The people of Mississippi rejected a state constitutional amendment that would classify a human embryo as a “person” entitled to all legal protections. According to the latest count, the margin was 59% to 41%. This, even though both Republican and Democratic leaders in that conservative state supported the amendment. See Mississippi anti-abortion ‘personhood’ amendment fails at ballot box – The Washington Post. Some pro-life activists opposed the tactic of trying to push through a personhood laws, something also being considered… Read more
Happy (belated) Gustavus Adolphus Day!
November 10, 2011 By Gene Veith 10 Comments
November 6 was the commemoration day for one of my heroes, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, the military genius and devout Lutheran who arguably was used by God to save Protestantism from extermination during the Thirty Years’ War. Sometimes honored as the greatest Lutheran layman, King Gustav makes for an interesting and inspiring example of vocation. The blog of the LCMS leadership, Mercy, Witness, Life Together, has a great post about him, including an informative sermon by Rev. Eric Andrae: … Read more
The commodities bubble
November 10, 2011 By Gene Veith 24 Comments
Economics columnist Steven Pearlstein describes how high finance is distorting the commodities market and warns that speculation and “financialization” is blowing up a big bubble: Silly you. You actually thought companies existed to make products and profits. You thought houses were meant to provide a place for people to live and office buildings a place for people to work. You thought food was meant to be eaten, oil and gas to be turned into energy, and metals to be turned… Read more
Theologians of the Cross
November 9, 2011 By Gene Veith 44 Comments
Another non-Lutheran discovers a Lutheran insight. Carl Trueman, professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, posts about theologians of the cross as opposed to theologians of glory. He explains it pretty well, I think: One of the things that is so striking about the current revival of interest in Reformation theology, broadly conceived, is the absence of perhaps the most glorious contribution of Martin Luther to theological discourse: the notion of the theologian of the cross. . . . At the… Read more
The Occupy ideology
November 9, 2011 By Gene Veith 20 Comments
I went into Washington yesterday and stumbled upon the Occupy D.C. folks. They were in a little green space on Pennsylvania Avenue, which they have filled up with tents. I was surprised to see how few of them there were. Estimates have been a couple of hundred–which in itself is an unusually tiny demonstration by D.C. standards–but even that number seems high, based on the little tent village that I saw. Also, they don’t really look like 99% of America! … Read more
Gay adoption laws vs. Christian agencies
November 9, 2011 By Gene Veith 76 Comments
Some states already require adoption and foster care agencies to give children to gay couples. That includes Christian ministries, which, in many cases are shutting down their operations rather than compromise their convictions. Now a proposed law before the Senate would make nondiscrimination against gay adoptions, including by religious agencies, a national policy: Adoption and traditional marriage proponents said legislation introduced Monday by Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to prohibit adoption agencies from barring homosexual couples from adopting a child… Read more
Local Election Day blues
November 8, 2011 By Gene Veith 18 Comments
Where I live, we are just voting today for local elections. We just have a state senator to pick and a number of county offices. But for the last several months we have been subject to getting multiple automated phone calls a day conducting polls, demonizing opponents, and scaring us into voting for particular candidates. Opposition research, negative campaigning, and hyperbolic rhetoric have trickled down into local elections. (The last robocall I answered insinuated that one candidate’s support of the… Read more
Both sides are wrong
November 8, 2011 By Gene Veith 40 Comments
Robert Samuelson is an economics columnist who has tended to be sensible over the years. (The Washington Post classifies its columnists online as either “tending left” or “tending right.” Samuelson shows up on neither list.) He makes the case that both liberals and conservatives are wrong on the economy: Let’s banish the budget fictions of left and right. The supercommittee — the 12 members of Congress charged with devising a plan to close mammoth deficits — cannot succeed without public… Read more
The fall of Citizen Cain?
November 8, 2011 By Gene Veith 172 Comments
A woman, Sharon Bialek, has come forward with details about how Herman Cain, currently running for president, groped her. She is not even one of the three women who filed sexual harassment claims against him and won settlements from the National Restaurant Association that he headed at the time. Here are the sordid details. Some conservatives are skeptical about the charges, while others think they ring true. Here is what the conservative blogger the Ace of Spades had to say:… Read more
The discovery of pro-life women
November 8, 2011 By Gene Veith 84 Comments
The Washington Post’s Lisa Miller discovered something that really seems to have surprised her, that the leaders of today’s pro-life movement are actually women, and young well-educated women at that. She seems to have assumed that only men would be against abortion, that all women were surely on the pro-choice side of this “women’s issue.” She gets her head around the issue: Recent news stories about the new vitality of the antiabortion movement and its legislative achievements — more than… Read more
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