Month: October 2007

The gay-themed Metropolitan Community Church is getting more and more competition for gay worshippers from mainstream liberal churches.

What are we believers afraid of? Science, properly conducted, can only reveal greater truths about the world and the universe. And such truths cannot definitionally contradict the divine. They can only help us increase what limited understanding we have of it. Those believers who deny the truths of science are merely revealing their failure to believe, their fear of the truth. I’m with these nuns who agreed to have their brains scanned by researchers looking for the neurological locus of a God-spot:

Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns’ forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe.

(Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty.)

That’s Rasmussen’s polling on the Iraq occupation in the last month – a significant increase in those wanting us to leave completely within a year.

This line about whether the president can go to war without Congressional approval is not likely to win over the bomb-and-torture-’em-first-ask-questions-later base:

"We’re going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and didn’t need to do."

Paul’s response won applause:

"This idea of going and talking to attorneys totally baffles me. You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war. It’s in the constitution. This is just war propaganda … preparing the nation to go to the war not only into Iraq but also into Iran."

But we’re at war, Congressman. Haven’t you got the GOP memo that in wartime, i.e. for ever, the president is the constitution?

A good question:

If we can access a white-laser virtual model of the Mona Lisa at a resolution of 10 microns from our personal computer, why bother getting shoved around and consumed by the crush of tourists at the Louvre only to get no closer than 3 feet?

A cockatoo and the Back Street Boys. Hey, after listening to this GOP debate in Michigan, it feels good.

A denial:

"He has no official role in my campaign. He’s been a friend for more than 30 years. But he doesn’t have any official role," Clinton said.

But he’s an unofficial adviser, Susan asked?

"I have thousands of unofficial advisers," said Clinton, "and, you know, I appreciate all of that. But he has no official role in my campaign."

Thousands of unofficial advisers?

An interesting report from StrategyPage deals with the gorwing capacity of today’s military to keep many support soldiers back in the US at the end of a modem. It saves a lot of money but it’s not without some costs:

Marines are particularly unhappy with this "reach back" stuff. Marines are eager about getting into the fight. Moreover, marines or soldiers so separated from their units, begin to feel they aren’t exactly part of the unit. The trend is to make these "reach back" detachments part of larger "support" entities, and skip any pretending that some members of the units stayed behind. This causes some awkward situations because, in the past, when troops had problems with some administrative matter, they could see a person in their unit who could take care of it. Now it’s some stranger on the other end of the phone or Internet connection. And before long, some of these functions will be outsourced to civilian firms. Then the perplexed will be dealing with someone in India, just like the rest of us. Well, I suppose it will all work out.

I mentioned the student protests of Ahmadinejad earlier today. Here’s a YouTube of the protest.

Jeb Koogler has another one – and some pics that suggest many more than 100 protesters. An Iranian blogger, Jadi, explains that many were barred from entering the university, and that the date was changed at the last minute. In other words, the mullahs were worried that the protests could be much more significant. Headline Junky concludes of Mr Dinner Jacket:

"That’s not the kind of guy you bomb. It’s the kind of guy you wait out."

The press and the courts and the blogosphere can only do so much in pushing back against excessive executive power. In the end, we need the Congress to fight back. But the Republicans were in the tank and the Democrats make marshmallow look resolute. I tend to agree with Carl Bernstein on this one.