Well of course he would cross his fingers in some juvenile way in order to fail to fulfill the duties of the office as an appellate judge. He is, after all, a Democrat.

Good ol' Benny Franks. What a guy. He'll tell reporters at the El Paso Times that he's an atheist, but when he gets confronted on this in Bowie County, smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, he'll deny ever making that claim. He'll tell the good voters what he thinks they want to hear.

It's not about atheism, lack of morals, or his desire to be elected. It's about how he won't even stand by his own convictions. How can we trust a man like that to make sound decisions that affect the daily lives of Texans?

The thoughts of Linda on 18 October 2006 - 12:05 Central+ + + + +

Inconsistency could be a serious charge here, Linda. Unfortunately, you've provided no documentation for your claim. Furthermore, your claim was never advanced in the GOP press release I quoted.

So I just spent about five minutes trying to track down substantiation. What I found was a Law.com article by "Mary Alice Robbins, Texas Lawyer" advancing an argument -- which I find very believable -- that Franks was misquoted from the start:

The Republican Party's allegation that Franks is an atheist stems from a June 18, 2002, article published in the El Paso Times, after the Texas Democratic Party held its state convention in the far west Texas city.

As noted in the article, Democrats on the party's platform committee debated whether to drop "God" from a sentence on the first page of the committee's platform report that read: "We want a Texas where all people can fulfill their dreams and achieve their God-given potential."

The article quotes Franks, a member of the platform committee, as saying, "I'm an atheist, [and] this does not bother me. I'm a pragmatist."

Franks says the article misquoted him and what he said was, "Let's say I'm an atheist. I still have no problem with this platform, because I'm a pragmatist." What he was saying, Franks says, is that, if he were an atheist, he would not be offended by the reference to God in the platform.

That sounds entirely plausible to me. Certainly, it gives me plenty of room to believe the man about his own religious beliefs. (That article even explains why the GOP press release mentions the Democratic platform, which until now seemed totally irrelevant.) So now you've raised the possibility that the GOP article is not only prejudicial but also inaccurate. Thanks for pointing that out.