Not much to say today, but I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me what ‘non-genital’ sex is.
Have I been missing out on something all these years?
by John Cole| 26 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Not much to say today, but I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me what ‘non-genital’ sex is.
Have I been missing out on something all these years?
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: Sports
It’s that time again- that brief, fleeting two day period of light in an otherwise dark 6 months.
Yes, of course, I am talking about the NFL draft. It is tomorrow, and I can barely contain my excitement. Who are my beloved Steelers going to take?
Put your predictions/desires below, and don’t forget to tell us who your team is…
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Politics
by John Cole| 39 Comments
This post is in: Outrage
While I have been railing against some of the bigots in certain religious movements, it is necessary to point out that there are people out there who are vicious and whose vitriole towards all religion is unwarranted and intolerable:
“Nazi pope a clear and present danger to the civilized world,” read the headline of a reader’s letter in a forum of NYTimes.com, The New York Times’ Web site.
It wasn’t the worst abuse leveled at Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, a German. Type the words “Nazi pope” into the Google search line, and you will get nearly 700 mentions.
“Seig Heil, hail Mary!” read one post, misspelling German word for victory, which is “Sieg.”
“What can you expect from a filthy Nazi?” asked one blogger quoted, with horror, by National Review Online. The blogger went on: “…Nazi bas– wearing a dress and no doubt with a past in child-molesting.”
The Internet is of course the kooks’ playground, where anti-German prejudices are safe to disseminate for a simple reason: unlike organizations representing blacks, Jews, Italians or the Irish, their German-American counterparts hardly ever raise a fuss.
You don’t have to be a believer in the entire range of Catholic Church doctrine to recognize how disgusting and completely unfair this type of rhetoric is towards decent people of faith.
I don’t agree with many of the doctrines promoted by the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict the XVI, but it takes a special kind of idiot to equate the Pope with the type of human filth that made up one of the most murderous and vile regimes in the history of mankind. Pope Benedict VXI was forced to be in Hitler Youth- he was yanked out of seminary, and forced to become a member of the military. He had no choice, and as soon as he had a chance, he returned to his true calling. To call this man a Nazi, to associate him with the wholesale slaughter of millions, to claim that he was any of this, is simply beyond the pale.
There are legitimate reasons to dislike individuals like Randall Terry, James Dobson, and the aforementioned Ken Hutcherson, but to make baseless and nonsensical charges that debase and attack all people of faith, such as calling the leader of the Roman Catholic Church is unwarranted and has two effects.
First, it merely confirms the bizarre worldview of people like Randall Terry, convincing them that the world really is out to get them.
Second, it it makes legitimate criticisms of the excesses of some religious leaders and religious communities difficult, because when anyone criticizes them, they immediately are lumped in with the Christophobes and haters who would sink to a level low enough to call the Pope a Nazi.
All this sort of thing does is smear decent people of faith and provide scum like the Terry’s of the world with political cover to wage war on everyone.
by John Cole| 27 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Charles Krauthammer, who is no shrinking violet, tells it like it is:
Provocation is no excuse for derangement. And there has been plenty of provocation: decades of an imperial judiciary unilaterally legislating radical social change on the flimsiest of constitutional pretexts. But while that may explain, it does not justify the flailing, sometimes delirious attacks on the judiciary mounted by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and others in the wake of the Terri Schiavo case.
DeLay is threatening judges involved in that case with unspecified retribution. He said that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy should be held “accountable” for using international law in deciding a recent (death penalty) case. He wants congressional hearings to reinterpret the “good behavior” clause of lifetime judicial tenure to make good behavior mean not what it has meant for two centuries — honesty and propriety — but good constitutional behavior. Do we really want Congress deciding that?
You guys have lost Charles Krauthammer. Are you beginning to smell the salts yet, beginning to come to your senses? I doubt it. Hammer then lists a series of offense he perceives the Courts have committed, and closes with this:
The prestige the courts inherited from Brown fueled their arrogant appropriation of legislative power in areas radically different and suffering no disenfranchisement — abortion, gay rights, religion in the public square. For decades they have been creating law, citing emanations from penumbras of the Constitution visible only to their holinesses.
This is all true and deeply depressing. But the answer is not to assault the separation of powers. Certainly not to empower Congress to regulate judicial decision-making by retroactively removing lifetime appointees. The non-deranged way to correct the problem is to appoint a new generation of judges committed to judicial modesty.
Yet the recent eruptions of DeLay, Cornyn and some of their fellows may, like FDR’s court-packing overreaching in 1937, have a salutary effect after all — scaring the bejesus out of judges, maybe even shocking them into a little bit of humility, something that does not seem to come to them naturally.
You guys have lost Charles Krauthammer.
by John Cole| 11 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
So, you are a religious zealot, a leader of an evangelical church, and a lunatic. What will move you to threaten a corporation with a nationwide boycott of Christians? Simple.
Anti-discrimination legislation.
When your religion, or your whacked-out interpretation of your religion, dictates to you that a bill preventing the discrimination of individuals based on sexual orientation in the workplace and housing is such a threat that nationwide boycott of a corporation, we aren’t talking about theology or faith or anything of the sort. We are talking about bigots, plain and simple.
The Microsoft Corporation, at the forefront of corporate gay rights for decades, is coming under fire from gay rights groups, politicians and its own employees for withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Many of the critics accused the company of bowing to pressure from a prominent evangelical church in Redmond, Wash., located a few blocks from Microsoft’s sprawling headquarters…
Microsoft officials denied any connection between their decision not to endorse the bill and the church’s opposition, although they acknowledged meeting twice with the church minister, Ken Hutcherson.
Dr. Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies opposing same-sex marriage here and in Washington, D.C., said he threatened in those meetings to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.
After that, “they backed off,” the pastor said Thursday in a telephone interview. “I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about,” he said.
So much for hate the sin, love the sinner. This loud, organized fringe movement within Christianity, particular some of the Evangelicals, really gives all Christians a bad name.
by John Cole| 6 Comments
This post is in: Military
As if there was any doubt:
A military jury convicted an Army sergeant of premeditated murder and attempted murder on Thursday for killing two of his comrades and wounding 14 others in an attack on his own camp in Kuwait at the start of the Iraq war.
The sergeant, Hasan Akbar, 34, could be sentenced to death when the 15-member jury reconvenes on Monday.
Prosecutors said Sergeant Akbar, a Muslim, told investigators that he attacked the brigade command section of Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, using stolen grenades and a rifle, because he was concerned that troops would kill Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack on the 101st Airborne Division to achieve “maximum carnage.”
A traitor and a murderer- cases like this really test my opposition to the death penalty.