[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]The Angry Anti-Religious Left (a superfluous phrase), spanning no more than 98 percent of liberals, is worried enough about King Swish’s re-election chances that they devoted heavy attention over the weekend to rapping Texas Gov. Perry’s Response Prayer Rally. The all-day Saturday was organized to offer prayers for a nation in crisis.

Imagine a politician mentioning religion aloud when Republicans know very well liberals have been trying since 1960 to drive the nasty thought from public education.

I am scandalized. I hope you are, too.

Mr. Perry hasn’t even announced his candidacy for President —that will come next Saturday. But the media bully boys on the Angry Left want to preview for him and his misguided supporters the kind of scalding bath he will be subjected to on an hourly basis once he enters the race. The bullies are daring Mr. Perry to run.

As with other major Republican figures, we know much more about their personal lives, than we know about the Idea-a-Minute Man in the White House.

On Saturday, before the Perry rally, The New York Times, which believes God died some time ago, plastered a battering ram critique of him across the top of two pages.

By Their Shape Ya Know ‘em

It isn’t difficult to find Republican haters in a country where King Swish tirelessly practices class warfare at the start of his daily television show. They are louder than a backfiring tractor — and frequently configured like one.

For those of us with imperfect memories, the boys at the Times led Saturday’s piece with the three worst Perry sins they could unearth after a months’-long investigation:

• One Sunday six years ago, Gov. Perry signed legislation requiring girls under 18 (the rigidly politically correct Times actually said “women under 18” — women?)to obtain parental consent before getting an abortion. (My word, Murgatroyd. For such dastardly behavior, I hope his blind paraplegic wife chased him out the back door with the strongest broom handle she could reach.)

In Unison, Let’s Faint in Shock

• A month after the Sept. 11 Muslim terrorist attacks, Gov. Perry bowed his head and actually said “Amen” to a prayer in the name of Jesus at a public school somewhere in East Texas where they must only have radicals. (Murgatroyd, this is getting serious. Call your nearest Muslim friend. See if he is available tonight to frighten the governor, his family and any other Republican whackadoo on Mr. Perry’s property.)

• Just four months ago when our beloved leader, Imam Obama, selflesslythinking of us, never himself, was out cooking up a few fundraising dinners for the unemployed poor and middle-class voters who can’t afford him, Gov. Perry was misbehaving again. He proclaimed April 22-23-24 as “Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.” (Thank imam you never will find such stupendous disobedience in Culver City — boo prayer, we say.)

The Times’ headline said: “Texas Rally Renews Debate Over the Boundaries of Perry’s Faith.”

Debate? Nobody was debating it except the libs among themselves.

The Times, which lauds itself daily for its critical news judgment, led its Sunday edition with a photo of the prayer rally spread across two-thirds of the top of page A-1. Like most liberals, the Times is incapable of sober analysis. And so their story mocked Mr. Perry and his faux religious faith. As did an essay farther back in the newspaper.

As a fitting caveat to the Sunday edition and the Times’s frustration with its own inept star player, King Swish, the lead story in their op-ed section was headlined:

“What Happened to Obama?”

My golly.

Could the Age of Enlightenment finally have reached the Angry Left in the media only three centuries after normal persons endured the epoch?

Forsooth, I was wrong, although the Blame Obama chorus is growing from the Angry Left.

The childlike essay was written by another slow-reasoning Georgia professor who barely edited the White House’s talking points, another reason the deadly dull, narrowly predictable Times may be en route to the Newspaper Cemetery.

Prof. Plodding brilliantly argued that Swish may not have had a stellar 2½ years, but it is not his fault. Look at the mess Mr. Bush left him. I hadn’t heard that before. What insight.

Prof. Plodding said that extremist Republicans, mainly Tea Partiers, are impeding the left-wingers’ Dimming Genius.

I had not heard that line before, either. How inventive.

Maybe a late-night comedian could rent the line.

Da devil made me do it?

Giddyap, Champ — Flip Wilson rides again?