Blogworthies LXXIII

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

Noteworthy entries @ Michelle Malkin, Pontifications, The Belmont Club, Recta Ratio, The Mighty Barrister, BeldarBlog, IowaHawk, Power Line, HerbEly, Gateway Pundit, The Brussels Journal, Tapscott's Copy Desk, Michelle Malkin (again), Darwinian Fundamentalism, Lead and Gold, Transterrestrial Musings, Off the Record, Veritas, and Catholic Pillow Fight.

The Damning FEMA E-mails @ Michelle Malkin (ellipsis in original):

I received a bit of flack from some of my conservative friends for highlighting FEMA's inadequate response — particularly former FEMA chief Michael Brown's embarrassing performance — during Hurricane Katrina. This week, Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA official Marty Bahamonde confirmed FEMA's failures once and for all. Bahamonde's testimony yesterday was especially damning. He was on the ground at landfall and throughout the aftermath and concluded:

"There was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde testified. "The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch."

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has posted 19 e-mails/Blackberry messages sent between Bahamonde and other FEMA officials as the disaster unfolded — including an obnoxious note from a Michael Brown aide emphasizing her boss's "very important" scheduling need for more dining time before a TV appearance on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show... as people were drowning and dying in New Orleans.

I am reprinting all of the messages here... because I think it is important for conservatives not to turn a blind eye to bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance. There's no excuse....

Lutheran pastor resigns his ministry @ Pontifications:

On October 9th, Pastor Tom McMichael tendered his resigned his ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, after seventeen years of ordained service. He and his wife will soon enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. Here is the letter he sent to his congregation. Please keep Pastor McMichael, his family, and Hope Lutheran Church in your prayers....

Judgment of Nuremberg @ The Belmont Club:

Although the Late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist made these remarks on the occasion of the dedication of the Robert H. Jackson Center, it raised some of the questions now being asked about the legitimacy of trying Saddam Hussein. Jackson was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1941. On May 2, 1945 Truman appointed Jackson as Chief Prosecutor to the Nuremberg Trials. Strange as it may seem to today's readers, some doubted that the Nazi leaders could be legally tried at all. Rehnquist said: ....

My Traditional First Hallowmas Post @ Recta Ratio:

.... I just happened to remember that it is October 20th (that forgetfulness seems to hit me every year). Who can't remember feeling the way Bradbury describes as childhood Halloweens approached?

Ray Bradbury is very much a modern. But his work is not imbued with modernism. You might call his style modernity without modernism. His Fahrenheit 451, which I read two years ago for the first time at the helpful instigation of my wife, is one of the most conservative statements in favor of classical learning and against the mainstream pseudo-culture of TV.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, and The Illustrated Man show us a most welcome positive view of small town America (with a twist, of course, this is fiction, and imaginative fiction at that). Bradbury's normative themes are refreshing and real and far more authentic to the human experience (while being faithful to the cultural tradition of which they are a part) than the works of hundreds of authors whose books cram the local Barnes & Noble or Borders....

We Dare Not Speak Its Name @ The Mighty Barrister:

The NBA has adopted a new dress code, requiring players to dress professionally while representing the league. This includes business or business casual dress, which means sweaters, turtlenecks, or collared shirts up top, dress slacks, khakis or dress jeans below, and dress shoes or dress boots on the bottom. And no outlandish accessorizing, like wearing big gold chains and medallions.

Response? Dressing in a professional manner is now racist, according to some players: ....

Miers' practice experience as measured by volume of trials @ BeldarBlog:

.... But now it's time for another of Beldar's Extended Anecdotes About the Good-Ol'-Days When He Was But a Pup: ....

How to Blog Good, Part 2: Style-ize For Maximal Impactfulness @ IowaHawk:

In the introduction to the powerful BloggoNetrix system, we covered all the basics you will need to get your blog up and running. At this point, many blogging "newbies" think this is somehow their cue to start pasting up ads and PayPal buttons and tip jars and pledge drives and so forth. Not so fast there, lil' tenderfoots! Don't put your cart before the chickens: the first step to building fabulous blog wealth starts with attracting and retaining a loyal group of readers. Once you have amassed and nurtured your herd of "cash cows," then you can begin thinking about driving your herd to the lucrative packing plant of advertising revenue. Until then leave the tip jars, like the one on the left, to us in the seasoned professional blogging community....

Anything But the Facts @ Power Line:

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is considered a mainstream Democrat, not a fringe figure on the left. And he is generally regarded as a principled liberal. So what can we conclude about the state of the Democratic Party when its best representatives, like Dionne, can't make an honest argument? Consider Dionne's latest column, a triumphalist account of the legal troubles now besetting Republicans Tom DeLay, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby....

A Definition of Unconditional Love @ HerbEly:

Saturday we listened to Msgr. Chester P. Michael talk about his new book A New Day. We also celebrated his 89th birthday. Fr. Chet was pastor when we moved to Charlottesville in 1970. His life has enriched ours.

Here is his description of unconditional love: ....

Missed Images From Saturday's Historic Vote @ Gateway Pundit:

Look who's picture was on hand at the vote on Saturday!...

Europe, America, and Politics Without God @ The Brussels Journal (emphasis in original):

.... The Brussels Journal interviewed George Weigel about his new book, in which he tackles what he calls "Europe's problem." According to Weigel Europe is dying in the most literal sense: it is depopulating itself. Why is a continent that is richer, healthier and more secure than ever before failing to create the human future in the most elemental sense of creating successive generations? According to Weigel, a Roman Catholic theologian, Europe's problem has to do with the loss of the cult at the heart of the culture....

Senate Majority Leader's Top Budget Aide Claims Federal Spending "Not Profligate," Cutting Pork Would Make Little Difference for Uncle Sam @ Tapscott's Copy Desk:

The following memorandum by Bill Hoagland is circulating in email format among majority staff aides on the Senate appropriations and budget panels. Hoagland is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's top aide on budget issues. The underlining here was not in the original email made available to Tapscott's Copy Desk....

The OU Bomber & Bias Against Blogs @ Michelle Malkin:

File this under "How the MSM ignores facts, smears blogs, and publishes snit fits disguised as responsible journalism."

Last week, I received a media inquiry from Wall Street Journal media reporter Joe Hagan. He wanted to talk about blogs and the University of Oklahoma bomber story....

ACLU, Kitzmiller and Banned Books Week @ Darwinian Fundamentalism:

A great irony was lost on me until today. I just learned that the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial opened during Bannned Books Week, which is sponsored by the American Library Association. There is an article on Banned Books Week in yesterday's Washington Post. The ACLU is helping to represent the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller, and its Complaint asks that the judge issue an injunction banning the book Of Pandas and People from science classrooms, even though it is there as an optional reference book for students and is not to be used as part of any classroom teaching. (See p. 23) Thus the ACLU celebrated Banned Books Week this year in a very special and meaningful way....

Media's Shifting Business Model @ Lead and Gold:

Shoshana Zuboff made an interesting point in this Fast Company article:

I felt as though I had just stumbled upon the clandestine documents of the elders of Davos. Want to know the secret weapon in America's race for productivity and global competitiveness? It's Althea! The much-touted self-service economy is actually a brilliantly concealed strategy to outsource American jobs. Instead of sending them overseas, though, we are sending them after hours to Althea and the other 54 million of us.

Jobless recovery? Hah! The recovery is throwing off jobs aplenty. They're just unpaid — no salaries or benefits, only overtime. We join together each evening to complete the work our corporations can no longer afford to pay for.

Cable news networks have been eager adopters of this new business model. In conventional journalism, reporters do interviews, assemble, verify, and weigh facts, and then write a story that has some coherence. The story was the public face of the newspaper or news broadcast. On cable, however, the interviews are the public content. The viewers are left with the task of weighing its significance and assessing the credibility of the people on screen....

Press Outraged Over Staged Flagraising @ Transterrestrial Musings:

March 3rd, 1945

IWO JIMA (Routers) Controversy has erupted among the press corps in the last few days as news has spread that the now-famous picture of the "victorious" flag raising over Iwo Jima a couple weeks ago was staged. Many believe that, as the huge number of casualties mounted in the ill-fated and pointless invasion of this tiny island, the Roosevelt administration, desperate for a bit of pro-war propaganda, arranged to have the photo taken for dissemination to the world's news services.

It has been revealed that the picture was actually of a "recreation" of an earlier flag raising of a much smaller flag, though even that event has now been cast into doubt by the apparent attempt to mislead the press.

There is abundant evidence that the picture was not only unspontaneous, but orchestrated on orders from higher ups....

Winters: Are Gay Priests the Problem? @ Off the Record:

Today's Dallas Morning News has an article on the Doomsday Doc and gay priests by Michael Sean Winters, a less discreet and more autobiographical version of which I've seen elsewhere (Beliefnet? Busted Halo?). He makes a thoughtful, fairly low-decibel case for giving the green light to gays. I think Winters's reasoning is faulty, but he's far from being wrong across the board, and some of his points are specious enough to deserve a rebuttal....

Theologically illiterate @ Veritas:

It's deeply unfortunate and a bit embarassing when someone who thinks they know something about something doesn't know much about that something, but still takes up bully pulpits made available to them in order to (unintentionally) reveal their ignorance.

As with pretty much all somethings, this happens in matters theological and ecclesial, from all sorts of perspectives. Because of google news alert, today I found an example of this from a self-described progressive Catholic....

Ann Althouse: Dads Are Optional @ Catholic Pillow Fight:

I enjoy reading Ann Althouse. Most of the time, she's a very enjoyable read, but her latest blog entry called Female autonomy: Does it frighten you? just got me steamed....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 10/22/05 12:13:21 PM
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