stcynic
Posts by this author
November 7, 2006
The Asylum Street Spankers are a very unusual band from Austin, Texas that I first heard of many years ago from my friend Gretchen. Another friend from Austin copied me a bunch of their stuff a few years ago and I really liked it. And now they're taking on the Iraq War and the pointless little…
November 7, 2006
The New York Times recently published leaked information that showed that, according to the US Central Command - the ones actually running the war in Iraq - that nation is rapidly descending into chaos, contrary to the rosy picture being painted by the administration and their apologists. While…
November 7, 2006
Just how crazed has the religious right (of all varieties) gotten over the gay pride parade in Jerusalem? This crazed:
For some of their followers, the issue is worth spilling blood over: An unknown extremist Jewish group pasted up signs announcing a $500 "reward" for every gay man or woman killed…
November 7, 2006
I know I'm a few days late on this, but I thought I'd follow up last year's embarrassing predictions with another slate. Actually, it wasn't all bad. I predicted that the Pistons would be better than the year before and they were. I predicted that the Miami Heat would start slow, leading Pat Riley…
November 6, 2006
I am in the middle of moving today, getting ready to dismantle my computer and move it to the new house. Phones and internet are scheduled to be hooked up sometime tomorrow, so I should be back online by evening tomorrow. In the meantime, I've got a few posts scheduled to go up tomorrow morning for…
November 6, 2006
Human Events is reporting from a supposedly credible source that Justice Stevens is in grave health and is expected to retire from the Supreme Court before the end of the year. Naturally, they are using this as a warning to conservatives about the importance of voting for Republicans this year:…
November 6, 2006
Frank Schaeffer, son of prominent Christian conservative philosopher Francis Schaeffer, has written an op-ed piece announcing that he will no longer support the Republican Party because of the Allen campaign's appalling treatment of James Webb in their Senate race.
I never served in the military…
November 6, 2006
According to this article at Salon.com, yes. You know Stephen Baldwin, the dumbest and least successful of the Baldwin brothers (though I did like him in The Usual Suspects). He's now an evangelist and you've got to see him perform (and yes, that is exactly what evangelism is, a performance). And…
November 6, 2006
Saddam Hussein has, of course, been found guilty of genocide by an Iraqi court and will be hanged (assuming the automatic appeals process required under Iraqi law goes as it should). I frankly don't much care about complaints about the trial procedure, or conspiracy theories about the process being…
November 6, 2006
John McAdams is a Marquette University professor who has commented here from time to time. We probably don't agree on a whole lot, but I've always found him to be a reasonable guy. But I came across this post on his blog and I must object. He's responding to an ad he saw for a clinic that provides…
November 5, 2006
Israel is refusing to cancel this week's gay pride parade in the face of escalating violence from the anti-gay loonies.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz refused on Sunday to ban a gay pride march planned for Friday in Jerusalem despite threats of violence from an extremist sect.
Police advocated…
November 5, 2006
It seems that Haggard, without getting specific, is finally admitting to what was obvious to everyone else days ago:
In a letter that was read to the congregation of the New Life Church by another clergyman, Haggard apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness.
"I am so sorry for the…
November 5, 2006
Balko reports that a gambling group is targeting Arizona Sen. John Kyl, one of the most vociferous advocates of gambling bans. Kyl's lead in the polls is shrinking fast. Let's keep this up, though.
November 5, 2006
Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center, one of the most moderate and objective church/state scholars in the country, has an excellent essay about religion in public schools and where the line is drawn between personal religious expression, which is constitutionally protected, and government…
November 5, 2006
I wrote previously about the case of Benjamin Arthurs, a North Carolina high school student who was prevented from handing out "Day of Truth" cards at his school the day after other students were allowed to hand out "Day of Silence" cards, as well as prevented from wearing a t-shirt that said "I…
November 4, 2006
Pay attention now, STACLU. The ACLU of Louisiana is defending a Christian man's right to protest outside a Walmart over their pro-gay policies.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of a man who was chased away from the front of a Wal-Mart store when he…
November 4, 2006
Radley Balko links to this article about a prosecutor who seized 3 cars from the parents of a guy caught trying to buy oxycontin. Not a dealer, not a distributor (they never even charged him with either), just a user; and they seized his parents' vehicles. They were kind enough to tell the parents…
November 4, 2006
The Pennsylvania Bar Association has given an award to Eric Rothschild and Steve Harvey of Pepper Hamilton for their pro bono work in the Dover ID case. The award is richly deserved. I have never seen a law firm put the kind of immense resources into a pro bono case as Pepper Hamilton did in that…
November 4, 2006
I saw him say this on TV and just sat there with my mouth agape:
I don't like the tone in Washington, D.C. I feel like that the politics has gotten ugly, and that tends to discourage people around the country. And that's just too bad.
This from the guy who had his underlings doing push-polling…
November 3, 2006
The plot thickens. The Rocky Mountain News reports:
Embattled minister Ted Haggard this morning admitted receiving a massage from the Denver man who claims to have exchanged sex for money with the Colorado Springs church leader for three years.
And a local news station reports:
Haggard says he…
November 3, 2006
Hardly a surprise, but still pretty funny. He claimed that his high school football coach started him at quarterback because of his leadership skills. His coach says, "I did?"
DeVos recounts a conversation he had with then-head varsity football coach Frank Rosengren: "He and I took a walk right…
November 3, 2006
The violence is escalating, with more than 2000 nuts protesting in Jerusalem.
Police were pelted with stones and bottles Thursday night as members of the Haredi ultra Orthodox Jewish sect engaged in a third night of rioting over next week's planned gay pride march in Jerusalem.
More than two…
November 3, 2006
Woman gets gang raped, gets sentenced by the court to 90 lashes for being alone with a man in a car. There must be quite a time change between here and Saudi Arabia. It's 11:41 here and it's 1100 AD there. Must be on Medieval Savings Time.
November 3, 2006
Updated: Haggard has apparently confessed.
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of a huge megachurch, has stepped down as NAE leader after a male prostitute went public and said that Haggard had been paying him for sex regularly for 3 years.
Mike Jones, 49…
November 3, 2006
Kehrsam sent me a link to this article about a preacher named KA Paul who goes around the country preaching that Bush is preventing the second coming of Christ.
The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has…
November 3, 2006
There's a controversy going on in Canada after a union of postal workers in Vancouver refused to deliver a piece of mail they considered bigoted.
Unionized postal workers at an east Vancouver sub-station walked off the job Thursday morning, refusing to handle a publication called The Prophetic…
November 3, 2006
Help, I'm in acronym hell! David Heddle, a devout Christian nuclear physicist who advocates cosmological ID (the strong anthropic principle) but is generally a critic of biological ID, has written a post responding to something Dembski said about Harvard's new origin of life research project. I…
November 3, 2006
One of the mantras for conservatives for decades when it comes to education is the importance of local control. So adamant were they about this that conservative politicians have long run on platforms advocating the elimination of the Department of Education completely. Indeed, the 1996 Republican…
November 2, 2006
In the most predictable result ever, the jury deliberated only 3 hours before finding Kent Hovind and his wife guilty on all charges.
A federal jury has convicted Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, of tax fraud.
Hovind faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. His wife faces up to 225 years. Her charges…
November 2, 2006
Here's a case where the Christian legal groups are absolutely right. A kids dance group was prevented from taking part in a holiday festival in Chula Vista, California, because their shirts bore a religious message. The American Family Association Center for Law and Policy filed suit on their…