that religion strongly correlates with unhappy lives.

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

* Science confirms that America miraculously became "a center-right nation" the day after Barack Obama won the presidency.

* The Cato Institute confirms "Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival." Not because it won't work, of course, but because it'll work so well as to discredit their kneejerk anti-governmentism forever. More at DKos.

* Who will pray to Bush for clemency? And how many corrupt presidencies do we need in a row before we abolish the damn pardon power?

* Finally, prepare yourself to go deep inside the ant hivemind.

The reality is: I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. "Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter," at GQ.

Pre-debate links.

* Those McCain/Palin rallies aren't getting any better.

In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed "treason!" during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.

Whether or not McCain and Palin can hear these words being shouted at them on the stump, these stories have been in the news for two days now. This is a case where silence really is deafening: when your supporters are screaming out "Treason!" and "Kill him!" you have a moral obligation to step in and put a stop to it. Hell, even Rudy Giuliani knows that.

* Good news/bad news: Apparently Brokaw never agreed to the no followups rule, so the campaigns are expecting there to be followups after all. That's the good news. The bad news: Brokaw ♥s McCain.

* How McCain destroyed the best brand in politics, with more at Washington Monthly.

* They found Sarah Palin's doodles. Rachel Maddow had some fun with this last night. You know, I'm beginning to think this VP choice speaks poorly of McCain's judgment.

* Also at Washington Monthly: analysis of Obama's latest, very good ad.

"He's out of ideas. Out of touch. And running out of time. But with no plan to lift our economy up, John McCain wants to tear Barack Obama down, with smears that have been proven false. Why? McCain's own campaign admits that if the election is about the economy, he's going to lose. But as Americans lose their jobs, homes and savings, it's time for a President who'll change the economy. Not change the subject."

* And despite what you sometimes hear in the comments of this blog, Pennsylvania is not a swing state.

Did Giuliani sink Palin's speech? Apparently Rudy was having so much fun he started improvising, going long and forcing the Republicans to cut Palin's video biography. As Kevin Drum writes, the video bios are kitschy, sappy, and highly effective—and most importantly Palin's fiery speech was written to be delivered after a hagiographic video that established her as a sympathetic and impressive figure of national stature. Without the video to bolster her, the speech came across quite differently; perhaps this, more than anything else, is why independents weren't buying.

In other words, is it possible that Rudy Giuliani's ego just saved the world?

UPDATE: TPM has the video as released to Fox News, describing it as "a glimpse into how the Republicans were planning to sell a soft-focus version of Palin's life as a soft-peddled intro into the harsh, partisan, and undeniably successful speech that followed."

His rise is remarkable in its own right - it's the kind of thing that could happen only in America. [laughter]

I have to echo Andrew Sullivan: why is this funny? What exactly is it about the nomination of Barack Obama that makes "only in America" a laugh line?

I'd really like to know.

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself...

Ah, Rudy. Who in public life has better mastered the art of being an asshole? To me this angry trivialization of Barack Obama's accomplishments won't work—it's too much, too mean and too ugly—but I've certainly been wrong about American political tastes before.

Big ups to Shankar: Rudy's speaking tonight. I'm breaking the embargo on this excerpt:

...but I know another person who was mayor on 9/11, and that's Sarah Palin. [applause]

I'm glad to see Hurricane Gustav won't keep Bush from speaking by satellite to the Republican National Convention. Very glad.

Poor Rudy, though. He gave the RNC his all and now he's nothing. Why, I bet he hasn't felt this bad since...

Not a great day for John McCain, which makes it a pretty great day for America. In addition to the whole can't-remember-how-many-houses-he-owns fiasco, he also seems to have finally crossed the Giuliani threshold with regard to the political exploitation of his time as a POW.

Can't say I'm displeased.

John McCain's campaign has made Rudy Giuliani's campaign manager their new political director. That should work out.