L.B.: What’s on second

Last updated on: May 5, 2006 at 5:33 pm By Fred Clark

Left Behind, pp. 211-213 (take two) Rayford Steele, we're told, attended the New Hope Village Church only a few times after his wife Irene starting going there. If the Rev. Vernon Billings' In-Case-of-Rapture video is at all like the sermons Billings preached, then I understand why Rayford never went back. Billings is pedantic and condescending, even when he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. He's almost Limbaughian. "The Bible says that men's hearts will fail them for fear,"... Read more

Random 10

Last updated on: May 5, 2006 at 3:12 pm By Fred Clark

15 Comments

I'm waitin' for the shout from the crowd … Velvet Underground, "Heroin" Patty Griffin, "You Never Get What You Want" Don McCloskey, "Lower Your Standards" Marshall Crenshaw, "Mary Anne" The Killers, "All These Things That I've Done" Pedro the Lion, "Bad Diary Days" Bruce Springsteen, "Mary's Place" George Michael, "Faith" Over the Rhine, "Happy to Be So" Kasey Chambers, "The Captain" Also on the subject of music: Check out the trailer for The Danielson Movie. Ad-den-dum, dum dum: In defense... Read more

Teen cheerleaders

Last updated on: May 4, 2006 at 4:48 pm By Fred Clark

59 Comments

"I make allowances for your youth, but I expect a certain amount of responsibility, and instead of which you enslave yourself to this, this … cult!" (OK, yes, that headline is mainly there to mess with the Google perverts.) Posted two stories for the paper this week about competitive cheerleading (here and here), both of which were characterized as "sports" stories. Debating whether or not things like competitive cheerleading are "sports" isn't particularly fruitful, but I am always suspicious of... Read more

The Minutemen commit Sodomy

Last updated on: May 4, 2006 at 4:00 pm By Fred Clark

54 Comments

"The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt." — Leviticus 19:34 I should have been more precise in the previous post: The ethics of immigration policy can be complicated. Immigration policy, by definition, has to do with borders and boundaries, with drawing lines that distinguish one group of people from another and establishing rules for treating these different groups differently. These things are an inescapable... Read more

Getting ugly

Last updated on: May 3, 2006 at 10:09 pm By Fred Clark

45 Comments

I haven't written much about immigration because, frankly, I don't have a clear grasp of the subject. Immigration law and the economics involved are fairly complicated. So are the ethics. The idea of rebranding illegal immigrants as felons strikes me as unnecessary and dumb, but I'd be happy to hear the arguments in favor of such a measure. It's not easy to find such arguments however. Instead of arguments, one finds mainly sentiment — and that sentiment is not pretty.... Read more

Binary Code

Last updated on: May 1, 2006 at 6:31 pm By Fred Clark

61 Comments

Either/or. This or that. Only this or only that. Government or individuals — and only government (Leviathan) or only individuals. Laws or markets — and only laws or only markets. Anarchy or tyranny. What a weird, unreal and inhuman way of looking at the world. Yet strangely popular. I just don't get it. The real world, of course, doesn't look anything like this. Yet when adherents of this strange binary outlook encounter the real world, they never consider adapting their... Read more

Springtime in Rodney Square

Last updated on: May 11, 2013 at 10:41 am By Fred Clark

54 Comments

Here's a cookie for Scott: "The war on drugs has created more problems than it has solved." It's an op-ed by George Jurgensen, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Delaware. It's also part of an ongoing series in the paper, a "public discussion of policy regarding illegal drugs" on the op-ed page that was prompted by a former "tough-on-crime' state prosecutor announcing, on his retirement, that "the war on drugs has failed." (See earlier, "Two cheers.") * * * *... Read more

Get Well Soon

Last updated on: May 11, 2013 at 10:41 am By Fred Clark

9 Comments

Had kind of an Emily Litella moment last night while posting the sports section. A note at the end of the story on the Phillies game said that Colorado first baseman Todd Helton, recently hospitalized with abdominal pain, had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. That was stunning news — here's a guy, 33 years old, in perfect physical health. One day he's leading all active players in career batting average and the next day he's in the hospital and... Read more

Red leader

Last updated on: May 11, 2013 at 10:41 am By Fred Clark

13 Comments

Marine Gen. (ret.) Paul Van Riper has joined the chorus of retired generals calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. You may remember Gen. Van Riper from "Millennium Challenge 02" — the largest war game ever staged by the U.S. military. The game, involving some 13,500 troops at a cost of around $250 million, was essentially a dress-rehearsal for the invasion of Iraq. Van Riper led the "Red," enemy, team. And he won. Or he would have won, if the... Read more

Cui bono?

Last updated on: May 11, 2013 at 10:41 am By Fred Clark

54 Comments

Beginning Monday, the average electric bill for the average household in Delaware will go up 59 percent. That works out to more than $620 a year. This huge spike is the result of electricity deregulation, which was introduced as a measure that would lower the cost for consumers. Deregulation was celebrated as a triumph over the costly inefficiencies of "big government." This claim was, it turns out, a con. This is not surprising. It's always a con when questions of... Read more