Full disclosure – my first university was Colgate in Hamilton, New York which was founded in 1819 by a group of Baptists, including at least one of my ancestors, to train Baptist ministers. Another ancestor, a minister, may have been responsible for Grover Cleveland becoming President when, at an event for Cleveland’s opponent he referred to the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion”. This annoyed the hell out of the Irish Catholics in New York who voted for Cleveland, and carried the state and the election by just over a thousand votes. I’m quite aware of the possibilities of mixing pastors and politics, but it has historically been a Republican problem. In this election John Hagee is more suited to the role of Samuel Dickerson Burchard than anyone else, if the media would report on his words, especially concerning “Romanism”.

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The Associated Press reports on an effort to separate church and state: ‘An Evangelical Manifesto’ criticizes politics of faith

The statement, called “An Evangelical Manifesto,” condemns Christians on the right and left for using faith to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

“That way faith loses its independence, Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology,” according to the draft.

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The BBC reports that Spam reaches 30-year anniversary

The first recognisable e-mail marketing message was sent on 3 May, 1978 to 400 people on behalf of DEC – a now-defunct computer-maker.
…

The sender of the first junk e-mail message was Gary Thuerk and it was sent to advertise new additions to DEC’s family of System-20 minicomputers.

It invited the recipients, all of whom were on Arpanet and lived on the west coast of the US, to go to one of two presentations showing off the capabilities of the System-20.

Reaction to the message was swift, with complaints reportedly coming from the US Defense Communications Agency, which oversaw Arpanet, and took Mr Thuerk’s boss to task about it.

I was on the East Coast at the time, and did not receive the first spam message, although I seem to have received every one since then.