I kid you not: After hearing that I was going to bake buffalo chicken cupcakes for the Super Bowl (with hot sauce and blue cheese in the cake and a blue cheese buttercream frosting), one of my friends asked if I would be baking the cupcakes as as a joke. “Are they just supposed to be funny, or will you actually enjoy eating buffalo chicken cupcakes?” Having not yet baked the Super Bowl buffalo chicken cupcakes, I told them that... Read more
Over at the USCCB website, they’ve posted the following statement, in response to a White House blog post on the HHS ruling: +++ The Obama administration, to justify its widely criticized mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage in private health plans, has posted a set of false and misleading claims on the White House blog (“Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions,” February 1).In what follows, each White House claim is quoted with a response. Claim: “Churches are exempt from... Read more
[Click here for the readings.] Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1952, Congress was in the middle of a long and controversial investigation into Communists in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee was summoning writers, directors, and actors to Washington to get them to “name names” of people they knew with ties to the Communist party. One of those they subpoenaed was the playwright Lillian Hellman. Hellman declined to do what the committee asked, writing to the chairman words... Read more
What happens when two rec league hockey teams suddenly get thousands of fans cheering them on? You gotta see this. It’s great. Read more
Seriously. The good people at the Susan G. Komen Foundation — ever heard of them? — are offering the pink pistol below: Discount Gun Sales has teamed up with the Susan G. Komen Foundation to offer a pink version of its popular Walther P-22 handgun in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Komen Foundation, which sponsors pink-ribbon walks and other events to raise money for breast cancer research, is embroiled in controversy following its decision to defund Planned Parenthood.... Read more
And so, like a good but weak soldier, Komen has essentially destroyed itself: hardline leftists will never forgive it; hardline rightists will never trust it. But feel a little sorry for Komen. They were trying to do the better thing, and they got mauled for it. They’re not cowards, they just weren’t strong. Not everyone can face the lions, especially if they’re being pounced on in their first steps. In this, however, Komen has helped put panache on institutional bullying;... Read more
[Click here for the readings.] Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1952, Congress was in the middle of a long and controversial investigation into Communists in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee was summoning writers, directors, and actors to Washington to get them to “name names” of people they knew with ties to the Communist party. One of those they subpoenaed was the playwright Lillian Hellman. Hellman declined to do what the committee asked, writing to the chairman words... Read more
Details: Komen for the Cure just released the following statement from Nancy Brinker and the Susan G. Komen Board of Directors: We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our... Read more
Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me: With many American Catholic leaders blaming the current administration for a new requirement that Catholic employers provide birth control coverage, you’d think that President Barack Obama wouldn’t exactly be their favorite person right now. Still, a survey conducted this week has the president beating Republican hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich among Catholic voters in the 2012 race. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, Obama gets 48 percent of the Catholic votes to Romney’s 40 percent... Read more
A new study may surprise you: By several noteworthy measures, today’s teenagers are growing increasingly conservative. While marijuana use has recently had an uptick, teenagers are smoking far less pot than their parents did at the same age. In 1980, about 60 percent of high-school seniors had tried marijuana and 9 percent smoked it daily. Among seniors today, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teenage risk behaviors since 1975, 45.5 percent have tried... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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