How far outside the mainstream is John Hagee, though? I can never quite tell to what extent UK coverage of US fundamentalism is proportionate, and to what extent it's just chortling at Johnny Foreigner, but I thought that a reasonable minority in some parts of the US (such as Hagee's native Texas, where gay sex was legalised less than five years ago), and quite possibly an un-ignoreable fraction of Republican voters, were right behind ideas such as Catholics not being proper Christians, imminent apocalyptic end-times featuring Israel, Hurricane Katrina as a justifiable punishment for laissant les bons temps rouler, the UN as the Antichrist, that sort of thing. Is Hagee much worse than, say, Pat Robinson? Is it not taken as read that such people support Republicans, and Republicans at the right of the party at that? (And after all, this is about Hagee saying McCain would make a good president, not McCain saying Hagee would make a good president.)

Peter