Good questions from Mark Schmitt, discovered via Earl Bockenfeld:

The right question, I think, is not whether religion has an undue influence, but why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first time ever, virtually no element of social justice? Why is its public phase so exclusively focused on issues of private and personal behavior?

It’s been quite a few years since my heavy Bible-reading days. I remember Jesus. He was a healer and a great teacher.

He said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” And “Him that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” I’ve been out of touch. Listening to the voices from the Religious Right these past few days, I guess they must have a different guy in there now.

Personally, I liked the old guy.

A few election day stories from The Other Paper, a free news and entertainment tabloid here in Columbus, Ohio:

In Whitehall, a woman in line became faint, and officials called the squad. The medics arrived and put her on a gurney, but she insisted they not take her away until she voted. They put an oxygen mask on her and hooked her up to IVs, then wheeled her over to the booth so she could vote.

It started raining pretty hard at Thurber Towers on Neil Avenue, but even then no one left. Some people took out umbrellas, others just stood there in the rain. One old guy, probably 80 or 85, came out of the retirement center carrying a little folding chair and set it up at the end of our line, in the rain, to wait. No one seemed upset. One woman said, “I’ve waited four years for this. I can wait another two hours.”

A fifth-grader making homeroom announcements at Hubbard Elementary School asked the students to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, at which point everyone waiting to vote stopped talking, took off hats, turned and faced the flag, and said the pledge together.

I heard from several people there that one of the voting machines at Rosehill Elementary School in Reynoldsburg showed up with 500 votes for Bush already “in,” but they were quickly erased.

It’s discouraging to lose an election. It’s hard, sometimes, to keep fighting. But we have to do it. For all the people, right or wrong, who waited in line to cast a vote.