Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
I can't much blame this ex-Marine (if such exists) for throwing in the towel: When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan. A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in …
Continue reading "Matthew Hoh’s Resignation: Losing Our Focus in Afghanistan"
But former McCain-Palin staffer Robert Heiler does it just the same: In many countries - as the history of Latin America alone illustrates - the institutions and the culture offer a weak defense against personality cult movements. In America, the defense is strong, buttressed by the First, Second, Fifth, Eighth and Tenth Amendments to the …
Continue reading "Underestimating Obama’s Personality Cult is Dangerous"
It's not very often that I do what I would call "heartwarming" stories on this blog. Perhaps I should do more; in the world we live in, we could use a few every now and then. But so many of them are, to put it bluntly, "hokey" or trite. This one is an exception. One …
Continue reading "The Strange and Wonderful Story of Sister Germaine"
I've gotten a couple of "canned" comments (they sure look like they're canned) about my piece on Rush Limbaugh and the NFL. I think I've found the cannery. In looking at the IP info, both of them come from the "Palomar Community College District" in California. Obviously one or more people with connections to this …
Continue reading "The Palomar Community College District, Rush Limbaugh and the NFL"
Kim Dwyer took strong exception to my statement in "Think Before You Convert" that "(t)he Catholic view of the Mass as a sacrifice–which is tied up with their view of the church–is unbiblical." Given that this is an important subject (Abu Daoud also dealt with it recently) I think some elucidation is in order. Side …
Continue reading "Why I Don’t Agree With the Concept of the “Sacrifice of the Mass”"
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn needs to think twice about quoting Chairman Mao. Let's consider these two well-known quotes, from Mao's 1927 classic "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan:" For the present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in China's central, southern …
Continue reading "Reply to Anita Dunn: Quoting Mao Cuts Both Ways"
Indeed they don't, according to Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi: AFRICAN Anglicans do not need the Pope’s intervention over consecration of gay bishops, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, has said. Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday announced new initiatives allowing Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements …
Continue reading "“African Anglicans do not need the Pope’s intervention”"
This week's music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks is Santana's "Black Magic Woman," a song that got a good deal of radio play at the time the novel is set. But I'd like to digress a bit and use it to illustrate how academics (and I am one, part time at least) …
Continue reading "Santana: Black Magic Woman, and the Isolation of Academia"
Not Conservative Margaret Thatcher, nor Socialist Francois Mitterand: History comes back to haunt us. Just over 20 years ago, the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "Britain and western Europe are not interested in the unification of Germany. The words written in the Nato communique may sound different, but disregard …
Continue reading "The Hard Truth: Some Didn’t Want the Germans Back Together"
They're at it again with credit: Earlier this month, a congressional oversight panel released its first analysis of the Obama administration’s $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), an effort to keep 4 million families from losing their homes. The analysis shows that the Treasury, in trying to keep people in homes they can’t afford, …
Continue reading "Our Subprime Federal Government, and a Lesson for the Church"
Positive Infinity 