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Posted by Ira Sharkansky

Among the lessons in practical politics from the run-up to the Iowa caucuses are two examples on how to besmirch your major rival, while verging over the borders of the political correct, then apologize, and get your besmirch even more attention on national and state-wide media.

A key aide of Hillary Clinton got some space in the Washington Post, and then more widely, when he asked if it would not be likely that someone will ask questions about Barak Obama's youthful experimentation with drugs, and perhaps giving drugs to friends, or maybe even selling them.

A day later, the aide resigned, Hillary apologized and disowned the comments, but there they were again in the media. Insofar as the wife of the dishonored aide is the former Governor of New Hampshire and a candidate for the US Senate, and the Obama-Clinton competition will have another round in that state, it is fair to assume that we have not heard the last of this.

Lesson two comes from Mike Huckabee. When asked about Mitt Romney's Mormonism, he wondered if it was not true that Mormons believe that the devil and Jesus were brothers.

One does not have to be an expert on Evangelical theology to know that Satan is a major negative in their world view.

It did not take long for Huckabee to apologize to Romney for what he said was an innocent question, and not an effort to raise Romney's religion as a campaign issue. If there are some Evangelicals in Iowa who did not get the message the first time, they may get it now, along with Huckabee's assertion of being a good guy without any Satanic agenda.

When I lectured on this topic at the dinner table, Mattan responded with yet another indication of his decent Israeli education. He recommendation that I take a look at the first passages in the Book of Job. The literal translation is:

Now it fell upon a day, that the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. (1:6)

Does this mean that Satan was one of God's sons (and by Christian implication a brother of Jesus), or something else, perhaps an interloper among the sons of God. Some Christian translations emphasize a distinction between God's sons and Satan (According to the Contemporary English version, the passage is: "One day, when the angels had gathered around the LORD, and Satan was there with them"), but that adds something not in the Hebrew.

Some may claim that the Hebrew "Satan" is not the devil, but "the accuser", but that opens the door to complexities that are not apparent from a simple reading of the Hebrew text (????).

Assuming that Evangelicals are serious in accepting the Bible as true, it would appear that they, as well as the Mormons must reckon with the membership of God's family.

However, anyone who has read a bit about religion should not be surprised if the Evangelicals and others have their own ways of reading this passage, or simply ignore it. The faithful in different communities concede that the Bible's meaning is not always clear, and that it is important to chose an appropriate teacher.

What may be most important in all of this, including the apologies, is that voters in Iowa have been given reason to think that Barak Obama was a drug dealer, and that Mitt Romney worships the devil.