As language becomes ever more meaningless, I sometimes think politicians will just get rid of words altogether and simply substitute noises that indicate various states of mood. For instance, when Catholics point out the crazy bigotry of Harry Knox, who dementedly calls the Knight of Columbus an “army of oppression”, as well as sundry other sample of anti-Catholic nuttery, the Administration responds that “the president is comfortable with the makeup of his faith advisory council“. It is, of course, consoling... Read more

Smoke Monster From ‘Lost’ Given Own Primetime Spin-Off Series Read more

I’ll be on Commander Craig’s podcast at 3 PM PDT. We’ll be talking about various stuff, but mostly Answering Angels and Demons and Mary, Mother of the Son, I reckon. Read more

There’s nothing like circumcision to spark a conversation. I once did a radio show with Rabbi Daniel Lapin in which one of the guests was a mohel (rabbi who performed circumcisions) from Argentina (I’ve led a rich and varied life). Rabbi Lapin had all sorts of stuff he wanted to talk about, but the only thing callers wanted to discuss was the endlessly fascinating topic of circumcision. It got numbing after a while, but one remark stood out: the mohel... Read more

Today, fawning lackeys, I give you but one command: You’ve seen the movie. Now read the review! That is all. Read more

Yesterday, you got to weather the crisis of my temporary halt in Follower Acquisition, discuss the Shroud of Turin, discover what Consequentialism is all about, get on the cutting edge of a conversation about circumcision, and ward off invisible chocolate robots while chatting about slippery slope arguments. Today, you get to enjoy Meta-Ethical Subjectivist Comedy Gold, as well as peruse other fun stuff that washed up in my mail box. And, of course, there’s the convivial atmosphere of the comments... Read more

In which we discover once again the ancient principle: Show me a person who cannot distinguish cleverness from wisdom, or a good brain from a good heart and I will show you somebody who is a fool. Read more

A masterful little fisk of one of the everlastingly stupid canards of the Pro-Torture Right. Read more

In one of those phony “confessional” articles where the author uses fake contrition to heap abuse on his enemies, Frank Schaeffer came out with a “confession” in which he again disinterred the corpse of his father, put it on trial like the body of Pope Formosus, and then, to the applause of the Herd of Independent Minds who read junk like HuffPo, set to work once again inserting the dagger of Christian fellowship between the shoulder blades of Evangelical and... Read more

Much of the popular approach to Catholic moral teaching is that God has arbitary “rules” that he lays out because, hey!, he’s inscrutable and just like rules. “Morality” in such a system consists of “keeping the rules” because, well, rules are for keeping. If you break a rule, God will be veddy veddy angry because he just kind of a cosmic martinet who is that way. If you question the rules, you will get in Big Trouble because Rules are... Read more