Support Your Local Judge.

I haven't had anything to say on the Wesson case, despite its national notoriety, so I have shown rare form in not saying anything.

It definitely has achieved notoriety as one of those exceptional circumstances where the normal go-to-work-and-pay-the-taxes elements of society finds itself "touching evil." The resolution of the case - a recommendation of capital punishment - caught Jonah Goldberg's attention at National Review Online where he quoted this news release:

From the AP:

FRESNO, Calif. — Marcus Wesson, the domineering patriarch of a large clan he bred through incest, should die for the murders of nine of his children, a jury decided Wednesday.

Wesson, 58, was convicted earlier this month on nine counts of first-degree murder, more than a year after the bodies of the victims — ages 1 to 25 — were discovered at the end of a police standoff March 12, 2004, twisted in a bloody pile in a back bedroom of his Fresno home.

Each victim had been shot once in the eye. Among the dead were also children Wesson fathered with his own daughters and nieces.

Truly, this case opens a shutter through which one can glimpse Hell. It absolutely has to be tough on the court professionals - the bailiff, judge, court reporter and court clerk - who worked the case day in and day out. People rarely think about the effect that exposure to this kind of toxin has on those people, who have to do their duty and carry on with impartiality while being exposed on a daily basis to pictures and stories that can haunt for a lifetime. I know that on those occasions when I've been in a courtroom on a civil matter where a rape or murder case is being tried, I've appreciated the fact that I didn't have to stay in the same room with the pictures and the testimony for too long.

So, today is the day of the weekly meeting for North Fresno Rotary. Since it is the beginning of the new Rotary year, the Senior Directors of the various service paths gave their reports.

Before the Senior Vocational Director, Chip Putnam, gave his report on the next year's activities, the club spontaneously erupted in a round of applause to let him know that we appreciated the difficult time he had recently gone through in serving his community.

Chip Putnam is the Honorable Chip Putnam, the judge on the Wesson murder case.

The reason Dick Durbin could make the claim he did is because we have not been taught about the past.

Like the photos of 9/11, a decision was made to downplay the treatment of our POWs in Vietnam because it could make us "bitter" or "hostile." What that decision has cost us is the subtle propaganda loss, which believes that America is evil.

On which point, please read this response to Durbin's fatuous comparisons by an American held as a POW by the Vietnamese.

And isn't it odd, how Durbin never included in his comparison any reference to North Vietnamese treatment of Americans? As if it wasn't that bad or he didn't know.

The Iraq/al Quaeda Connection Again.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO adumbrates the many, many connections between Saddam and bin Laden's organization.

Must these links be proven to an ontological certainty?

I don't think so. Why would it be unreasonable to believe that Saddam wouldn't leverage his control over sovereign territory to make an alliance with another opponent of the United States? It's not like that kind of thing hasn't happened before.

And spare us the nonsense about the ideological differences between Saddam and bin Laden. This isn't the debating room at the MoveOn home offices. History is replete with antithetical ideologies putting off the final accounting of their differences to make common cause against a mutual enemy. Think of the anarchists and the Communists during Spain's Civil War or the British and the Bolsheviks during World War II.

Moreover, the burden that American leaders have of protecting American security means we deserve the benefit of the doubt, not psychotic leaders of states with a track record of mass murder. I'll say it again, the logic of proof in the law permits you to believe the affirmative of a proposition if you disbelieve the other's guys denial. [See this post on Donchin v. Guerrero and the proof of the existence of WMD.] In other words, in a world of uncertainty, if the other guy tells you he didn't know that his tenant had a dog, and you have reason to believe he's lying, you can conclude that he knew that the tenant had a dog and moreover that he knew the dog had a habit of biting people. After all, if that wasn't the case, why would he be making all that effort to lie?

I take it that the logic of this approach applies with even more force to situations involving psychotics with a proclivity for mass murder and the potential for putting their sick fantasies into execution.

Debate Club.

"Did the Court get the Establishment Clause right."

Paul Finkelman, the Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa, has the affirmative. John C. Eastman, the Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law and the Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, has the negative.

Enjoy.

Scientology on the Net.

[Via Amy Welborn.]

Operation Clambake is an anti-scientology website with some really interesting items. For example, there is a biography of L. Ron Hubbard which makes for interesting reading if you have any interests in the "Golden Age of Science Fiction". Also, there are a number of items that discuss the doctrines of Scientology.

When it comes down to it, Scientology is simply reconstituted Gnosticism. Gnosticism postulated that some humans contained trapped bits of spirit which could be freed from evil matter by secret knowledge. So does Scientology. Likewise, Gnosticism created an elaborate mythology about how an evil God had created the material world from which these divine bits of good godstuff had to be freed. Similarly, Scientology postulates some oddball alien warlord trapping thetans into the Terran bodies some 97 million years ago.

Weird; for all of Hubbard's colossal ignorance of, or indifference to, science and history, it's almost as if he had a collection of Nag Hammadi gnostic manuscripts on hand from which to fashion his mythos.

Update: By the way, did you know that the leadership of Scientology runs around in faux-naval uniforms or that Scientology has its own paramilitary organization?

And here is a page of Scientology acronyms. I don't know which is more frightening: that any organization needs to coin terms like "fair game" or "exteriorize" or "Fifth Galactic Invader Force" or that adults buy into this 1930s vintage science fiction claptrap.

Goofy stuff.

Kelo - The Implications for Fresno.

Kudos to Fresblog, who is parsing the implications of Kelo for Our Fair City. Fresblog specifically notes that developers have been pining about developing Fresno's historic Armenian town - the place of William Saroyan's childhood and the setting of My Name is Aram.

Is there any question about whether this historic community, and one of the few connections that the Central Valley has with literary history, would be levelled for the good of development and a few dollars in campaign contributions?

"Divisiveness", Empiricism and the Development of Constitutional Doctrine.

In the recent decision on allowing some displays of the Decalogue on public property, but not others, the majority gestured at a concern that such displays could engender "religious divisiveness." Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy mused that decisions like the one passed down on Monday may cause more divisiveness than the displays ever did. Fellow conspirator, Todd Zywicki, followed up with his own post that Monday's decision really constitutes cut-rate social engineering; no one has done any studies on the question. SCOTUS' claim that it is staving off "divisiveness" really reflect the gut instinct of 5 of the inside-the-beltway lawyers who happen to sit on the court.

Good points all around. I'm on record in the comments to the first post as saying that I've never been particularly offended by the public displays of religious sentiment, even though such expressions are invariably Protestant, and, recently, nondenominational Protestant. For example, invocations at Rotary lunches frequently end with "in Jesus' name we pray", particularly if the invocation is given by a nondenominational Protestant. One avoids "divisiveness" by accepting the good intentions of the speaker, understanding that the speaker's sectarian fillips belong to the speaker and, if necessary, mentally distancing oneself from the sectarian elements.

Habits of tolerance are not fostered by giving a "heckler's veto" to those with heightened sensitivities. We live in a country whose history is intertwined with religious usages. The Supreme Court opens with an invocation to God and meets in a courtroom that itself has a depiction of the 10 Commandments. Treating those innocuous symbols as poison sends a message to believers and secularists about the dangers of religious sentiment. A Supreme Court decision affirming that public art must show additional care in depicting the Decalogue is divisive because it tells believers that something about what they see as normal and positive is a danger to public order.

By the way, where does the concern about "divisiveness" go when the issue is teaching evolution to the children of people who would accept martyrdom in the name of a literal interpretation of the Bible? Understand for a moment that I'm not a creationist or a biblical literalist, but if the operative principle in constitutional interpretation is to avoid "divisiveness" shouldn't creationist get a similar veto over what public schools teach? (And on a related, but somewhat offbeat note, if local governments are ultimately omnicompetent in deciding what constitutes a governmental function pace Kelo, where does there competence go when the issue of determining the right amount of divisiveness in matters pertaining to school curriculum or moral legislation is the issue?)

Housekeeping.

I've moved from YACCS to Haloscan.

YACCS is fine feature, but I'm trying to enable a "trackback ping" feature for the Bearflag League. So, I'm sorry about your fine comments, but that's how it goes.

Speaking of systemically dysfuntional human choices.

Mark Steyn points out that the answer to the question of whether "getting more and better casual sex" is an "appropriate organising principle for society" may matter a great deal.

Second Thoughts on Flag Desecration.

Mark Steyn puts the case against flag desecration laws in language that I can agree with.

Propaganda and War.

Here is a lengthy essay on the strategy of "divide and conquer", by which a combatant seeks to divide an enemy's people from their leadership. The essay is interesting because of the depth of the historical examples it provides.

Two additional points:

First, look at the effort that governments went through previously to enact this strategy, a strategy which has been underwritten gratis since the 1970s in America by the media. It's almost as if there is a belief that the laws of human action have been repealed for America.

Second, the Paul M. A. Linebarger who authored the treatise on Psychological Warfare, which is mentioned at the outset of the essay, is better known to science fiction fans as Cordwainer Smith, author of Norstrilia and the Instrumentalities of Man cycle.

This site provides background on Smith/Linebarger's psychological warfare experience. Also, since religion and culture is a constant theme of this blog, it is interesting to note that Cordwainer Smith may have been the only Science Fiction author to incorporate Episcopalian concepts into his writing.

From the "Surprising, little-known but oddly cool things about Catholicism.

The Curt Jester has a post about, inter alia, a Catholic Sportsmen's Organization, whose patron saint is the "gunner saint", St. Gabriel Possenti. St. Gabrial Possenti earned his sobriquet with by saving in Italian village from brigands in 1860 through a demonstration of his prowess with a handgun by nailing a lizard with a single shot.

Here is the website for the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, which has links to topics like "Self Defense and the Bible. And this is the story of St. Possenti and the unfortunate lizard, both of whom are immortalized on St. Possenti's religious medallion.

This strikes me as one surprising saint story.

On the general subject of poor cultural knowledge, I was at my parish's ministry for divorced and separated people last Wednesday and I shared that it was the feast day of St. Thomas More. I had mentioned the fact with the same confidence of recognition that I would have had if I had shared that it was Tom Cruise's birthday. Not one of the 6 other generally middle-aged Catholics were even acquainted with the name. (Well, one did recall More after I mentioned "A Man for All Seasons.")

I would have sworn that every one would have known of St. Thomas More, but clearly we are becoming a people - all of us moderns, I fear - so obsessed with the immediate and contemptuous of the past that we are becoming culturally ignorant of our own history.

A demonstration of the practice of charity in public discussions.

Publius links to this post by Carl Olsen that discusses his response to a "fan."

Does our common law now reflect the common sense of the New York Times?

The Volokh Conspiracy finds a correlation between the op-eds of the New York Times and recent inane Supreme Court decisions.

Jimmy Akins on Tom Cruise and the Power of Scientology.

Actually, this is pretty cool.

Trust me.

And, no, I'm not being insensitive to the "religion" of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard was a mediocre science fiction writer, not a prophet.

Heading for a "Billy Graham moment."

Recently, I've been hearing things about Billy Graham that have impressed me more and more with his "holiness." That's not a term that usually applied to our Evangelical brothers, but articles like this one from Christianity Today about Graham's stand against segregation in 1952 offer a perspective on the man that I didn't know before:

Graham chose to make his stand in the heart of the segregated South. He initially agreed to segregate the audience during his 1952 campaign in Jackson, Mississippi, but rejected Governor Hugh White's suggestion to conduct separate meetings for blacks. Meanwhile, Graham prepared to make a much bolder statement. Holding segregated events had always struck him as wrong, but he'd never chosen to take decisive action—until now. Walking toward the ropes that separated blacks and whites, Graham tore them down.

Mystified and uncomfortable ushers tried to put the ropes back up. Graham personally stopped them.

This symbolically powerful gesture marked a major ministry watershed. He never again led a segregated campaign.

This seems to be consistent with his interest in ecumenical cooperation with Catholics in 1992.

I don't know much about Graham. I've always kind of dismissed him as belonging to the sphere in which Billy Sunday, Elmer Gantry and Jimmy Swaggert reside, which I'll concede is probably unfair to Graham and Sunday, but I'm a child of my times. Now, though, that Graham is approaching the end of his life, and I start reading about things like his stand against segregation, I'm beginning to wonder what I missed.

The Craft and Cunning of the SCOTUS.

Professor Wagner plots a scenaria where the eminent domain case might just make sense.

From the "What Liberal Media?" File.

PostWatch compares the lack of coverage over Durbin's "American troops remind me of Nazis" comments and the immediate coverage of Rove's "Liberals were soft in their response to 9/11" comment.

Justice Thomas - Court's decision impacts poor and minorities most.

Read Justice Thomas' dissent to the next Lefty who wants to paint all conservatives as heartless lackeys of the Man:

The consequences of today’s decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful. So-called “urban renewal” programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their homes. Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful. If ever there were justification for intrusive judicial review of constitutional provisions that protect “discrete and insular minorities,” United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152, n. 4 (1938), surely that principle would apply with great force to the powerless groups and individuals the Public Use Clause protects. The deferential standard this Court has adopted for the Public Use Clause is therefore deeply perverse. It encourages “those citizens with dis-proportionate influence and power in the political pro-cess, including large corporations and development firms” to victimize the weak. Ante, at 11 (O’Connor, J., dissenting).

Those incentives have made the legacy of this Court’s “public purpose” test an unhappy one. In the 1950’s, no doubt emboldened in part by the expansive understanding of “public use” this Court adopted in Berman, cities “rushed to draw plans” for downtown development. B. Frieden & L. Sagalayn, Downtown, Inc. How America Rebuilds Cities 17 (1989). “Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them.” Id., at 28. Public works projects in the 1950’s and 1960’s destroyed predominantly minority communities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland. Id., at 28—29. In 1981, urban planners in Detroit, Michigan, uprooted the largely “lower-income and elderly” Poletown neighborhood for the benefit of the General Motors Corporation. J. Wylie, Poletown: Community Betrayed 58 (1989). Urban renewal projects have long been associated with the displacement of blacks; “[i]n cities across the country, urban renewal came to be known as ‘Negro removal.’ ” Pritchett, The “Public Menace” of Blight: Urban Renewal and the Private Uses of Eminent Domain, 21 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 1, 47 (2003). Over 97 percent of the individuals forcibly removed from their homes by the “slum-clearance” project upheld by this Court in Berman were black. 348 U.S., at 30. Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court’s decision will be to exacerbate these effects.

Of course, that exactly describes a case here in Fresno where low income housing for poor and minorities was "taken" through eminent domain to make space for a vacant lot for a large law firm (using money set aside for "low income housing").

All in the name of "urban renewal."

This type of thing goes on all over the country every year.

SCOTUS greenlights the governmental "taking" of your property for your wealthier or more connected neighor's benefit or "Property" is just another name for something that is yours unless and until the government decides that someone else can use it better.

Professor Bainbridge posts on today's Supreme Court ruling affirming that the government - cities, states and the federal government - may use the power of eminent domain to benefit private economic development.

In other words, if a developer convinces a city that his strip mall will benefit the economy of the city, and if you home stands in the way of his development, the city can use its power of eminent domain to take your property.

Terrific.

Frankly, though, this is nothing new. I was peripherally involved in a case where a low income apartment building in downtown Fresno was condemned by the City of Fresno to provide space for the construction of a parking structure for one of the largest law firm in Fresno. (That case also involved the use of money earmarked for "low income housing" to help pay for the parking structure. So, ironically, federal and state money set aside to provide housing for low income housing was used to demolish low income housing.)

The project was justified by the City as a key part of Fresno's perennial efforts to "revitalize" downtown. The argument was that the parking structure was needed as an inducement to keep the large law firm downtown and that the law firm was a substantial contributor to the economic vitality of downtown Fresno. The argument had some merit. It was certainly not irrational and while a Superior Court judge had some difficulties with the City's use of eminent domain, he nonetheless upheld the condemnation on the grounds that the City was not acting arbitrarily or irrationally.

Within three years of the construction of the parking structure, the law firm left downtown for a more prestigious north Fresno address.

Update: Here is a round-up on this latest judicial misfire.

Still More: The "progressive Catholic guys at Mirror of Justice are discussing the decision from a Catholic jurisprudential perspective. I like this observation:

So, it strikes me that the regime approved in Kelo -- i.e., one in which one's ability to use and enjoy rightfully owned property is subject to the government's continuing belief that some other person's use would not be more beneficial, economically -- is difficult to square with "respect for the person as such."

So, "property" is just another name for something that is yours until the government decides that you can't use it as well as someone else.

Incidentally, whatever happened to they "individual mystery" which was at the heart of our Constitution's evolving concept of liberty? You think a child isn't human until she is born and I disagree? Ah well, that's just one of the imponderable questions of value. You think that sodomy involves an unreasonable disease vector and I don't? Well, ditto, and keep your values out of the bedroom, buddy.

But, jeepers, make it the question about whether your property is "better" as a home for your family or a tattoo parlor in a strip mall as part of an urban redevelopment project and suddenly 3 out of 5 City Councillors can unravel the deepest mysteries of aesthetics and value.

From the "What's up with those sophisticated Europeans" file.

Kathy Shaidle links to this article about Dutch Bishops protesting a Dutch television program called "God Does Not Exist", which, inter alia, depicts Jesus being walked about on a leash like a dog.

Today is a special day for Catholic Lawyers.

Pro Ecclesia reminds us that today is the Feast Day of St. Thomas More, the patron saint of Catholic lawyers. (St. Thomas More is also a patron saint of "difficult marriages", which makes him a kind of "two-fer" patron as far as I'm concerned.) Pro Ecclesia offers this More quote:

What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?
- Saint Thomas More

Sounds like something the author of Utopia and a friend of Erasmus might say.

Steyn on Europe.

From the first paragraph:

My favourite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: "EU leaders and voters see paths diverge." Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters "diverge", it's the leaders who depart the scene.

Read the rest.

Incidentally, Publius links to a comment at David Morrison's blog by a Frenchman who voted "Non", who corroborates Steyn's article. The commenter also explains that the debate over the "Christian roots of Europe" was far "... more heated in France than "elites" care to admit, as the increasing anti-Catholicism in France is met with a true renewal of faith (as always in France since the Revolution)."

Meeting the "Canadian Content" Requirement.

Kathy Shaidle links to 7 Things You Can't Say in Canada.

I wonder how many Canadians have fled the insanity that their country has become in order to become citizens of the country that is "is the greatest force for good the world has ever known."

Red on Red in Iraq.

This post by Winds of Change on the existence and significance of warfare between factions of the Iraqi insurgency is fascinating.

Consciousness and Reality.

The Maverick Philosopher, who may be joining the BFL, has a lengthy post on John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought-experiment. I recommend the post for two reasons:

(a) it is absolutely amazing that the majority position in philosophy is that we humans are simply fooling ourselves about our mental states. Daniel Dennett, who has quite the reputation in the mainstream media, is on record in a debate with Searle as saying that he believes humans are akin to zombies who are going through the motions of appearing to respond freely to stimuli. But that's what you get when you try to reduce all things human to mere cause and effect, like pinballs and planets.

(b) The last time I tried to explain Dennett's position on my own, I got hooted at. It was in a bar and a group of moderately intoxicated folks thought that Dennett's position was just "nuts." Which, I guess, goes to show the disparity in wisdom between academic philosophers and the beer drinking average man.

Child Sacrifices in Britain?

Christianity Today is reporting on a BBC 4 story on a leaked Scotand Yard report that children are being sold for human sacrifice:

A confidential report from London's Metropolitan Police leaked to BBC Radio 4's Today program (audio) claims children are being trafficked into Britain as religious sacrifices.

"[P]eople who are desperate will seek out witchcraft experts to cast spells for them," says the report, a product of a ten-month investigation. "For a spell to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male child unblemished by circumcision. … Boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this purpose. … Specific details were not forthcoming as the belief was that they would be 'dead meat' if we tell you any more."

The report also alleges that children are being trafficked into the country for sexual purposes, particularly catering to African men who believe that sex with a child will cure them of HIV or AIDS.

The first part sounds like sheer nonsense; the second part sounds like the sex trade that President Bush declared war on prior to 9/11.

Christianity Today sensibly advises caution on the story, but does point out that "the deadly campus cult phenomenon on Nigeria" makes this potentially something more than the "news of the weird."

Ok, that is some weird stuff.

The Axis of Evil Indeed.

Christianity Today carries an amazing story about how North Korea made it a practice of putting ashore in Japan to kidnap Japanese citizens in order to teach North Korean spies about Japanese culture and language. The CT article focuses on Megumi who was 13 years old and returning from tennis practice in 1977 when North Korean agents kidnapped her. Megumi never returned to her parents, but her mother found in her tragedy something redemptive.

Amazing.

From the "There weren't any Communists in Hollywood" file.

Roger Simon critiques Hollywood movies for being out of touch with world events and then offers a precis from "Red Star over Hollywood." The part Simon refers to involves Hollywood writers being required to criticize their own works at the command of the Communist Party, United States branch.

< sarcastic mode > But, of course, the Communist influence in Hollywood and the blacklist of non-Communists in Hollywood never happened. < /sarcastic mode >

This seems like a problematic approach to dealing with divorce.

Tonya transcribes an inteview with a woman who "came out" as gay, but found one part of the gay lifestyle unpalatable:

Glass: She didn't just turn herself into just any gay person. She made a total, complete, unambiguous, full-hearted commitment. She became completely and utterly gay -- worked at a gay newspaper, only hung out with gay people, dressed like a dyke, and in her free time she read up on gay history.

Today she is kind of a femme person but when she was gay she cut her hair short, didn't wear any makeup and dressed to hide her body.

Glass: Was there any kind of limit to your gayness?

Guest: The limit was that I really couldn't bring myself to sleep with women.

Glass: So that seems like that would be kind of a problem.

Funny stuff. Read the post.

Something you don't often hear.

Richard Brookhiser on The Cinderella Man:

Saw Cinderella Man. The anti-Million Dollar Baby. Plus, it's true (or true enough). If I give myself to it entirely, I want to be an Irish Catholic; if I withhold myself, I want to be a Marxist (in reaction). Enough corn to earn an ethanol subsidy. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellwegger were terrific. Run, do not walk.

Hmm...a movie that makes the traits of obsessive guilt, a susceptibility to third-degree sunburns and having complete strangers share their jokes about drunken and/or pedophilic priests seem cool must be a really terrific movie.

Finally, a selling point for all of this blogging.

Dodd reminds us that "nerds make better lovers." The linked article asks, and answers, "Ready for a real relationship? Ditch the pretty boys and grab yourself a geek" because said "geeks" are authenticate, caring, thoughtful and funny. The article forgot "and usually so grateful for the attention that they would cough up a spleen."

The downside to actually being involved with a person who is honest, thoughtful and faithful is getting him past all of those "quirks." (Such as being forced to listen to someone explain the "Nietszchian perspective on buying an automobile", but I digress.) Per the article:

But to get to that authentic nerd, chic women have to be willing to embrace their own inner geek and accept the guy for who he is, chess trophies and all. The caveat to mating with a geek, as some dating experts see it, is coming to terms with his less-than-studly looks and less-than-suave demeanor. All thoughts of embarrassment have to go out the window.

Ha! Exactly what I've been looking for: a woman with no sense of embarrassment.

Too Funny, True and Politically Incorrect.

Secret Agent Man launches into a stream of consciousness deconstruction of a typically laudatory news article about Howard "Howling Mad" Dean.

That Publius is a certified genius.

Res Publica explains how to put a "read more" feature into Blogger. (tm).

Spread the news.

An Islamic Perspective on Star Wars.

Even though Lucas himself is not a follower of any specific religion, he has used elements of Islam (as well as other world religions) to convey the universal understandings of good and evil.

The author, Irfan Rydhan, conveys a a sense of what is so attractive about Islam in his essay.

Two movie reviews.

Lady Liberty at Enter Stage Right gives a thumbs up to "Batman Begins" and "The Perfect Man." The former is a must-see for those of us who are action-adventure comic book wonks - i.e., to those with the mindset of a 12 year old boy - while the latter might appeal to the Boff, my 12 year old daugher.

From the "It's never a problem until your own ox is gored" file.

Glen Reynolds links to this article on "anti-discrimination and free speech". According to the article:

Two former editorial writers at The Indianapolis Star have gone to court, charging that top newsroom managers "consistently and repeatedly demonstrated ... a negative hostility toward Christianity."

And:

According to a story in the Star today, Patterson and Coffey claim in the lawsuit that Ryerson and Henry were hostile toward Christianity and Christian employees at the paper. They also assert that Henry and Ryerson strongly disagreed "with anyone who had a biblical view of homosexuality."

Reynolds notes: "I suspect that we'll see more complaints like this. I also hope that they'll lead to a considerable pruning-back of "hostile environment" doctrine."

I think he may be right on both counts, but not, I hope, with the development of a sui generis rule that excludes "Christians".

I think he may be right because the once the "movable feast" which the possession of "victim status" affords is extended past the Democrats' clientele, a large sector of the civil rights industry will begin to wonder if "we've gone to far." Similarly, most Republicans think the whole thing went to far a long time age. I personally think we were past that point long before Aguilar v. Avis, which upheld prior restraints on speech in the name of anti-discrimination principles. (Aguilar was the case for which Justice Brown has been demonized because of her dissent in favor of free speech.) Apparently, though, no one is very concerned about such aberrations as long as it doesn't benefit Christians.

Well, the best way to undermine support for a bad law is to give the law impartial enforcement, so lets hope Patterson and Coffey score a victory.

More Steyn on Durbin.

Mark Steyn wonders if watering down the "idea" of torture is smart politics for the Democrats:

Again, the more one hears the specifics of the “insensitivity” of the American regime at Guantanamo, the more many of us reckon we’re being way too sensitive. For example, camp guards are under instructions to handle copies of the Koran only when wearing gloves. The reason for this is that the detainees regard infidels as “unclean”. Fair enough, each to his own. But it’s one thing for the Islamists to think infidels are unclean, quite another for the infidels to agree with them. Far from being tortured, the prisoners are being handled literally with kid gloves (or simulated kid-effect gloves). The US military hand each jihadi his complimentary copy of the Koran as delicately as white-gloved butlers bringing His Lordship The Times of London. When I bought a Koran to bone up on Islam a couple of days after 9/11, I didn’t wear gloves to the bookstore. If that’s “disrespectful” to Muslims, tough. You should have thought about that before you allowed your holy book to become the central motivation for global jihad.

What a surreal way to fight a war.

This may be a movie to look for.

If you like this kind of thing.

The Ninth Day, which is described as:

This fact-based World War II drama focuses not on military maneuvers but on life-and-death theological debates. Oscar-winning director Volker Schlondorff ("The Tin Drum") recounts the trials of the Rev. Henri Kremer, an anti-Nazi Catholic priest from Luxemburg who is imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp.

Kremer (movingly played by Ulriich Matthes, who portrayed Josef Goebbels in "Downfall" earlier this year), is released for a visit to his family, where suave SS leader Gebhardt (August Diehl) aims to make him a political pawn of the Reich. He orders Kremer, a righteous and respected scholar, to persuade the local bishop to support the Nazi occupiers.

If he succeeds, Kremer, his family, and Luxemburg's Catholic community will be spared. Failure will mean Kremer's return to the death camp and harsh persecution for those he leaves behind. Gebhardt, himself a former seminarian, plays on Kremer's fears and physical weakness, He seductively argues that only the Nazis can defend the church against atheistic communism and that Judas was not a traitor but a servant of God's will.

While the pacing is a bit slow, the story line is engrossing.

Here is a Godspy article on the director of "The Ninth Day."

More reviews. The movie is purportedly based on a true story, but that can't be right because we know that the Catholic church was collaborating with the Nazis according to James Carroll.

More news you will not hear from the MSM.

500,000 Spaniards march in protest against same-sex marriage.

That is a whole lot of people "standing athwart history and yelling 'stop'."

Of Gulags and Gitmo.

The Angle of Repose makes an important point with links to the Cambodian Genocide Project.

Responsibility and Authority.

Mark Steyn eventually gets around to questioning Senator Durbin's patriotism concerning his statements comparing the American military to the Nazis:

The senator from Illinois' comparisons are as tired as they're grotesque. They add nothing useful to the debate. But around the planet, folks naturally figure that, if only 100 people out of nearly 300 million get to be senators, the position must be a big deal. Hence, headlines in the Arab world like "U.S. Senator Stands By Nazi Remark." That's al-Jazeera, where the senator from al-Inois is now a big hero -- for slandering his own country, for confirming the lurid propaganda of his country's enemies. Yes, folks, American soldiers are Nazis and American prison camps are gulags: don't take our word for it, Senator Bigshot says so.

This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing; it's about senior Democrats who are so over-invested in their hatred of a passing administration that they've signed on to the nuttiest slurs of the lunatic fringe. It would be heartening to think that Durbin will himself now be subjected to some serious torture. Not real torture, of course; I don't mean using Pol Pot techniques and playing the Celine Dion Christmas album really loud to him. But he should at least be made a little uncomfortable over what he's done -- in a time of war, make an inflammatory libel against his country's military that has no value whatsoever except to America's enemies. Shame on him, and shame on those fellow senators and Democrats who by their refusal to condemn him endorse his slander.

This isn't rocket science and it's not about standing up to injustice. If Senator Durbin is concerned about Gitmo, he has other vehicles other than inflaming the passion of people who need no excuse to kill Americans.

Catholic Triumphalism

The Paragraph Farmer links to this article on What's so great about Catholicism. Sure, it's chauvinistic stuff, but the ability to incorporate the French Foreign Legion into the argument merits a read. Also, I totally endorse the author's take on the Catholic contribution to - of all things - freedom, which deserves a lengthy citation:

Yes, the good old reactionary, repressive Catholic Church has been the most ardent defender of freedom in the history of the world — though it almost never gets credit for it. We live in an age of determinist ideologies — with the fate of nations and individuals supposedly determined by race, economics, history, psychology, genetics, or even — insofar as Protestants have any common doctrinal beliefs — predestination. The Catholic Church stands alone in radical defense of man’s free will.

When the media, Protestants, and dissenters tell practicing Catholics that the impulse to sexual activity is overwhelmingly powerful and can’t be controlled or renounced, Catholics alone say, "No, man is free. All Christians are called to chastity, and what they are called to do, they can do, and some can freely take on celibacy as a sacrifice to better serve God and His Church."

When Maximus in the movie Gladiator rallies his cavalrymen with the words, "What we do in this life echoes in eternity," he is speaking like a Catholic, not like a Reformed Protestant or a Muslim who believes that eternity is already written and that man has no free will.

When skeptics complain that the evidence for God is not clear or that a God who allows suffering and evil is Himself sadistic and evil, the Catholic responds, "Our God has made us free men. True freedom always comes with costs and challenges. You see, ours is not a religion of make-believe where actions have no consequences. Ours is a religion of life as it really is. And life as it really is, is a life of original sin. Catholicism is a religion of pilgrimage, freely accepted, to grow in Christ, to overcome sin."

It is another oft-propounded myth that the Western world didn’t taste of freedom until the Protestant revolt of Martin Luther, which led to the division and state subordination of churches in northern Europe and eventually led, in some countries, to the separation of church and state and the irrelevance of church to state.

But who would blatantly say that the Renaissance — against which Luther revolted — was not free? Who would deny that the great check on state power throughout the entirety of European history, from the conversion of Constantine until the 20th century, was the Catholic Church?

Think of the Roman Emperor Theodosius, commander of all Rome’s legions, stripping himself of all imperial insignia to do penance before an unarmed cleric, St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan. It was the Catholic Church that brought a moral check to bear on the exercise and perquisites of power.

Think of the martyrdom of Sir Thomas Beckett and Sir Thomas More. Think of the Protestant revolt, which argued that the power of the state was scriptural and the power of the papacy — the power of Christ’s Church against the demands of the state — was not.

Think of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Kulturkampf of Bismarck, and later intellectual and political currents, including fascism, communism, and the liberalism of our own time, all of which saw — or see — the state as the essential thing, centralization of state authority as the central task, and state direction as the essential instrument of reform. And what was the roadblock to these "reformers"? The Catholic Church. It was the Church that asserted the independence of "subsidiary institutions." It was the Church that defended the rights of the family against the state. It was the Church that protested, in the words of Pope Pius XI, against the "pagan worship of the state."

It is important to remember, not as an indictment or a smear but as a corrective to conventional wisdom that the foundations of road to the Third Reich were laid to some extent by Luther. Certainly there were courageous Lutheran opponents of Hitler, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the White Rose conspiracy. But Bonhoeffer had to find a way around Luther's idea that the state was divinely sanctioned by God. Likewise, the Protestant churches went quickly into the control of the Nazis through the process of gleichschaltung. (Concededly, this did trigger a reaction in the "Confessing Church" movement.) Likewise, Hitler's "electoral breakthrough" was found in the Protestant north.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, in 1937 smuggled into Germany and had the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge read to Catholics on Palm Sunday. Mit Brennender Sorge condemned Nazism as "paganism", to wit:

"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds"

"None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" "

Particularly germane to my argument is this passage from paragraph 22 of Mit Brennender Sorge:

Should men, who are not even united by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church alone is qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is severed from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters these erroneous developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only serves the purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the vitality of his own people.

In short, Catholicism historically advanced the cause of freedom by dividing loyalty. There never was a time in the Catholic West when the temporal and spiritual powers were in the hand of the same person, or where the spiritual powers were officially subordinated to that of the temporal power. Accordingly, there was always the possibility of a development in the understanding of freedom of conscience, even to the point that gets us to where we are today.

On that last point I was surprised on this latest re-reading of Mit Brennender Sorge to read the following:

31. The believer has an absolute right to profess his Faith and live according to its dictates. Laws which impede this profession and practice of Faith are against natural law. Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which in school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral.

This is an extremely topical point today in light of the circumstances described in Dale Price's post and my exchange in the comments of that post with Franklin Jones. If you read the comments, you will see that the Catechism sections I quote on the "freedom of conscience" seem to be lifted almost verbatim from Mit Brenneder Sorge. (As another aside, when you hear the advocates of the position that Catholicism caused the Holocaust, such as advanced by James Carroll, mention Mit Brennender Sorge, which they often don't, they will make that encyclical sound as if Pius XI was only complaining about Nazi incursion onto Catholic privileges. For example, Carrol claims that [t]he encyclical complains primarily about Hitler's violations of the concordat. Carroll's fundamental dishonesty is seen when that claim is compared to the passage I've excerpted.)

A final disclaimer about triumphalism; there have been illiberal Catholics; there were Catholic supporters of the Nazis; the idea of the freedom of conscience is one which has developed by fits and starts. Nonetheless, the existence of an institution that divided the loyalty of Westerners and which had the ability and cause to oppose national rulers contributed to our idea about freedom, which we treasure today.

Happy Father's Day and Thanks

Kathleen Parker says some nice things about a group that is all too often stereotyped as "dumb, dorky and dispensable."

New Blog

Atheocracy, which will focus on -

Atheocracy.com intends to accomplish two goals: (1) To offer a positive case for the right of religious citizens to participate in America's liberal demorcacy by critically assessing the burdens placed on them by those who mistakenly claim that an atheocratic public square is a neutral one; (2) To document and offer commentary about unjust and uncharitable discrimination, depictions, and marginalizaiton of religious believers who seek to participate as citizens in the public square and shape the laws and policies of their communities. Because this injustice is often supported and perpetuated by groups and individuals that maintain that all religious belief is irrational and thus ought to be sequestered from the public square, we refer to these groups and individuals as atheocratic, which literally means supporting "atheistic government."

And here is the Atheocracy blog.

Neal Stephenson on Star Wars:ROTS

Science Fiction author Neal Stephenson points out that Episode 3 is a confusing mess, and why that may be important.

Eulogy

Penner told me I should Jonah Goldberg's eulogy to his father.

Penner was right. It is a masterpiece of a son's love for his father.

You know what the real trick is to picking up chicks half your age?

Weird religions started by mediocre science fiction writers, that's what.

The Holy Weblog links to this article about how Tom Cruise creeped out 19 year old actress Scarlett Johansen through repeated phone calls pressuring her to meet him at the Scientology Center in Los Angeles. According to the article:

...when the actress finally agreed, the supposedly professional get-together took an oddly spiritual turn. “[Cruise] took me into this room, which was stifling hot, and was showing me all kinds of info about joining the church,” Johansson told our source. “The whole time he didn’t even offer me a cookie!” Instead, he offered her dinner—and a glimpse into the Twilight Zone.

Shortly thereafter, Johansen dropped out of Mission Impossible 3, "reportedly due to scheduling conflicts."

The article ends with this observation:

"After striking out with Johansson, Cruise reportedly turned his attentions to 24-year-old Jessica Alba, 22-year-old Kate Bosworth, and 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan, before settling on the 26-year-old Holmes. As far we know, Cruise’s War of the Worlds co-star, Dakota Fanning, was never under consideration."

Nichole Kidman is looking smarter all the time.

From the "Truth is not decided by a majority vote" file.

Mirror of Justice advises that the United Church of Christ is expected to defeat a resolution proclaiming that "Jesus is Lord."

A majority of the UCC feels that the resolution is too divisive or exclusionary or something.

The resolution in question contains this passage:

A pastor or church cannot deny the divinity of Jesus and claim to be Christian. Our status as a Christian denomination and our loyalty to Jesus as Lord needs to be clarified since it is well known that there are UCC pastors and churches that do not adhere to the Lordship and divinity of Jesus, so much so in fact that the UCC is often referred to as “Unitarians Considering Christ.” It is highly detrimental to the health and growth of UCC churches and extremely embarrassing for UCC pastors and members to be viewed as non-Christians.

Those observations seem truthful, albeit the "Unitarians Considering Christ" line is just plain funny.

Perhaps the Penner & Bradley megafirm should drop some cards off at some local UCC churchs. It looks like there could be another denomination whose sane membership is getting fed up with the people who run the show.

The Sage of Selma addresses the "myths of the anti-war left"

VDH on the candor of a terrorist.

Ha! The Answer!

Evangelical Outpost has a scientific rebuttal to the "theology quiz meme" that has infected the Godblogs and susceptible members of the secular blogoverse. (And you know who you are.)

Another California Earthquake

Spork in SoCal has a post on the event.

So does Boi from Troi.

Communio Circle Thursday

Tonight it is Aquinas on the Origin of Evil.

I love evil; it's so interesting and complex.

I mean as a topic of analysis and study. Because of my "Lawful Good" alignment, of course, I'm committed to opposing evil wherever it raises its foul head.

I think we've found the Pope of St. Blogs.

Roger Ho scores 100% on "Roman Catholic" scale on the "religious typology" test.

Nice try, Tan Horizons, better luck next time. (By the way, on the "We are all Wesleyans now" subject, Tan Horizon's next highest scores were "Wesleyan" and "Neo-orthodox".)

The ends of libertarianism - Is polygamy in our future?

One of the reasons I disengaged from libertarianism as a political view - apart from its movement in the direction of blaming America for the problems of the world - was its inability to deal with the truth that a liberal social order, which exalts freedom, individuality, respect for the individual and the free market, requires a substantial amount of effort to create and keep going. Classical liberalism didn't just happen; it required a lot of lucky breaks and the cultivation of a unique set of social "skill sets". Maintaining a liberal society requires the constant "formation" of that skill sets in the individual members of society.

Smith's "invisible hand" notwithstanding, liberalism didn't have to emerge. History is replete with cruddy little societies groaning under the collected weight of their dysfunctions. Anyone who believes that people always act rationally in groups and over the long run should read Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by UCLA anthropologist Robert Edgerton.

Reading Sick Societies is like watching a car crash, as you are exposed to one maladaptive behavior after another. Such as the Canadian tribes whose taboos would not let them fish from a particular lake because it was forbidden. Likewise, Edgerton describes societies that have institutionalized gang-rape, female infanticide and murder. The Inuit, for example, have historically had a "homicide rate comparable to that of any inner-city ghetto." and "in the tribal highlands of Papua, New Guinea, warfare accounts for between 20 and 30 percent of all deaths."

It's not even that the people are unaware of their dysfunction. The Highlanders of New Guinea welcomed colonialization because it offered an end to the endless cycle of violence.

Edgerton's book is a useful reminder that our cultural practices can change and can become dysfunctional.

Take marriage, for example. One of the features that has been most conducive to long-term happiness and prosperity of the broadest number of men and women has been, quite simply, companionate, bisexual, monogamous marriage. The alternative - polygamy - is tremendously destructive of individuals, as this post by Moira Breen linking to this article on modern American polygamy demonstrates. According to the article, “over 400 boys have been driven from their community, mothers and home by older polygamous men.”

Parenthetically, can that number be right? Or is it just an urban legend that grows in the telling? Another article put the number at 1,000.

Whatever the number of boys involved, the article shows the human cost of polygamy:

The freckle-faced 17-year-old said he was left to fend for himself last year after being forced out of Colorado City, Ariz., a town about 40 miles east of here, just over the state line.

"I couldn't see how my mom would let them do what they did to me," he said.

When he tried to visit her on Mother's Day, he said, she told him to stay away. When he begged to give her a present, she said she wanted nothing.

"I am dead to her now," he said.

The article also points to the dysfunctional dynamics that preserves such an inhuman system. The writer notes that the boys are purportedly booted from their homes "for cause":

His stated offenses: wearing short-sleeved shirts, listening to CDs and having a girlfriend. Other boys say they were booted out for going to movies, watching television and staying out past curfew.

Some say they were sometimes given as little as two hours' notice before being driven to St. George or nearby Hurricane, Utah, and left like unwanted pets along the road.

Authorities say the teens aren't really being expelled for what they watch or wear, but rather to reduce competition for women in places where men can have dozens of wives.

"It's a mathematical thing. If you are marrying all these girls to one man, what do you do with all the boys?" said Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff, who has had boys in his office crying to see their mothers. "People have said to me: 'Why don't you prosecute the parents?' But the kids don't want their parents prosecuted; they want us to get the No. 1 bad guy — Warren Jeffs. He is chiefly responsible for kicking out these boys."

Polygamy is a system that humans have often resorted to. Once it becomes socialized its hard to resist, because the men with the power have a vested interest in continuing the system. It's also an inhuman, primitive, degrading system that teaches values that are the antithesis of those required for liberalism.

Are we really so eager to jettison the Western tradition of marriage simply so we can set out on uncharted cultural waters that could return us to polygamy?

"That's how they faked the moon landing..."

Damian Perry points out a new theory we may be hearing from the moonbats - namely, that the World Trade Center collapse was caused by the planting of explosives and not because of impact by airplanes. This theory is being given play by the LewRockwell.com, a libertarian/anarchist site, but, certainly, it wouldn't be surprising to see a Michael Moore treatment given to this absurd theory, which apparently denies that the WTC was struck by any airplanes, notwithstanding the eye witness testimony of the event!

Beautiful Atrocities is a History God.

A Brief Timeline of the Root Causes of Terrorism.

Go read it. Take notes. Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, will be on the test.

The first rule of Debate Club is ...

Forget it. The topic is whether school vouchers are the "next great civil rights issue."

More Fun with Religious Archetypes.

Mark Byron theorizes that Wesleyanism is a kind of "default position" of Christianity.

Rev. Mike is a "Neo-Orthodox" in case you want to know what that typology looks like.

Canadian Uber-Prot blogger Bene Diction scores as "Post-Modernist", again, if you want to see how that kind of thing looks.

Kathy, who, if I recall correctly, is proud of her Presbyterian roots, scored highest on the "RC" scale and came in high (second place, actually), like everyone else, on the "Wesleyan" scale.

I scored highest on the "RC" scale - no surprise - and then came in almost as high on the "Neo-Orthodox" and the "Wesleyan" scales. (I also scored an embarrassing 39% on the dreaded "Fundamentalist" scale, which I blame on the inadequate catechesis I received as a child.)

Byron may be on to something.

Update: And score Ith, who is a card-carrying Episcopalian, as another closet Methodist. (She also had an impressively low score on the "Modern Liberal" scale, but a disappointing 49% on the dreaded "Fundamentalist" scale. Unfortunately, with that score, she'll have to settle for the silver.)

Tan Horizons is, however, an overachiever, scoring 96% (!!!) in the "RC" category. He seems strangely reluctant to share his "Modern Liberal" score or his percentage on the dreaded "Fundamentalist" scale.

The "Torture" Log

Here is the link to the Times' "Extracts from Interrogation Log."

I heard a caller describe the water-related parts of the interrogation as involving drowning on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday. The caller wanted to know why Limbaugh would assume that the interrogation involved pouring water on the head when it was more likely to involve wrapping the detainee's head in plastic and drowning him. Limbaugh was fairly livid with the caller, asking the caller why he would assume such a thing when it was found in the article.

I thought Limbaugh was over the top and engaging in his typical, but effective, argumentum ad absurdum. On the other hand, after reading the "log", it seems Limbaugh was right. When the detainee was offered water, he refused on the grounds that he was on a "hunger strike." The interrogators then poured water on the detainee's head because he had shown "disrespect" to "Sergeant A."

It seems more likely that Limbaugh was right. Also, it seems that this kind of bizarre insistence on minor points of protocol might be a starting point for interrogation; breaking down a detainee's initial resistance on small and trivial points puts the detainee into a position where he is on the road to being compromised in more important areas.

Also, ironically, the detainee's "hunger strike" resulted in dehydration, which necessitated the suspension of interrogation so that an IV could be used to mend the detainee's self-inflicted injury!

Americans either never knew, or ignored, or have forgotten, the treatment of American POWs by the North Vietnamese. Long story short, Americans were brutally and physically tortured by the Communists. They were beaten and strangled, all so that the North Vietnamese could wring silly concessions from the POWs. For example, Admiral Stockdale writes:

In fact, I am not so sure we lost many battles. Unless you have been there, it is difficult to imagine the grievous insult to the spirit that comes from breaking under torture and saying something the torturer wants you to say. For example, "My government is conducting a criminal war. I am a war criminal. I bomb churches, schools, and pagodas." Does that sound silly to you? It does to me. But I and many others were tortured in ropes for that statement.

Here is another source on the torture of American POWs in Vietnam, which advises that the goal of torture was to have POWs "write letters requesting forgiveness from the Vietnamese people, to sign letters of amnesty and to be on Vietnamese television."
Silly things, in truth, but the POWs knew that the real goal was to compromise the POWs on silly and trivial things, so that they could then be exploited for more serious ends.

It's also enlightening to read what the torture inflicted on Americans involved. It included being "tied to trees and posts in the compound and beaten for 16 hours a day", internment in solitary confinement for 6 months at a stretch and the imposition of solitary confinement for engaging in "public worship."

If that kind of thing is torture - and the anti-war forces have always been oddly silent about the American experience, as well as the role of those complicit with the system that applied torture to Americans, such as Jane Fonda, as if the things that Americans suffered was not torture - then calling 30 days of solitary confinement and the pouring of water over the head "torture" would seem to drain the word of any substance.

Update:Lileks puts the issue of "torture" in a different perspective.

The Mighty Barrister is Back.

And if you think this blog is occasionally lacking in charity, you should check out his post on George Michael's paen to Henry VIII.

It's not that I'm saying that the MB is wrong; it's that I probably wouldn't have used the word "syphilitic."

Exhibit "A" in why the old media is is viewed by the public as having the integrity of the average crack-whore.

The Ombugsgod suggests that we check out this post and the accompanying comments - the comments are particularly priceless - by a "veteran" journalist who decided to expose the weakness of blogs. What you will find is that the blog - Scoopstories - excoriated various blogs for publishing a videocapture of a miscaption. It's a no big deal, quick-laugh kind of thing.

Until, that is, Scoopstories "heard" that this video-capture was a fake and decided that this showed how blogs perpetrate lieas and refuse to correct their errors, unlike, he claims, old media.

Except that there he had no evidence that the vidcap was a fake.

To his credit, he did issue a correction, but even there he came across as someone writing from the old media's scriptbook. (For example, he claims that he is setting the standard for quick and clear corrections; apparently he is ignorant of the fact that such a standard has been in effect for years. So what we have is typical old media arrogance coupled with invincible ignorance.)

Moreover, consider how the mistake occurred; Scoopstories started with the narrative and then framed the facts around the narrative, or simply assumed that those facts exist. Which is precisely why the old media is not trusted.

I don't think that Scoopstories quite understands this yet, given the fact that he wants the error to be procedural - i.e., "I should have sourced the story better" - rather than substantive - i.e., "I wanted the story to fit my preconceptions". The problem is that the fix for the former isn't the fix for the latter.

Another test - no surprise.

Mark Byron, who scored high both as a scary Calvinist and a warm, huggable Wesleyan, linked to this test. So, I took it with the following absolutely predictable result, and I even tried to skew it in the direction of my inner Calvinist (and yet I just couldn't condemn most of humanity to an eternity of screaming agony for not being predestined to know what "TULIP" means.)

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 75% Neo orthodox 71% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Emergent/Postmodern 50% Classical Liberal 46% Charismatic/Pentecostal 46% Fundamentalist 39% Reformed Evangelical 36% Modern Liberal 29% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

I think I blew my opportunity at being a "Modern Liberal" because I couldn't endorse the cosmic significance of that Pisky whackjob, John Shelby Spong.

Actually, I'm fairly ecumenical all by myself, particularly compared to Byron.

If you take it, let me know how you score.

The Southern California "One Free Crime If You Are A Celebrity" rule remains intact.

Michael Jackson acquitted on all counts, including the "serving intoxicating beverage to minors" lesser counts, on which the only evidence was "guilty."

I've been watching these celebrity cases for 20 years now - from the Landis case through O.J. and Robert Blake - and the one rule you should never forget is, never bet against a celebrity when jail time is on the line.

Maybe Jackson was innocent - or maybe the kid's mother was a nut - but maybe democracy, which requires the equal application of the law to the rich and poor, needs to take into account the siren call of celebrity.

Update: California Conservative is not amused by the decision.

Caltech Girl is just happy that the Jackson verdict answers one burning question that we've been curious about for the last decade.

The "real scandal" in the "Quran-handling" case.

Diana West explains something that has been overlooked in all the discussion of respecting Muslem sensibilities. After explaining that Army regulations require an elaborate kabuki theater of donning clean gloves and carrying the Quran in a clean detainee towel, West writes:

At first glance, this scene may seem to exemplify a bizarre excess of good manners, an absurdly obsequious respect for a largely foreign faith. Since when does the United States specifically direct its soldiers to show two-handed "reverence" in the handling of any religious book? But it seems to me that there's more behind this charade. The "clean gloves" and "detainee" towels are the tip-off. The fact is, under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Quran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.

The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws (www.sistani.org). This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids -- obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam -- and, chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean cloves and detainee towels, the United States military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis -- the unclean infidel -- a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the bloodlust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.

Is this political correctness run amok? Not exactly. It's something else again, a new threat from within that needs vigilant redress. P.C. is about victimology, the elevation of perceived victim groups to the canonical pantheon. The Gitmo rules are more blatantly about surrender, a voluntary self-extinguishment, a spreading condition of denial of what is right and worth standing for. Not what you expect from the United States Southern Command.

It should be axiomatic that Americans are not "unclean". Americans should stand up for that proposition even if radical Islamists disagree. It is in fact a founding principle of Americanism that there are no "unclean" castes, peoples or faiths.

According to Donald Kagan, adopting a strategy which is strong enough to confront and incite an enemy, but not strong enough to win, is a recipe for long term defeat. (See the Athenian response to the "crisis" at Epidamnus. In our case, let us hope that our politically correct strategy of confronting Islamic terrorism while conceding their moral superiority doesn't yield the same results.

Update: But this kind of thing, or images of our fellow citizens throwing themselves out of burning buildings or having their heads cut off, are "spiked," lest Americans become angry.

Does anyone doubt that this kind of one-sided propaganda is paying dividends for the enemy?

Flag Desecration in Fresno.

Check out Unpun Rick's post on the condition of flags flown in Fresno county.

The pictures show frayed, decaying American flags at "Club One" casino. The casino is across the street from the Fresno County Courthouse and is therefore something that is in line of sight for visitors to Our Fair City.

This is a disgrace. It disgraces the American flag and it disgraces the city of Fresno, which plays into Fresno's reputation for being a trashy city.

I think that I'll look into having my Rotary club buy two flags to present to Club One.

Religion in America

The Mirror of Justice links to current research into the "state of the American church", some of which is displayed as nifty colored maps.

The map of the distribution of church-going Catholics suprised me by showing a huge density in the upper Midwest - and a vast empty area in the Southeast. My county - Fresno - shows up as green, which reflects that 4.7% to 7.3% of the population go to Mass on a weekly basis.

This map of "mainline denominations is also suprising. Again, I was surprised by the strength of the "mainline denominations" in the upper Midwest. I was also surprised to see that Fresno county was shown as "white", which is reflects the lowest level of church attendance at .0% to 1.8%. (Note also the highest cohort goes from 8.9% to 85% of the population as regular church attenders.)

Finally, here is the Evangelical map. This map shows huge strength in the Southeast - the "empty quarter" from a Catholic perspective. Some 10 states, running from South Carolina to Texas are strongly evangelical. The Northeast, on the other hand, is the "evangelical empty quarter."

Again, I was surprised by the fact that my county shows up in the 9.2% to 12.4% church attendance range. I think I would have expected a higher percentage based on all of the non-denominational Protestants I know.

This series of maps is introduced by a screen which advises that "Evangelicals, Catholics and Mainliners are strongest in different parts of the country."

It sure looks that way.

That fact is also an empirical reason for impatience with the "theocracy" arguments that were so popular a few weeks back. I was in a comment box exchange with a gay agenda apologist who quickly moved from grim concern about an impending theocratic crackdown on gay rights generally to expressing outrage about some initiative taken by one legislative chamber in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma!

Oklahoma simply doesn't reflect the entire nation, and in order for a "theocracy" to be put together a broad coalition of diverse religious traditions in diverse parts of the country would have to be put together. In other words, "theocracy" would look a lot like "democracy."

So, two cheers for Federalism and shame on those who would exploit fear and hatred of evangelicals for their own political benefit.

More on the flatulent gasbag of mediocrity that is the Da Vinci Code experience.

Ha! Someone else who was suprised to find that the DVC is really, really poorly written.

Publius guides us to this post by Cnytr that takes the Da Vinci Code to task for being an offense against literature. Here's her take on the literary meris of the DVC:

The strikes against Dan Brown are as follows:

1) Bad Plot
2) Bad style
3) No Sense of Timing
4) Flimsy, Floppy, See-Through Characters Who Aren't Really Characters At All
5) Bad Dialogue
6) Bad Transitioning (ugh, what a movie this is going to make)

She also nails down Brown's wooden literary style, his beating the reader over the head with silly etymological derivations, and his flat characters.

I'm particulalry amused because in the post below I flashed back to Twain's classic "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offences", in which Twain explains:

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

Likewise, because of Brown's wooden prose and cardboard characters, this detail seemed to have been overlooked in the DVC.

Cnytr's post is therefore music to my ears. I had thought that a law might have been passed requiring eveyone to respectfully compliment the DVC as "a work of fiction".

Here's my post on the DVC from 2004. In an opening paragraph I observed:

"I am on record as assuming - based on its sale’s performance - that while the DVC would be a scholastically ignorant work purveying a knee-jerk ideology, it would also be well written. After reading the book, I have to issue a mea culpa. The DVC really is poorly written."

I also thought Brown's literary device of inserting "expository lectures" was lame, particularly when the lecture was given in a flashback sparked by a question to Langdon but Langdon never bothered to answer the other character's question!

Likewise, last year I observed:

"Another amateur stylistic quirk that Brown employs is tying physical appearance to moral status. Thus, Langdon - our hero - is every man’s man. In a two-for-one exhibition of bad literary habits, Brown uses a flashback lecture to describe Langdon’s “captivating presence” and as being “Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed.” (p. 9.) On the other hand, the villains are as physically defective as they're morally impaired. The fact that they’re either albino or crippled led this review to argue that Brown’s book revealed more an open prejudice toward the disabled than it did to Catholicism. Although I think the argument is a stretch, I think that the correspondence course that Brown took on writing must have stressed the idea of developing two-dimensional characters through the use of physical description."

I'm so happy about someone else being willing to acknowledge that Brown is a poor writer, I'm beside myself.

Bart D. Ehrman on the gassy windbag of deceit which is the Da Vinci Code

Professor Ehrman is interviewed by Belief.net concerning the historical accuracy of the Da Vinci Code.

Surprise! He thinks that the DVC is a load of cow manure, except he's more diplomatic than that. Here's his quick read on the DVC:

I liked "The Da Vinci Code" as a work of fiction. But the thing that troubled me is that the fiction is allegedly based on historical fact. Dan Brown begins the book by laying out what he calls historical facts, and he includes the statement that all descriptions of art, architecture, sacred rituals, and documents are factual. The difficulty I had reading through "The Da Vinci Code" with that in mind was that most of the descriptions of ancient documents, in fact, are not factual—they’re part of his fiction. But people reading the book aren't equipped to separate the fact from the fiction.

After that pleasant introduction - but wrong because the DVC practices all of Fennimore Cooper's literary offences - Ehrman gets to work and demolishes Brown's "scholarship." Ehrman's observations on Constantine's role at Nicea are good, but I was surprised by this:

What’s another big historical inaccuracy in the novel?

There are several gigantic points that have to do with Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene. Maybe the first thing to say is that it's absolutely false that as [the character] Robert Langdon says, it would have been highly unusual for Jesus not to be married because Jewish men were always married. That's false.

Tell us more about that, because I have heard that on and off over the years.
Yeah, that's kind of a commonsensical claim that isn't true. We know Jewish men from the first century who remained single and celibate. What's most interesting is that the ones we know about are ones with a worldview that's very similar to the worldview ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels—which is an apocalyptic worldview. We know about Jews from Jesus' time from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And by the way, Dan Brown indicates some of these lost gospels were included among the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's absolutely false.

Which goes to show how effective the "Big Lie" technique can be; I had also started to accept the idea that Jewish men in the First Century tended to be married.

This also goes to show why everything Brown writes ought to be assumed to be wrong until it is proven true.

Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has lectures at the Learning Company on "Lost Christianities" that track his book on the subject. He also has a book that is critical of the "nonsense on a pogo stick", which is the Da Vinci Code.

Here is a free Ehrman lecture on the subject form the Teaching Company. (And don't ever say that we do not provide "value added" at this website.)

I recommend Ehrman's lectures with a caveat - Ehrman tends to fall into the modern school of scholarship that focuses on recovering the lost voices of history. In doint this, he tends to give the impression that those lost voices were normative rather than eclectic. When you get done listening to his lecture on "Lost Christianity" you are left with the impression that orthodox Christianity was a minority position, which it wasn't. There was a reason that orthodoxy won out, after all, and it had something to do with the fact that it reflected something like 90% of the population. (Ok, I made up that number, but the point is that orthodox communities vastly outnumbered the competition.)

It would be like a 30th Century historian writing a history of 20th Century politics and dropping the Democrats and Republicans into the sea of third parties; like it or not, but the Libertarians wouldn't deserve equal time with the Democrats in such a history.

Beyond that, though, Professor Ehrman is an engaging and informed lecturer.

Another entry from the "You Can't Hide the Truth" file.

With the release of files showing John F. Kerry's lackluster grades - they were actually a point below that of George W. Bush who has, of course, been ridden by bicoastal elits as "dense" - it is useful to note that last August, Ann Althouse predicted Kerry's poor grades based on his seeking admission to Boston College Law School. Althouse based her intuition on nothing more than an experience of a person who has actually applied to laws school.

In fact, everyone who goes through that experience becomes keenly aware of law school prestige rankings and where their LSAT scores and GPAs place them in the pecking order. For example, I applied to four UC schools - UCLA, Berkeley, Davis and Hastings. I was accepted by all, except Berkeley, for which I was wait-listed twice. I can tell you precisely what the order of prestige was for these schools; I suspect that most everyone with any law school experience in California can.

Of course, knowledge of reputations is often a regional thing. To put Althouse's comment into a California context, it appears that Kerry went to McGeorge rather than Stanford or Berkeley.

If I'd known that, I would also have been wondering about Kerry's grades. (This is not to knock McGeorge. As they say, some of my best friends went to McGeorge, and Justice Anthony Kennedy taught at McGeorge night school for over 20 years...

Well, maybe since Monday that last point is a reason for knocking McGeorge.

But the point is that no one in their right mind passes up Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, or any of the UC schools for McGeorge.

You have to wonder, though, why none of this was considered important during the election. Althouse had it figured out. Certainly those brave defenders of the public's right to know had a clue that Kerry was maybe being a tad deceitful about his academic prowess. It couldn't have been totally irrelevent to the election; the press had been bouncing Bush around for his "gentleman C" grades for years.

This is just another item in the reason that the mainstream media has lost the respect and trust of the average person.

"...Yoda did more acting than the real people."

And may deserve an Oscar for it, too.

[Lileks review ROTS.]