Friday was the last day of work for some of my colleagues in the press room. They weren't laid off — they hit the Pick Six jackpot at the end of last month. Office scuttlebutt says the $10 million payout, split three ways, works out to about $95,000 a year for the next 26 years. For all but a handful of people in the building, this was perceived as More Than Enough to live on while still setting much of... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 219-221 OK, so, Rayford Steele is in church. Right at 10 o'clock, Bruce began, but he asked Loretta to stand by the door and make sure any latecomers were welcomed. We met Loretta about 20 pages ago, shuffling about the church office "sunken-eyed and disheveled, as if she'd come through a war." She was in no condition to be greeting latecomers. Then again, maybe she was. Childless Loretta is still the only person we've met in the... Read more
While we're on the subject, I note the following from the August 2006 Harper's. This is an excerpt from "The Rhythm Method and Embryonic Death," by Luc Bovens, published in the June 2006 Journal of Medical Ethics: It has not gone unnoticed by pro-life advocates that if one is concerned about abortion because of the moral turpitude of killing embryos (and fetuses) then one should also be concerned about contraceptive techniques — the morning after pill, intrauterine devices and the... Read more
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good … Because you folks have better musical taste than I do, and because I keep finding great new songs (and great old songs) by doing this, and because I have rehearsal all afternoon and work all evening and won't get to Left Behind until tomorrow, sorry, and because the last two posts were about stem cell research and heated debate isn't the best way to easy into the weekend. And because it's... Read more
Let me repeat this in blunter terms. Here is what President Bush said yesterday in defense of his veto of Rep. Mike Castle's bill allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research: This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it. … Embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed for their... Read more
James A. Garfield's record is safe.* After more than five years in office, President George W. Bush has vetoed a bill. Bush had threatened a veto 141 times previously, but never followed through. Today he proved that when he says something 142 times, he means what he says at least once. If President Bush says he's going to do something, you can be sure he will — at least 0.7 percent of the time. Reuters' Tabassum Zakaria and Joanne Kenen... Read more
America, 2006: "Can't anybody here play this game?" Amazin'. * * * * * President Bush is threatening to veto Rep. Mike Castle's bill to lift the Bush administration's limits on federally funds for research involving embryonic stem cells. Reporting on this has uniformly treated this as a typical instance of a president threatening a veto — but it's not. George W. Bush has been in office for more than five years. During those five years he has repeatedly threatened... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 218-219 It is the first Sunday after the Rapture. The world has had less than a week to adjust. The mass disappearances coincided with hundreds of calamitous transportation disasters, all on one day. Tens of thousands are dead. More than a billion are missing, and survivors, family members and rescue workers are still working desperately, five days later, to sort out the dead from the vanished from those merely misplaced by global chaos. And there are no... Read more
Could tell a lie but my heart would know … This week's alphabetical list: "Can't Seem to Get It Through My Head," Green "Candy," Iggy Pop & Kate Pierson "Candy," Morphine "Candy's Room," Bruce Springsteen "Cannonball," The Breeders "Capistrano Beach," Terry Scott Taylor "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Lucinda Williams "Caravan," Van Morrison "Caravan of Love," The HouseMartins "Carry Us Through," Sarah Masen Read more
Could've used some Powdermilk Biscuits today before heading over to put in some volunteer time at the Sestak for Congress HQ. You may remember Powdermilk Biscuits as one of the fictitious sponsors of "A Prairie Home Companion" — they're made from "Whole wheat that gives shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done." Not that I'm actually a "shy person" exactly, but I was working the phone bank, and there's something about cold-calling people... Read more
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