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« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 » September 30, 2006"Kip Hawley is an Idiot"Ryan Bird is a middle-aged guy from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He's a frequent flyer, racking-up over 125,000 miles a year traveling on behalf of his company.I hate to say this guy was asking for it, but this gesture was obviously meant to be provocative. The sad thing is that such a gesture, in fact, is. Posted by Zach Wendling at 08:26 PM | Comments (5) Randle El is Not on the ListWhile we're playing with statistics here at ITA, here are some more numbers to crunch. The web's archive of professional football data, pro-football-reference.com, recently ranked the best and worst QBs of the modern era (since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger) and posted the results on their blog. PFR's rankings were based on a quarterback's adjusted yards per attempt (defined as "(passing yards + 10*(TD passes) - 45*(interceptions thrown)) / (pass attempts)") adjusted for season by subtracting the season average adjusted yards per attempt (to determine if a given QB was above or below average that year) with the difference multiplied by number of attempts for each QB. How they generate the numbers is explained a little better in the first post in the series, which gives us the worst QB season of all time and the worst QB of all time. Surprisingly, Ryan Leaf, who once went 1/15 for 4 yards and 2 INTS in a game, doesn't lead either list. It seems Mr. Leaf flamed out too fast to rank too highly on the suckitude list. I never would have guessed #1, though his inclusion does make perfect sense. For Colts' fans, Jack Trudeau ranked #6. The best QBs and QB seasons of all time are here. Unsurprisingly, Peyton Manning's 2004 season ranks the best QB season of all time and Marino's 1984 as #2. I'm surprised at the #1 QB of all time, however, especially since the numbers don't include his awesome career rushing statistics (43 additional TDs). Manning is currently ranked #7, and, the authors concede, will probably be the best QB of all time statistically when all is said and done (though I'd trade some of that for a Super Bowl title if I were a Colts fan). Posted by David Darlington at 07:09 PM | Comments (0) September 29, 2006Show me the income!One of the challenges with addressing the question of income inequality is that you can get very different impressions depending on how you look at the data. "The L-Curve" plots the data as income amount by percentile. The singular noticeable feature on this plot is the huge spike at the far right end of the curve. Even if the curve plotted only realized earnings (e.g. wages and capital gains from stock sales, etc.), rather than gains in net worth due to the value of stock holdings, this feature would still be very prominent. The problem, however, is it's hard to tell how significant that spike really is in the big picture of the economy. If the length of a football field is to represent all 114 million U.S. households, the 50-km-high spike that represents Bill Gates' $50 billion "income" in 1999 is only 0.8 microns thick--approximately 1/50th the thickness of a human hair! Even if Gates can fairly be said to have had a $50 billion income in 1999, that only amounts to 0.6% of all income (in 2004). The L-Curve really isn't the sort of distribution that scientists would consider useful. When we want to get a visualization of the spread of characteristics in a system, we typically use a histogram. The chart below illustrates where America's income is going. It is constructed so that every slice under the green curve with the same area represents the same amount of money. Likewise, the red curve shows the distribution of America's households. It is plotted on a logarithmic scale, which is useful when examining data over a large range. (More details about the number crunching below the fold.) I present this curve because I think it is one useful method for visualizing where the actual bulk of income in America is going. I do not claim that this proves whether income is fairly distributed in the U.S. or not. And if anyone finds something wrong with my method, please let me know.
How this chart was constructed: 1) Income data was obtained from the US Census Bureau ("Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2005") and the Internal Revenue Service ("All Returns: Adjusted Gross Income, Exemptions, Deductions, and Tax Items: 2004"). 2) All households were grouped into "bins" as defined by the Census (up to $100,000) and IRS (over $100,000) data tables. $1 was used for the lower limit of the "less than $5000" bin, and $100 million was used as the upper limit of the "more than $10 million" bin. 3) Total income in each bin was calculated by multiplying the number of households in the bin by the mean of the upper and lower limits of the bin. The sum of all these bins is the estimated grand total of all U.S. income. 4) The percent of all U.S. income was calculated for each bin. 5) The normalized income fraction for each bin was calculated by dividing the result in step #4 by the difference in the logarithm of the upper and lower limits. (This controls for the fact that not all the bins are the same size, and that the data will be plotted on a logarithmic scale.) 6) The normalized household fraction for each bin was calculated the same way, substituting the % of households in each bin for the % of all income as stated in step #4. 7) The values in steps #5 and #6 were plotted against the mean income level for each bin (the mean of the upper and lower limits). Posted by Eric Seymour at 05:05 PM | Comments (10) Tooting my own hornThe list of successful 2006 Indiana bar exam applicants has been released. Yours truly was on that list. Following a ceremony on October 20th, I'll be a bona fide attorney. Update: I like how one person described it: Isn't that a weird feeling? I wasn't even happy; I was just relieved. It was like "Oh, I didn't have a total disaster today, that's nice." Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:50 AM | Comments (15) What is This Mightier Than?For when reality is just too convenient. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:17 AM | Comments (0) September 28, 2006Throwing off the curveIn a post below, Zach links to a web site that attempts to illustrate the distribution of income in the United States. However, one of the figures cited on the site doesn't pass the sniff test. After representing the annual household income of $40,000 as a stack of $100 bills 4 cm high and the ~99.7th percentile mark of $1 million as a stack of Franklins 1 meter high, the site claims that "it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!" But on that scale, a 50 km high stack would represent an annual income of $50 billion. Bill Gates' net worth in 2005 was $46.5 billion, so obviously no one is making $50 billion a year in income. If my math is off, someone please let me know. Update: As was pointed out in the comments, the author of the site is counting a 1-year increase in Bill Gates' net worth as income. (Wikipedia confirms that Gates' wealth "briefly surpassed $100 billion in 1999".) I guess the author only counts positive income, because there's no 50-kilometer deep spike to reflect Mr. Gates' subsequent loss in net worth. As an aside, I must say that my first reaction to the "L-curve" was to be surprised not at how insanely wealthy a very very small number of people are, but how relatively equally income is spread out for most Americans. The 95th percentile is making only a little more than twice the median income, and the 99th percentile is earning 7.5 times the median income. In my view, why obsess with bringing down that top 1%? Posted by Eric Seymour at 05:28 PM | Comments (2) New form of justice?Anthony Stockelman, an inmate in Indiana's Wabash Valley Correctional Facility for molesting and killing a young girl, has received an involuntary tatoo of the girl's name on his forehead, pictured below. While I certainly value the rule of law, it's hard to muster much sympathy in this case.
Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 02:23 PM | Comments (3) Engine of the Economy IIIn a previous post, I noted an analysis by Kim, Solomon, and Kessler on how the Democratic Party can reconnect with the middle class. They pose an interesting critique: "conservatives believe the wealthy are the engine of the economy; we believe the middle class is the engine of the economy." I wondered if one could determine which "belief" is correct. In order to begin to unwrap this, I think it may be necessary to answer three successive questions. 1) How does one define middle class and the wealthy? 2) Who comprises these groups? 3) What economic behaviours do these kinds of people engage in? It may be helpful to illustrate income distribution in the US. I can't vouch for the accuracy of these figures, but this illustration seems consistent with what I've seen before (rotate it 90-degrees clockwise to put the axes where they usually go). This doesn't really bother me since I don't believe the baloney that relative, not absolute, income is supposed to make me unhappy. Nevertheless, the temptation to confiscate the extreme income is obvious. I think a football field makes for handy comparisons, too. What is the middle class? Definitions vary quite a bit. It could start anywhere from the 20- to 40-yard line and run all the way to the 85- to 95-yard line. Wherever the boundaries lay, it's a no-brainer that Democrats would want to "reconnect" with such a vast swath of voters. Who is in the middle class? Operationally, the Democratic Strategist authors are looking for workers who are financially secure yet aspire to a more comfortable lifestyle. This can extend broadly upwards from frugal blue collar workers. The upper end is more vague. How wealthy is wealthy? The ability to set oneself on a course for greater prosperity probably begins somewhere near six figures. The precise point, however, is not important. I believe that for the purposes of evaluating Democratic strategy, the question is who should be the target of the taxation that will be necessary to fund the pro-middle class policies. Based upon the distribution curve, the deep pockets are the top faction of 1% of earners. Who is wealthy? In my earlier post, I repeated the conventional wisdom that it is CEOs and celebrities. But as a paper by Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh (PDF) finds, the usual suspects account for a minority of the super-rich: See Table 8a on page 61. Top executives of public firms (Main Street); financial executives, bankers, and investors (Wall Street); corporate lawyers; and celebrities and athletes account for 16-22% of the top income earning categories (and at liberal estimates no more than 40%). The rest of the top earners may be trial lawyers, executives of private companies [small businessmen, perhaps], second-tier executives of public companies, and other independently wealthy individuals. (Interestingly for populists, the authors write, ". . . our evidence suggests that stealing CEOs or poor corporate governance cannot possibly be more than a very small part of the picture of increasing income inequality . . ." (p.38)) It's hard to know what, exactly, Kim et alia meant when they said that the middle class are the engine of the economy, but I take that they believe our economy grows and prospers based upon the activities new Democratic policies would seek to foster: home ownership and college education. Left unstated is what the middle class would do with funds freeded up by shifting the burdens of medical-, child-, and elder-care to the wealthy (via taxation). Presumably, some of this would also go toward mortgages and tuition, but I don't think that's certain unless there are also some additional carrots and sticks from the Democrats. So what is seen is the beneficial increase in homeownership and education (and the questionably beneficial increase in disposable income) among a large swath of the public. What is unseen is the reduced economic activity among the wealthy. This is partially obscured by the fact that the public don't really know what the wealthy do with their money. I suspect there is still a persistent, if latent, belief that the super-rich have money bins. Or failing that, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "MTV Cribs" have convinced many that the wealthy live in conspicuous luxury; no doubt that is true for some of them, but Kaplan and Rauh disabuse us of the notion that celebrities account for anything but the merest fraction top earners. Further, the research of Thomas Stanley, popularized in The Millionaire Next Door, shows that this popular image is misleading. The point is, if Democrats rely on such illusions to justify confiscatory taxation to pay for their pro-middle class agenda, it will be an inaccurate argument. And really, it doesn't so much matter what the rich spend their money on; it matters what they do to earn that money. This is the fundamental shift required to understand why conservatives believe that the wealthy are the engine of the economy. Despite antipathy for some of the very rich (trail lawyers, incompetent CEOs, decadent celebrities), conservatives consider most of them important leaders of industry, especially the much-praised small businessman. Taxing them seems counter-productive in the fullest sense of the word. Ultimately, I think this shift in perspective explains the dichotomy Kim et al propose. Liberals focus on the aggregate actions of ordinary people, conservatives on the risk-taking of talented individuals. The question of who drives the economy is not, then, merely empirical. It requires one to choose one of these perspectives. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:23 AM | Comments (5) Miami LibreThe headline "14-year-old student flees to Cuba" really threw me for a loop. What kind of a person flees from Miami to Cuba? Are 14-year-olds really that stupid? Then I read the article and it all made sense: "And in school, he was accused of cheating to try to win the class presidency." Cuba will no doubt grant political asylum to this fellow scoundrel. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:25 AM | Comments (0) September 27, 2006More Science Made Fun(Thanks to Off Colfax in the comments of Zach's post below for this one) I'm sure many of our highly-intelligent and good-looking readers are familiar with the old internet science experiment where one drops a pack of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Coke and produces a soft drink fountain. As I understand it, the reaction of the Mentos with the CO2 in the soda causes the soda to shoot its way out of the bottle. Call this a variation on that theme. BOOYAKA indeed! Posted by David Darlington at 08:01 AM | Comments (0) Cheap Skates for CheapskatesTen things one shouldn't buy new, according to MSN.com:
Of course, we'd be in trouble if everyone followed this advice, but I think it would be most damaging to the industries of 1, 2, and 6. Everyone ought to follow 8, as there are no shortage of failed start-ups, and office furniture is ridiculously overpriced anyway, probably because the typical purchaser isn't spending his own money. Again, I'm childless, but I can't conceive of 3 as being anything but a waste of money; at most, a child needs only a stuffed tiger. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:12 AM | Comments (3) September 26, 2006Why oh why can't we have a better . . .Glossy, puff-laden, dumbed-down national newsmagazine for the lowest common denominator: Newsweek edition. Check out the covers on the left-hand side. (via A Commonplace Book) Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:11 PM | Comments (3) Release the NIEI'll add my own small voice to growing calls for the government to release at least a redacted copy of the National Intelligence Estimate on the Global Jihadist Movement, about which much was made this weekend following a leak to the New York Times. The article doesn't quote from the report at length, relying instead on summaries and interviews about it. The interesting consequence is the nearly complete confirmatory bias in both camps. Critics of the Iraq War think it's a smoking gun; supporters of the President claim there are exculpatory details in the classified document. I'm inclined to believe that even if we get a public version of the NIE, these reactions will persist, even though disclosure would resolve the debate for any candid mind. As for myself, I will accept the Time's characterization until proven otherwise. I once trusted this Administration's version of intelligence consensus; I will not do that again. But even if we get a useful copy of the NIE, I fear we will still be in the dark about important subjects. Although intelligence officials assure the Times that the conclusions were not "softened or massaged for political purposes," there is reference in the article to previous drafts which contained sections on inflammatory US actions to which policymakers objected. How much of that information didn't make it to the final draft? Update: As Karl notes in the comments, ITA gets results. Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:24 PM | Comments (8) Benign IEDI want to make one. Does that make me a redneck? Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:08 AM | Comments (3) September 24, 2006Payola, PleaseJust to be clear, I'm pretty pleased to have publishers send me free books to review; it's one of the perks of being a blogger. However, I am saddened that I wasn't hit up by Simon & Schuster to give Voting to Kill a glowing review. Now that I've panned it, I fear I'll never get on the payroll. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:43 PM | Comments (0) Book Review: Voting to KillWhen one sits down to compose a post about a topic, it is often frustrating to see that someone else has already covered it, only better. However, it also happens from time to time that serendipity provides one with a quote that perfectly fits one's topic, and I can't help but think that as I prepared to review Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership by Jim Geraghty that Tyler Cowen wrote the following just for me: Translating good blog ideas into book format is best done by people who...have experience writing books, or who have journalistic experience, not by people who have large staplers.While Geraghty does have journalistic experience, his celebrity comes from his role as a blogger for National Review Online's "The Kerry Spot," still in operation two years on. And as I read his book, I couldn't help but think that he has a very large stapler indeed. Any one section in this book would probably be sufficient fodder for a blog post -- and probably has been. And any one of these posts would be a modest effort at writing, capturing a rather facile thesis: terrorism was a salient issue among voters in the past two elections, and they have perceived the GOP as having the greater ability to combat it. This is enough to sustain a 90-second visit to TKS, but 332 pages of 90-second visits is simply tiresome. Voting to Kill indeed feels like a collection of blog posts because so much of it comes in lists. Geraghty will present an (uninteresting) observation, like the fact that many on the Left said stupid things in the wake of 9/11, and then beat it to death by citing every quote that the blogosphere and Lexis-Nexis can produce to support it (blockquotes and references to other bloggers abound). This comprises the entirety of Chapters 5 and 6, nearly a third of the book, and continues elsewhere. Geraghty prattles on about Michael Moore, at one point for 18 pages at a stretch, and then has the audacity to follow that some pages later with: In fact, there is a bizarre phenomenon of extreme attentiveness to lefty comments in righty circles. Conservatives bloggers, in particlar, seem to have this intense interest in what the fringiest of the left fringe is saying about the political news of the day.And yes, MoveOn.org, DailyKos, Democratic Underground, et alia also make an appearance. This tendency to smother a subject with tedium prevails elsewhere. Chapter 4 is a slapdash overview of U.S. Foreign Policy gaffes from 1968-2001 punctuated by boldfaced summaries that repeat the already brief text. One wonders whether Geraghty was paid by the word. This is also apparent in whole sections that ramble on into pointlessness -- I still don't know what Chapter 10 was about. Or take, for instance, the section "Dems Need a Sense of Our National Mission," which begins with an almost stream-of-consciousness recitation of movie plots. The book winds down like Frank Sinatra scatting, trying to remember the lyrics to a song that's gone on too long. One would hope that among all this, one would find some flashes of insight into recent electoral politics. There are none. Geraghty does offer some advice for Democrats, some cautions for Republicans, and, surprisingly, some praise for Hillary Clinton, but on the whole, the book seems to be an attempt at the Permanent Record of Common Knowledge. Republicans who get a kick out of this book would be reminiscent of some sports fan whooping it up to tapes of last year's winning season. This provides for some giddy hubris: Geraghty declares that "The 2008 GOP candidate will gaze upon a panoply of low-hanging fruit, rich in electoral college votes." Further, Kerry's 2004 performance may be the "high watermark" for Democratic presidential candidates. The 31 Red States spell good fortunes for House and Senate races. Most dramatically, Geraghty declares, "There is actually nothing guaranteeing that the Democratic Party will continue to have any influence in U.S. politics." The only thing tempering these predictions is a short section that worries over whether national security will continue to be a salient issue; this is also accompanied by a section depicting a rather rosy assessment of the GWOT. Herein lies the book's greatest flaw: an almost complete absence of policy analysis, even as Geraghty states, "politics is about policy differences." Nowhere does he raise the very valid concerns that the GOP may lose their perceived edge on national security through bungling the war on terror. And recent polls show that it is no longer just the Left, as Geraghty implies, who view the invasion of Iraq as a separate -- and distracting -- issue. In the end, we have a book that contains nothing original, insightful, or useful. What we do have is a collection of lists, details, and news clippings -- all of which strikes one as just so much padding, clumsily stapled together. It is a whole that is less than the sum of its parts. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:16 PM | Comments (3) September 22, 2006Vente KoinoniaSalon's profile of Pastor Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from last week is notable for a couple of reasons. Of course, there is the expected shock response to Mars Hill's views on gender roles you'd expect from a left-leaning webzine (though one of the women profiled in the article says she was misrepresented). Honestly, Mars Hill's views on gender are a little too conservative for my taste, but I've been around long enough to know that the church is not far from the mainstream of evangelical thought. What got me about Mars Hill was its housing arrangements and commitment to "missional living." When the church started, its young members lived in group houses. Now spread out across Seattle as home owners, the older members use their houses as bases of operation as well as support networks for others. Author Lauren Sandler writes: Now there are no less than 50 neighborhood hubs that form centers for prayer, Bible study, and dinner parties throughout Seattle -- local axes for Mars Hill's global reach. A megachurch of thousands threatens the deeply personal experience the church relies upon for intensive active membership. These cell groups keep the church intimate even on its mammoth scale. This is not to far from what I was looking for here. Christians are called to look out for each other, in both supportive and corrective ways. Mars Hill has figured this out, and is creating little "places" in the midst of modern Seattle, much to the dismay of Salon magazine. I wonder if there are other churches around the country doing this, or do I have to move to Seattle and endure people whining about the Super Bowl if I want a little Vente Koinonia. Posted by David Darlington at 07:27 PM | Comments (1) Common Ground on LifeEvangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT), a project headed by Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus, has released its latest statement, "That They May Have Life." Addressing the issue of abortion, the statement is a major step forward in defining what exactly abortion destroys. Consider: "The ominous, and still recent, development in our society and others is the addition of new justifications for killing....The principle is now asserted and supported by appeal to law that we are justified in killing human beings who are, for whatever reason, unwanted or deemed to be an excessive burden to others.... It is false and pernicious to claim that the unborn child is, at early stages of development, only a potential human being. No life that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and no life that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being" (emphasis added). That the signatories of this statement include Frank James from the Reformed Theological Seminary, Tony Perkins of the FRC, Robert Louis Wilken from UVA, and Avery Cardinal Dulles evidences the capaciousness of the document's theology. And that this document should emerge when the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act this fall is also pertinent. In October or November, the Court will consider Gonzalez v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzalez v. Carhart, two cases challenging the constitutionality of the Federal ban. You will recall that the Court last addressed the constitutionality of this "gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized" procedure in Stenberg v. Carhart, 540 U.S. 914 (2000). In Stenberg, O'Connor, writing for the majority, stated that Nebraska's bill was unconstitutional since it did not contain an exception for the life of the mother. This consideration was later rebutted by Congress when it passed the Federal bill - when it collected ample testimony in the congressional hearings, from fetologists and doctors who performed abortions, that no affliction faced by a pregnant woman would be remedied by a partial-birth abortion. In addition, Stenberg did not address the nature of the constitutional claim - the Court blithely overlooked (the majority did not even mention it) precedent set in US v. Salerno, a 1987 case where the Court acknowledged that "facial challenges" must be accepted only rarely as they involve the risk of exceeding those boundaries that confine the power of the judges. O'Connor's jurisprudence, not surprisingly, has caused confusion in the Federal Courts (Judge Easterbrook readily admitted this in Hope Clinic v. Ryan, and one might posit that it has contributed to the present legal imbroglio). I believe the present cases rest on how the Court will interpret the commerce clause claims of Federal ban. Scalia, Roberts, and Alito will likely propose the quasi-conservative rationale of U.S. v. Lopez, but Thomas is anyone's guess. His concurrence in Lopez may not support the commerce clause rationale underlying the Federal ban. I'm not the first to say it, nor will I be the last, but the fall term of the Court will be contentious, WWF style. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 11:44 AM | Comments (27) Gaydar from Sharper ImageLast night's episode of The Office was one of the funniest so far. And based upon the popularity of the show, I'm going to do an experiment in web traffic similar to "I am not Stephen Colbert." Gaydar from Sharper Image Posted by Zach Wendling at 05:23 AM | Comments (1) September 21, 2006'Evil' Wal Mart strikes againThis time the retail giant that offers a massive vareity of goods at discount prices to otherwise ignored population segments now plans to cut prices for generic drugs between 20 percent and 90 percent. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:32 PM | Comments (19) September 20, 2006Tooting My Own HornA British publication called Don't Panic decided to reprint my Bastille Day article from last year on the French language, which is rather flattering. It's included in their recent issue devoted to language. In return, I'm giving the gift of web traffic: Don't Panic sounds like an interesting experiment in multi-media with print, web, and artistic tie-ins. Check them out. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:04 PM | Comments (1) Let the horse race begin!While Jonah Goldberg is contemplating a Democratic takeover of the House, Scott Elliott of Election Projection is predicting (at this point) that the GOP will hang onto the House with a very thin 9-seat advantage. Elliott is a Christian conservative Republican, but in 2004 his final prediction handed Bush 289 electoral votes--off by only 3. Elliott also predicts (as do most analysts) that the GOP will hold the Senate (losing three seats), but projects that the Dems will have the majority of state Governors after November 7. With the mid-term elections a mere 7 weeks away, this political junkie will be checking Election Projection more and more often. Update: I forgot to mention this when posting last night, but what's remarkable about Elliott's House projection is that the only state where the Dems are picking up more than one seat is the Republican stronghold and ITA home base of Indiana, where he currently projects the Democrats will pick up not just two, but three seats. That would be an incredible gain, especially since the state only has nine total seats. A three-seat shift in swing state Ohio (with its 18 total seats) I could understand, but what the heck is going on in Indiana? Posted by Eric Seymour at 06:22 PM | Comments (5) A Tale of Two FacesFrom the Guardian, September 6, 2006: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's outspoken president, fired an ominous warning at the country's educated elites yesterday by calling for a purge of "liberal and secular" academics in the universities.From US News, September 20, 2006: In what might be construed as a charm offensive - at least an effort to lay out a less confrontational tone before Americans - Ahmadinejad asked, "Can't we just be friends?" He added, "We are in favor of dialogue ... but under fair conditions."So which is it, Mr. Ahmadinejad? Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 06:21 PM | Comments (4) PostSecretEvery so often I check in on PostSecret, a fascinating blog that, in their words, "is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." I liked this recent one in particular. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:07 AM | Comments (4) An Open InvitationFor those readers in the Indianapolis area, the Federalist Society at the Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis will host a debate entitled "Free Exercise or Constrained Conscience: Religious Liberties on the Landscape of Hinrichs v. Bosma." You will recall that this is the somewhat infamous "Statehouse prayer" case that is currently on appeal before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The debate will be held at the Law School on Wednesday, 27 September, at 5:00 P.M. Participants include Kenneth Falk of the ACLU of Indiana and William Saunder of the Family Research Council. For more information, visit the School's website. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 09:48 AM | Comments (0) Hurricane PelosiIs this Jonah Goldberg column the equivalent of boarding up the windows and hoarding the canned goods for the GOP? Calling a Democratic take over of the House "possible, if not probable," Goldberg argues how it could be a boon for the conservative cause, as a Democratic House (and possibly Senate) would undoubtedly reign in an out-of-control executive branch, both fiscally and perhaps legally, as well as force the Democrats to do something other than criticize the president. It's one thing to harp on one's opponent when out of power, it's another entirely to have to do something about it when in power. In other words, Goldberg argues a huge 2006 for the Democrats could mean smaller returns in 2008, as voters might not like what they see out of the party. Generally you'd expect a bit more optimism from National Review and other standard bearers of the conservative cause. Aren't conservatives supposed to carry the image of Reagan, with his cheery smile and laugh in the face of any danger? If NRO is calling a Democratic take-over in November "probable" (and seemingly resigned to the fact and looking for the silver lining), instead of trying to rally the troops against Pelosi, et al., one has to wonder how bad it will really be for the president and the GOP. Posted by David Darlington at 08:38 AM | Comments (2) September 18, 2006The Wrath of Dead EmperorsNot that we have read enough of Bene's Regensburg lecture, but the lecture should be read as a whole and not in FoxNews.com snippets. Benedict's lecture at Regensburg was chiefly about the inseparable linkage between faith and reason in Christian history, and how a separation between the two means a disintegration of Christian faith. Enter a quote from Manuel II Palaeologus, Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. Palaeologus' empire did not command the title "empire," comprising Constantinople, a few islands in the Aegean, and the area of Thessalonica in Thrace. In a little over three centuries, Muslim forces conquored most of the Byzantine Empire, subjecting Christians in the area to "the dhimmi class system," granting them certain rights. If you wanted to evangelize, print any Christian literature, appoint or elect your presbyter or bishop without state sanction, or testify against a Muslim in a court, think again. Whether Palaeologus was correct in his statement that the Prophet commanded his followers to spread the Faith via the sword is the stuff of candid, if not civil, debate, but certainly not the killing of nuns and the burnings of churches. Put in the context of the Ottoman blockade of Constantinople in 1394, one might grant Palaeologus an inch for hyperbole. Yet while quotations from the penultimate emperor of the Byzantine Empire might lead some in the world to burn and murder, it does not address the substance of Benedict's lecture, namely, that "God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word - reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John [the Evangelist] thus spoke the final world on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God." Editors at the New York Sun compare Benedict's current imbroglio with John Paul the Great's against communism. Some cringe that Islam would even be spoken in the same sentence with communism, but the article offers a rational defense. While it is true that large segments of Islam do not reflect the barbarism of burning churches and killing religious, Benedict's point still stands: One cannot separate faith from reason, as reason at its zenith is nothing less than a reflection of the Divine. How one comprehends such a relationship, whether it be through the faith of Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin, who stated yesterday that "Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," or through the faith that the West is continually told is truly Islam, is the million dollar question. A war rages for the soul of a Faith, and the world could not care less. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 09:36 PM | Comments (20) Maybe He Should Kiss a KoranIn response to being labeled evil and inhuman by a dead Byzantine emperor, a group of Muslims did what anyone would do in that situation: They firebombed two churches in the West Bank. -- The Dilbert BlogI don't feel too compelled to defend Benedict XVI from the violent crybabies in the Muslim Street, but I wonder whether this incident will prompt some clarification on the Roman infatuation with univeralism. Posted by Zach Wendling at 07:39 PM | Comments (5) September 17, 2006HPR ColumnMy latest submission for the Howey Political Report can be read by clicking the link below. There's a growing consensus among polical pundits that Republicans will suffer in this year's mid-term elections. Even the solidly red state of Indiana is up for grabs. As Indiana's chief political guru Brian Howey put it, "U.S. Reps. Chris Chocola, Mike Sodrel and John Hostettler are in deep trouble over the war, now being recast by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a battle against 'Islamic fascism.'" Their plight isn't unique; the war in Iraq threatens to undermine the campaigns of numerous Republican congressional candidates across the country. But what makes these three unique is that none of them voted for the Iraq war in October of 2002, yet it threatens to unseat them anyway. Hostettler flatly voted against it, and Reps. Chocola and Sodrel had not yet been elected. How, then, could they let themselves get caught up in its negative aftermath? Certainly voter ignorance is partly to blame. Anyone with an "R" after their name is assumed to have supported the initial decision to go in and, to a lesser degree, is assumed to support President Bush's style of leadership. But neither of these portrayals are always fair, particularly for John Hostettler. Hostettler follows his own line and consistently bucks the wishes of the national party. Following his "no" vote on the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney cancelled a planned fundraiser in the 8th district. He has often voted against large Republican spending bills, including a Hurricane Katrina relief package. While Chocola and Sodrel are typically more likely to agree with President Bush, they're by no means a carbon copy either. Clearly Hostettler and others like him throughout the country stand to gain, politically speaking, by separating themselves from President Bush and highlighting their independent track record. But this task will prove particularly difficult for Hostettler. As of the July 15 reporting deadline, he had only $195,146 on hand, while challenger Brad Ellsworth had over three times that amount. Hostettler is therefore forced to rely on the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for help, and there's little chance the national party will spend money praising a candidate's independence from the very hand that's feeding it. The NRCC and its candidates are ultimately left in a bind - either highlight candidate independence, implicitly criticizing the national party, or risk losing control of the House. If a recent Washington Post story is any indication, the NRCC may simply choose a third option and go negative. The Post reports the NRCC enlisted veteran party strategist Terry Nelson to "run a campaign that will coordinate with Senate Republicans on ads that similarly will rely on the best of the worst that researchers have dug up on Democrats." That's a gamble, given that such bickering is partly to blame for the Republican poll drop already. But with plans to spend more than $50 million on advertising (a midterm election record), the Republicans aren't backing down without a fight. But for the investment to pay off, the NRCC's best efforts may be spent on helping candidates portray an independent, outside-the-beltway image. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 07:38 PM | Comments (8) September 15, 2006Clinton Runs for 39 Yards in LossI must admit that when I read the headine "Bush denies impropriety while at USC," my first reaction was: I thought he went to Yale! Posted by David Darlington at 08:46 PM | Comments (0) September 14, 2006The Lost City of ChernobylThe English is a bit rough in spots, but this photo blog of Chernobyl 20 plus years later is both remarkable and eerie. The city remains standing -- half time capsule, half indication life continues on. Highly recommended. Hat tip: John H. Posted by David Darlington at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) The Engine of the EconomyDrum's argument below follows from a fascinating analysis by Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler on how the Democratic Party is disconnected from the middle class, published in The Democratic Strategist. Among all the other interesting things they have to say, one passage in particular grabbed my attention: Well that gets to our critique: conservatives believe the wealthy are the engine of the economy; we believe the middle class is the engine of the economy.Is this truly a belief, or is it an empirical question? In the absence of definitions of who is wealthy and what constitutes the engine of the economy, the argument appears to go something like this: we benefit more when we take money away from CEO's and celebrities and use it to pay for college, first homes, and care for the elderly and young. Sounds like a persuasive story for campaigns, but is it true? Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:14 PM | Comments (2) The Unseen Tactic of the LeftSixty years ago, Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson (PDF), which attempted to popularize a concept in classical liberalism that economic policies can often have unintended and destructive secondary effects much removed from the public's attention, unlike those policies' ostensible purposes -- as Frederic Bastiat titled it in the 19th-Century, What is Seen and What is Not Seen. While in the 60 years hence, classical liberals and their allies on the Right have made much progress against foolish thinking in economics, it is still an uphill battle to bring the public's attention to the secondary effects of current policies. And even when these secondary effects are relatively clear, for example, higher prices for food due to agricultural subsidies and tariffs, public disapproval is neither salient nor decisive. Add to this the fact that once debunked, an economic fallacy will continue to surface, the tactic of rooting out the Unseen seems like a Sisyphean task. This is why I'm skeptical, and a bit surprised, to see the tactic emerge on the Left. Consider some recent musings by Kevin Drum on how the Democratic Party can reconnect with the middle-class: Republicans have rigged the system to overwhelmingly favor the rich and the result has been stagnation and increasing insecurity for the middle class. But the reason Republicans been able to get away with this is that stagnation at a household income of $63,000 isn't all that bad.My impression there are very few marginal Democratic voters who have the patience for such an argument. And this is a very good thing, because it would only result in an even more complicated rebuttal from the Right that the kinds of policies Democrats would have used to "spread" that growth would also probably have destroyed much of it. (Considering the pinko policies that even the GOP was swallowing 30+ years ago, even that 80% is surprising.) Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:04 PM | Comments (34) September 13, 2006CMS ShuffleThe Associated Press reports on a so-called Medicare holiday in which the federal government will not send medical providers Medicare reimbursements until after October 1. The American Medical Association responded by noting that they don't get a "financial responsibility holiday," so the hold should be repealed. But even more interesting than the government's holiday on its financial obligations, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Mark McClellen, is resigning. (You may know McClellen better as the brother of Scott McClellen, the former White House press seretary.) McClellen is a physician and economist who's served in government since the late 1990s, but the biggest line on his resume may be that he oversaw the launch of Medicare's new prescription drug program, Medicare Part D. Having overseen one of the largest entitlement programs in recent history didn't seem to matter to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which has tapped McClellan to head the think tank. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) Enjoying the High Life for a Good Long TimeAt the risk of gaining the reputation as ITA's "lists guy," I thought this TIME Health article was pretty good. Apparently, the top seven counties in the United States for life expectancy are in Colorado, lead by Clear Creek County (say that three times fast) at 81.3 years. Is it the fresh mountain air and water? Is it the healthy Colorado lifestyle (low numbers of smokers, lowest-in-the-nation obesity rate)? Is it the good Christian living in Colorado Springs radiating to the rest of the state? Nobody knows for sure. And in a related story, researchers found enough differences in life expectancy as sorted by race, class, gender, and geography to identify "eight Americas." Asian women have it good. Posted by David Darlington at 08:28 PM | Comments (1) Consumer-Driven Health Care IIJosh shrewdly notes below that a study revealing health care consumers to be imperfectly informed presents a major challenge to advocates of consumer-driven health care, generally found on the right. The leading alternative, generally found on the left, is a single-payer model. But I don't think that the study in question necessarily leads us down this road. As Greg Mankiw writes: The problem, my rightish friends would reply, is that the Rand study did not examine the other side of the coin. What if the quality of the health care were judged not by the consumer but instead by an employee of the postal system? Or, worse, by a random member of Congress, while he was running for reelection and accepting campaign contributions from a variety of health-care providers? Yes, decisionmaking in health care is hard, so mistakes are inevitable. But is there any reason to think that collectivized decisionmaking is usually better than individual decisionmaking? Without doubt, this question is a challenge to my friends on the left. Posted by Zach Wendling at 06:09 AM | Comments (4) September 12, 2006Conspiracy CranksJames B. Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, sums up his magazine's debunking of wild conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11 attacks. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) We Don't Need No ReligionIt is an all-too-common trope among paleo-conservatives: The academy is hostile to people of faith. More generically, to religion. And more often than not the trope ends with the refrain that the university environment all but completely squelches religious conviction. Whether we agree with such an assessment, folks on both sides of the nave can agree that an alarming number of twentysomethingers, espeically those churched as teens, do not place a high premium on practicing their faith. A recent study by the Barna Group appears to codify the latter observation, at least among its pool of approximately 22,100 adults and 2,100 teenagers. In the study, released Monday, the director comments that there remains considerable debate whether this disengagement is merely a lifestage issue or indicative of sometime more permanent. In reading the study, I could not help but think of David's post some time back on the dissentigration of the church community. After all, if churches emphasized the importance of being an active part of Christ's Body on Earth, a fortiori the sacred nature of this relationship, one could only hope that finding a church community would be at the top of Johnny the Christian's list. Isolation simply would not be an option. Perhaps it is an issue of education - just not in the manner commonly considered. Better catechesis during formative years would throw some intellectual, emotional, not to forget soteriological, ghusto into the temptation of backsliding. No matter what the cause, from the looks of it orgaizations like InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, Newman Centers, and Christian Legal Society have their work cut out for them. Only, of course, if they can first gain entry to campus. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 01:41 PM | Comments (11) September 11, 2006Consumer-Driven Health CareWithout question, health care will be a major issue in the 2008 presidential election. Most polls rank it among the most important in the eyes of voters, including this Harris Poll (pdf) which suggests that it will influence 40% of voters. And though health care would be a major issue in its own right, Michael Moore's forthcoming "documentary" on the subject, titled "Sicko," will only raise its profile with voters. As Roger Friedman of Fox News wrote, "From the little we saw last night, it is clearly going to be a huge, huge hit...another cultural phenomenon." With so much attention being paid to the topic it's important for policy wonks like ITA readers to be well-read on it. Ezra Klein, one of the leading lights of the leftist blogosphere, recently penned a post on the problems with consumer-driven health care, focusing in particular on the lack of knowledge and information that most patients have in evaluating health care: Over in the Wall Street Journal, more empirical scorn is being heaped on consumer-drected health care, this time in the form of a study showing that consumers have absolutely no idea what good health care is. Researchers from the Rand Corp., UCLA, and Department of Veteran's Affairs had 236 elderly patients in two major managed care plans rate the quality of their health care. Satisfaction was high, with the average rating a super 8.9.The thrust of Klein's argument, of course, is that we're too stupid to handle our health care on our own. That philosophy is nothing new from the left. It is, after all, the basis of Social Security - you're too stupid to plan for your own retirement. The philosophy isn't wholly without merit. I don't know what procedures are necessary for a given symptom, and I'm not always well versed on costs. But there are rough analogies to work from. Cars are incredibly complex machines that I know very little about, yet the government doesn't step in to make sure I've received good care. Similarly we rely on a privately hired inspector before purchasing a house. The obvious difference, of course, is that a shoddy car repair doesn't always end your life; poor health care can. Ultimately consumer-driven advocates must come up with an acceptible answer to Kelin's argument, and it can't involve involve complex economic theory. Otherwise Europe and Canada's socialized health care system will come to the US to roost. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:34 PM | Comments (8) September 10, 2006A Seal of ApprovalThis seal generator is pretty cool. Maybe we should hold an official ITA logo contest. This worker is probably a little too reminiscent of a Wobblie for our demographics. Posted by David Darlington at 02:24 PM | Comments (2) September 09, 2006Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Christian Right?Plenty of people are, if this bibliographical essay in First Things from Ross Douthat is any indication. Douthat, who writes for Atlantic Monthly and blogs at The American Scene, has read the latest wailing and gnashing of teeth from Kevin Phillips, James Rudin, Michelle Goldberg, and Randall Balmer, and found these noted liberals making much ado about nothing. Well, perhaps not nothing; there is in fact a marginal movement of hardcore Calvinists who call themselves Reconstructionists or Dominionists whose idea of the good life makes Calvin's Geneva look like Cancun during Spring Break. But they rank "somewhere between the Free Mumia movement and the Spartacist Youth League on the totem pole of political influence in America," Douthat says. However, Douthat shows, that doesn't stop Phillips, et al, from reaching too far to make connections between the Dominionist fringe and the mainstream Christian Right, finding things that aren't there, and straining credulity in the process. What Douthat doesn't really mention, and what really in my mind makes the recent alarmism of Phillips, et al, (not to mention Andrew Sullivan and his insulting term "Christianist") rather silly, is that these would-be Paul Reveres are five years behind the times. The Christian Right is on a serious, identifiable decline. Ideologically, they're fracturing. Parts of the Christian Right are growing a green thumb, as Seth pointed out this week, while others are discovering that the straight Republican ticket isn't always the best answer. The Christian Coalition itself is losing members, and its former head lost a race for Lt. Governor in his home state. Part of the decline is due to success -- Bush in the White House and Roberts and Alito on the bench -- but another part, I think, is that evangelicals have found out that after getting the seat at the table they've wanted for so long, their hosts are serving Mac-N-Cheese. Count me among those who doubts the GOP will ever get around to really doing something about abortion, for example. Secular authority will give the church what it wants as long as it serves its interests. When the church pushes for more (in "speaking truth to power," as it should), it inevitably, sometimes violently, rediscovers that secular authority wants it on a leash. We are nowhere near an emerging theocracy. The Christian Right is currently going through a Niebuhrian reeducation process. As Niebuhr taught us, there are many different places for God and Culture to meet, and the Christian Right is discovering that the corridors of power aren't always the best place for a rendezvous. Calvinist dystopias aside, Christ's Kingdom is not of this world. That is not to say that Christians in politics should not be trying to recreate the world closer to what God intended -- full of peace, justice, and love -- but we need to remember that we are lesser copyists of a far better artist. And, sometimes, the political tools we've been given aren't even the right ones to use. Posted by David Darlington at 06:27 PM | Comments (19) September 07, 2006OK Go!Arguably the hottest new band on the music scene is "OK Go", an American band that, in their words, is "part indie rock, part stadium rock, part straight up pop with the occasional whiff of Weezer or The Cars or Elliott Smith." Their music alone should be enough to win you over, but it's their ingenius self-made videos which are also helping boost their popularity. According to some authorities they've created the most downloaded music video ever with over 9 million downloads. Below the fold I've posted two of their best. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 10:42 PM | Comments (5) Confessions of a Pro-LiferFred Barnes (of Weekly Standard and Fox News fame) has penned an interesting article on "How Pro-Lifers Become Pro-Lifers". It explores how five influential individuals became pro-life, including himself and President Reagan. So think for a moment about these five experiences: Reagan's deciding on signing an abortion bill, Hyde's mulling whether to co-sponsor a pro-abortion measure, Ponnuru's watching as the Summer of Mercy unfolded, Smith's reading pro-euthanasia tracts at his dead friend's home, and our -- my wife and I -- adverse reaction to amniocentesis. One common thread is obvious. All of us, because of the circumstances we found ourselves in, were forced to think about the taking of a life and what that means in both practical and moral terms. Most people avoid thinking about troubling moral issues like abortion or euthanasia. We couldn't. Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:23 PM | Comments (17) Jesus Saves...The EnvironmentThat Evangelicals, and more specifically, the National Association of Evangelicals, are concerned with the status of the environment is no surprise by now. During March of last year, the NAE released it infamous Call to Civic Responsibility statement, urging evangelical Christians to become better stewards of the environment. The statement was a surprise to many: All this talk of "care for the environment" is the stuff of the National Council of Churches, not those serious about Christ's call to go to the ends of the Earth, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Cynicism aside, the NCC is still hard at work. The October term of the Supreme Court dawns in three weeks, and the NCC (along with the Church World Service, and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference) wants the Court to know what it thinks of the EPA and the Clean Air Act. Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. EPA challenges the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In its amicus brief, the NCC states that "followers of the Judeo-Christian tradition are called to be responsible, just stewards of the Earth and the abundant resources that it makes available, today and for future generations. See Gn. 2:15, 9:12." The brief goes on to quote Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31-33 to the effect that the EPA should regulate C02 becuase "Christian ethic preaches love of our fellow humans." Yes it does. And part of this love is giving a full profession of that same Christian ethic which also includes some nasty doctrine of man's fall and Christ's redemption. While I agree with what the NCC's amicus brief states, it is what countless other statements from the NCC do not state, namely the Christian ethic of the monogamous, hetrosexual union being the normative means God established to perpetuate His creation and fill His Kingdom, that beg the question: Why make a public argument based on your faith with regard to the environment, but not other pressing public policy issues? I would think that the NCC could file a similar brief, drawing on biblical passages and Christian ethics, when the three DOMA cases are considered by the Court next spring. On second thought, that particular application of Christianity might offend Establishment sensibilities. (Remember that Barry Lynn, General Councel for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, is a UCC minister). As Jordan Lorence, senior council with the Aliance Defense Fund, notes, "Leftist activists trout out [the] 'Establishment Clause' argument when they want to undercut a public policy position advocated by religious conservatives and traditionalists" - but when it goes to support their policy points we get amici briefs like mannah from heaven. Posted by Seth Zirkle at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) September 06, 2006Push or PullThe election is still an eternity away in the special space-time continuum of politics, but at a mere 62 days, it looks as if Democrats have an appreciable chance at taking the House. (Unless gas reaches $2/gal by November.) This is no mean feat, especially as gerrymandering and campaign finance "reform" have made incumbency all that more protected. Pundits earlier claimed that the Dems would have to nationalize the election if they wanted to make gains. This was slightly wrong -- Republicans were glad to nationalize it for them through gross incompetence and a steady stream of scandals. Explaining every hot district with Republicans' low approval ratings surely glosses over local nuances (here in Indiana, home of three tight districts, Democratic support has probably been bolstered by our Republican governor's self-inflicted wounds), but a Democratic majority in the House would receive a mandate based upon the narrative of voter discontent. How far would that mandate go? That is, are voters simply choosing to punish Republicans, or are they choosing Democratic governance? And how likely are those two options to resolve our current woes? I have more hope for the former than the latter. This is largely because I'm sympathetic to calls for "the administration to groan under the weight of a hundred investigations." The more one learns about the policy-making apparatus in the White House, the more one yearns for justice for those responsible. And the necessary oversight from the Congress has been completely absent. The GOP solidarity on covering up failure and corruption reflects a serious defect in character, one usually charged at statists, i.e., that they will do anything and sacrifice anything to hold on to power. This is why I find myself agreeing with Kevin Drum when he writes: This is, by a long measure, the most underreported aspect of the Bush administration's war on terror. Not that they're pursuing the wrong strategy -- though they are -- but that in the end they don't really care that much one way or the other. Winning the war has always been secondary to winning elections.Is there anything that hasn't been secondary to winning elections? Yet for all my desire to see this malfeasance exposed in some official manner, I also have to recognize that any investigation will be poisoned by partisanship. This is largely due to the fact that the Democrats who would be leaders in the House are little better the Republicans they would replace. And I only think they would be marginally better because they've not been in power for twelve years. This is also what makes the second proposition -- that they will introduce good governance -- so improbable. Republican mismanagement, which could be termed governance-by-wishful-thinking, will soon be replaced by Democratic mismanagement, perhaps we could call it governance-by-wishes. Then again, Kevin Drum does float a vision of Democratic foreign policy that isn't half bad, even if it is half-baked. It would never fly on its own, but flown in under cover of voters revolting against Republicans, we might see some progress if they can keep a lid on the "Chomsky wing" of their party. Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:27 PM | Comments (22) September 05, 2006The Rove ConnectionA new book on Karl Rove hit the shelves this past week, detailing how Bush's point man brought about the President's second term. The book also details Rove's connection to the gay community, or so 365gay.com maintains. As it happens, Rove's father came "out of the closet" after the family moved to California; Rove stayed close to his father, keeping a picture on his desk. John Mable with the National Stonewall Democrats emphasizes how this "demonstrates that LGBT individuals are found throughout the American family...citizens who deserve equal protection under the law." Posted by Seth Zirkle at 09:11 PM | Comments (3) September 04, 2006Requiescat in Pace
Steve Irwin, 1962-2006 Posted by Zach Wendling at 09:07 AM | Comments (6) September 03, 2006Clearing the Air in ChurchWhile I'm fond of formal vestments for clergy in church, this article gives some scientific validation to my intolerance for incense, "Incense and candles release substantial quantities of pollutants that may harm health, a detailed new study of air quality in a Roman Catholic church suggests." As for candles, most churches I've visited lately have switched to oil lamps that just look like candles. Posted by Zach Wendling at 12:08 PM | Comments (3) September 01, 2006What Game Are These Guys Watching?Don't look now, but 7 of the 12 NFL "experts" on ESPN.com picked the Indianapolis Colts to win the Super Bowl this year. Do these guys not realize Peyton Manning is still the Colts' quarterback? I know this is blasphemy, but if your QB can't avoid the rush and can't handle the blame for past playoff letdowns ("idiot kicker" "there were protection issues"), you've got a lot to prove. I vaguely remember back in the go-go '90s some news show putting stock portfolios picked by the experts up against a portfolio picked by a trained monkey throwing darts at a board. The monkey's picks frequently outperformed the picks of the experts. Some of these NFL guys would fare no better. Come to think of it, maybe I should use that methodology to pick my fantasy team this year. Of course, with my luck, the monkey will hit all Cleveland Browns. Posted by David Darlington at 09:27 PM | Comments (1) |
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