This very good piece, by Carrie Severino, appeared on Monday:   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/20/the_democrats_intellectually_weak_attacks_on_gorsuch_133378.html     Read more

    Timothy Keller is an impressive fellow of impressive accomplishment, as I’ve recently mentioned here on this blog.  (I’ve cited him more than once, I think, including here.)   The criticism that he’s receiving, and that Princeton Theological Seminary is receiving, speaks eloquently of the disdain for actual diversity that is so painfully, embarrassingly obvious among some self-proclaimed crusaders for diversity© — and it should leave Latter-day Saints with no illusions about the prospects of our being accepted in certain... Read more

    “Why Baptists Should Support Muslims’ Right to Build Mosques”   And the same reasoning applies — in spades — to the Latter-day Saints.     Read more

    It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me to realize how much more we know now about the planet Mars than we knew back when young prince Tutankhamen and I were boys together.   Seriously, as far as I’m aware we knew comparatively nothing.  But now look:   http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2017/03/nasa-giant-mars-volcano-and-earths-dinosaurs-went-extinct-about-the-same-time.html     Read more

    For years, I’ve insisted on taking my tour groups to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  Not because I think it the actual place of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection — being skeptical of the Garden Tomb, I leaned for a while to thinking the Holy Sepulcher authentic, but I’m now inclined to reject both — but because of its enormous historical significance (as, literally, the center of the world for pre-modern Christendom, as the chief object of the... Read more

    “If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.” William Law (1686-1761)   I posted something earlier today about the Church’s efforts to aid refugees.  I’ve been saddened (though not surprised) to see some members of the Church, responding to that post (but also on previous occasions and in earlier conversations), come out in frank opposition to those efforts, and to the First Presidency... Read more

    I’m very pleased at this:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865676059/Were-not-pulling-back-from-helping-refugees-LDS-leader-says-as-First-Presidency-increases-budget.html   In this context, it’s difficult not to think of the lyrics by James Montgomery (d. 1854) to the hymn that John Taylor sang in Carthage Jail not long before the mob assault on the jail that resulting in Elder Taylor’s grievous wounding and in the martyrdom of the Patriarch Hyrum Smith and the Prophet Joseph Smith.   The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs it here.  But that apparently isn’t the tune... Read more

    “A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.” Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)     Read more

    Don’t panic.  Don’t be alarmed.   If you have a heart condition or are pregnant, don’t read this.  Just back away slowly and calmly, exit the site, and go to a safe space on the web where you’ll be okay.   This item is from The Onion, which is a satirical publication — or, in an idiom with which some will feel more comfortable, a publication that tells lies and that hasn’t always been deferential or entirely respectful... Read more

    A significant figure for both my wife and me — separately, before we’d met — was the late Arthur Henry King.  (Just after our wedding, we ran into him in, of all places, a grocery store in Cedar City, Utah.  When he learned that we had married, he complimented me on my very wise choice, and I took his compliment quite seriously.)   Here’s an interesting piece about his view of Joseph Smith by Michael De Groote:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705376899/Joseph-Smith-was-a-great-writer—-Arthur-Henry-King.html... Read more