Blogworthies LXXII

Because The Blog from the Core simply can't cover everything.

Noteworthy entries @ Musings of a Pertinacious Papist, Media Blog, Disputations, Terrorism Unveiled, cut on the bias, The Jawa Report, The Huffington Post, Off the Record, Brainwash, Mere Comments, little green footballs, Gates of Vienna, Rightwingsparkle, Lead and Gold, Media Lies, Hugh Hewitt, Scylla & Charybdis, and Veritas.

A requiem for male friendship? @ Musings of a Pertinacious Papist:

The love that dare not speak its name has rapidly become, as one of our own resident heretic commentators has made all too clear, the love that simply will not shut up. In many quarters of our society, this sort of obstreperousness — "openness," "coming out," "we're here and we're queer: get over it!" — is feted as a cause celebre, as a sign of sound social health. Others — not all of them Bible-thumping fundamentalists from the backwaters of Mississippi — are not as confident.

Touchstone magazine ("A Journal of Mere Christianity"), an Orthodox-sponsored ecumenical periodical, is proving to be an increasingly reliable source of solid cultural commentary, as demonstrated by the latest issue, which features a thought-provoking essay by Anthony Esolen entitled "A Requiem for Friendship: Why Boys Will Not Be Boys and Other Consequences of the Sexual Revolution" (the article is not available online as of this posting)....

ABC: College Nuke Labs Vulnerable to Multicultural Hotties! @ Media Blog:

According to a hard-hitting ABC News report that I watched tonight, our nation's supply of university-controlled nuclear material is vulnerable to any dedicated group of multicultural-hottie terrorists that put their minds to the task!

These hotties, after watching Season One of The Apprentice, realized that if they just acted flirty they could totally get these science geeks to let them into university nuclear research labs, resulting in a rocking intern project for ABC that would totally guarantee them post-graduation employment!...

Speaking of hobgoblins @ Disputations:

I am, on the whole, insufferable, which is one reason many people who meet me socially get the impression that I am quiet and reserved. I know from experience that, once I start talking, no good will come of it.

I am, though, a rank piker compared to Emerson: ....

A Balancing Act of Tact and Rebuke @ Terrorism Unveiled:

I wrote notes in the margins of the latest Zawahiri letter to Zarqawi....

Can it be that a man is better than me? @ cut on the bias (emphasis in original):

"Yes," says Charles Murray. "No," says Charles Murray.

Murray, a co-author of the controversial book, The Bell Curve, has a long and fairly complicated essay in the WSJ about the innate differences between groups of people — men and women, blacks and whites, and others. It's fascinating reading, and I highly recommend it. Stick to it to the end, and read with an open mind.

One of the points I think he needs to make more clearly — maybe in bold, 16-point type — is this: No matter what differences show up between groups, there is nothing that shows that all people in one group are better at something than all people in another group. That means, for example, that while women may not be as good as men generally at science, there will always be some women who can rival the best men. They should be encouraged to follow their talent and dream....

PC Hacks at OU Paper Covering Up Oklahoma Bombing @ The Jawa Report:

The University of Oklahoma student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily (OD), today calls for the FBI break its silence on Joel Henry Hinrichs III — the OU student who blew himself up outside a football game on Oct. 1. The reason? To dispell the myths propogated by online 'hacks' that are claiming that the Oklahoma bomber, Hinrichs, may have been part of a larger Islamic terror plot.

Underlying today's editiorial is the assumption that Hinrichs was not part of a larger plot and that any evidence to the contrary is simply poor journalism....

2008: Will Al Gore Be the Anti-Hillary? @ The Huffington Post:

It's still three years away but Hollywood is already starting to choose sides for 2008. And two very distinct camps have started to form: those backing Hillary, and those desperately searching for the anti-Hillary.

Hillary is descending on L.A. this week, with a small Democratic strategy session planned for Thursday at Ron Burkle's home with, among other Hollywood players, Haim Saban and Rob Reiner, and a trio of fundraisers Friday and Saturday at the homes of Reiner, Bruce Cohen, and Marta Kauffman.

The devoted Hillary-ites include deep-pocket donors like Saban, Steve Bing, and Alan and Cindy Horn.

The Hollywood insiders who are not going the Hillary way are not ready to go public yet (I'm sure some of them will even be at the Hillary fundraisers this weekend). But, in private conversations, a growing number of them say they are determined to find another candidate to support....

the gay priest imposture @ Off the Record:

This week's NCR has an interview with — don't be shocked — an anonymous gay priest. The editorial aim is to demonstrate the irrationality of the Church's stance on homosexuality; in fact, the article does just the opposite. A few observations: ....

Supreme Court Decisionmaking: Simple? @ Brainwash:

My heaviest casebook in law school was for Constitutional Law. It is a subject with a lot of different elements, including long lines of case law fleshing out the relatively imprecise words of the Constitution. Constitutional law particularly has depth and detail in areas like executive power, criminal procedure, administrative law, protections under the rubric of "privacy" and "substantive due process," free speech, establishment clause jurisprudence, and the recent line of cases reevaluating states' rights under the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments....

Love is the Lesson @ Mere Comments:

Here in a residually Catholic corner of the Maritimes, divorce — and a blithe carelessness about getting married in the first place — has ravaged the population. It took me a while to notice, but it's become clear to me that if you meet someone over 40, your better bet is to assume that the woman with him is not his first wife, or not his wife at all.

And that set me to wondering. I'm not enough of an anthropologist to make any confident assertions about it, but it seems to me that the norm for human cultures is either polygamy or monogamy with lots of divorce. In Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis?, set in the time of Nero, a certain noblewoman is considered a veritable phoenix for being univira, that is, a woman who has had only one husband. Naturally, she is a Christian....

"The Muslims' War is with the Jews" @ little green footballs:

MEMRI TV has clips from an interview on Hizballah?s Al Manar TV with Ahmad Rami, the head of ?Radio Islam? in Sweden, who openly states that he hates Jews, not ?Zionists.? ....

Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia, Part 1 @ Gates of Vienna (emphasis in original):

During the Beltway Sniper crisis, back in the fall of 2002, a series of articles in The Washington Times described John Allen Muhammad?s conversion to Islam, and his later break with the Nation of Islam.... Apparently the NOI was not militant enough for Mr. Muhammad, and he left it to become involved with a group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Arabic for ?community of the impoverished?), a terrorist organization founded by a notorious Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani.

What drew my eye in the article was the mention of a Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound in Red House, Virginia. Red House?! I know Red House ? a small village in rural Charlotte County....

What Is Worth Fighting For? @ Rightwingsparkle:

.... The monsters we are fighting would like to take away your right to drive, to wear perfume, to listen to music. You wouldn't have to worry about abortion. If you were intimate before marriage, you would be hanged or worse. They want you to wear a burka over your LIFE. And yet you don't see fighting this war as worth it. I suppose you think that fanatical way would never happen here. I suppose you don't care about the women who have lived this way for far too long.

Well, who would have imagined the Nazis? Who would imagined that a belief that furthering the human race would include gassing Jews and the disabled and that it would be accepted and practiced?...

Press Speak: "Charging for Columnists" @ Lead and Gold:

Jay Rosen analyzes the NY Times decision to charge for access to their columnists. He makes several good points about the wisdom of the move in light of the new media realities.

He cuts to the heart of the issue when he puts himself in the shoes of the NYT editors and executives:

one of my worries would be over-estimating the marketplace value, and misstating the unique selling proposition of a Herbert, a Maureen Dowd, a David Brooks. When I read Dave Anderson in sports he sounds like every other sports columnist, even when he's on target.

From inside the journalistic pyramid, space on the Times op-ed page looks like the pinnacle of the profession. For readers, in Thomas Friedman's flat world, the Times's opinion-mongers compete with dozens of others. How many readers will agree that the NYT scribblers are worth the premium price?

Some readers will pay, but the Times risks long-term brand erosion even while it reaps short-term revenue....

The Supreme Court's makeup is so important.... @ Media Lies:

....because our judiciary is so delusional.

A California judge has ruled that San Diego's Proposition A, a voter initiative to preserve the Mt. Soledad War Memorial by transferring the property to the National Parks Service, is unconstitutional. The proposition, which was approved in July by over 75 percent of San Diego voters, has now been invalidated by the opinion of one judge.

The issue under dispute is the presence of a large Latin cross in the center of the 50-year-old memorial. The judge says that any attempt by the City of San Diego to preserve that cross represents "an unconstitutional preference of religion" and is therefore prohibited.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Furthermore it states that the government cannot pass any law respecting an establishment of religion nor can it prohibit the free exercise thereof. The latter appears to be the courts' goal....

What Do The Critics of the Miers Nomination Want? @ Hugh Hewitt:

This is a long post, designed to reply to some of the major arguments advanced against Harriet Miers by conservative critics. Ed Morrissey has done a fine job of reviewing last week's intra-conseravtive battles, though overstating my role in it, but there are many arguments advanced against Miers that simply do not stand up....

Contraband Transcripts @ Scylla & Charybdis (emphasis as in original):

The Left Wing repeats endlessly that there was a single reason for the Iraq War, and that the entire endeavor has gone awry. The MSM is a partner in this message delivery system, as it slants hard news and analysis into an anti-war angle. The anti-war message is almost always the primary driver of MSM stories. Bummer likes to refer back to transcripts — a favorite debunking technique — and regarding the Iraq War, Bush's Call to War transcript, or "Casus Belli" — is right here, 3 weeks before the Iraq War began. (The Left HATES the fact that these transcripts exist on the dangerous, unregulated, right wing, hate-mongering internet.) ....

Iraq: A Just War? @ Veritas:

As long-time readers of this blog know, I'm inclined to think that the Iraq War was (and is) just, especially in regard to the reasons for going to war. (To clarify, the question of "just war" touches on both why a war is fought and how it is fought; the focus here will be on the former.)

There are, of course, plenty of people who oppose the war, and for plenty of reasons. Some of those reasons are ridiculous, but some of them are at least plausible and understandable. I'm happy to see that most of those Catholics who view the war as unjust are in the latter camp....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 10/15/05 09:26:33 AM
Categorized as Blogworthies.