Daniel J. Ikenson says yes: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he was “so upset … they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again.” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, clucked of the Olympic committee at a news conference that “You’d think they’d know better.” To prevent such abominations in the future, six Democratic senators plan to introduce the “Team USA Made in America Act of 2012″ next... Read more

From Dahlia Lithwick, a week or so back, but still an interesting take: Depending on whether you generally prefer your vitriolic abuse from the left or the right, it’s been a tough week for Chief Justice John Roberts. Having given conservatives the sun, the moon, and the stars for seven years, Roberts suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of everyone from theWashington Post’s Marc Thiessen, to the Wall Street Journal’s John Yoo, to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who not only returned... Read more

… get our attention, so Chesterton said something along this line. But this study shows that death tightens one’s faith and one’s openness to other religions. Death can have a profound effect on a person’s religious beliefs. In a new study, death not only strengthened a person’s religious beliefs but also increased the denial of other religions. One popular belief about the role of religion is to help manage how people deal with death. Religion could help people be aware... Read more

Bruce Hulme is an administrator and professor at Tabor Adelaide. Giving by Bruce Hulme: The Spiritual Discipline of Giving Thinking about giving as a spiritual discipline might make us wince a little. Surely our giving is to be a free outpouring of gratitude in response to the generosity of God, rather than something that is ‘under compulsion’ (cf. 2 Cor. 9:7) or in need of regimentation! Is considering giving as a spiritual discipline little more than a return to living... Read more

David Brooks, on the need for a new kind of diversity: Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like... Read more

Interesting report here by Jordan Weissmann: Anyone care to speak up? Everyone prefers going work with people they like. That’s just natural. But it’s also one of the reasons certain industries tend to get dominated by old boys’ clubs. Exhibit A: Wall Street. Now, a new working paper out of Harvard University suggests there’s another downside to doing business with people based on whether you get along: Friends are bad for business. The study explores the reasons venture capitalists team up... Read more

Graham Buxton, whose book Dancing in the Dark, I recently blogged about on this blog, is a professor at Tabor Adelaide (and you can find him at Fuller Theological Seminary, too). Lament by Graham Buxton: Lament and Remembrance in Ministry Behind the deep cries of lament that afflict us all at times lie the pain and grief of feeling abandoned. But in the face of such lament we do well to recall that there is a God who has not... Read more

The big picture: we will fly into Instanbul (Constantinople), tour some of the cities of Peter and Paul and John in Asia Minor, fly to Tel Aviv, get a bus to Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, and then the unique part of this trip is that we will go on a four-day hike from Nazareth to Capernaum. Then we will bus down to Jerusalem to spend a day in Jerusalem. Please think of joining Kris and me on this life-time of... Read more