Any other day might have been OK

Any other day might have been OK February 12, 2015

• The Latter Day Saints have excommunicated dissident blogger and podcaster John Dehlin. You guys, Al Mohler is sooo jealous of the Mormons right now. Sure, he’s figured out lots of work-arounds to create something like excommunication for Southern Baptists, but it still lacks the zing of the real thing itself.

• A year ago, “a toxic leak contaminated drinking water for 300,000 residents” in West Virginia. Can you guess how Republican lawmakers there are celebrating this anniversary?

Screen shot 2015-02-11 at 4.39.58 PM
No. No it can’t, but thanks for asking.

Did you guess that it’s by introducing “a series of proposals that would weaken a new chemical tank safety law, remove stronger pollution protections for streams across the state, and protect the coal industry from enforcement actions over violations of water quality standards”? Because that is what West Virginia Republicans are doing.

• I generally agree with Erik Loomis and Taylor Berman on this. I’d apply the same principle to coffee shops, where it’s just rude to make people getting coffee wait 10 minutes while the barista concocts some intricate warm milkshake.

If you’ve learned to order a “Quad venti half-caf breve no-foam with whip, two-splenda stirred skinny three-pump peppermint mocha,” then you should also learn this important phrase: “Please go ahead of me if you’re just getting coffee.”

There’s only one reason Michael Sam isn’t on the roster of an NFL team. Sports performance is measurable, and Cyd Zeigler shows that — by every measure — this guy belongs in the league.

• Now both John Fea and Warren Throckmorton have hinted they’re thinking about attending the David Barton Road Show when it rolls into Lancaster County next month. The event — “U-Turn: A Roadmap for Renewal,” hosted by the right-wing Pennsylvania Pastors Network — promises to be unreal in almost every sense. But if those two are going, I might be interested too.

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz is the latest Republican official to argue that the future of the GOP lies in convincing the public to love them as much as it loves Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. Teddy Roosevelt is now trying to find a way to return from the dead just so he can go to Utah to slap this guy silly. Teddy’s “trust-busting” was both good policy and good politics. The current Republican Party’s Trust-Trusting approach is neither.

• Chris Partridge at McSweeney’s: “One Member of This Trinity Is Not Pulling His Weight.”

For extra credit, try to list all of the trinitarian heresies Partridge’s nicely irreverent piece invokes. For extra extra credit, try to say something, anything, reverent about the doctrine of the Trinity that doesn’t result in just as many potential heresies. (You can’t. It’s a trap. The doctrine of the Trinity is a machine designed to produce and condemn heresies.)


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