Psalm 72

Last updated on: April 1, 2005 at 11:48 am By Fred Clark

I want to highlight one final item from Rick Warren's appearance on "Larry King Live" (transcript here). Warren is a megachurch pastor and author of the best-selling self-help book "The Purpose Driven Life." Time magazine recently featured him as the most-influential of it's 25 Most Influential Evangelicals, noting that "on the eve of the presidential Inauguration, Warren… delivered the Invocation at the gala celebration." If I had the chance to deliver such a sermon, to preach to the president on... Read more

Diaspora

Last updated on: March 31, 2005 at 12:18 pm By Fred Clark

14 Comments

David Brooks contemplates switching baseball allegiance. This is a serious matter. I've lived in the Delaware Valley for nearly 20 years. Fairly soon after moving here, I transferred the tepid, mainly geographic loyalty I had to the football, basketball and hockey teams of my childhood. This happened gradually, almost unconsciously. I remember being surprised to realize I felt disappointed after seeing the Giants beat the Eagles. It was, I realized, official. I was assimilating. But baseball is different. I am... Read more

Privileges revoked

Last updated on: March 30, 2005 at 2:00 pm By Fred Clark

20 Comments

I'm confused by this story of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling Monday: In a sharply divided ruling, Colorado's highest court on Monday upheld a lower court's decision throwing out the sentence of a man who was given the death penalty after jurors consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The Bible, the court said, constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on what the court called a "higher authority." … The ruling involved the conviction of Robert Harlan, who... Read more

Very Nice People

Last updated on: March 28, 2005 at 7:25 pm By Fred Clark

52 Comments

Honestly, criticizing Rick Warren is not the purpose that drives my life, but the megachurch guru made one other statement on "Larry King Live" that's worth examining. On the subject of Terri Schiavo, Warren says something that highlights why it is that evangelical Christians in America are simultaneously Very Nice People and blindered hypocrites. Here's Warren: I know that if it were allowed, that Terri Schiavo's feeding for the rest of her life would be taken care of by millions... Read more

“The increase in violence”

Last updated on: March 28, 2005 at 2:55 pm By Fred Clark

16 Comments

So the other night at work I'm watching "Larry King Live" on the 24-hour news station CNN. Except Larry ain't live and CNN isn't a 24-hour station. CNN broadcasts, I don't know, somewhere between 12 and 18 hours of news-ish programming a day. Then it repeats the same shows overnight. They sometimes show Larry King twice overnight, meaning that some days his bland interview with a B-list former newsmaker and/or celebrity (last night it was Donny Osmond) constitutes 1/8 of... Read more

Happy Easter

Last updated on: March 27, 2005 at 9:14 am By Fred Clark

9 Comments

You know you've been spending too much time in the blogosphere when your instinctive response to the Easter liturgy is to say: "Christ is risen indeed … heh." Read more

Caiaphas

Last updated on: March 26, 2005 at 11:29 am By Fred Clark

26 Comments

So the Chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, "What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better... Read more

Briefly

Last updated on: March 25, 2005 at 10:11 am By Fred Clark

3 Comments

NASCAR morality Sports reporter Mike Finney finds a Nextel Cup crew chief auditioning for a role as Pentagon spokesperson: Todd Berrier, crew chief for the No. 29 Chevy of Kevin Harvick, has been suspended for the next four races and fined $25,000 for using an unapproved fuel filler and unapproved fuel cell vent in qualifying for last Sunday's race. … "If I had to do it again, I'd still play it to try to get away with it, because I... Read more

The Scandal of the Originalist Mind

Last updated on: March 24, 2005 at 12:19 pm By Fred Clark

49 Comments

Margaret Talbot offers a long, critical, insightful and somewhat affectionate profile of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in this week's New Yorker. The full profile, annoyingly, is not online, although they have posted a Q&A with Talbot that serves as a kind of Cliff Notes for the piece. The more I read of Talbot's description of Scalia's approach to the Constitution, the more I began to have a sense of deja vu. I grew up among the fundamentalists. I've encountered... Read more

Kaput

Last updated on: March 23, 2005 at 2:23 pm By Fred Clark

7 Comments

"George W. Bush's plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment. It's a statement of political fact." So wrote Jacob Weisberg yesterday in Slate. If Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., had any doubts that Weisberg was right, those doubts were quickly dispelled by the crowd of angry constituents at his townhall meeting last night. The News Journal's robin brown reports: … when the subject turned to the idea of letting younger workers opt to... Read more