The well-conceived Politifact.com calls Mike Huckabee on his claim that a majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “clergy.” In fact, only one of 56 was a clergyman. From Politifact: “We’d like to give Huckabee every benefit of the doubt, but even if you consider former clergymen among the signers the best you could come up with is four. Out of 56. That’s not “most,” that’s Pants-on-Fire wrong.” Read more.

BTW: Politifact is a cool and useful site from the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, dedicated to a factual analysis of presidential candidates’ statements and ads. Learn more about it and its nifty truth-o-meter here and check it often. [Thanks Val and TPM]

This weekend’s Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Summit” promises to be a real wince-o-matic source of telling quotes. Friday’s best/worst comes from Fred Thompson:

People ask me, ‘What would you do in the first 100 days in office?’ I don’t really know. But I’ve said to my wife that I know what I’d do in the first hour: Go into the [oval] office and pray for the wisdom to know what the right thing to do was.” [thanks god-o-meter]

It seems to me that in this one quote he pretty much sums up all the reasons not to vote for him: He doesn’t “really know” what it is he will do as president and he’s going to ask Zeus for an answer. Scary.

Also interesting: When Wolf Blitzer asks FRC prez Tony Perkins if Mormonism is a Christian religion, he replied: “Well, I mean clearly it’s different than the Christian faith. It is not a brand of evangelicalism, it is not a brand of the Christian faith. It is a different faith altogether.”

Students at Missouri State University have started a chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it’s now the second-largest religious group on campus. Here’s local news coverage from Ozarks Fox KSFX. [thx Laughing Squid]

Find Flying Spaghetti Monster frequently asked questions here.

… from the friendly folks at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Click here to see what today holds. The FFRF — which is holding its 30th Annual Convention this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin — is having a big year. This week the group erected its first “Beware of Dogma” billboard and starting this month, its Freethought Radio is now carried nationally by Air America. Hear a podcast of the inaugural Air America show here.

CNN reports that on Sunday, Barak Obama closed a stump speech to 4,000 members of the Redemption World Outreach Center mega-media mega-evangelical mega-church with the line “I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

The Kingdom quote got a lot of people riled up in the blogosphere and I have to admit it was disturbing to me. For disbelievers, the Christian Kingdom he’s evoking shares more with The Caliphate than with the secular ideals of American Democracy. And it’s doubly disturbing because it’s just a phrase that I would never want my president to use — an idea I don’t want the American president paying lipservice to — no matter what crowd he’s pitching to.

Andrew Sullivan tells us, oh, don’t worry about it, Barak’s not of that Bush-Dobson brand, he’s more of the Niebuhr-Tillich brand so it’s okay, he wasn’t really calling for The Kingdom. After all, he was in a church grubbing for votes and he’s really a much more subtle philosophy reading guy — so no worries.

The thing is, I’m not disturbed because I believe Obama wants The Kingdom, the Christian Kingdom right here in the USA. I don’t believe that this Harvard academic star, this worldly man with Muslim relatives wants the Christian Kingdom on earth. What I believe is that he is beginning to be willing to say anything to anyone to get elected. And that’s got me worried, and a little pissed off, because I had had the audacity to hope — after his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 — that he wasn’t going to be that kind of candidate.

On Friday, George Bush appeared to embrace the universal godhead, telling Al Arabiya: “Well, first of all, I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That’s what I believe.” Read more at WhiteHouse.gov.

Since the 1940s, Dr. Bronner sent the same message on his famous soap bottle labels: “Our Brother’s teacher of the Moral ABC, mason-tent-sandalmaker Hillel taught carpenter Jesus to unite all mankind free! All-One-God-Faith, as teach African shepherd-astronomers Abraham & Israel for 6,000 years since yr.1 Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One. All-one. Exceptions eternally? None!”

The annoyingly ad-full Beliefnet.com and Time magazine offer the 2008 election God-o-Meter (pronounced Gah-DOM-meter). It tracks “god talk” and “god talk effectiveness” from the presidential candidates and ranks them on a 1 to 10 scale, where 1 is a “secularist” and 10 is a “theocrat.” The accompanying blog details the latest campaign godjinx like when John McCain insists the US a Christian nation or Barack goes on his 40 Days of Faith and Family Tour or Gary Bauer gets on the Fred Thompson train.