Month: March 2006

"Who has not found the heaven below   
Will fail of it above.   
God’s residence is next to mine,   
His furniture is love."

– Emily Dickinson.

Need some tips on how to keep the Iraqi government negotiations going? Try this video.

The original can be found here.

Borders and Waldenbooks will not carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine, because it contains four of the Danish cartoons. The reason? They’re afraid of Islamist violence:

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

Well, at least they’re honest. Sharia: 1. The West: 0. If you care about freedom of expression, don’t buy books from Borders or Waldenbooks. And if you want to draw a lesson from the entire episode, it’s obvious: violence against free writers and artists gets results. We have all but invited more.

Washington says goodbye to president Bush’s "manservant," Andy Card.

(Photo: Martin Simon/EPA.)

I presume some Christianists will soon be declaring the Commonwealth’s Supreme Judicial Court’s decision today another exercise in rampant "judicial activism." The decision – supported by the far right’s bete noire, Margaret Marshall – upholds a 1913 anti-miscegenation law that made Massachusetts marriages invalid if they were entered into by residents of another state with the intent of violating the marriage laws of that other state. (The law was crafted to stop inter-racial couples getting married in Massachusetts and returning to, say, Virginia and trying to have their marriage recognized as legal. Virginia’s current position on same-sex marriage is identical to Virginia’s previous position on inter-racial marriage: it’s an abomination.) The Massachusetts Court’s decision seems to me to be the right one. If the Massachusetts legislature wants to repeal the 1913 law, they are entitled to. Until then, it’s the law. It also seems clear to me that other states may legally and constitutionally decide not to recognize Massachusetts’ marriages, with or without the 1913 law.

Along with other federalist conservatives, I believe in the right of individual states to make their own decisions on marriage rights. They are so doing. I think it makes sense in a country as diverse and polarized as this one to allow Alabama to have different laws on gay relationships than, say, Oregon. What Massachusetts has now done therefore is to destroy the last crumbling pillar of the argument for a federal constitutional ban on all legal protections for gay couples. The whole point of this amendment was supposed to be to stop Massachusetts marriages from being "forced" on neighboring or other states. Now, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled these marriages invalid out of state before they even begin! The debate is now over, right? And the Republicans will withdraw their polarizing "Marriage Protection Amendment" from Congress this summer, right? There’s no need for it whatever now, is there?

Prayers were answered. JPod is beyond help.

Apologies for the lighter blogging. I went in Monday for another foot check-up; and my podiatrist administered another wart-treatment (they seem to have gotten even worse) that felt fine when it happened, but has subsequently created three large, gruesome-looking burn-blisters on the ball of my right foot, making it impossible for me to walk. In fact, for a while yesterday, it hurt like hell just to lie down and feel the nerve endings absorb the chemicals. They give you a painkiller, which would be lovely if I weren’t in pain. As it is, it keeps the pain away but makes me a little spacy, so I’ve been easing up on the posts. Not that you’d notice or anything, but just saying … Now where was I?

Watching the intensity of the youth protests and riots in France, it’s impossible not to reflect on the massive cultural gulf between the U.S. and continental Europe. These young people are rioting against a law that would almost certainly help more of them get a job. They are rioting to stay unemployed. And the main complaint from some French observers is that some of them are not violent in the correct, traditional French way:

"In France, we always imagine violence to be political because of our revolutions, but this isn’t the case," said Sebastian Roch√©, a political scientist who specializes in delinquency in the suburbs. "The casseurs are people who are apart from the political protests. Their movement is apolitical. It is about banal violence ‚Äî thefts, muggings, aggression."

Ugh. This violence, it is so … apolitical, so banal. Where did the good old political violence go? It’s important to remember that excessive welfare states do not only impede economic growth and freedom, they also change people’s minds and souls – from independence to dependency, from self-help to resentment, from pride in work to rioting to perpetuate unemployment.

(Photo: Jerome Sessini, Time.)

You’ve got to love a quote like this:

"You know how he is, somebody presents an idea; he says, ‘No, not doing that, next question.’ But he was not like that, so that means he was at least digesting some of the advice suggesting change."

Not quite as fast as the average Arctic glacier these days, but an improvement.