Below is a selection of written comments by Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.  Both bloggers are now employed by the John Edwards campaign.  Click on the dates to link to the original blog pieces. 

Amanda Marcotte:

June 14, 2006:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

"Protestant anti-choice assholes are on the horizon."

October 9, 2006:

Discussing limbo: 

"Yes, that Peter Abelard. Which strikes me as just a nice little extra detail because there’s a pragmatic reason that the Vatican might be a little hesistant to come right out and say that there’s no limbo (definition here, for those who don’t know much about Catholicism) is because the concept is wielded by everyday Catholics to explain where the souls of unborn babies go, which is just an extra way to guilt trip women who have abortions. But it’s sort of a balancing act, as far as I can tell, because as most people understand it, unbaptized children go to limbo but when Jesus returns, they all get to go to heaven. So it’s a way to guilt trip women who have abortions without casting god as such an uncruel monster as to throw souls into hell that never even had a shot at sinning. So that’s limbo: it sucks enough to make women feel guilty about abortion, but it doesn’t suck so much as to run people off.

"I suspect Pope Ratz will give into the urge eventually to come out and say there’s no limbo and unbaptized babies go straight to hell. He can’t help it; he’s just a dictator like that. Hey, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw. The alternative is to let Catholic women who get abortions feel that it’ll all work out in the end, which is just not doable, due to that Jesus-like compassion the Pope is so fond of. Still, it’s going to be bad PR for the church, so you can sort of see why the Pope is dragging ass.

"Which all brings me to recommending this great post by Austin Cline at Jesus’ General about why authoritarian types are so damn interested in cobbling people’s sex lives and meddling around in people’s private sexual decisions, like in this case why the Catholic church is so interested in making sure that people can’t make the perfectly sound decision to limit their family size while enjoying a healthy sex life—either you’re going to have to forgo birth control or you’re going to have to feel guilty to the point where you fear you’re casting babies into hellfire, by their standards. It’s a way to disrupt people’s lives so the church can get more control" 

December 26, 2006:

"And, needless to say, the Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics."

Melissa McEwan:

April 19, 2005:

"Da New Pope (as Ezra would say) doesn’t like da faggots. As anyone who’s spent more than five seconds hanging around this joint knows, here at Shakespeare’s Sister, we likes da faggots, and so we don’t likes da new pope...

"This gay-hating bigot was just made head of the largest network of institutionalized homophobia in the universe...

"I reject this pope, I reject his church, and I reject its teachings."

February 21, 2006:

From a piece titled “What don’t you lousy motherfuckers understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?”:

“The unmitigated temerity of calling themselves the ‘Pro-Family’ Network while they try to undermine gay families is just about enough to send me permanently around the bend. And what’s this bullshit about children deserving to be ‘in that relationship’? If you’re so bloody passionate about making sure kids have a mom and a dad, then surely you’re spending at least as much time and effort on deadbeat parents and trying to criminalize divorce for couples with children, right? No? Pretty much just focused on preventing gays from giving homes to unwanted children? What a fucking surprise…"

“Seriously, these wankers need to fuck off.”

July 4, 2006:

"Who could disagree? Christians really have become strangers in America. All they've got anymore is a Christian president with an almost exclusively Christian cabinet whose biggest supporters are conservative Christians to whom he panders relentlessly, including appointing two openly Christian justices to the Supreme Court, an almost entirely Christian Congress, who starts each day's session with a prayer, guaranteed freedom of religion, money that says "In God We Trust," a pledge of allegiance that describes us as "one nation under God," television networks who will accept advertising from conservative religious groups but not liberal political groups, schools who are incorporating a religious belief into science classes, gays being denied marriage in order to protect its "sanctity," women denied access to emergency birth control for no legitimate health reasons but because some religious people have a problem with it, Catholic communities being built in Florida, Museums of Creationism springing up, laws still on the books that respect Christians' holy day (like in Indiana, where you still can't shop for a car or buy booze on a Sunday), and churches not required to pay taxes."

November 1, 2006:

"I believe [link to poll stating nearly half of Americans are unsure if God exists]  is something for which President Bush can take some much-deserved credit, as long as he’s willing to share it with his wingnut Christofascist base." 

November 21, 2006:

"…it's difficult to imagine a time in which Christianity wholly submits to the prevailing view of science and ends its reign of persecution against the LGBT community. This time, they are not going after one man, but millions of people, and some of Christianity's most prominent leaders -- including the Pope -- regularly speak out against gay tolerance. In America, many Christian leaders actively pursue discriminatory legislation, seeking to limit the rights of the LGBT community throughout society. Should they eventually embrace the scientific view this time, they will have a lot more for which to answer -- which certainly means their reluctance to admit their error is much greater."

November 29, 2006:

From a piece titled “On Cunts”:

"And I love the word cunt. I use it like it's going out of style, mostly when referring to my own or talking to one of my Brits (to whom the word is about as alarming as oatmeal). I love it specifically because it has so much power in America. I love it when some dude calls me a cunt intending to deliver the ultimate insult, and I can effortlessly take the wind out of his sails by replying, "Fucking right I am. Queen Cunt of Fuck Mountain, and don’t you forget it, son." I'm all for reclaiming that shit—but reclaiming it is about wearing it yourself and wielding it ironically, which is necessarily as a compliment, not an insult. If I call my girlfriend "a beautiful cunt" for expertly handling a sexist prig, that's got reappropriative power. If I call her "a dumb cunt" because she does something foolish, not so much.

"Sometimes in the past I have used cunt as an insult. (When CNN invited Ann Coulter to comment on the 2004 presidential debates, I sniffed, "I didn’t realize they had officially transformed into the Cunt News Network.") I'm not defending it; I can't. If someone had called me on it, they'd have been right, because, let's face it, I love using the word that way. I love its power to demean so neatly, so economically, and so completely. It has so much gorgeous power that it's almost irresistible. And any argument I tried to use to defend my right to call someone a cunt—not ironically, not as a compliment—would be total and complete bullshit. I wouldn’t possibly try to claim that using it that way isn't nasty, when the reason I love it is because it is.

"So I know damn well if I call someone a cunt to demean them, I'm going to get taken the woodshed, and rightfully so, and if I try to rationalize it, I'm full of shit. There it is.

"And anyone who's interested in being honest will admit that they feel exactly the same way when they use cunt as an insult, or wax rhapsodic about a member of Congress wiping corporate cum from her lips with a cocktail napkin. They feel good. They feel potent unleashing such powerful weapons. It's, like, totally punk and shit."