Thumbs Down for Ashcroft

Roger Ebert takes time off from movie reviewing and snack bar raiding so he can absolutely go off on the Bush administration's take on public prayer and AG John Ashcroft especially.

Ebert identifies two kinds of prayer, the "vertical" and the "horizontal." The former is good, the latter is bad. Suitably brief theology from the man who reduced movie reviews to digit flexing.

And while not an airtight argument, you gotta hand it to a guy so sure of himself he can write of the Bushies:

Their faith is like Dial soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners have been discarded.

Ouch. Not even worth renting then?