Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
The New York Times' Maureen Dowd's recent comments about the US having a nervous breakdown with the widespread reaction to Barack Obama, the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy and the like makes me think of an era when the country had a real nervous breakdown: the 1970's. In the wake of the 1960's, with all of …
Continue reading "Book Review: Andreas Killen's 1973 Nervous Breakdown"
It's amazing what happens when the shoe is on the other foot: Pentagon lawyers believe that online whistleblower group WikiLeaks acted illegally in disclosing thousands of classified Afghanistan war reports and other material, and federal prosecutors are exploring possible criminal charges, officials familiar with the matter said. A joint investigation by the Army and the …
Continue reading "Obama Becomes Nixon: Going After WikiLeaks"
Not in Florida, at least: Despite dumping record-breaking dollars into their maverick political campaigns, self-financed candidates Rick Scott and Jeff Greene trail their opponents heading into Tuesday's primary, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll released late Saturday. Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum now leads Scott 45-36 percent in the survey of likely Republican voters, reversing …
Continue reading "Self-Financing Isn't the Whole Deal In Elections"
I was encouraged to see the Anglican Curmudgeon's piece Keeping Religion out of Politics, and Vice Versa. You can see my immediate comments on that post, but it's heartening to finally see some movement on the "conservative" side of the debate over same sex civil marriage towards getting ride of civil marriage altogether. Earlier this …
Irrespective of what Obama's porte-parole might say: White House spokesman Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is." He commented on Air Force One as Obama headed for a vacation in Massachusetts …
Continue reading "There is Nothing Obvious About Barack Obama. And That Includes His Religion."
This is the third in a sporadic series on the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The previous article in the series is Catechises and Baptismal Regeneration. In the last piece, I discussed the whole issue of baptismal regeneration and how belief in same was not incompatible with a true transformation of the person …
Continue reading "Catechises, the Preparation for Baptism and Discipleship"
The Fifth Republic forces its people to stay in the middle course: Male tourists in France were being threatened with $48 fines for walking around without their shirts on, The Independent reported Monday. Locals in seaside resort towns including Cannes and St. Tropez demanded the move after they were sick of seeing Brits and other …
Continue reading "Burqas One Day, Shirtlessness the Next: The French Practice Égalité"
"The New Foundation" business didn't work for either Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter: Obama’s contribution was to be the New Foundation. “We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity–a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest,” he declared. Obama would repeat …
Continue reading "New Foundations (Obama's and Otherwise) Are Expensive"
The Washington Post, an elite institution in its own right, breaks down and admits the truth: A study scheduled for release Monday about the value of a college education, at least when it comes to the basics, has found the opposite to be true in most cases. Forget Harvard and think Lamar. Indeed, the Texas …
Continue reading "Victory at Last: You Learn More Away from Harvard, But…"
As the Anglican Curmudgeon points out: In the California case in Judge Walker's court, the principal defendants were Governor Schwarzenegger and the Attorney General, Jerry Brown. Both chose not to defend the constitutionality of the amendment, which had passed by a significant majority at the polls. (In doing so, they placed their personal views above …
Continue reading "The Standing Issue in the Proposition 8 Case Isn't a Done Deal"
Positive Infinity 