Sinner.

Sinner.

GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said President Barack Obama’s administration “purged” mentions of God from the Democratic Party platform Wednesday. “I think it’s rather peculiar,” Ryan said on “Fox & Friends.” “It’s not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision. I’d guess you’d have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform. There sure is a lot of mention of government. I guess I would just put the onus and the burden on them to explain why they did all this, these purges of God.”

Uh oh. Someone's going to have some more explaining to do, it seems, because Paul Ryan is being a naughty, false-witness-bearing, stone-casting ... oh, what's the Biblical term? ... jerk Yes. This is now a thing. Yesterday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called it "disgraceful" that Democrats had chosen not to say God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God in their party platform—because everyone knows that the very best way to be a good, God-fearing person is to casually, and for politically exploitative purposes, take the Lord's name in vain.

Now Paul Ryan, who's been catching a wee bit of hell for his—oh, how to put this delicately? Blatant lying—is trying to score some cheap points by also clutching his pearls at the utter lack of theocratic devotion in the party platform. Which is pretty funny, considering that Paul Ryan is the same guy who claims that he's using his Catholic faith to help him calculate exactly how to end Medicare and food stamps and health care and all sorts of other things Jesus probably would have heartily endorsed because Jesus was actually pretty into all that taking-care-of-the-least-among-us stuff.

In fairness to Paul Ryan, he may not be as familiar with the Bible as, oh, say, Atlas Shrugged. After all, only one of those books is required reading for his staff because of the "sorely needed" instruction in "morality"—and it's not the one filled with Jesus.

That's why the Catholic bishops helped him out by explaining, in little itty bitty Ryan-sized words, how Ryan's budget was pretty much a mark of the Devil and was "unacceptable" for "moral and human reasons," as well as "unjustified and wrong."

Ryan, who is shocked—shocked!—that those godless Democrats "purged" God from their platform, decided to "respectfully disagree" with the leaders of his church, which everyone knows you're not allowed to do because the Catholic bishops are never wrong about anything, especially government policy, and if you disagree with them (respectfully or otherwise), you are violating their First Amendment rights and waging a war on religion and God and making the Founders very sad because they left that rotten socialist Europe place to create a perfect theocracy in America so shut up.

Paul Ryan also, by the way, got some extra help from prominent Catholic scholars on his confusion about God, who tried to use even itty-bittier Ryan-sized words:



“Our problem with Representative Ryan is that he claims his budget is based on Catholic social teaching,” said Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, one of the organizers of the letter. “This is nonsense. As scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor.” [...] “I am afraid that Chairman Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher Ayn Rand rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Father Reese. “Survival of the fittest may be okay for Social Darwinists but not for followers of the gospel of compassion and love.”

But oh well. Since Democrats didn't say "God" in their party platform—nor, by the way, did they include those oh-so-holy Republican declarations of just how much they hate gays and chicks and not-white people—Ryan thinks the "onus and the burden" is on Democrats to explain why they hate God. (At least he doesn't expect them to explain how "God" didn't make the final cut of the Constitution either.)

But since Ryan has yet to address his own onus and burden, maybe he should go first.