Tomorrow begins the March Madness at Chez Shea. I head off to Walla Walla, WA, home of the ACME Birdseed Company as well as all the other fine ACME products that have served Wile E. Coyote so well. It is also the inspiration for this fine Walt Kelly poem: Deck us all with Boston Charlie,Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo! Don’t we know archaic barrelLullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,Boola boola... Read more

The other day I put up a note about me coming to DC/VA/MD area. In my haste to get the word out and my enthusiasm to tell folks in the area that the airfare is covered, I stupidly left out the fact that, yeah, I would still ask for my normal honorarium based on the number of talks you want me to give. I have edited the entry to reflect that and correct the mistake. So please take that into... Read more

Remarking on yesterday’s post about the Catholic Chaplain who wrote the filthy bit of pro-choice agitprop for “Faithful Democrats”, a reader remarks: During my Mom’s final illness, in a non-Catholic hospital, a very kind and compassionate Pakistani Muslim physician worked with us, patiently explaining everything and detailing our options. I sensed in him a very profound old-world, “home, hearth and family” attitude of respect for Mom’s life, as well as a religious regard for the sanctity of human life, which... Read more

The more you assert something obviously in diametric opposition to both the letter and spirit of Scripture, the more certain you are to hail yourself as highly intelligent and the person allied with the normal reading of Scripture as “ignorant, pathetic, and simplistic”. So, for instance, if you decide to array your intellectual artillery against the proposition that the New Testament teaches that Jesus is God or that he ever claimed to be God, you say things like Jesus was... Read more

…from Gitmo (that’s “Club Gitmo” for all you Rubber Hose Right fans of Rush Limbaugh’s laff off at the Bush-created Torture Regime) we find illustrated for us one of the most pernicious facts about state-sponsored regimes of torture: the fact that it creates a class of people who enjoy their work and like to do it is on their free time. Indeed, as the former Soviet Union demonstrated, such a class of people find ways to network and continue exercising... Read more

He also said that while CIA interrogations will have new limits, President Barack Obama can still use his wartime powers to authorize harsher techniques if necessary. Translation: torture remains the legal policy of these United States at the personal discretion of his Imperial Majesty, the President. He has graciously made an appearance of doing something about the egregious abuses committed by the previous King. But the bottom line is: Obama has carefully preserved the “right” of the state to torture... Read more

Derbyshire applies one of the first scalpels on the corpse where it is badly needed: on the weird and desperate substitution millions of American conservatives have made in replacing serious thought with talk radio chatter: Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs? They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now... Read more

Here! The books should be released in roughly a month! Read more

In which we consider how to read the Bible as grownups do and not as Bill Maher does. Read more

…on this site? Hint: It starts with “A”. No. Not “Artificial contraception”. That actually get a heap ‘o praise on this site (“smart government at its best!”) in stories like this: Report urges boost for US family planning programPublicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research… It’s another word. Think hard. It will come to you. “Faithful” Democrats: working... Read more