Category: The Dish

… he’d write a lyric like this:

Well I bought a ticket to the revolution
And I cheered when the statues fell
Everyone came
To destroy what was rotten
But they killed off the good as well
Sometimes the solution
Is worse than the problem
Let’s stay together.

The new album from pop geniuses Tennant and Lowe is now available. It’s called Fundamental. The remix companion album is called Fundamentalism. The Pet Shop Boys are against it. As all conservatives should be. (If you want a taste, YouTube has a couple of great recent PSB videos for two recent songs, "Miracles" and "Flamboyant." "Miracles" is sublime.)

"It’s true that you and I are not being grabbed on the streets and sent to a former secret police torture-training camp in Godforsakistan. Nor is the government eavesdropping on your international phone calls or mine. Probably. Because I like you, I’ll forgo the usual ominous warning about how they came after him and then they came after her and then they came after you. I’ll even skip the liberal sermonette about how even bad guys have rights.

But your rights and mine are not supposed to be at the whim of the government, let alone the president. They are based in the Constitution and the willingness of those we put in power to obey it – even as interpreted by judges they may disagree with. The most distressing aspect of this story is the apparent attitude of our current rulers that the Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome – by conducting dirty business abroad or by wildly disingenuous interpretations of laws and the Constitution," – Mike Kinsley, on the way in which this administration has essentially bypassed the Constitution in order to protect it.

E. J. expands on what we’ve been exploring all week.

Professor Hanlon O’Faolin has cracked the Bloomsday Code. The Onion’s crack reporters are on the case.

You have to see Joe Lieberman’s latest to believe it.

I’m absorbing the email flood after Larry King last night and will try and get back to everyone, but several are asking if I have written on these subjects. Er, yes. My first book, "Virtually Normal," makes the key arguments about why the Catholic teaching on homosexuality is incoherent on its own terms. My second book, "Love Undetectable," is a memoir of my faith-journey through the plague years, an account of the origins of homosexual orientation, and a celebration of friendship as a core Christian virtue. If you’re interested, check them out. Part of my next book, "The Conservative Soul," tackles the deeper philosophical issues behind Catholicism’s treatment of sexuality as a whole – straight and gay – as well as presenting a defense of a non-fundamentalist Christianity as the Christian life closest to Jesus’ example. You can pre-order it here.

A reader writes:

I, along with my 91 year-old, daily-Mass-attending Irish-Catholic mother, watched the CNN Larry King show last night. Says mom at the conclusion: "The only one making any sense to me is that guy who you say you read online everyday." There is hope for us all.

Thanks for all the emails. If I’ve got 91 year-old Irish-Catholic grandmas on my side, what do I have to fear? I had my own Irish Catholic grandma, of course: the seventh of thirteen kids from the town of Tralee, in County Kerry, Ireland. I think she held the world record for a decade of the Rosary; and she lived with us as I grew up. I’ve never witnessed faith like hers, and she never read a book of theology in her life. If she’s interceding for me with Our Lady in heaven, and she may well be, I’m gonna be ok (or, at least, forgiven).

Coulter tries one more publicity ploy. If only the returns were diminishing.

Not from Republicans – but from Democrats. Check out the new Rasmussen poll (although Rasmussen polls are not the most reliable). Lieberman may run as an Independent – and could probably win. What if McCain is denied the Republican nomination and invites Lieberman to be his running mate on an Independent ticket in ’08? Hmmmm.

"For people in America who are a part of my political tradition, our great sin has often been ignoring religion or denying its power or refusing to engage it because it seemed hostile to us. For … the so-called Christian right and its allies, their great sin has been believing they were in full possession of the truth," – president Bill Clinton, in one of the wisest formulations I have read on American politics and religion in a long time.