The value of this effort is genuinely incalculable.  It will be a massive primary source for black family history, black history more generally, and the study and understanding of American history overall:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/freedmen-bureau-database-national-museum-african-american-history-culture     Read more

    The American intelligence community is apparently saying that it did:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_russiahack-745p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.db28ef9d95db   If this report is accurate, the question would be “Why?”   I suspect that it’s because Vladimir Putin wants to make America great again.   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah     Read more

    Last month, I alluded to the alleged approach of the grand Mormon holiday of “Smithmas,” which some particularly dishonest critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claim we celebrate to the detriment or in place of Christmas.   It occurs to me, in that connection, that I’m not sure that I so much as heard the name of Joseph Smith mentioned last week during the First Presidency’s annual Christmas devotional.   It must have been an unaccountable... Read more

    A thought for Christmas, on the New Testament Christmas story:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865668980/Jesus-the-shepherd-and-the-shepherds.html   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah     Read more

    The Interpreter Foundation’s 19oth posted scripture roundtable — featuring Martin Tanner and Bruce Webster — focuses on 2016 Gospel Doctrine lesson 46, which is based, in turn, upon Ether 12-15:   Scripture Roundtable 190: Book of Mormon Gospel Doctrine Lesson 46, By Faith All Things Are Fulfilled   Have a wonderful weekend!   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah       Read more

    Five quotations from the great Irving Berlin:   “The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.”   “Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.”   “After you get what you want you don’t want it.”   “Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life.”  (referring to his early-childhood poverty)   “I gave up trying to get your mother to economize,”... Read more

      If it’s Friday, there must be a new article from Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.  And, whaddya know?, there is:   Improvisation and Extemporaneous Change in the Book of Mormon (Part 2: Structural Evidences of Earlier Ancient versus Later Modern Constructions)   Or, if that link doesn’t work, try this one.     Read more

        You should meet the man who wants to strip your church of its tax-exempt status, deprive your tithes and offerings of legal recognition as charitable gifts, and single your faith out for punitive action by the Internal Revenue Service:   “LGBT activist plans ad blitz targeting Mormon church’s tax-exempt status”   If you support the moral teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he says that you’re motivated by hatred and he regards you... Read more

    “When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.”  Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993)       Read more

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442900/godspeed-john-glenn   His was a titanic name when I was a boy.  And now the last of the Mercury 7 astronauts is gone.  It’s the passing of an era.   “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit... Read more