Meet the Christian right’s new doomsday prophet — and his insane, apocalyptic “blood moon” theory - Salon.com

In 2015, there is a United States congressman who believes that the so-called blood moon prophecy determines the fate of the Middle East and, because of some more prophecy, the fate of the world, of all of us. In 2015. Common Era.

“Blood moons,” which is a gussied-up way of naming your garden-variety lunar eclipse, “have preceded world-changing, shaking-type events,” says Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a man constitutionally permitted to vote in one of the world’s most powerful legislative bodies. Legislation, accords, Security Council Resolutions, military aid packages — why consider this mere terrestrial ephemera when you can just go out into your backyard and consult the moon?

While the prophecy may seem fringe — like something a hooded Nostradamus type from the Dark Ages would wheeze in dim and flickering firelight — it’s gaining surprising traction in conservative media, and is being adopted as legitimate by prominent figures, including Hice in Congress and the Family Research Council, the powerful social conservative lobbying group in Washington. Mega-pastor John Hagee, the leading purveyor of blood moon prophecy talk, is powerful in Washington, able to command the attendance of influential conservative politicians to his events.

Meet the Christian right’s new doomsday prophet — and his insane, apocalyptic “blood moon” theory - Salon.com

Our Terrifying New Congress: Meet 5 Tea Party Extremists Taking Office this Month | Alternet

Similar to this list from Right Wing Watch, but there are a few differences. Two names not on RWW list, Mark Walker and Cory Gardner.

Come next week, a few of Congress’ most notorious Tea Partyers will no longer be in office. Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican who once declared evolution and the Big Bang Theory “lies straight from the pit of hell,” lost a U.S. Senate primary this year and won’t be returning to the House. Neither will Michele Bachmann, who needs no introduction.

But the departure of such inflammatory conservatives hardly means that the 114th Congress will be a more sober one. Indeed, the crop of Republicans taking power next month is even further to the right than the current House GOP conference. The newly Republican Senate, too, will feature more than its fair share of ultraconservative hard-liners. Today, Salon looks at five of the most extreme Republicans taking power in Washington this month.

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Mark Walker

The retirement of North Carolina GOP congressman Howard Coble paved the way for the election of Baptist pastor Mark Walker, whose statements on race and immigration range from condescending and cringe-worthy to downright frightening.

Walker once wrote on Facebook that he “had the privilege of spending an hour with an African-American male who grew up in the inner city,” but he lamented that “most of these Americans have no concept of the pride and joy when we, as parents, invest in our children.”

On border security, Walker said at a debate that “we got to go laser or blitz somebody with a couple of fighter jets for a little while to make our point.” When the moderator asked whether he worried that this could lead to a war with Mexico, Walker replied, ”Well, we did it before. If we need to do it again, I don’t have a qualm about it.”

Cory Gardner

As he geared up to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Rep. Cory Gardner confronted a major problem: on issues like immigration, the 2013 government shutdown, and reproductive rights, he’d taken ultraconservative positions unlikely to play well in a statewide election. So Gardner did what any cynical politician would do; he moderated his rhetoric, pretended he was open to compromise on issues like immigration, and even recanted his support for a state-level personhood amendment. (However, Gardner did continue to support a federal personhood bill, which he disingenuously asserted was nothing more than a statement that he “supports life.”)

Our Terrifying New Congress: Meet 5 Tea Party Extremists Taking Office this Month | Alternet

Five Of The Craziest Conspiracy Theories That The Freshman Republican Class Will Bring To Congress | Right Wing Watch

It turns out that by branding themselves as members of a party that has returned to its mainstream, center-right roots after successfully stamping out a Tea Party rebellion, even “establishment” Republican candidates are able to hold all sorts of extreme views without any consequences.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that a party that regularly endorses candidates who deny climate science and denounce evolution has moved the political center so far to the right that even candidates with radical views can still be treated as moderates. These days, Republicans win kudos simply for stating that they don’t want to ban birth control or destroy the economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

This dynamic has allowed any number of conspiracy theories to flourish in the GOP. Here are five conspiracy theories that newly elected members of the United States Congress will be bringing with them to Washington next year,,,

Five Of The Craziest Conspiracy Theories That The Freshman Republican Class Will Bring To Congress | Right Wing Watch

America’s worst new congressman: Why Georgia’s Jody Hice is so frightening - Salon.com

It’s official: in January, Jody Hice will be sworn in as the next Congressman from Georgia’s 10th District. This is a man who has called Islam, the second-largest religion in the world, “a totalitarian way of life with a religious component” that “does not deserve First Amendment protection.” In his book he calls legal abortion “worse than Hitler’s six million Jews or Mussolini’s three hundred thousand,” adding that “the genocide in America is inexcusable!” In 2004, he told the Athens Banner-Herald that he doesn’t “see a problem” with women running for office “if the woman’s within the authority of her husband.” On his radio show he blamed Sandy Hook and other school shootings on “kicking God out of the schools, and… kicking God out of the public square.” He once misquoted a satirical essay by a gay writer as evidence that homosexuals preying on children was “part of the ‘gay manifesto’” and part of the “radical agenda that is currently threatening our nation.”

As Matthew Pulver of the Flagpole writes, Jody Hice believes a lot of things that make him sound insane. Last night, he won a seat in Congress.

A Baptist minister and former talk radio host, Hice is filling the hole left after Paul Broun’s failed run for Senate. You might remember Paul Broun as the Congressman and medical doctor who stood in a room festooned with deer heads and told a gathering of Baptists and hunters that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang were “lies straight from the pit of Hell.” Broun set an incredibly high bar for mindboggling insanity, but Hice just might be able to clear it.

America’s worst new congressman: Why Georgia’s Jody Hice is so frightening - Salon.com

Georgia Republican: State-sponsored religion will end big-government tyranny

Hice wholeheartedly endorsed Scalia’s remarks, in spite of the fact that the words “under God” were not added to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance until it was more than 60 years old and in spite of the Constitution’s First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which explicitly forbids the U.S. government from endorsing any religion.

“To be in the midst of a fight against secularists who are trying to impose on all of us that it is unconstitutional to acknowledge God and to honor God,” said Hice, “the secularists want to tell us that that’s unconstitutional. And Scalia is arguing that not only is that, in fact, constitutional, but it is in the best interests of who we are.”

“One of the biggest dangers that we are facing today,” Hice continued, “is judges who think that the Constitution is some sort of living document that changes with the times.”

This is a problem, Hice said, because for Americans to view the Constitution through “the lens of secularism” is not what God intended.

“Folks, that is problematic, that is an enormous danger,” said Hice.

“When it comes to the idea of religious liberty,” he said, “it is not constitutional for the state, if you will, just to be neutral towards religion.”

Religion, Hice said, is “an entrenched part of who we are” as Americans “and a necessary part of who we are.” God-fearing governments, he said, produce “a moral people who are self-governing of their own lives and thus don’t need the big arm of intrusive government all over us. Because we are self-governing people.”

“You remove God and you remove religion,” he said, “and you remove the state from encouraging religious belief and you get more secularism, you get more problems, you get more crime, you get all, whatever, fill in the blank out there.”

“End result,” Hice said, “you get bigger government.”

“Government has a responsibility to encourage religious belief,” he concluded, “because that is is the foundation, as I said earlier, of how limited government can exist.”

Georgia Republican: State-sponsored religion will end big-government tyranny