Current Affairs
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Lena Dunham is an actress whose name I recognize, though I have never seen her perform, because she gets into the news now and then. She attracted some attention during the 2012 election for some asinine comments comparing voting for the first time to losing one's virginity to a special someone, with the special guy…
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This doesn't seem to be a joke. Seems like a pretty big deal, as the Lambeth Conference has been an important feature of Anglican life for generations (since 1867, to be exact). I'm not all that well informed on things Anglican, but I would think this represents a significant recognition of the lack of unity that…
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Where? The complete sentence is "In France we have to hide the fact we are Jewish." In France? How can this be? I've read many times over the past five or ten years of an increase in anti-Semitism in some parts of Europe. But that Jews are "leaving France by the thousands" is startling. One commenter offers the…
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I've only written about Israel a few times here. Actually I couldn't remember having done so at all, but since I've been doing this since 2004, and have accumulated over 2500 posts, I know I can't entirely trust my memory on that sort of thing, so I checked, and there were a couple of brief…
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From Neoneocon: I continue to reserve judgment, however, until the forensic evidence comes in. There’s a lot more to be learned about the facts in this case. Waiting to learn the facts before coming to a conclusion? It's not the Internet Way. You're supposed to respond instantly with outrage to a story like this, stake…
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Salon writer denounces Pope Francis for not being the secular progressive that secular progressives want him to be.
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It's probably abusing the privilege somewhat, but a portion of James Bowman's media column in the April New Criterion is so good that I'm going to quote it at length. It's a devastatingly sharp critique of the fatuous Mr. Obama's assertion that he is always "on the right side of history." …Mr. Kerry, when interviewed on Face…
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This lengthy piece in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations," is getting a good bit of attention, and deservedly so. Coates (I wonder how his first name is pronounced) is an intelligent and thoughtful man, and I think he makes a pretty strong moral case for reparations from the U.S. government to the…
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Climate change is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy, sneezy, costly and dangerous, according to a comprehensive federal scientific report released Tuesday. So says the San Jose Mercury-News apropos a new National Climate Assessment report. Perhaps the actual report is not as excited as the journalism, but from what I've seen of headlines today this…
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Every philosophical school must eventually grow stale, and a hindrance rather than an aid to further thought (though if it has sufficient vitality it may recover). And if it has met with worldly success nothing is more to be expected than that this should happen precisely at the moment of its greatest triumph, when it…
Light On Dark Water 