when the chips are down. I am yet to be convinced that Cole isn't going to turn out to be one more who fits that pattern. I would like to be wrong, but we will have to wait and see. What I'm pretty sure he means by "not being a dick about it" is not starting arguments with people who practice religion in their own space. I do not share your confidence -- accusing so called 'new'atheists of being 'shrill' or 'dickish' simply for being unapologetically godless and directly taking theists to task for their more harmful and ridiculous claims is a well established delegitimising tactic among accommodationists like Mooney. The use of similar language here may be simply an unfortunate coinicidence, but then again it may not. He's been pretty consistent (recently, at least; I know there's been a substantial change over time) at opposing people pushing religion into public policy in whatever form it takes. I don't think I'd exactly characterize him as an accomodationist. And yet he characterises people who oppose the ubiquity of public paryer and the use of exclusitory, sectarian religious language by govenment entities in a society supposedly predicated upon the seperation of church and state as 'crazed reactionaries'. Tax-exempt orgs in the US MUST stay out of partisan politics, or lose their tax exemption. If there's a drive in the US among Catholic churches to tell everybody in their pews who to (not) vote for, they are way over that line. We have