The IRS plot thickens

May 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

More information is coming out about how the IRS harassed groups critical of the government.  Allegations are coming out that the agency audits businesses whose owners have questioned government actions and that it has leaked confidential tax records.  Also, the Washington Post is reporting that the initiative to target conservative organizations came not from rogue agents in Cincinnati, as the IRS has claimed, but from a task force in Washington.

What the IRS did to the conservative organizations, going back to 2010, is in their handling of their tax exempt applications as non-profit organizations.  They inundated the groups with paperwork, including the request for detailed information about donors and even volunteers.  In addition, the agency would take up to 2 years to process the application!  This effectively kept the new groups from functioning.  After the jump, an organization’s spokesman tells what his group went through. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Government Tagged With: Leave a Comment

“The assumption of the humanity into God”

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday was Ascension Sunday. (The actual Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter, the time the risen Christ remained on earth, was last Thursday.)  It commemorates something important and profound:  the now-and-still Incarnate Son of God, His work of redemption complete, returning to His Father and assuming His eternal place in the Holy Trinity.

Some people think Ascension Day means that Jesus isn’t here anymore.  (I have heard that put forward as a way to deny His presence in Holy Communion!)  But what it really means is that now He can be present in all times and places (particularly Holy Communion!) because the Ascended Christ fills all things (Ephesians 1:20-23).

Christ’s Ascension has to do with His Incarnation, which, according to the Athanasian Creed, was “not by conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by “the assumption of the humanity into God.”  Think of that!  Our human nature, taken on by Christ, has been taken “into God.”  This is why, in connection to Holy Communion, Christ’s body and blood, elements of his and our physical human nature, can be distributed to us human beings in our own times and places.  What are some other implications of “the assumption of the humanity into God”?

Filed Under: Christ, Holidays, Theology Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

What is a nation?

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

As college classes, including my own, conclude for the Summer, I will reveal an academic secret:  professors often learn from their students.  Being an audience of one for all of those papers has its rewards.  In my Shakespeare class, several students wrote about some aspect of the emerging view of nationhood in Shakespeare’s history plays.  The nation-state, after all, was a fairly recent development in the 1590′s when Shakespeare wrote his histories, with England transitioning from the feudal system, with its personal loyalties to local lords, to a highly-organized central government commanding citizens with a strong sense of their “Englishness.”

But, as Shakespeare’s plays suggest, there are different understandings of what constitutes a nation:  (1)  a geographical locality; that is, a land, a place (“this sceptered isle”);  (2)  a people  (“we band of brothers”); (3) a government; that is, a sovereignty embodied in the monarch (“Henry V”);  (4) a distinctive spirit or ideology (not so evident in Shakespeare, except for perhaps hints of English liberties and differences with France).

It occurred to me that these same different views of nationhood are still with us today and that we Americans have not really arrived at a consensus about it, resulting in some of our confusions.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: America, Culture, Education, Government, History, Language, Literature, Personal Tagged With: , , , , , Leave a Comment

IRS targeted conservatives

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The IRS targeted conservative organizations–and admits it!  And is now apologizing for it!  Investigations are underway.  This is an egregious case of the abuse of governmental power and may turn into a major scandal.  From the Associated Press:

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. [Read more...]

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This new commenting system

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

As you have seen, the new “Disqus” commenting system being implemented on all Patheos blogs that I said was coming has gone into effect.  I’m still figuring it out myself.  One thing I learned:  “Disqus” is pronounced “discuss.”  (Get it? I know, I know. . . )  Here are a few features that might have benefits for our discussions on this particular blog: [Read more...]

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Camouflage

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

As an example of how government spending mushrooms due to unnecessary duplication, bureaucratic turf protection, and lack of assessment, consider the varieties of camouflage the military has been using for uniforms over the past decade.  (For the ten patterns, go here.)  The story about this in the Washington Post is quite instructive and might make you indignant at the waste of money it chronicles, but it also has its hilarious moments, which I have put in bold print for your convenience after the jump. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economics, Government, war Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment

Benghazi whistleblowers

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Three diplomats on the scene in Libya when Islamists killed the American ambassador and torched the embassy facility in Benghazi testified before a Congressional committee that the official State Department account of the incident is not exactly correct.  The three also told of pressure they received not to tell the whole story. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Government, Islam, terrorism Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment

Classical Lutheran Education conference

May 10, 2013 By 1 Comment

The Consortium for Classical and Lutheran Education (CCLE) will hold its annual conference at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on July 16-18.  I’ll be there!  The conference will kick off a teacher certification program and will feature extended teacher-training seminars just for that purpose, in addition to sessions on all kinds of topics.  (See them after the jump.)

For more details and to register, go here. [Read more...]

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Our partnership with the dead, the living, and the unborn

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Peter Wehner quotes British journalist Charles Moore, reviewing Jesse Norman’s new biography of the 18th century father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke:

As his struggles for America, Ireland and Corsica showed, Burke was no automatic defender of existing authority. But what he understood, and expressed with immense rhetorical power, was how human beings stand in relation to one another. Although they are morally autonomous individuals, they do not – cannot – live in isolation. In our language, laws, institutions, religion, and in our families, we are part of a continuum.

Society is ”a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born’’. It is not society that keeps mankind in chains, but the pretence that now is the only time that matters. Almost every piece of rot you hear in politics comes from those who wish to lock man into what WH Auden called ”the prison of his days’’. It is comforting that the Burkean Jesse Norman is in the House of Commons to tell them when they are wrong.

Mr. Wehner adds his reflections:

It strikes me that this ancient insight–of how we do not live in isolation, that we are part of a continuum–has been a bit neglected by American conservatives in recent years. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, History, Life Issues, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

The world’s worst violators of religious freedom

May 9, 2013 By 2 Comments

The worst countries for religious freedom are either Muslim or atheist.  (Burma is Buddhist.)  We understand about Islam, but atheists like to present themselves as tolerant.  What does it tell us that no countries of Christian heritage are on the list?  (After the jump: the 15 countries currently on the official list of the worst religious rights violators.) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Religions Tagged With: , 2 Comments