Defining the Issues -- A Methodist Witness

re: defining the issues that divide the church...

Jesus Christ is "Our Vehicle to the Divine?" The Episcopal Church is in Big Trouble

re: Albert Mohler looks at some of what the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori, has been saying in interviews...

open book: Wha' Happened?

re: in a post about Pope Benedict, Amy Welborn says, "...But I have to say, when I read items like this, I don't see pessimism. I see optimism that eventually, when presented with the truth, people will eventually find their way to it. Don't you think that has marked almost every talk that has come from Benedict? A conviction that, first of all, God is real, human beings are made by God, in his image, and find their peace in Him. (yes, Augustinian, indeed.) All of the competing voices and temptations out there will eventually fail us, individually and collectively, and we'll eventually figure out that what God is offering us is not a prison sentence, but a key to unlock the prison in which we've locked ourselves..."...

Independent Women's Forum: And We’re Not Threatening to Move Out of the Country, Either

re: "Mark Shea points out a crucial difference between Republicans and Democrats: The former don’t sign up for psychotherapy after they lose an election..."...

Independent Women's Forum: Will we be humiliated in Iraq?

re: "Liberals see Iraq as Vietnam Redux. But now in the (London) Spectator, Charles Moore compares the possible effects of a U.S. stand-down in Iraq to the effect of England’s failure of nerve at Suez—an idea both so striking and so distressing (especially in light of the midterm elections) that I am breaking Inkwell’s unofficial ban on discussing articles that require registration to mention it..."...

Germany Divided | Deutsche Welle

re: special section with articles on Germany during the Cold War, and on efforts to reunify since then...

Katarina Witt: The New Queen of German TV | NEWS | Deutsche Welle | 10.11.2006

re: former ice skating champion hosts a celebrity reality show called Stars on Ice...

Eastern Europe Draws Veil of Silence Over Communist Past | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 03.03.2006

re: "...The pervasive presence of informers and collaborators during the communist era is an issue that has never been addressed at a political level in Hungary. Even so, it's a skeleton in the closet of public consciousness that refuses to go away...[snip]...Political observers believe that not only former communists have a vested interest in keeping the files under lock and key -- they believe that parliamentary parties across the board see the Hungarian people's reluctance to banish the ghosts of the last few decades as a natural turning away from the past. / But given that some 150,000 Hungarians are thought to have collaborated with the secret police, it seems likely that those ghosts will catch up with the public soon..."

Now the GOP Is For Affirmative Action? by Harry Stein, City Journal Autumn 2006

re: the fight for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) had to be done without Republican leaders...

Supreme Court Debates Best Method to Execute a Baby by Matt Bowman

re: notes from someone who was at the Supreme Court's hearing on partial-birth abortion...

Decent Films Guide - Search

re: movie reviews of five Zorro movies, 1920-on...

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: What Katharine Jefferts Schori Does Not Say

re: "...I think no one on “Mere Comments” has commented yet on the sermons preached by the Episcopal Church’s new Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at her investiture and installation on November 4 and 5, 2006. Maybe they're not worth much comment. They do not include predictably controversial statements (such as her reference to "Mother Jesus" at General Convention 2006) but the sermons are more remarkable for what they do not say:/Bishop Schori’s sermons make no mention of the cross, nor of Jesus' death, nor of His rising again. Neither sermon uses the word "Gospel" (or the phrase "good news"). Neither sermon mentions Father, Son, or Holy Spirit (though the word "Spirit" does appear.) Jesus is not called Lord in either sermon; and somehow in her November 5 All Saints’ Day sermon, she managed to avoid saying “Christ” or “Christian” altogether..."...

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Hungarian Cardinal a Communist Informer

re: "The Hungarians did not start releasing the files of the Communist secret police until 1997. Historians are going through them and discovering unpleasant things. The American press has not mentioned anything about the discoveries, but Der Spiegel has a long article, “Verehrter Verräter,” and there are additional articles here, here, here, and here. /Cardinal Paskai, who was primate of Hungary until he retired in December 2002, was publicly a “peace priest” (the darlings of the left) and secretly an informer for the Communist Secret Police from 1965 to 1974. He had the code name Tanár, Teacher. During that time he wrote reports on priests and religious..."...[snip]..."Not only was Paskai informing on his fellow priests, the majority of the Hungarian delegation to the Second Vatican Council were in fact secret police informers, and in 1977 alone 421 priests informed on their fellow Catholics..."...

The Paragraph Farmer: Tiptoeing through the tulips

re: looking at the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis Collins...

MI5: 30 terror plots being planned in UK | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

re: "MI5 has identified 30 major terrorist plots being planned in Britain and is targeting more than 1,600 individuals actively engaged in promoting attacks here and abroad, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the agency, warns today. /The 30 plots are the most serious of many more planned by some 200 British-based "networks" involved in terrorism, she said in a speech seen by the Guardian. In a gloomy assessment of the home-grown terrorist threat, MI5 says most of those involved are British-born, and most are connected with al-Qaida..."...

News from Agape Press: Silver Dollar City -- Where Management Makes a Difference in Employees' Lives

re: some of the story behind a longtime family friendly tourist attraction in Branson, Missouri...

OpinionJournal - Extra: End of the Revolution

re: Dick Armey says, among other things, "I've always wondered why Republicans insist on acting like Democrats in hopes of retaining political power, while Democrats act like us in order to win."...

Power Line: Forum Post of the Day

re: more thoughts on the election and where we go from here...

OregonLive.com: Election Updates from The Oregonian

re: "Kulongoski presses his agenda for a bluer Oregon/SALEM - Gov. Ted Kulongoski said Wednesday he plans to take full advantage of Oregon's new political order and his resounding reelection to push an agenda that includes spending a record $6 billion on public schools over the next two years and raising taxes on corporations and smokers. / "I look upon the election as affirmation of the direction I want to go," Kulongoski said at his first post-election news conference..."...

Wright American Fiction (1851-1875)

re: "This is a collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,763 unedited, 1,124 fully edited and encoded) by 1,456 authors. See this page for more information. Collection last updated on September 3, 2005. MARC Records are available for the entire collection."...

DigitalBookIndex: Search by Author (eBooks, eTexts, On-Line Books, eDocuments

re: entry on John Townsend Trowbridge 1827-1916...

Scotsman.com Heritage & Culture - World War II

re: articles on World War II, and its legacy...

Scotsman.com Heritage & Culture - Scotland's People - An Edinburgh real-life James Bond hero

re: a Scotsman who helped the Danish Resistance in World War II...

Lonely, Flickering Light - Prison Fellowship

re: Kristin Wright writes about Adoniram Judson and the church in Burma, and the persecution today of Burmese Christians...

The Resurrection of Pearl Buck

re: Pearl Buck has become popular in China, even at the higher academic levels...

Petrona: Meaning of life

re: links to "Two articles on the unfashionable but essential characteristic of taking responsibility for one's actions..."...

Brandywine Books" Let's Cultivate Simplicity and Solitude

re: Phil shares some good suggestions from A. W. Tozer...

Eject! Eject! Eject!: MAKE A CHOICE

re: "...My friends, this is time to make a choice. We have suffered a very large defeat tonight, and there is nothing now that we can do about that except decide on how we wish to face it. We have been given an opportunity to show what losing with honor should look like. Do not wail and cry. Do not shout CHEATERS! or whine about media coverage. And most especially do not blame the American people. They are not idiots and they are not sheep..."...

hat tip: Lars Walker

A different campaign: Orthodox congressional candidates bring Jewish text study techniques to campaigning

re: two Republican candidates in Maryland set out to make a difference this year...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

re: a mostly glass-half-full look at the election results...

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts

re: John O. McGinnis, professor at Northwestern University's School of Law, discusses the books "Does American Democracy Still Work?" by Alan Wolfe and "Our Undemocratic Constitution" by Sanford Levinson...

No Left Turns : Occidentalism and the Intellectuals

re: John Moser on the book Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. He pulls the quote: "Where the free market dominates, as in the United States, intellectuals feel marginalized and unappreciated, and are inclined to be drawn to politics with grander pretensions. Taking their freedoms for granted, they become easy prey for enemies of the West."...

An Overdue Reckoning

re: Dean Barnett makes some suggestions on how to deal with the Republican losses (graciously) and how to go forward. He also isn't buying some of the excuses people are putting out...

Bridget Johnson on California on National Review Online

re: Bridget Johnson says it's time to let up on the California bashing, because California, overall, is not that different from the rest of the country...

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Bangladesh hails 'messiah' Zidane

re: former rags-to-riches football star receives a hero's welcome in Bangladesh...

The Scotsman - Business - BBC regional TV news network to benefit local press, says chief

re: "THE BBC plans to buy news and content from local papers across Britain for its planned network of local TV stations, the corporation's director-general said yesterday. / Mark Thompson proposed a partnership with local newspapers to avoid a head-on collision as television and newspapers moved into broadcasting on the web..."...

Intrepid gets stuck in the mud

re: the plan to move the USS Intrepid from its pier to a shipyard for refurbishing was derailed by muck in the river. Museum officials say they might try again at the next full-moon tide, Dec. 8...

In the shadow of the noose, Saddam softens - Los Angeles Times

re: "BAGHDAD -- A subdued Saddam Hussein, already sentenced to death in a human rights trial that concluded Sunday, walked into a courtroom again today and called on warring Iraqis outside to let bygones be bygones. "I call upon all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile, and shake hands," the former dictator said after recounting tales of how both the Prophet Mohammad and Jesus Christ both showed forgiveness to their enemies..."...

FIRST THINGS: On the Square

re: Richard Stith writes, "Why do many pro-choice people find our arguments against early abortion not just unconvincing but absurd?...[snip]... I submit that pro-life arguments seem absurd to any listener who has in the back of the mind a sense that the embryo or fetus is being constructed in the womb..."...

FrontPage magazine.com :: American Mourning by Jamie Glazov

re: the book America Mourning: The Intimate Story of Two Families Joined by War, Torn by Beliefs, by Melanie Morgan and Catherine Moy, about the families of friends Casey Sheehan and Justin Johnson, both of whom died in action...

Michelle Malkin: John Kerry: Uniting the armed services

re: another banner, this one displayed at the Army-Air Force Game. It reads (all in caps in original): We support those not as smart as John Kerry. On the left it has Go Army and what looks like a coat of arms. On the right, it has Go Air Force and what looks like another coat of arms...

Professor's Bigfoot Research Criticized - Examiner.com

re: "...Jeffrey Meldrum holds a Ph.D. in anatomical sciences and is a tenured professor of anatomy at Idaho State University. He is also one of the world's foremost authorities on Bigfoot, the mythical smelly ape-man of the Northwest woods. And Meldrum firmly believes the lumbering, shaggy brute exists.

That makes him an outcast - a solitary, Sasquatch-like figure himself - on the 12,700-student campus, where many scientists are embarrassed by what they call Meldrum's "pseudo-academic" pursuits and have called on the university to review his work with an eye toward revoking his tenure..."...

NTSB: Wind Blew Lidle Plane Off Course - Examiner.com

re: "A light wind was cited by federal investigators Friday for blowing a small airplane carrying Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle off course and into a New York City high-rise on Oct. 11....[snip]...The report issued Friday said the airplane was flying along the East River between Manhattan and Queens when it attempted a U-turn with only 1,300 feet of room for the turn. To make a successful turn, the aircraft would have had to bank so steeply that it might have stalled, the NTSB said in an update on the crash..."...

N.J. Landing Error Worries Experts - Examiner.com

re: last week a Continental Airlines flight carrying 154 people from Orlando, Florida, landed on a taxiway at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey instead of the runway to which it had been assigned. Both pilots have been grounded by the airline...

Danielle Bean: This 'n That

re: several subjects, including "...the FDA wants to know how you feel about about vaccines manufactured using aborted fetal cell lines..." Has link...

National Novel Writing Month - FAQs

re: it's NaNoWriMo time again...

Elephants in Academia: "What's your plan?"

re: stump speech by President Bush, pointing out that Democrats offer criticism but no plan...

The Anchoress » NY Times out-and-out lies on Kerry (& costs us plenty) - Updated

re: I'd missed this. The New York Times story on the Kerry kerfuffle didn't include what he actually said???? In fairness, there is a November 3, correction at the bottom....

Penn: Office of University Communications

re: home page for University of Pennsylvania communications office - news releases, links to articles that reference Penn or its people, contact info for media looking for an expert, more...

Barbaro Trainer Ponders What May Have Been - washingtonpost.com

re: The Breeders' Cup Classic this weekend prompts some daydreaming about races that couldn't happen after all...

Penn: Office of University Communications: University of Pennsylvania Professor Re-Writes History of U.S. Saudi Relations

re: "Robert Vitalis, associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, rewrites U.S.-Saudi history in his new book"...

Democracy Project: Penn President Poses with "Suicide Bomber"

re: University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann threw a Halloween costume party, and let a guy dressed as a suicide bomber ham it up for the cameras, including mock executions of 'hostages' (she also posed smiling beside the kid)...

hat tip: Hugh Hewitt

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day

re: Scott Adams figures out how to remap his brain to restore his speech...

hat tip: JollyBlogger

Murder, Arson Charges For Wildfire Suspect, Raymond Lee Oyler Accused In Calif. Blaze That Killed 5 Firefighters - CBS News

re: man suspected of setting multiple fires in the area over a period of months, possibly years...

New Frontier Lures Detroit Autoworkers, As Employees Lose Their Jobs, Booming Energy Industry In Wyoming Calls - CBS News

re: Wyoming has 6,000 more jobs than people, is looking for workers from other states...

BostonHerald.com - Herald Columnists: Massachusetts’ botched joke

re: Jules Crittenden takes a sober look at Kerry's 'botched joke'...

hat tip: Gateway Pundit

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: Climate Non-Conformity

re: trying to keep the global warming debate open...

OpinionJournal - Extra: Stern Review

re: Bjorn Lomborg argues that more good will come from addressing some issues (like clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education) directly instead of plowing money into attempts to get carbon-emission cuts...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

re: various links to follow up... (also includes, in ref to a story on increased birthrate in Iraq: As the 19th-century Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore observed, "Every time a child is born, it brings with it the hope that God is not yet disappointed with man.")...

Winter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

re: cultural differences, folklore, science, historical footnotes, starting dates for winter...

Last thoughts on John Kerry « Bookworm Room

re: coming at Kerry's 'get a good education or get stuck in Iraq' gaffe from a different angle, Bookworm notes that the Left seems to equate academic smartness with intelligence (an assumption that doesn't always hold up), and also generally doesn't acknowlege that other experiences, such as service in the military, can provide an education...

Voila! A Car Powered By Air, French Duo Says No Combustion, Zero-Emissions Vehicle Runs For Pennies Per Mile - CBS News

re: work continues on a vehicle run by compressed air (pull quote: “The beauty of this concept is air is everywhere and it doesn't generate pollutions. The main problem is the technology to make use of air." - UCLA professor Su-Chin Chow)...

Author Courts Book Clubs And Boosts Sales

re: Romance novelist John Shors put his email in a letter at the back of his paperback edition, offering to make personal calls and visits to book clubs. He's talked with 200-ish so far, reportedly has sales up to about a thousand books a week...

Petrona: Autumn books: battlefield between the ears

re: the book "Mind Wars: Brain research and national defense" by Jonathan D. Moreno, reviewed by Charles Jennings...

OpinionJournal - Taste: Saints Misbehavin'

re: Thomas J. Craughwell, author of "Saints Behaving Badly" (Doubleday, 2006), tackles the commonly held (and quite erroneous) myth that saints are people who lived their whole lives in holiness. Far from it, in many, many cases. Includes info on push to name French cop-killer and thief Jacques Fesch a saint, based upon his conversion and contrition after being put in jail...

Integration Is Helped When Everyone New Doesn’t Move In At The Same Time « Expat Yank

re: a look at the current push to force religious schools in the UK to accept students who don't belong to their faith, plus a consideration of the less obvious reasons this represents muddled thinking...

Shipbuilders by Arthur Stanwood Pier. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1922. Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

re: poem calling for earnest action against the Germans. Last stanza:
Come, gather at the shipyards,
And toil with healthy hate,
For only you can save the world,
The Hun is at the gate.

Scribner Chronology

re: an illustrated chronology of the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons...

VDH's Private Papers::Free at Last

re: review of the book The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, by Fouad Ajami...

¡No Pasarán!: A Surplus of that Vision Thing

re: Ségolène Royal, a candidate for President of France, is campaigning to a large extent on environmental policies, social protection and research, which blogger Joe Noory notes: "Ironically, 3 things that market can provide more efficiently without having to shove it down peoples’ throats."...

Townhall.com::Blog: Mark Halperin, Unplugged

re: Hugh Hewitt shares some of his favorite exchanges from an interview with ABC News' political director...

Shame on Michael J. Fox - Orlando Sentinel : Opinion

re: Parkinson's patient Gary Loftis covers some of what works already for people with the disease, and what's on the horizon for possible treatments that don't involve harming embryos...

hat tip: The Paragraph Farmer

Wittingshire: Michael J. Fox

re: focuses on more civilized approaches to dealing with Michael J. Fox's misleading and ill-informed 'stem cell' ad...

Deadly Hezbollah chess match - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

re: James G. Zumwalt details one way Hezbollah set up ahead of the Israeli-Hezbollah war to use civilian homes for military uses, with or without consent of the residents...

TNA Home

re: info on and support for people with trigeminal neuralgia and other face pain...

Miller Center — Franklin D. Roosevelt Speeches

re: the Fireside chat from September 11, 1941...

MercuryNews.com | 10/28/2006 | Reward at $500,000 as fire rages

re: still looking for the arsonist/s in the deadly Esperanza fire in southern California, which continues to burn wildly...

TorontoSun.com - Michael Coren - I sympathize, but Fox is still wrong

re: why Michael J. Fox is wrong about the embryonic stem cell research he's promoting...

British Psychologists: Abortions Cause Women Mental Health Problems

re: a few folks noticing that abortion seems to have psychological consequences...

Article | Casual reaction to criminal brutality

re: Theodore Dalrymple discusses crime and its effects on New Zealand...

What Rush REALLY Said About Michael J. Fox

re: audio, transcripts, links, background, to counter the Dems and media activists who are trying to misrepresent what the argument is about...

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > State -- Crews fear wind could push Calif. wildfire toward more homes

re: four firefighters dead, one critical, and the situation is very bad, with Santa Ana winds, drought- and beetle-killed trees, residents forced to flee...

Bishop Henry on Why He's Not Afraid to Speak out on Homosexuality, Abortion

re: fighting erosion of adherence to Catholic teaching...

The Dawn Patrol: Welcome to Planned Parenthood's 'Nightmare'

re: (words fail me)...

EDITORIAL - Cowardly Schiavo Stalking Congresswoman Musgrave

re: Michael Schiavo is apparently showing his colors, again...

Dear Divine, From Oprah by Judy Gruen

re: a dead-on look at a culture so skewed that Oprah has more sway in many lives than G-d (note: some content isn't family friendly)...

Suzanne Fields: Saints, sinners and bigots

re: column on how religion is, or isn't, integrated into daily life, now versus then...

Mona Charen: 13 reasons to vote Republican on Nov. 7

re: Republican versus Democrat achievements and plans...

Eugenics,Then and Now

re: article by Ken Concannon, "...Inherent in this country’s concerns about overpopulation, in the growing euthanasia movement, and in the “unwanted child” rhetoric of the abortion industry, is the eugenic concept that the world would be a better place if the most unfortunate among us were not in it. That is a very unfortunate worldview."...

LifeEthics.org: Frankenbunnies, non-brain dead organ donation, cloning, and PVS guinea pigs

re: "Isn't it amazing how many of the most controversial news and public policy issues revolve around bioethics and medicine?

I've noted before that all of the controversies (like those mentioned above, from the days surrounding the weekend of October 8-9, 2006) are actually only one: which humans will receive society's protection of the inalienable right not to be killed, enslaved or robbed..."...

the evangelical outpost: She's Having a Fetus

re: fictional conversation between two pro-choice women, using the euphemisms common to their cause...

Censored! - Charlotte Wyatt Blog :: Euthanasia :: ProLifeBlogs

re: a blog about a little girl with severe medical problems was ordered closed by court order???...

Breeding and Believing -- Linked?

re: an article in the British magazine Prospect on a rise in religious belief and growth of more orthodox groups...

JS Online: The right vs. the rite of marriage

re: dead-on op-ed piece about the referendum on marriage in Wisconsin...

JS Online:Patrick McIlheran: Right On: Voting no means permitting yes

re: New Jersey courts have shown why there need to be marriage-protection clauses in state constitutions... "...But the key is that while families can fuse, fission and reblend as many ways as people can imagine, marriage isn’t about who people want to kiss. It’s about what combinations society will be made to give its approval to by law..."...

ScrappleFace » Outrage Over YouTube.com ‘Michael J. Embryo’ Ad

re: Scott Ott hits a home run with an ad that neatly points out who will get hurt if embryonic stem cell research gets a big push in Missouri...

OpinionJournal - Federation: Getting the Numbers Right

re: "To avoid charges of "racism," we disciplined black and white students differently"...

Butter Cake Troubleshooting - Joyofbaking.com

re: common cake baking problems and their causes...

JS Online:Crocker Stephenson: Meeting Baby Doe

re: newspaper blog. "Join Crocker Stephenson behind the scenes as he pieces together the story of a young man, Tim Krahling, whose birth 19 years ago sparked a headline-grabbing debate over the rights of parents and society to care for a child born with severe abnormalities. Watch, even participate, as Stephenson gathers the facts he will use to tell Tim’s story, and explore with him the ethical, emotional and moral issues that inevitably arise when a reporter journeys deep into the lives of private people to make public their most personal stories."...

Even More “Multi-faith” Than One Might Think? « Expat Yank

re: in the 2001 UK census, 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi Knight...