This rather lengthy article on the comments of Southern Baptist leader Richard Land had some things that were interesting to me.

Among them:

Asked why Evangelicals believe Mormons — whose church is officially called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — are not Christians and what that says about Jews, Land says most Evangelicals, as well as Catholics, consider Mormon beliefs to be beyond the parameters of apostolic Christianity.

“I would look upon Catholicism as an erroneous understanding of the Christian faith; that’s why I’m a Baptist, not a Catholic,” Land says. “I would look upon Mormonism as another faith in the same sense that I would look upon Islam as another faith. I think the fairest and most charitable way to define Mormonism would be to call it the fourth Abrahamic religion — Judaism being the first, Christianity being the second, Islam being the third, and Mormonism being the fourth. And Joseph Smith would play the same character in Mormonism that Muhammad plays in Islam.”

I love it when people who are not of a certain faith try to define what people in that faith believe. It usually comes out sounding strange to our ears.

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According to Rasmussen, Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader, has a 19 percent favorable rating.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now viewed favorably by 19% of American voters and unfavorably by 45%. Just 3% have a Very Favorable opinion while 22% hold a Very Unfavorable views.

Harry loves to hate President Bush and VP Dick Cheney, but they have favorable ratings in the 30s, significantly better than Reid.

But Harry can rest easy. His favorable rating is tied with one public figure: Scooter Libby.

One of my favorite stories from living in Brazil is the one about the thousands of Brazilians who regularly made the most amazing temple trek I know of. There are actually a lot of members (more than 60,000, according to the Church) who live in Manaus, Brazil, which is a city of more than 1 million people in the middle of the Amazon jungle.

There were no permanent roads to Manaus, so members would take a boat downriver to Belem. The boat took two to three days. Then, they would take a bus from Belem along the coast of Brazil all the way to Sao Paulo. The bus took about a week. Total travel time: 9-10 days by boat and bus.

These people are our modern-day pioneers.

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Add this story to the long list of evidences that there were pre-Columbus trips to the Americas.

Key graf:

“There is increasing evidence of multiple contacts with the Americas,” she said, “based on linguistic evidence and similarities in fish hook styles.” Physical evidence of human DNA from Polynesia has yet to be found in South America, she added.

I still remember a teacher in high school saying all of the native Americans came across the Bering Strait. For many years, this was one of my main objections to the Book of Mormon. And of course the fact that Polynesians were clearly in the Americas but there is apparently no Polynesian DNA is an interesting twist.

A Rudy Giuliani campaign official is trying to focus more attention (presumably negative) about Romney’s Mormon faith by directing media to the SL Tribune story on Romney’s supposed link to the “White Horse Prophecy.” See here for the story.

I personally don’t think these types of tactics will work, and they reflect badly on candidates trying to use them.

Meanwhile, McCain has raised a much more interesting and thought-provoking questions regarding Romney’s immigration policies. I wish the candidates would concentrate on real issues like these rather than on garbage regarding candidates’ religion.

UPDATE: The Giuliani campaign has apologized to Mitt.