The Legacy Media is Caught Again.

Reporters caught conspiring to concoct story designed to embarass Republican candidate Joe Miller.

Clearly the reporters were conspiring to set up some type of smear of Joe Miller. With glee, they even cite a recent controversy over an incident involving the Rand Paul campaign, while discussing how they would spread the story via social media after whatever incident they had in mind came off. It also brings to mind another recent episode that ended with Jerry Brown’s California gubernatorial campaign being caught up in controversy when someone from Brown’s camp called Brown’s opponent, Republican Meg Whitman, a “whore.”

Mainstream Media reporting ought to be listed as an "in-kind" donation to the Democrats.

NRO's Battle 10 has the transcript:

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…


[Laughter]

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…

MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.

[Laughter]

MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’

FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.

[Laughter]

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

Bloody Henry.

Apologetics 315 has this link to Explaining the Heresy of Catholicism by John MacArthur.  MacArthur is supposed to be something of a heavy hitter in Protestant circles, but the two lectures I've listened to make me doubt that reputation.  In the first lecture on the Mass, MacArthur spent 20 minutes accusing Catholicism of the Donatist heresy, requiring for the effectiveness of a sacrament that the priest be morally "pure."  Anyone with a passing interest in history knows that Catholics like St. Augustine were on the other - and winning side - of that issue and that the Catholic doctrine is "Ex opere operato":

A technical phrase used by theologians since the 13th century to signify that the sacraments produce grace of themselves, apart and distinct from the grace dependent upon the intention of the person conferring the sacrament; the latter effect is designated by the phrase ex opere operantis. The phrase is first found in the writings of Peter of Poitiers (c.1130-1215),

"The act of Baptism is not identical with Baptism because it is an opus operans while Baptism is an opus operatum."

The phrase was not in general use in the time of Saint Thomas but it was officially adopted by the Council of Trent and used to signify the objective character of the sacraments as producers of grace in opposition to the subjectivism of the Reformers. According to Trent, therefore, the term opus operatum signifies that the correct use of the sign instituted by Christ produces the grace irrespectively of the merits of either minister or recipient (ex opere operantis), though the intention of conferring the sacrament is required in the minister and the intention of receiving in the recipient, if he be an adult, for a valid and worthy reception of the sacrament. For the council clearly states that the sacraments "confer Grace on those who do not place an obstacle thereunto."

This is ironic since MacArthur's constant point is how ignorant Catholics are about their "satanic system." It seems that the ignorant one is John MacArthur, who apparently thinks that the Donatists won the schism.

In the second lecture on the Mass, MacArthur vented for a full 20 minutes on the 180 martyrs who were put to death under Queen Mary Tudor, aka "Bloody Mary."  Certainly, no would defend that religious oppression in this day and age, but for the sake of balance it might be worth pointing out that Mary's dad, Henry VIII, killed numbers that would not be eclipsed until the totalitarian Twentieth Century:

Mary I burned 284 Protestant heretics, according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which is unlikely to be an underestimate. Estimates of the number of executions carried out by Henry VIII range from 57,000 to the 72,000 claimed in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (the mass murder following the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace should be taken into account). The troops of his son Edward VI massacred more than 5,500 Cornish Catholics in the wake of the Prayer Book Rebellion. Elizabeth I was more sparing of formal executions, though St Margaret Clitheroe was pressed to death at York and Mary Queen of Scots beheaded; but the butchery in Ireland was appalling. There, Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, supported a policy of extermination by artificial famine on a scale that was not exceeded until Stalin in the 1930s.


So, why is it “Bloody Mary”, but “Bluff King Hal”, when the executions he ordered exceeded his daughter’s by more than 56,000 at the least? Why not “Bloody Harry”? Obviously, because he was the founder of the Church of England. That did not prevent him from burning the more advanced Protestant Anne Askew, who had the privilege of being racked in the Tower of London by the Lord Chancellor in person, which suggests that the divisions between conflicting wings of the Church of England were at least as vicious then as now.


The most recent study of Mary’s reign, Eamon Duffy’s Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor, authoritatively demonstrates that England at her accession remained a Catholic country at heart and was relieved to return to the practices of the old faith, which had not been abandoned out of mass apostasy but only in obedience to the personal policy of Henry VIII, enforced by terror.

In that regard, one interesting thing about MacArthur's reading from Foxe's book is the apparent mass support for the incineration of Protestant's under Mary.  Foxe's description has the martyrdom's attended by thousands.  Giving due credit for the idea that executions were popular, might there also be some element of "pay back" by a population that had been repressed during the reigns of two kings who were trying to exterminate the old religion?

The bottom line is that MacArthur's sermons explain why a lot of anti-catholicism seems stuck in the 16th Century: it is stuck in the 16th Century, in the living memory of people like John MacArthur.

If only Presbyterian Ministers in Presbyterys committed to removing sexual behavior standards from the Presbyterian Church could marry....

From the Layman:

Chicago Presbytery, a recognized leader among those seeking to remove sexual behavior standards from the Presbyterian Church (USA) constitution, has a new claim to fame: It is now hamstrung by an estimated $11 million debt arising from a sex offense lawsuit.


Complainants alleged that the presbytery’s youth ministry director, the Rev. Douglas R. Mason, sexually abused four minor boys repeatedly over a period of nine years, including taking them out of school during the day to have sex with them. The activities allegedly occurred in various places, including the presbytery office, the youth ministry van and during youth field trips.

Sealed settlement

The presbytery approved a settlement with the victims in 2007, but details were sealed and online access to presbytery reports, minutes and financial records have been password protected.

Although presbytery officials initiated an inquiry after the allegations were made public, the presbytery did not bring charges against Mason. The presbytery’s investigation found “no tangible evidence or third party testimony that would corroborate the plaintiffs’ stories,” said Robert C. Reynolds, the presbytery’s executive in a statement released shortly after the civil suit was filed.

And:

Having escaped ecclesiastical and criminal prosecution in Chicago, Mason headed for Miami, Fla., where he found work as an interim associate pastor at the Miami Shores Presbyterian Church for a year, followed by short-term employment with a South Florida academy where he taught a class of learning-disabled teenagers.


Mason died in Florida at the age of 46, according to PCUSA records. The Sunny Isles Police Department reported Mason’s death as unknown causes. Because of his death, he was never a defendant in a civil, criminal or ecclesiastical trial. But that didn’t take Chicago Presbytery off the hook for a lawsuit that appears to have resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement

  And here is the most important part of the article:

Opposing sexual behavior standards


In 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2008, Chicago Presbytery voted to remove the “fidelity/chastity” standard that is part of the PCUSA constitution. The Rev. John Buchanan and other presbytery leaders played a prominent role in organizing The Covenant Network, a denominational lobbying group that seeks the full inclusion of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) persons in church leadership positions.

In 1997, after the Covenant Network’s campaign to do away with the denomination’s sexual behavior standards was launched, attorney Robert L. Howard, who was then chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, authored a Layman article in which he warned that failure to uphold ordination standards could pose serious legal liability issues for the denomination. Howard said that the church is best protected by having a clear, unambiguous moral standard firmly embedded in its constitution, along with a demonstrable history of enforcement.

Chicago Presbytery has defied that counsel on two counts: It has repeatedly and vigorously acted to remove the standard (Book of Order G-6.0106b) from the constitution, and its leaders have supported “local option” policies that undermine enforcement of the standard, while giving aid and counsel to persons who openly violate it.

Just remember that sexual preference has nothing to do with this problem, but mandatory celibacy for clergy does!

Schadenfreude Alert - Atheist allegedly defrauds atheist charity.

And the best part is that it is the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Josh Timonen was one of a small coterie of young protégés around Richard Dawkins, sharing his boss's zealous atheism. But now he and the evolutionary theorist have fallen out spectacularly. Professor Dawkins's charity has accused Mr Timonen of embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds.


The two atheists had become close in recent years, with Dawkins, the best-selling author and Emeritus Professor of Biology at Oxford University, even dedicating his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, to him. But Mr Timonen and the Dawkins foundation are now preparing for a legal wrangle.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, has filed four lawsuits in a Californian court alleging that Mr Timonen, who ran its online operation in America, stole $375,000 (£239,000) over three years. It is claiming $950,000 in damages, while Mr Dawkins is suing him for $14,000 owed to him personally. Mr Timonen strongly denies the allegations.

If it's true, what's so wrong with this from the viewpoint of evolutionary morality? If Mr. Timonen did it and succeeded in getting away with it, then he'd be working to the advantage of his "selfish genes."  Otherwise, it's all just matter in motion; it's not like he did anything objectively wrong.

Vox Day writes:

With the exception of the hapless Sam Harris, atheists repeatedly insist that despite having no externally imposed morality, there is no reason for them to behave worse than those who do possess a morality imposed upon them by their gods. And yet, again and again, we see that their moral behavior, (as measured by the theistic systems in which they do not believe), is completely dependent upon the circumstances in which they find themselves and the temptations they face.

In the same way that an atheist leader with sufficient power is more likely than not to murder at least 20,000 people, we now know that atheist charities, (if I recall Dawkins's claims correctly, the foundation for Reason and Science was the first explicitly atheist charity in Britain), are one for one in corruption. But I suppose that's what happens when you turn yourself into the godless version of a big-haired televangelist.

If only Christian youth group leaders could marry.

From the Star-Trib:

The director of a youth organization in Cambridge, Minn., has been arrested and accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the Christian group.


Mark S. Holm, 54, of Stanchfield, Minn., who has led East Central Minnesota Young Life since 2004 and came aboard nearly 40 years ago, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and remains in the Isanti County jail pending charges and a court appearance late Friday morning.

Holm's accuser, who is 17 years old, and her parents came to the Police Department and gave a statement, police said. Young Life lists on its website a host of activities it offers for boys and girls, ranging from introducing "adolescents to Jesus Christ" to camp retreats to support through mentoring.

When will we end the discipline of celibacy for Protestant youth group leaders?

Liberals resorting to bigotry, again.

This has to be the worst campaing season ever. People who resort to appeals to religious prejudice, whether it's the inane "Aqua Buddha" ad or the recent attempts to use Catholic imagery as an unspoken reason to vote against someon deserve to lose.  And now there's this "are you now or have you ever worked for a Catholic Diocese" strategy from Missouri.

Big Journalism has a post on an attempt to smear Missouri Congressional Candidate Ed Martin as a Catholic for purported involvement in the pedophilia scandal because - hey- all Catholics are guilty by definition. It appears that the site is funded by  Martin's opponent, Democrat candidate Russ Carnahan. 

Here is the site whose allegations appear to be that Martin worked for the Diocese between 1998 and 2001 and therefore must have been involved in alleged pedophilia that happened decades earlier.  The site finds great signficance in Martin's wedding invitation.

According to Big Journalism:

It must be asked: Is this what all reporters from CBS and NBC news are really like? How could an Emmy award-winning journalist and an Edward R Murrow award-winning journalist be reduced to such reprehensible actions? Did they try to push the story through the media and fail? Anderson Cooper had enough interest to call the local Fox channel for an investigation, but it wasn’t moving fast enough until Ed Martin called the press conference to get ahead of the smear. Add in the suspicious payments to a research department at the University of Arizona that researches speaking to the dead, and you get a very nasty, very under-handed, almost certainly illegal coordination hit piece, run by former Dateline journalists, and financed by Russ Carnahan’s re-election campaign.


This is the state of modern journalism. Handed the keys to a juicy story about an attack piece that failed, no media outlet was interested in discovering who was behind a blatant smear of Catholics and a congressional candidate. Once again, an unpaid blogger presented the evidence. It is our hope that the media finally reports on the matter, calling out their former comrades for conduct unbecoming of a professional journalist.

All of this, of course, merits not a second of interest in the media since anti-Catholicism is "the last acceptable prejudice.

Cuckolding - it's good for the mother...

....and who really cares about the putative father?

From NRO:

Sadly, this article (“Who’s the Daddy?” by Melanie McDonagh) lurks behind the London Spectator‘s paywall. That’s a shame, because in its own quite astoundingly malevolent way, it’s not without interest. The author’s complaint? That DNA tests now allow men to know whether they are truly the fathers of the children that they are being asked to provide for. I would have thought that this was a good thing. Ms. McDonagh does not.

DNA tests are an anti-feminist appliance of science, a change in the balance of power between the sexes that we’ve hardly come to terms with. And that holds true even though many women have the economic potential to provide for their children themselves…Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them. The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not… Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter…in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice.

Words fail me.

Ditto.

John Mortimer on the development of the First Amendment.

The author of Rumpole of the Bailey - who was a practicing attorney - wrote this:

[speaking in a debate about pornography] A test of pornography was once adumbrated by the Supreme Court of the United States. It was called the Felix Principle. And it was adumbrated in the days when Mr Justice Frankfurter sat upon the court. And a pornographic book was then defined as something which gave Mr Justice Frankfurter an erection. [laughter] And it was noticed that as the years went by... [laughter and applause] and Mr Justice Frankfurter became older and less easily stimulated, the judgements of the Supreme Court became conspicuously more liberal.

Great moments from "The Shrew."

Barbara Walters looks like she's sucking a lemon as she suggests that Joy Behar tone it down a bit.

The Euphemism Treadmill. - The reason why we have to keep relearning what is and is not acceptible to say in polite society.

According to the Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia:

Euphemisms often evolve over time into taboo words themselves, through a process described by W.V.O. Quine, and more recently dubbed the "euphemism treadmill" by Steven Pinker. (cf. Gresham's Law in economics). This is the well-known linguistic process known as 'pejoration' or 'semantic change'.

In his remarks on the ever-changing London slang, made in Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell mentioned both the euphemism treadmill and the dysphemism treadmill. He did not use these now-established terms, but observed and commented on the respective processes as early as in 1933.

Words originally intended as euphemisms may lose their euphemistic value, acquiring the negative connotations of their referents. In some cases, they may be used mockingly and become dysphemisms.

Minnesota Democrat Party runs "The Most Anti-Catholic Political Ad You'll Ever See."

According to National Catholic Register:

A Democrat Party supporting independent non profit group has sent out perhaps THE most anti-Catholic political advertisement I’ve ever seen. Sometimes there’s a little subtlety to anti-Catholic political rhetoric but not this time. This is in your face anti-Catholicism. A postcard was sent out to voters with a photo shopped picture of a Catholic priest wearing a campaign button saying: “Ignore the Poor.”


As you can see the pic takes up nearly the entire length of the postcard. It’s anti-Catholicism is not one point of many. It’s the point.

According to its website “The Minnesota DFL supports and works to enact the ideals and principles of the Democratic Party and strives to sustain the foundations in our Party’s grassroots history.”


One of the more worrisome things about this is that this group must believe that there’s enough of an anti-Catholic vote that this would pay dividends. Could that be true?

Never mind the factual basis the charge that the Church ignores the poor is absolutely ridiculous because the Church is THE most charitable organization on the planet. But this postcard has nothing to do with the poor. What this is about is the fact that the Church stands strong against abortion and gay marriage. And that makes some very angry.

This election season has been a nasty one. And this may be its low point.

See also The Eponymous Flower.

I'm not getting the point of the ad. How does accusing the Catholic Church of "ignoring" the poor make people vote Democrat? 

 

The Counter-cultural Colbert.

Kathryn Jean Lopez points to this under-reported bit on Stephen Colbert's appearance on The View.

And with that, Colbert dropped the shtick and focused on something anyone who watches his show regularly has seen glimpses of: his faith. He’s a Catholic who unmistakably believes that should mean something. That there should be something different about you if you are. The one who has hope lives differently, after all.


And, so, on The View, he presented the Cross. He told Walters and the women around the interview couch about his mother and her “very strong faith.” “She taught us to still love life and not be bitter,” he said “And to realize that everybody suffers and if you can accept your suffering then you’ll just understand other people better. And, strangely enough, you have to be grateful for pain.”

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch Predicts Republican Blow-out.

This falls in the man-bites-dog category. Koch writes:

I predict a Republican victory of tsunami proportions on November 2nd.


For the last six months in various public forums, I have said that Republicans will take both the House and Senate. Most political observers, citing statistics from various states, continue to say that, while it appears certain that the House will go Republican, there are too few Senate seats in play for a Republican takeover. Further, many pundits state that Democrats will preserve their control of the Senate because the Republican Party has undermined itself by fielding whacko and semi-whacko candidates from the "Tea Party" wing or otherwise offering inferior candidates, e.g., Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Carly Fiorina in California.

Without being able to cite statistics that support my view, I nevertheless predict the Republicans will also take the Senate.

 
And:
 

Why would intelligent voters leave the Democratic Party that they endorsed so heavily two years ago in the 2008 presidential election? The reason is obvious - deep, deep disappointment in the record of President Obama. The President has wasted many opportunities in his term to date, and has lost by his own admission almost every battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate in pushing through Congress monumental legislation that he signed into law.


Why did the President and Congress insist on reinventing the wheel when it came to health care coverage? Weren't there prototypes in Europe and elsewhere developed and used for more than 50 years with proven track records that could have been used as models? Did the President and Congress have to terrify people who had insurance coverage in order to provide coverage for the additional 32 million Americans covered under the new law? Couldn't those without insurance have been attached in some way to the Medicaid rolls? Why did the President and Congress sell out to the prescription drug companies and strip Medicare of the right to negotiate volume discount purchases that could have saved U.S. taxpayers more than a trillion dollars over ten years? What rankles most for many, including me, is why have there been so few criminal prosecutions of those who are responsible for having brought the U.S. economy to its knees, destroyed the nation's prosperity and caused millions of Americans to lose their homes, their jobs and a substantial portion of their retirement savings? Why when looking at Obama's cabinet and advisers, do we see the faces of those who many hold responsible for the economic debacle?

It is for these reasons, I believe, the coming November tsunami will roll across America and give the Republicans, who are undeserving of the honor, control of both Houses. The American public is enraged and wants to punish those who have been in charge of the country. They know those who will replace incumbents may be as bad or worse, but they also believe they can't do any greater damage. They are willing to put up with them until the next election to teach our elected representatives a monumental lesson -- that public service is an honorable profession and must be performed competently and honestly.

Accusations of Homophobia....

...they're not for everyone.

Democrat party leader "outed" for homophobic slur against Andrew Breitbart. Usual defenders of homosexual interests oddly silent.

Brent Boger for Clark County Prosecuting Attorney

Washington Post decides grassroots Community Organizing is bad...

...if it is done by orthodox Catholic blogs.

According to Rachell Zoll at the Washington Post:

Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters

-- Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough.


Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church.

-In the Archdiocese of Boston, parishioners are dissecting the work of a top adviser to the cardinal for any hint of Marxist influence.

-Bloggers are combing through campaign finance records to expose staff of Catholic agencies who donate to politicians who support abortion rights.

-RealCatholicTV.com, working from studios in suburban Detroit, is hunting for "traitorous" nuns, priests or bishops throughout the American church.

What do these people think they are doing?  It's not like they are targeting something really evil like a liberal journalist who appears on Fox News.

Thomas Peters, who runs the popular "AmericanPapist" blog, said fellow orthodox Catholics have embraced the Web because they feel they finally have a platform that can compete with well-established liberal Catholic publications, such as the National Catholic Reporter. (Some conservative bloggers call the paper "the National Catholic Destroyer.")


Peters, 25, considers himself on the more positive side of the orthodox Catholic blogosphere, although some targets of his commentary disagree.

He condemns the vitriol he sees online, and promotes a blog feature called "bishops with backbone," in praise of church leaders who rein in dissenters. He also added an online function to send thank you notes when leaders take tough stands, recently generating 500 letters in one day for Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis who refused Holy Communion to gay rights protesters at a recent Mass.

"All of these things that we say in public are meant for the best good of the church," said Peters. He began his blog several years ago and now works for the American Principles Project, a conservative advocacy group founded by Princeton University scholar Robert George.

The rise in lay conservative fervor comes at a time when the need for activism would seem less urgent. The U.S. hierarchy has seen a wave of retirements in recent years that has swept out leading liberals. The men taking their place are generally more traditional and willing to take a harder line against disobedient Catholics, from politicians to parishioners.

Notice the age of the "American Papist"?  Liberals are besides themselves about the fact that history didn't turn out the way it was supposed to.

Of course, it makes for another great double standard.  When liberalism is ascendant, conservatives should shut up because they are doomed to lose. When liberalism is in decline, conservatives should shut up because it doesn't matter.

Global warming ... is there nothing it cannot do....

...such as cooling the world by a degree?

I'm being facetious because there are some projections of a quick, substantial global cooling because a "Super La Nina cycle":

A super La Nina is developing

Historically, these strong La Nina events drop the Earth’s average temperature around one degree Fahrenheit, and the drop comes quickly. As a result, some of the same places that had record heat this summer may suffer through record cold this winter.


La Nina is the lesser-known colder sister of El Nino. La Nina chills the waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean, and in turn cools the entire planet for one to two years or more. This chilling has the potential to bring bone-numbing cold to many parts of the world for this and the following winter. As a result, world energy demand may spike in the next one to two years as much colder weather hits many of the major industrial nations.

And:

What about the recent heat we’ve all heard about?


For the last year, the world has been dealing with the warming effects of a strong El Nino. The El Nino warms the ocean waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean and in turn heats the atmosphere. Western Russia melted under a record heat wave this summer, after freezing from record cold last winter. Many parts of the southern United States had record heat this summer, but also shivered under record cold last winter. The persistence of the jetstream to blow in patterns that changed very little for long periods of time contributed to these extremes of temperature. This locked in jetstream wind pattern enhances temperature anomalies by restricting the exchange of air flow from one place to another. What would be hot becomes very hot, and what would be cold becomes very cold.

It is common for the jetstream to behave this way when the sun is in the solar minimum, such as it has been for the last three years. We are emerging from the minimum, but the sunspot numbers are continuing to be very low. Some solar experts say this next sunspot maximum may be one of the weakest in 200 years. As a result, the tendency for the jetstream to blow over parts of the Earth with little month-to-month variability may continue this year. That would result in continued extremes of temperature. The difference would be this time cold areas would be even colder due to the oncoming super La Nina and the falling global temperature.

The El Nino of the last year pushed the global temperature right back to where it had been in the beginning of 2007. The result has been no net warming or cooling since then. In fact, there has been no net warming or cooling since around 1999. Interestingly, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 369 parts per million to 387 ppm (parts per million) during this time. This amount is above the level of 302 ppm in 1910, when 20th century global temperature started to rise. Despite this significant rise in carbon dioxide since 1999, there has been no “global warming” during this period.

Right now the Pacific Ocean is in the beginning of a thirty year cooler spell called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. There is a strong, potentially super La Nina developing. The sun is still quiet with very few sunspots. When these conditions exist, the first two months of the cold season (December and January) tend to be cold from Montana to Iowa to Florida up to the Great Lakes and most of New England. In addition, temperatures tend to be very cold from central and western Canada to Alaska. China could suffer a bitterly cold December and January if historic temperature patterns are consistent with current conditions. Much of central and western Europe are cold in these situations as well.

A Protestant's Protest Against Sola Scriptura.

Caleb Roberts at Genu(re)flections explains why he no longer accepts the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.  Part of his explanation:

Now this question of the certainty of Scripture is not one that has been ignored by the various Reformed confessions. The language of the Westminster Confession states that:


“…our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.”

So, our assurance of Scripture’s infallibility rests upon an inward work of the Holy Spirit’s witness that takes place within our hearts that testifies to the proper and true books of Scripture, the true canon. I know I am treading upon nervous ground here, but given the principle of Sola Scriptura, how is a Spiritual inward working in our hearts an any more appropriate foundation on which to place canonical certainty than a Spiritual inward working in the Church? If you have Catholics on one side that argue that our certainty of Scripture is based on the inward working and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the magisterium that organized the canon and Protestants on the other that argue that our assurance is based on the Holy Spirit’s inward working in the hearts of believers, the difference does not seem to be Sola Scriptura. Rather, the difference is only in regards to the object on which assurance rests which in both cases is extra-biblical and therefore fails as an adequate foundation of certainty within Sola Scriptura. In fact, it seems that all one has to do to distinguish the Catholic position from the Protestant is to take that phrase from the Confession and replace “our hearts” with “the Church.”

And:

Related to this is my next concern, which is that of the binding of the conscience. Sola Scriptura maintains that only that which is contained in Scripture can bind the consciences of men. Well, since the list which properly constitutes which books belong in Scripture is not contained within Scripture itself and the canon was fallibly organized by the extra-biblical Synod of Hippo, was that council violating the consciences of believers by authoritatively establishing a canon outside of Scripture? Moreover, logically speaking, could someone as a Protestant decide for himself that, say, James isn’t a valid part of the canon? As opposed as he would be, on what grounds, beside any denominational vows he had taken, could his conscience be bound? For no where in Scripture does it state that James is Scriptural except within James itself and if he already believed that James was invalid, nothing from within that book could convince him otherwise. As far-fetched as this example seems, Martin Luther himself did this very thing with not only James, but Jude and Revelation as well. Even if we accept what I understand to be Calvin’s understanding, that true Christians “know the voice of the Shepherd” which is the Scriptures, this doesn’t resolve the issue of someone deciding that James or Esther is not canonical and inspired. What would the argument against them be: “The majority of Christians hear, and have always heard, the Words of God in Esther, therefore you should too?” Again, the basis of the certainty in the inspiration and canonicity of any book is not founded upon Scripture alone. Again, if the canon is a “fallible collection” then it seems totally plausible that someone might come to object to a certain book’s place within it for whatever reason and Sola Scriptura would have no way of binding his conscience against his beliefs. Sola Scriptura again seems to implode on itself. If only that which is contained in Scripture can rightly bind the consciences of men, it seems as though you have to first improperly bind consciences in order to possess an established and organized canon with which you can then go out and properly bind consciences.

Those are conundrums, except that in practice Protestants did exactly what the Catholic/Orthodox church did - define the canon through the institutional authority of the church and base the decision on the canonicity of particular books on the conformity of those books to core Christian principles.  Of course, that doesn't solve the Protestant problem which denies that such an approach is infallible.

"One year later, Cash for Clunkers was still a dumb, economically harmful idea."


From Bubble Meter:

IN THE market for a used car? Good luck finding a bargain: The price of “pre-owned’’ vehicles has climbed considerably over the past year. ...

No great insight was needed to realize that Cash for Clunkers would work a hardship on people unable to afford a new car. “All this program did for them,’’ I wrote last August, “was guarantee that used cars will become more expensive. Poorer drivers will be penalized to subsidize new cars for wealthier drivers.’’ ...

When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy.

The reason Cash for Clunkers pushed up used car prices is because it required that perfectly functional used cars be destroyed, thus decreasing the supply of used cars available to poorer drivers.

Theology made somewhat understandable.

The Parable of the Boat: Illustrating Differences Between Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, and Calvinism

Evolution in Action.

I have a vague recollection of reading in National Geographic a story in my youth about a two-toed "Ostrich" tribe.  As the years have gone by, I've convinced myself that the story was nonsense, maybe something I saw on the cover of a National Enquirer.

But now thanks to the wonders of the internet, I've been able to establish that my recollection is correct.  Here's a link to a story about a tribe in Zimbabwe that suffers from ectrodactyly, which might be a beneficial mutation:

The condition in the Vadoma is caused by a mutation of chromosome number seven. What they tell us is that a dominantly inherited genetic mutation survives when it has beneficial effects - the tribe's deformed feet may help with tree climbing.

Weird stuff.

So, if some event happened that wiped out the rest of humanity - of if tree climbing become essential for survival - would there be a time when all memory of five toed humanity fade?

Probably not, the gene for non-ectrodactylism would survive and express itself as a mutation, like red-hair.  Also, the Vadoma are not a different species since they can interbreed with non-Vadoma.

So maybe it's not such a great example of evolution in action, after all.

United States Government Declares that Stigmatizing Muslims as "Scary" and "Un-American" is Perfectly Alright.

Ha, ha!  Fooled you!

Obviously it would be horribly bigoted to stigmatize Muslims. Saying something like that could get you fired.

The government would never permit Muslims to be described as a threat to our way of life. That might cause the public to react against Muslims.

No, rather, the subject of the resolution describing a particular religious group as a threat to the "San Francisco way of life" were those scary and dangerous Catholics, about whom it is perfectly acceptable to stigmatize because (a) they aren't Muslim and (b) they take positions that the Left disagrees with.

And if you can't see the principled distinction between stigmatizing Catholics and Muslims, then you are hate-filled homophobic racist.

Ninth Circuit rejects lawsuit against San Francisco resolution that Catholicism is "Un-American."

A splintered federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday by Catholics who objected when San Francisco supervisors condemned the Vatican for prohibiting Catholic Charities from placing adoptive children with gay and lesbian couples.


The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied requests by a Catholic organization and two local residents to order the city to repeal the supervisors' 2006 resolution.

But the 8-3 ruling failed to decide whether the city had expressed official hostility toward Catholicism, in violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

It makes perfect sense.  It's only religion. It's not like it was something explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, like abortion or homosexuality or something really important.

OK, let's set up those detention facilities for Catholics, like the ones that they had for the Japanese-Americans during World War II. Because while we know those were wrong, wrong, wrong, I just get the feeling that detention facilities for Catholics will be completely different.

And we need to refer the issue to Rachel Maddow of whether - although one has a right to be Catholic - one has a right to a job while being Catholic.
Sometimes I wonder when I dropped into this weird alternate universe.

Great Moments in the Liberal Tradition of Public Participation...

...which doesn't count if you are conservative.

"Election Fraud Uncovered by Patriotic Citizens … Who Promptly Get Sued"

Talk about denial! A group of liberal activists is making the media rounds, assuring reporters and editors that election fraud is a fairy tale. Nothing serious, they assert, nothing to see here. Too bad for them that citizens in Houston, energized by the Tea Party movement, have formed a group called True the Vote. Their hard work has demonstrated that, in some parts of the country at least, our election system is still infested with problems.


True the Vote is composed entirely of volunteers — hundreds of them. They have pored over election records in Harris County, Texas, looking for signs of fraud. And they have found plenty. Indeed, their initial research into only a very small portion of the voter registration records has led them to ask the U.S. Justice Department’s Voting Section to conduct a federal investigation.

And:

Of course, this may explain why True the Vote has been hit with a lawsuit by the Texas Democratic Party, an ethics complaint by Texans for Public Justice, and another lawsuit (for defamation) by Houston Votes and the Houston lawyer behind the voter registration drive that turned in multiple problematic registration forms (Harris County estimated over 7,000). That same organization has also sued Harris County — claiming the county is barred from correcting the voter registration problems!

California has the Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation [SLAPP] law that would end this kind of harassing nonsense pretty quickly, and hit the Texas Democratic Party for attorneys fees.  I don't know if Texas has a similar law, but if it doesn't, it should pass one.

Oofta!

Tim Pawlenty teaches President Obama some useful Minnesotan phrases.

Tail Gunner Joe was Right!

Rachel Maddow affirms that it was perfectly hunky-dory for Hollywood to blacklist Communists because, while one has a right to free speech, no one has a right to a paid job in Hollywood.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As Jim Treacher says:

Maybe Williams does think those feelings are unacceptably irrational and need to be wrestled with, and perhaps someone should ask him more directly if he thinks that. But until he clearly states it to be the case, there’s no reason to assume he thinks we should battle those feelings and work to delegitimize them.

It’s true, I haven’t heard Juan Williams call for the abolition of all crimethink. Thank goodness we have Greg Sargent of the Washington Post to remind us what’s permissible to think. Not what’s permissible to act on, or even to say aloud, but to think. How can we all be free if people are allowed to think in unapproved ways?

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime is death.”

The Totalitarianism of Modern Liberalism - "NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed."



I hear that "Liberalism" is looking for a lawyer to obtain a cease and desist injunction against "Liberals" for "false advertising."

Juan Williams shares some stories about life in the NPR gulag.

I change her mind, the decision had been confirmed above her, and there was no point to meeting in person. To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.


I say an ideological battle because my comments on “The O’Reilly Factor” are being distorted by the self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity. In their hubris they think by talking with O’Reilly or Hannity I am lending them legitimacy. Believe me, Bill O’Reilly (and Sean, too) is a major force in American culture and politics whether or not I appear on his show.

Years ago NPR tried to stop me from going on “The Factor.” When I refused they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

This self-reverential attitude was on display several years ago when NPR asked me to help them get an interview with President George W. Bush. I have longstanding relationships with some of the key players in his White House due to my years as a political writer at The Washington Post. When I got the interview some in management expressed anger that in the course of the interview I said to the president that Americans pray for him but don’t understand some of his actions. They said it was wrong to say Americans pray for him.

Later on the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock crisis President Bush offered to do an NPR interview with me about race relations in America. NPR management refused to take the interview on the grounds that the White House offered it to me and not their other correspondents and hosts. One NPR executive implied I was in the administration’s pocket, which is a joke, and there was no other reason to offer me the interview. Gee, I guess NPR news executives never read my bestselling history of the civil rights movement “Eyes on the Prize — America’s Civil Rights Years,” or my highly acclaimed biography “Thurgood Marshall — American Revolutionary.” I guess they never noticed that “ENOUGH,” my last book on the state of black leadership in America, found a place on the New York Times bestseller list.


This all led to NPR demanding that I either agree to let them control my appearances on Fox News and my writings or sign a new contract that removed me from their staff but allowed me to continue working as a news analyst with an office at NPR. The idea was that they would be insulated against anything I said or wrote outside of NPR because they could say that I was not a staff member. What happened is that they immediately began to cut my salary and diminish my on-air role. This week when I pointed out that they had forced me to sign a contract that gave them distance from my commentary outside of NPR I was cut off, ignored and fired.

And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

Daniel Schorr, my fellow NPR commentator who died earlier this year, used to talk about the initial shock of finding himself on President Nixon’s enemies list. I can only imagine Dan’s revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed.

Payback....she's a bitch.

Juan Williams calls for defunding NPR.

How cool is to watch the employer who wrongfully terminated your employment reap the whirlwind?

If only middle-aged Swedish women were allowed to marry.  If only middle-aged Swedish women were allowed to be priests.

20 Women Arrested in Swedish Child Porn Raid

Swedish police say they have arrested 23 people in a nationwide raid against a child pornography ring, including 20 women.


Police spokesman Sven-Ake Petters called the raid "unique" and said he has never come across so many female suspects in a child pornography investigation before. He says arrests were made at 12 different locations across Sweden on Wednesday and include women aged between 38 and 60.

Police uncovered the network during the investigation of a man in Dalarna, western Sweden, who was charged last month with breaking child pornography laws.

Petters says there were no immediate clues as to why so many women were involved but that police will now investigate computers and mobile phones that were seized during the raid.

Crazy Republicans.

On the other hand, you get some crazy amateur political talk from some amateur polticians like GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden who says "violent overthrow of government is 'on the table.'"

In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising "is not the first option," but it is "on the table." That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County GOP, who called the remarks "inappropriate."


Broden, a first-time candidate, is challenging veteran incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in Dallas' heavily Democratic 30th Congressional District. Johnson's campaign declined to comment on Broden.

In the interview, Brad Watson, political reporter for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), asked Broden about a tea party event last year in Fort Worth in which he described the nation's government as tyrannical.

"We have a constitutional remedy," Broden said then. "And the Framers say if that don't work, revolution."

Watson asked if his definition of revolution included violent overthrow of the government. In a prolonged back-and-forth, Broden at first declined to explicitly address insurrection, saying the first way to deal with a repressive government is to "alter it or abolish it."

The comment is made by a sacrificial lamb who is never going to get elected and doesn't represent the official views of anyone but himself, and, yet, this is just nutty talk.

Mark Shea has been doing Yeoman's work of pointing out the hypocrisy of not condemning this kind of talk from the Right if we are going to condemn it on the Left:

The more these people gaze upon the terror of the Nazis under the bed that haunt their Beck-filled dreams, the more they slowiy turn into that which they fear most. Aristotle is right: we become like that which we contemplate. The Thing that Used to Be Conservatism is transmogrifying into the fascist it fears.

Airplane's David Zucker lampoons Boxer's "Call me Senator" line.



Call Me Madam Joe from RightChange on Vimeo.

Great stuff.

O'Reilly and Williams are on the O'Reilly Factor and they are pissed.

O'Reilly is convinced that it is the Fox connection that motivated NPR inasmuch as Soros gave NPR $1.8 million last week.

Williams has observed that he doesn't fit into NPR's "box" because he's not the predictable black liberal.

O'Reilly is saying that this is a big boost for Williams, which it probably is, what with the higher name recognition, future book deal and being able to host the Factor. 

Williams says to O'Reilly, "You're a stand-up guy."  O'Reilly deserves that praise for calling the head of NPR a "pinhead" and a "coward."

Did NPR and the Left really want this in the news two weeks before the election?

More Thoughtcrimes being Punished by the Ministry of Truth - Democrat Division.

How is this not an unconstitutional prior restraint on political speech?  I understand that the First Amendment is doing a lot of work supporting a penumbra for abortion rights and gay marriage, which it doesn't mention, but - jeez! - can't it be given a day off to actually protect, you know, free speech?

Democratic representative Steve Driehaus has filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission against the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List to stop the group from putting up four billboards claiming that Driehaus voted for taxpayer-funding of abortion (see the ad here).


“The information is factually untrue and this is just another attempt by Steve Chabot’s supporters to spread false information,” Driehaus said Thursday, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “The Susan B. Anthony List is doing everything they can to attack pro-life Democrats, not because of what we achieved in the health care bill but because they’re partisan.”

"Meanwhile, it looks like the billboards will not be put up until the matter is settled," the Enquirer reports. "The Ohio Elections Commission has set a hearing on the complaint for Thursday, Oct. 14 in Columbus

Newsflash - Fox News is now positioned as the champion of free speech and journalistic integrity...

...by giving former NPR reporter a $2 million dollar contract.

Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. The Fox News contributor will now appear exclusively and more frequently on the cable news network and have a regular column on FoxNews.com.


"Juan has been a staunch defender of liberal viewpoints since his tenure began at Fox News in 1997," Ailes said in a statement, adding a jab at NPR: “He’s an honest man whose freedom of speech is protected by Fox News on a daily basis.”

Ooh, how the Left must really be hating that "Fair and Balanced" slogan today.

Got to love Capitalism.

The Return of the Blacklist - Leftist NPR Fires Pundit Juan Williams for Badthink Thoughtcrime.

Tolerance is all too often the space between breathing out one orthodoxy and inhaling another.

Juan Williams fired for his comment on the O'Reilly Factor that he is often uncomfortable on planes when he sees people in Muslim garb because of his knowledge that Muslims have been responsible for the terror attacks against Americans.  According to Big Journalism:

The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”


Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.

He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.

Dan Riehl offers the interesting observation that Williams was sacked so promptly because he is an African-American and his politically incorrect comments showed that he was "off the reservation" and breaking Leftist solidarity by giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

What Juan Williams did is very similar to why the Left hates Sarah Palin, other conservative women and conservative homosexuals. He played against the progressive stereotype of himself, revealing a balanced and too candid humanity within. For a moment, in essence, he became too real.


As he said, “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country."

Well, if Juan Williams is impacted by the behavior of Muslims, then progressives - and NPR is that, can't lecture white America that their concerns are based on hate, religious intolerance, bigotry or xenophobia. Juan Williams didn't drop his mask and reveal any Islamophobia last night on Fox. What he did was rip the mask off the tactics NPR and other progressives, including the liberal media, use to lecture America and prevent an honest discussion of the threat from Islam.

Michelle Malkin lists the many Leftists who called for Williams firing for his "thoughtcrime."
 
Hey, wasn't McCarthyism and "Blacklisting" supposed to be bad things?

Public Service Announcement: "Some men might feel that chivalry obligates a man to say yes, but the law does not."

Sorry, guys, but you can't use the excuse that you slept with your attractive female co-worker because it was required by law.

Issue: can a man ever view a sexual proposition from an attractive woman as "unwelcome"?

The trial court in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Prospect Airport Services came pretty close to saying 'no.'

Apparently, Rudolpho Lamas, a recent widower, was propositioned by a married co-worker Sylvia Munoz. He said no and something about being in mourning and his Christian convictions and the fact that she was married. She persisted in her pursuit of this poor guy for months and eventually enlisted fellow workers in a campaign of calling Lamas homosexual. The company took no steps to protect Lamas.

The district court granted Prospect's motion for summary judgment .⁷² The district court concluded that as a matter of law Munoz's conduct was not severe and pervasive enough to amount to sexual harassment objectively for a reasonable man, noting that “Lamas admits that most men in his circumstances would have ‘welcomed’ the behavior he alleged was discriminatory, but that due to his Christian background he was ‘embarrassed.’ “⁷³ The court emphasized that Lamas had never filed a written complaint, and management had told Munoz that her behavior was inappropriate.

Because, obviously, only a crazy Christian with Christian "issues," or gay guy, would pass up on an opportunity to commit adultery with an attractive woman.

The Court of Appeals disagreed:

It would not make sense to try to treat welcomeness as objective, because whether one person welcomes another's sexual proposition depends on the invitee's individual circumstances and feelings. Title VII is not a beauty contest, and even if Munoz looks like Marilyn Monroe, Lamas might not want to have sex with her, for all sorts of possible reasons. He might feel that fornication is wrong, and that adultery is wrong as is supported by his remark about being a Christian. He might fear her husband. He might fear a sexual harassment complaint or other accusation if her feelings about him changed. He might fear complication in his workday. He might fear that his preoccupation with his deceased wife would take any pleasure out of it. He might just not be attracted to her. He may fear eighteen years of child support payments. He might feel that something was mentally off about a woman that sexually aggressive toward him. Some men might feel that chivalry obligates a man to say yes, but the law does not.

Actually, that is a pretty comprehensive list of reasons to avoid having sex.

Also, note how the Court dates itself by using "Marilyn Monroe" as the standard unit if female sexual allure. I was explainin the case to my secretary and restrained my impulse to use "Farah Fawcett" as an example.  I tried to reach for someone more current and went blank. 

So, who is the contemporary "Marilyn Monroe"?

If people don't have Aquinas, they will follow any idiot who comes along.

Science Fiction author and Thomist Mike Flynn does a great job of dismantling yet another bullshit claim that humans are just machines.  The proximate cause of Flynn's essay is a Telegraph article entitled "Neuroscience, free will and determinism: 'I'm just a machine' - Our bodies can be controlled by outside forces in the universe, discovers Tom Chivers. So where does that leave free will?"

Actually, the subtitle gives away the show.  Our bodies can be controlled by outside forces in the universe?  Has Tom Chivers never fallen down, been wrestled to the ground or drunk?

In this case, though, the gosh-wow thrust of the story is a magnetic wand that can cause a subject's hand to flinch, which is no different in principle than causing the hand to flinch by holding a lit match under it, and, yet, no one starts describing the brain as a machine without free will when that happens.

Flynn writes:

 We might start with a few things free will [volition] does not mean.


It does not mean a random choice.

It does not mean a successful choice.

It does not mean an unpredictable choice.

It does not mean an unforeseeable choice.

It does not mean a surprising choice.

It does not mean an unreasoned choice.

It does not mean an unmotivated choice.

It does not mean indifference to the ends chosen.

It does not mean a deliberated choice.

It need not mean a conscious choice.

And it does not mean that the will is unencumbered by habit, error, mental or physical illness, or other impairment -- including magnetic wands. It only means that it is not determined by external forces. Someone could seize hold of Prof. Haggard's finger and twitch it mechanically, but the fact that an external force can also move his finger does not demonstrate that in the common course of nature Prof. Haggard cannot normally choose to do so.

The last bullet needs a comment: If the human subconscious is real, it is as much a part of the mind as any other; so subconscious choices are also encompassed by free will.

Part of the problem is the blindness of modern science to formal and final causation. These two causes are making a quiet re-appearance under new names like "emergent property"/"self-organizing system" and "attractor basins," but they have been banished from our thinking of causation for several hundred years. Therefore, Haggard and others misunderstand both "will" and "free."

The electrochemical reactions in the brain are simply the material cause of the choice. They are not the formal or final causes.

Read the whole thing to get an understanding of how lost so much of science is without Aristotelianism.

"Imagine a Star Trek convention, but older."

An article describes the cutting edge of social evolution which are a group of aging and graying socially autistic nerds at an Atheist Convention.

Or as Mark Shea calls it, "the Convention of Napoleon Dynamites with a Mean Streak."

The big issue appears to be how much they should throttle back the meds that keep their Asperger's under some kind of control:

The disagreement was not, then, between atheism and humanism. It was about making the atheist/humanist case in America. A central question was, “How publicly scornful of religion should we be?”


Here even the humanists got less humane, as each side stereotyped the other. Those trying to find common ground with religious people were called “accommodationists,” while the more outspoken atheists were called “confrontationalists” and accused of alienating potential allies, like moderate Christians.

And, of course, as a herd of indendent minds, they really want to be want to validated for their hate:

Rather, as atheists in a very religious country, they were looking for solidarity.


For example, I had lunch on Saturday with two young lovers who met earlier this year at “Generation Atheist,” a meet-up for young people at a pub in Hollywood, where they had gone looking for like minds.

Free-thinking conformists.

Fighting Pseudo-Knowledge - Hurricanes and Global Warming.

Failed predictions of imminent apocalypses have a way of slipping our mind once the season passes, which leaves the failed prophets with no net damage to their reputations, e.g, Paul - "Humans will be eating Humans in the Global Famine of 1985" - Ehrlich.  So, it's a good time to reflect on the absence of predicted hurricane activity during the last half decade.

Forgotten Histories.

Interesting stuff.  Mark Shea points to this link on the history of the Parthenon and the tendency of Modernity, i.e., The Enlightenment and Thereafter, to suffer amnesia or a decided lack of curiosity about the thousand year period between the Classical Age and itself.

Shea observes:

One of the many bitter fruits of the Endarkenment was the tendency to skip over the Age of Christian Europe as the "middle ages". That meant, the "age between pagan Europe when things were cool, and now, when things are again becoming cool by becoming less Christian". That prejudice remains with us today, which is why nobody thinks of the Parthenon as a great Christian Church or considers the possibility that there is anything interesting about the Greeks after Pericles. The snow job of the Endarkenment was extremely effective.

The article points out:

All this, and some other evidence I have not yet mentioned, prove that the Parthenon was one of the most important sites of Christian pilgrimage in Byzantium; I would place it fourth after Constantinople, Ephesos, and Thessalonike. Moreover, there is now every reason to think that it was far more important as a church in Byzantium than it had ever been as a temple in antiquity -- or whatever it had been exactly in antiquity to begin with: its precise religious use is a matter of controversy.

And:

The apogee of the Christian Parthenon in Byzantium was in the twelfth Century (but this may be due to the survival of more evidence from then than from previous periods). We hear of a festival –probably annual -- celebrated in honor of the Theotokos that drew people to Athens from far and wide, and also of a miracle of divine light inside the Parthenon, probably a lamp whose flame never died. The orators of the period who wrote about Athenian affairs played rhetorically on this theme of the divine light, varying its imagery and drawing

And:

   

Obviously, more is at stake in all this than a few misunderstandings about Byzantium: the entire history of the Parthenon has to be rewritten. I am referring specifically to the ancient-modern polarity, according to which the Parthenon was a glorious temple that celebrated all that was good about classical antiquity (democracy, philosophy, humanism, etc.); it was then neglected by the benighted Byzantines, who were superstitious Christians, and effectively had no history for over a thousand years, only then to have its true worth discovered” in modern times with the birth of the nation and the emergence of scientific scholarship and archaeology.
     Our (heretical /orthodox) alternative to this alleged history has a different geometry. First, we have to acknowledge that the Parthenon was not regarded in antiquity as anything so special. Few of the extraordinary things that have been said about it in modern times are even so much as hinted at in ancient sources, and when they are they do not refer to the Parthenon exclusively. The building was never placed on the list of ancient “wonders.” There were too many far more magnificent structures in the lands around the Mediterranean that contended for that honor, though they were later destroyed and so no longer pose a challenge.
     As far as we can tell, the Parthenon was never associated with any ideal, whether democracy (it only happened to be built by one, but could have been built just as well by a tyrant), philosophy, humanism, or what not. Unlike in Byzantium, we know of no one in antiquity who traveled to Athens to see it or pray in it. It wasnot even an especially important religious site in the classical age, and seems to have been used as a treasury.
      No ancient source that talks about the “sights” of Athens singles out the Parthenon among the many other sights. Into it the famous light of the Attic sky, the bright color of the building itself, the shining virtues of the city’s learned bishops in this period, and so on.

"Country Music and the Value of the Elderly."

Lydia McGrew at "What's Wrong with the World" posts the following Country Music tearjerker as part of her observation at how easily we in the Culture of Death seem to view the elderly - our parents, grandparents, us eventually - are a buden.



Another one:

If only lawyers could marry.

Lawyer Sentenced in Child-Sex Case

By Brandon Ortiz

Daily Journal Staff Writer

A Los Angeles lawyer arrested during an Internet child-sex sting was sentenced by a state judge Monday to six years in prison, according to the district attorney's office.

Eduardo Brito Leaton, 40, pleaded guilty last month to one count of meeting a minor for lewd purposes and three counts of using a minor for sex acts. Police say he exchanged sexually explicit e-mails with a detective posing as a 16-year-old girl from Georgia, and traveled to a hotel to meet her. They say he also received sexually explicit photos of children younger than 14 who he met on the Internet.

Great Moments in Modern Romance.

Man immolates self in working through "issues" with ex on C-Span.



It's a sad case of "nerd love" gone wrong.

Like Richard Nixon wearing a suit at the beach, the Democrats this year are working too hard at passing for normal.

What is with the Democrats this year?  It seems that all of their fears are projections about what they would do if given the opportunity.

Ann Althouse provides these clips.

Here is the political ad from Rand Paul's opponent, which, if it had been put out by a Democrat, would have caused the Left to have vapors about the coming Theocracy.



Here is Paul's statement from his debate.

Let's Play "Spot the wife of the crazy Holocaust-denying Fundamentalist Muslim Leader."

Professor Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection links to this Huffington Post article about fashion and style in Iran.

But the real "added value" to this post is in one of the comments to Professor Jacobsen's post:

Diggs said...

If you actually have the stomach to click on the article in HuffPo, and read the comments, you will see why Leftists are clinically insane. Every single one of the comments makes excuses for a religion that forces women to wear an abaya. Most, insanely, write that she is wearing the abaya at her pleasure! There is not a single comment on what it means that a woman is forced to wear one specific piece of clothing in Iran to go out in public while the males are allowed to wear pretty much anything, or any concern at all of the implications that a woman must hide her identity according to islam so that they don't entice the males to sin. Several also comment that it is to western women's lament that they are allowed to chose what they wear! Lefties really do want a government that controls everything, don't they. An abaya is okay with them.

Either those Leftards don't understand what an abaya means in islam, or they are too afraid to even make a peep against something that they would visibly and vocally argue against if it were being forced on women by Christians or Jews. My guess is a bit of both.

Check the HuffPo comments.  Diggs is right.  There's a whole lot of apologetics for the "fashion sense" of women who are assaulted and fined if they don't wear the chador.

"You're too stupid to understand our successes," the Vice President explained.


According to the Canada Free Press:

According to Biden, the issues involved are simply too complex for the ordinary man and woman to grasp.


As reported, in part:

Democrats aren’t running on the administration’s accomplishments like health-care and financial-regulatory overhaul and the stimulus because “it’s just too hard to explain,” Biden said. “It sort of a branding, I mean you know they kind of want the branding more at the front end.”

New Age Bullshit Alert.

The Chinese "word" for crisis does not mean "danger" and "opportunity."

Another bit of pseudo-knowledge goes down in flames.

Two Cheers for Capitalism.

After reading Jack London's Socialist fantasy, "The Iron Heel," I needed this.

From Daniel Henninger:

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.


This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill's rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.

Longer answer: The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That's why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.

A remarkable Sept. 30 story about all this by the Journal's Matt Moffett was a compendium of astonishing things that showed up in the Atacama Desert from the distant corners of capitalism.

Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

Chile's health minister, Jaime Manalich, said, "I never realized that kind of thing actually existed."