Todd alerted me to this story from Reuters: The Vatican has granted priests the right to forgive the sin of abortion when hearing the confessions of hundreds of thousands of young people attending a Roman Catholic youth festival in Spain this week. The termination of pregnancy is a sin punishable by excommunication under Church law. The World Youth Day (WYD) pilgrims will attend a mass confession in the presence of Pope Benedict on Saturday in a central Madrid park. “This… Read more
Obama’s new stimulus plan
August 19, 2011 By Gene Veith 40 Comments
President Obama will soon propose a new economic stimulus plan, one that will combine tax cuts, lots of new spending, AND deficit reduction: President Obama has decided to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending and tax cuts as he seeks to address the great domestic policy quandary of his tenure: how to spur job growth in an age of austerity. Obama will lay out a series of ideas in a major address right after Labor Day, when… Read more
Normalizing “minor-attracted persons”
August 18, 2011 By Gene Veith 142 Comments
First we accept homosexuality, some social conservatives said, and next we’ll accept pedophilia. If we legalize gay marriage, they said, next we’ll have legalize polygamy. “Nonsense!” came the reply. “You’re committing the slippery slope fallacy.” Well, we are slipping and sliding on that same slippery slope. That’s the point made by Joe Carter, who analyzes the latest effort to de-stigmatize pedophilia; that is, to use a more politically-correct term “minor-attracted persons.” If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental… Read more
The end of cursive handwriting
August 18, 2011 By Gene Veith 86 Comments
When I was in grade school, penmanship kept me off of the honor roll. Today most schools have not only dropped penmanship, they do not even teach cursive writing anymore Most states don’t require children to learn cursive writing anymore. Some 46 states have adopted the Common Core Standards, a set of educational guidelines that do not require cursive writing as part of a school’s curriculum. The state of Indiana recently announced it would drop a district requirement to teach… Read more
Perry leads in GOP polls–already!
August 18, 2011 By Gene Veith 46 Comments
Governor Perry is leading the other Republican presidential contenders, including among tea partiers and anti-tea partiers. Romney leads him among moderates by only two points. Rick Perry leads his Republican rivals by double digits in the first national survey taken since the Texas governor joined the race and Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll over the weekend. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday afternoon, Perry, who launched his campaign Saturday in South Carolina, attracts the support of… Read more
The new Lutheran denomination
August 17, 2011 By Gene Veith 224 Comments
Congregations dissenting from the ELCA’s embrace of homosexuality now have a bishop and have formed a new Lutheran denomination: The North American Lutheran Church (NALC). It has 250 congregations and some 100,000 members. Check out their website, which details the NALC’s beliefs, government, and mission: North American Lutheran Church (NALC). My impression is that the NALC will still ordain women and be ecumenical in relation to other churches–the website specifically says it will co-operate with the new Anglican church, which… Read more
The Ron Paul alternative
August 17, 2011 By Gene Veith 152 Comments
Ron Paul, the pro-life anti-war libertarian, took second place in the Iowa straw poll. Michelle Bachmann beat him by only 200 votes, and yet her showing is being hailed as making her a contender. Paul is attracting much more support than he received the last time he ran for president, which was considerable. So why does the media continue to ignore him? Why does the punditocracy refuse to treat him as a legitimate contender? Isn’t that a case of the… Read more
The Middle-Earth election guide
August 17, 2011 By Gene Veith 10 Comments
The Wall Street Journal and John McCain started it by calling Tea Partiers “hobbits.” Timothy Furnish develops the parallels: The first leg on this journey is figuring out what the Ring represents in modern political discourse. Since the Tea Party is trying to cast it into the fire, it must be American government spending and debt (which includes deficits, of course). That would make Congressman Paul Ryan Frodo since he knows more about that burden than anyone; and thus Samwise… Read more
Another consideration in a presidential candidate
August 16, 2011 By Gene Veith 94 Comments
In choosing which presidential candidate a person will support, the most usual preoccupation for people in both parties is “what does he–or she–believe”? That’s certainly important, since a leader’s beliefs will manifest themselves in their policies and decisions. But there is something else to consider: How well can this person govern? Having an ideology and having the ability to preside over a government are two different dimensions that are not necessarily related to each other. To run something–as a manager,… Read more
What makes a gaffe?
August 16, 2011 By Gene Veith 84 Comments
Mitt Romney said, “Corporations are people.” Newt Gingrich castigated “right-wing social engineering.” Michele Bachmann claimed that she shared the same spirit as someone else born in Waterloo, Iowa, John Wayne. But it wasn’t the movie star with whom she shared a birthplace but serial killer John Wayne Gacy. These politically-damaging statements were heralded as “gaffes.” But what makes a gaffe, as opposed to a forgivable misstatement or an inconsequential mistake? Journalist Paul Waldman, a liberal, by the way, explains: What… Read more
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