Month: April 2007

Neo-Nazi attack victim Noel Martin smokes a cigarette in the garden of his home on April 25, 2007, in Birmingham, England. Noel was paralyzed on June 16, 1996 in Germany after a stone thrown by Neo-Nazis crashed through the windscreen of his car and Martin’s car veered off the road. Martin has returned to Germany twice since the attack to support anti-racism youth exchanges and protest marches. Martin has chosen July 23, 2007, his birthday, to end his life at the Swiss Dignitas organization that offers clients medically assisted suicide. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Who’s running this war? George W. Bush shifts his answer to that question on a regular basis.

Rolling Stone collects 25 classic marijuana melodies – with help from readers.

WaPo’s Ruth Marcus has a withering critique of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on partial birth abortion. I find many of her points telling, especially the federalism and the stare decisis questions. But I come away feeling even more keenly that these issues should not be decided by a handful of Justices. The nuances here – the medical, moral, psychological questions – are best left to legislatures, and the men and women who elect them. I’d support a legislative debate on partial birth abortions, and most abortions after the first trimester. The kind of arguments Marcus makes deserve wider discussion than the genuinely anguished, if confused, writings of Anthony Kennedy.

That’s how many donations Obama has received since April 1. From close to 40,000 people.

Greg Mankiw opines: it’s a "great group."

A reader writes:

And to think I previously respected your Simpson’s I.Q. "Foofaraw" is used in an episode listed among the Top 25 all-time as chosen by Entertainment Weekly.

As a labor relations attorney, it is probably my all time favorite. In "Last Exit to Springfield" Homer becomes plant union boss and goes mano-a-mano with Mr. Burns over the employee dental plan, among other hot worker issues of the day. Homer, of course, trades all for a keg of beer in the lunchroom. And don’t miss Lisa’s touching picket-line folk singing…"they have the plant, but we have the power".

Anyway, reporter Kent Brockman, in commenting on the story, asks the immortal question as a pithy commentary: "Arglebargle, or fooferaw?"

I will now slink back to my cubicle.

Spengler makes the case:

Tolkien is a writer of greater theological depth than his Oxford colleague C S Lewis, in my judgment. Lewis is a felicitous writer and a diligent apologist, but mere allegory along the lines of the Narnia series can do no more than restate Christian doctrine; it cannot really expand our experience of it. Tolkien takes us to the dark frontier of a world that is not yet Christian, and therefore is tragic, but has the capacity to become Christian. It is the world of the Dark Ages, in which barbarians first encounter the light. It is not fantasy, but rather a distillation of the spiritual history of the West. Whereas C S Lewis tries to make us comfortable in what we already believe by dressing up the story as a children’s masquerade, Tolkien makes us profoundly uncomfortable. Our people, our culture, our language, our toehold upon this shifting and uncertain Earth are no more secure than those of a thousand extinct tribes of the Dark Ages; and a greater hope than that of the work of our hands and the hone of our swords must avail us.

Daniel Larison makes the obvious point.