Are we allowed to question the irrational beliefs of political candidates?

This is probably going to be one of those posts that I make, regret, and later take down. However, in my defense, I wrote this one dead sober.

This morning an editorial from Washington Post editorialist David Ignatius appeared in my copy of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

It is an absolutely excellent editorial and I was really thrilled to see it in print. In his article Mr. Ignatius argues how absolutely appalled the founding fathers of our country would be to see the degree to which religion has been infused into our political debate.

As I said, it is an excellent editorial and I strongly encourage you to read it here.

I wanted to tell Mr. Ignatius how much I enjoyed his editorial so I wrote him an email. I told him that as pleased as I was to hear his message that, frankly, I feel that whenever someone raises this topic it generally falls on deaf ears; at least on anyone who doesn't already agree with that view to begin with.

As I was writing the email it occurred to me that I was sending a message to an open minded free thinker who was also a member of the press. It raised another question in my mind that I have been pondering a lot about lately.

The question is this. Does the press have a responsibility to question how rational a politician is, especially one who is running for high office? Apparently, if the irrational belief is based on the politicians religious views then the answer is unequivocally a big "NO".

To quote the reply I received from Mr. Ignatius exactly he wrote this:

Dear Mr. Ratcliff:

You are right in saying that we do in the news media not delve into the details of people's religious faith. I think that's as it should be.

Thanks for writing to me.

David Ignatius

So, it works like this: If a politician, let's say a guy named Dennis Kucinich, says he saw a UFO then you can pretty much treat him like an insane lunatic in the press (even though he may, in fact, have actually seen a UFO.)

Now, let's take for example a politician named Mitt Romney. Now, he believes that an Angel came and spoke to a guy named Joesph Smith and this angel handed him some magic golden plates, written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that, strangely, contained word for word verbatim passages from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Now, that..that..you can't say anything about.. even though this is a guy running for a job that does, if I understand things correctly, require some pretty serious critical thinking skills.

Oh well, I will never figure this thing out...