Issues for the blog today
Let's fill the page up today.
- My former denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association is very shrill about church-state separation, but wait, that's only for those churches with plus signs on them. Seems it's perfectly ok for the UUA Washington Office to distribute a church bulletin insert telling UUA members how to lobby their Senators to oppose the Republican effort to end the filibuster. Somehow I doubt Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, will be on their case.
- Lino Graglia writes on the real lawmakers in America, our judges, and opines that our Constitution has become a dead letter because of four words in the Fourteenth Amendment that have a very fluid meaning.Death by Due Process.
- Wesley J. Smith, of the Discovery Institute writes in the Weekly Standard The English Patient, a case where a patient may face involuntary death by dehydration against their will because in a system of socialized medicine, life and death matters do not belong to patients, but to the doctors treating them.
- Links on the filibuster deal:
Senator John Cornyn
Andrew McCarthy.
Polipundit.
National Review Online editors' opinion.
My opinion: Don't know what to think yet. I'm glad to see Priscilla Owen and William Pryor in. I don't like that filibusters are likely to continue. The Democrat's idea of "extreme" is "anyone nominated by President Bush" or who believes the Constitution is actually a written document with words that mean something and not something else.
- Mark Davis - Where the Bible Meets the Ballot Box. (Dallas Morning News, subscription required) God is not a Democrat either it seems. Here's an excerpt:
there are plenty of issues that don't have natural roots in faith. No preacher can claim to know God's wishes on taxes, Social Security reform, gun control or a host of other concerns. They can try, as when the left tries to measure compassion only through the lens of government expenditure.
Most Republicans – and most people of faith – believe genuine compassion comes from our individual hearts and pocketbooks. And the most genuine path of devotion to the Christian God leads right through the church of the believer's choice.
- Dish up a bowl of Frosted Flakes and curl up with the original animated The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger and who sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (without credit) has passed away. A grrreat voice indeed.
- What do I think about Star Wars ROTS? (Would it make more money if they made Star Wars ROCKS?) I'll be more generous than most reviewers. I thought it was basically an entertaining movie, though the path to the dark side for Anakin was a tortured process which defies believability, though maybe I should give it a break. I did something similar a long time ago, turning my back on God, and looking back on that time of my life, I find it hard to believe I believed "the emperor's promise" too. Ok, it's plausible, but still he seems to do a most egregious thing (I won't mention it here) too easily, just after crying out "What have I done?" after doing something a smidge less evil. Not impossible, but clumsy, unless the Dark Side had some kind of enchanting force on him. As for the Jedi Council, what a real bunch of idiots they were. Trusting Skywalker to spy on the emporer while denying him the role of Jedi Master? What were they thinking? Spoilers? Not many to worry about; you know how it ends if you saw Star Wars Episode IV, and in that sense, it's kindof weird watching this movie. The only new thing to learn in this movie is how Darth Vader gets his suit.
Posted by Joel Fuhrmann at May 24, 2005 12:14 PM