There really is a demonstrable disparity in the coverage. Media Matters recently documented that articles mentioning Wright and Obama have appeared more than 12 times as often as those covering Hagee and McCain, in both The New York Times and The Washington Post combined, since Hagee's endorsement.

But the media-driven religious radical preacher connection isn't the only commonality shared by Obama and McCain. Fresh on the heels of the vituperative calumny Obama received for his association with former Weather Underground domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, yet another candidate for Helen Thomas to consider is Chicago Tribune editorial board member and political conservative Steve Chapman.

Chapman notes that McCain deserves the same sort of attention for his hypocrisy in accepting support from Nixon administration-approved domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy. Chapman explains that Liddy's participation in Watergate and other political scandals - which represented "one of the greatest threats to the rule of law" this nation has ever faced until currently - was a function of the same (if the polar opposite) motivation of the era as that which drove Bill Ayers' illegal acts, for which both served time. The difference, as Chapman notes, is that Liddy has retained his "penchant for extreme solutions".

But getting back to examining the religious version of voter propriety offender, there is yet another Republican-connected holy man who has expressed his own version of God Damn America and suffered no calumny for doing so.

On March 5, 1995, in Tarrytown, N.Y., Bush family friend, Republican Party supporter, and owner of The Washington Times Rev. Sun Myung Moon excoriated America. "America has become the kingdom of individualism, and its people are individualists," Moon preached, "You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan." Reporter Robert Parry notes that Moon has escaped media scrutiny despite his extensive expressions of hatred regarding America. Financially bailing out Bush family members and sycophants must really help!

Once beholden to Moon for their rescue, such Bush family remoras saw to it that a room in the Senate Dirksen Office Building was made available to the Moonies so that Moon could be crowned the "King of Peace". Moon's followers hailed the 2004 "ceremony" as proof the U.S. government was bowing down to this self-proclaimed new Messiah.

So what does this have to do with McCain's connection to wacko shamans? McCain's current chief political adviser Charlie Black helped arrange that event, so can the apple fall far from the tree? Logic dictates a 'NO' answer.

All is not lost regarding the religious community. Joining the growing list of candidates for Helen Thomas' Seekers of the Lost Truth are the more than 80 evangelicals - including well-known evangelical author and speaker Os Guiness and Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw, who have signed the Evangelical Manifesto [to be released 5/7/8], which damns the use of faith for political purposes. The Conservative Christian signers of these anti-political theses believe the word "evangelical has lost its religiousness, and that Christians have become 'useful idiots' for one political party or another".