Rep. Paul Ryan, seen here telling the crowd why good Jesus-based values demand we cut Food Stamps and meal assistance for seniors yet again because those kids and old people will probably just trade that food for abortions or something. Probably.

Via my colleague Hunter at Daily Kos — The most interesting thing about Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Forum being held this week is that it exists at all. Ralph Reed, for those precious few of you who do not remember recent political history, is a crook. He is a political scammer who worked with Jack Abramoff in a swindle of Native American tribes and conservative Christians alike, a scam that went to the heart of the conservative movement but in which every last person save Abramoff himself has undergone a magical conversion back into respectability based essentially on the same scam as they started out with, which is duping Good Christian People out of their money.

So to have Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Allen West, Ron Johnson, Rick Santorum, Gohmert-Perry-Bachman-Palin-Cain-and-everyone-else-who-is-anyone in far-right conservatism eagerly climb aboard the good ship Ralph Reed for his latest little shindig should tell you all you need to know about the sincerity of the whole movement. He’s a lobbyist who got caught in a money laundering scandal, and he was back lobbying and collecting checks in no time flat because, bluntly, all the conservatives currently surrounding him were just fine with that. Just don’t get caught again, Ralph, and everyone will go along with the political scammer running a supposed morality-based movement. Everyone involved is exactly that shallow. … Read the whole list of religious scam bullet points here.