2 Corinthians 3:5-6: "Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." Read more
When your household budget is out of balance due to unemployment, then no amount of cost-cutting is going to allow your family to live within its means. When your means is an income of $0 you don't need austerity or discipline or smug self-righteousness. You need a job. Read more
It's also possible that insulting the intelligence and aspiration of younger readers may not be the best approach to winning them over. And, in any case, this is not what a newspaper is supposed to be for. Read more
I sympathize with Buck a bit here. He's just trying to get a straight answer, but the Witnesses can't give him one because they're unable to speak except by quoting unrelated snippets of Bible verses. I'm starting to think that Eli isn't short for Elijah, but for ELIZA -- the early chatterbot computer program that recited lines from its scripts in a way that sometimes almost sort of mimicked human conversation. Read more
Why is it called faith-"healing" when the kids keep winding up dead? How can you dismiss an 11-hour speech without ever hearing or refuting a single sentence in it? Partial Victory, part 1. How to make your religion a quirky relic regarded as a meaningless, frivolous part of the background landscape. Sen. Alexander forgets to pretend. The name of the NFL team in Washington needs to change. One retailer experiments with paying a living wage. Read more
It's the Friday music game -- I'll show you mine, you show me yours. Got any more songs with 'S' names in the title? I've got Shaft, Sharky, Sharon, Sheena, Sonny, Stacy, Stalin, Stella, Stephanie, Susan, Susie and Suzie. Read more
But maybe also — maybe — the lack of anti-gay merchandise at Creation also reflects the raw profit-seeking that seems to drive so much else of what those vendors are all about at Christian festivals. Ministry schministry — those vendors are driven by supply and demand and they’ll sell whatever they think this audience would be willing to buy. So maybe they’ve learned that the younger generation that makes up the bulk of Creation’s market just isn’t interested in buying anti-gay T-shirts ... Read more
Jesus Christ, pugilist; Big Mountain Jesus; the Cardinal has long paid for contraception; reaching out to white voters; not standing by for street harassment; a woman is not a laptop; meat-eating vegetarian extremists; and more. Read more
Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852: "Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America!" Read more
Family Research Council invokes Carl Sagan against marriage equality. Three accounts of three Very Bad Days. Intellectual jokes. Orson Welles has a hunch about hunches. Protest songs. What Dolan never did was worse than what Dolan did. Turn-about and fair play in Ohio. Read more
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