Evangelical: Republicans are wrestling with what to do about the Senate candidacy of Alabama’s Judge Roy Moore, 70, who’s been accused of sexual contact with teenagers while he was in his 30s. Polling shows the race that was once a slam dunk for Moore is now a tossup.

But conservatives are loath to ditch Moore for fear of letting a Democrat win, narrowing the senate majority to a margin of one. President Trump, who’s been accused of sexual improprieties himself, has yet to weigh in with a strong opinion.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” White House legislative director Marc Short said, “There’s no Senate seat more important than the notion of child pedophilia.”

One of Moore’s defenders, the Alabama state auditor, compared a man dating a teenage girl to Christianity’ first couple. “Take Joseph and Mary,” he said. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

Jesus didn’t grow up in the Bible Belt.

Kathryn Brightbill, an advocate for home-schooled children who grew up as an evangelical, writes in the LA Times that older men pursuing teenage girls is not uncommon among evangelicals. She writes, “The allegations against Roy Moore are merely a symptom of a larger problem. It’s not a Southern problem or an Alabama problem. It’s a Christian fundamentalist problem.”

She says, “The evangelical world is overdue for a reckoning. Women raised in evangelicalism and fundamentalism have for years discussed the normalization of child sexual abuse. We’ve told our stories on social media and on our blogs and various online platforms, but until the Roy Moore story broke, mainstream American society barely paid attention. Everyone assumed this was an isolated, fringe issue. It isn’t.”

Strong Men: Continuing his tour of admiration for dictators and strong men, President Trump in the Philippines said he has a “great relationship” with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the murders of an estimated 6,000 drug dealers and users in his country. In a joint appearance, both Trump and Duterte ignored questions about human rights abuses.

The Tax Men: Both the Senate and the House are moving ahead this week with plans for major tax reform in an effort to give themselves and President Trump a single major legislative victory in their first year controlling all three branches of government.

Major disagreements have already surfaced. The House would give business a major tax cut and change the rates for all Americans, but not without doing some unpopular things. The Senate would eliminate the tax deduction for local property taxes, thereby raising taxes for homeowners, particularly in high tax states. The House wants to keep the deduction for the first $10,000.

The Republicans need to pass their tax cuts to prove they can pull themselves together, but they risk raising resistance from the other side.

World: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake along the Iran-Iraq border has killed at least 340 people. When the death toll is that high early in the reporting of an event, it’s likely to go higher. The epicenter was in a rural and mountainous area. — Russian wingsuit flyer Valery Rozov, a daredevil among daredevils, was killed when he crashed into a cliff after leaping off the 22,349-foot-high mountain Ama Dablam in the Himalayas. Rozov, who was sponsored by the Red Bull energy drink, was on a quest to fly off the top of the highest peaks on seven continents.

Nation: At least three people were stabbed yesterday in an incident at the giant Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. Witnesses said the attacker was talking to himself before he started stabbing people.

We Hear: The soft-edged New York gossip columnist Liz Smith, who’s often described as “legendary,” has died at age 94. For 33 years at several New York newspapers, Smith’s name was as big or bigger than the players and celebrities she wrote about.

Her biggest scoop was news of Donald Trump’s first divorce.

Smith wined and dined with her subjects to mine them for material — from Sinatra to Madonna — often becoming personal friends and leaving out some of the most salacious stuff she might have published. She didn’t particularly want to hurt anyone.

She was accused of conflict of interest for being friends with her subjects, a sin in the news business. She told the NY Times, “I don’t have to be pure, and I’m not. I mean, I am not a reporter operating on life-and-death matters, state secrets, the rise and fall of governments, and I don’t believe you can do this kind of job without access.”

She sat on a tidbit about herself as well. She was gay.

The Loser Bowl: The NY Giants, who entered the season with Super Bowl hopes, went one and seven for the season so far, until yesterday, when they lost to San Francisco which had had lost all nine of its games until meeting the Giants. It’s a battle for the first draft pick.

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