First, I see you have fallen victim to the Leftist meme du jour. Bennett, though by no means a reasonable man, in this particular case was quoted out of context and was ridiculing the idea that a link between abortion and crime statistics was worth considering with his comments. So the comment that he made that people consider appalling was in fact a hypothetical example of something he considered a bad idea. Not to say I like Bennett, but dragging him over the coals for this one is the sort of idiot political discourse that is precisely the problem with US politics.

Actually, a lot of the prediction before the whole Germany horse trading began was that Merkel would be the one that gets screwed by the coalition. The SPD gets a few years where someone else gets to make some unpleasant reform decisions and they can sabotage her leadership enough it will be very difficult for her to increase her parties role.

Of course, its not really religion that is bad for you society, if it comes with pluralism and tolerance. There is an argument that with sufficient pluralism and tolerence, you are unlikely to have too much religion, of course.