Back in June, I complained that I didn’t really understand the whole point of Twitter. After that, I discovered that some of my friends were on there, and we started following each other. And then, by who knows what confluence of hash tags and at-signed retweets, I began to accumulated followers, and to follow them some of their followers, and now I sort of get it. Every time I check my timeline–three or four times a day–there are 100 to 200 new tweets to look at, and always something funny or interesting. I’m following a whole lot of lefties, so I get many, many pithy statements in favor of health care reform. Thanks to Twitter, I’m actually feeling rather well-informed these days. Sometimes I know things before Todd does, and that’s never happened before.

I know what you’re thinking: Twitter isn’t journalism. But no, no, don’t worry … What I’m saying is that the people I follow tweet links to various news items and blogs, and I read a lot of those. I’d never have the patience and attention span to sit and read all the breaking stories on the New York Times’ website, as Todd does–but I can take in a surprising amount of data while standing in line at Starbucks waiting for a pair of teenagers to decide whether they want mocha chip frappuccinos with half-whip or two-thirds-caf blended lite caramel tuxedo smoothies.

And today has been something of a banner day, for you see, the cantankerous group of propagandists behind Conservapædia has decided that the Bible is too liberal, and has announced The Conservative Bible Project. No, I swear, I’m not making this up. I read about it on Pharyngula, and PZ has the link back to the original announcement. (I’m not going to link to it directly, because I have no particular desire to improve the site’s PageRank.)

The chief goal of The Conservative Bible Project is to remove liberally biased language that has crept into the good book over the centuries.* The proposed cure? Translate the King James Version into modern English. Because, of course, as anyone knows, if you’re striving for authenticity, the best way to go about it is to start with a problematic and antiquated translation and update it, making sure that you carefully weigh each and every phrase to ensure that it’s adequately biased in a particular predetermined way.

This project is so wrong-headed and doomed to failure that I can’t even begin to put into words how foolish I think it is. Good news, though: I don’t have to!

Check out #conservativebible on Twitter, and prepare to laugh. Here are a few of my favorites:

tedopon ACTS 3:3-4 A beggar saw Peter and John and asked for money. Peter looked at him and said “get a fucking job.”

Rocky1542 “The Lord giveth and Cigna taketh away…”

ladinah “And Jesus Wept” finally explained in missing verse for #conservativebible “…after he applyeth VapoRub”

Baconmints Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself, except mexicans, oh and women.

ZerlinaM Illustration of Jesus healing the sick from the #conservativebible

I contributed a couple myself. How could I resist?

In the beginning, God said “GIT R DONE!”

Love your neighbor as yourself… You DO live in a restricted, gated community, right?

Verily I say unto thee, ’tis easier for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle than 4 a rich man to tolerate a tax hike

Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies, the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins… Like Democrats.

Aaaaand, of course, there’s now a parallel thread, #liberalbible. Of course, it’s a lot less funny from the get-go, since there isn’t, in fact, a liberal bible project. (However, the Conservapædia people–if I’m not mistaken–have unironically tweeted that the New International Version is the liberal bible, and that’s hilarious.)

Plus–yawn–many of the quote-unquote jokes are about Clinton and Lewinsky. Yeah, okay, whatever. Please note that Bill Clinton was not–for example–slamming anti-gay legislation through Congress while cruising for sex in men’s rooms. It’s the hypocrisy, people, not the sex.

Many other so-called jokes are about how Obama is going to take our money. Sigh. Those would probably be funnier if taxes hadn’t actually been cut for about 95% of us. I doubt that it’s the other five percent who are slamming out #liberalbible tweets. It’s interesting, though, isn’t it? All this complaining of tax increases among people whose taxes have decreased? Someday perhaps I’ll come to understand how conservatives have succeeded in teaching people to argue and agitate against their own best interests.

But not tonight.

In the meantime, it’s come to my attention that there is, in fact, another bible rewrite underway. I’m not sure it’s a liberal bible, per se, though I think it’s a safe bet that no conservative bible would ever remove the prohibition on masturbation.

* “Crept in”? What am I saying? The liberal stuff was forced in by the liberally evil liberals and their evilly liberal liberalism.