Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Erick Erickson, Fundamentalism, Health care, Healthcare, Jerks, Obamacare, RedState, Republican Party, Tea parties
Finally confronted with the text of the House healthcare bill, Michelle Bachmann’s angry horde of “tea party” “activists” chose to tear up the bill, rather than read it.
Granted, tearing up legislation you’ve never read, but assume you won’t like, is a step up from mailing fake dog poop. So there’s that.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Bill Owens, Dede Scozzafava, Doug Hoffman, Media, Messaging, Mike Bloomberg, NY-23, Spam
Six Bloomberg mailers. In one week.
Despite what was, to outside observers like myself, a “sexy” election, Tuesday’s special congressional election in New York’s 23rd district drew below-average turnout. Why? One thought:
While visiting the area, I heard two candidate ads on a local radio station in the space of 15 minutes. Both pushed the limits of decency. I talked to voters who left for work at 8:30 in the morning, and came home at 5:30 to seven voice mail messages — all candidate robocalls. The perception that Doug Hoffman was responsible for bringing this hellfire down on the 23rd district was palpable, unequivocally correct, and likely contributed to his loss, with overall turnout suffering in kind.
Thanks to newly re-elected Mayor Bloomberg, who also had a harder election night than he expected, citizens of the Five Boroughs will understand the sentiment (see above). Well-armed politicians should take note.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Fantasy, Fundametnalism, Harry Potter, Science fiction
Lest we forget, in some circles, the Harry Potter series remains “controversial,” owing to a troublesome passage in the Bible. Firefly fans will recognize it: Excodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Aside from presenting real questions about the continued relevance of a literal reading of the Bible — because, really? — this passage apparently interferes with some Christians’ ability to enjoy compelling young adult literature, and the attendant cultural phenomenon, because the dust jacket of The Sorceror’s Stone plainly indicates a world where Exodus 22:18 is blissfully ignored. Like the Dursleys, fundamentalist Christians would prefer the orphaned Potter to stay in his closet where he belongs, thank you very much — and Dumbledore along with him.
To his enduring credit, one Benedictine monk is pushing back on that opinion from a Christian perspective, by, through apparently exegetical research, grounding Harry Potter’s moral lessons in Christian values. That’s not just fair, it’s overdue. The fundamental lessons of the Potter series center around acceptance, the importance of virtue, and the real, physical manifestations of love, all values that Christian theology espouses — even when some Christians do not.
This is objectively good for modern Christianity, and civil society: religions built around shutting the world out have a way of dying, but tend to drag parts of the secular world down with them. Still, accepting Harry Potter for its confluence with Christianity only would be a bad way of doing things — the literary equivalent of Huck Finn’s “I knowed [Jim] was white inside” — if it weren’t accompanied by this rejection of religiously-motivated isolationism:
I do not think there is any intelligent view out there that says these books are evil. They are the sort of objections that come from people who have not read them. What are they suggesting we do, ban everyone who turns up at a children’s party to do a few tricks?
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: Christian fundamentalism isn’t just out of step with modernity. It’s out of step with its own roots.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Antonin Scalia, Fairness, Judicial activism, Jurisdiction, Law, William Brennan
Perspectives on the relationship between notions of “fairness” and “tradition,” from that favorite proxy battlefield for constitutional values — in personam jurisdiction.
See the full opinion text by pulling Burnham v. Superior Court of California, 495 U.S. 604 (1990). The question is whether obtaining personal jurisdiction over a defendant based only on his transient presence within the jurisdiction comports with constitutional guarantees of fairness. Justice Scalia answered for the majority in the affirmative — even when the events bringing the defendant into the jurisdiction were unrelated to the cause of action. After all, that’s the way it’s always been! Justice Brennan agreed, but found the manner in which Scalia reached that conclusion deeply disturbing: tradition, he argued, is no proxy for real fairness.
Fireworks ensued. Who you think has the better of this debate probably determines a lot of your worldview.
If you live there, you probably already know this — the north country, and especially the counties by the water, like Oswego and the surrounding area, are absolutely gorgeous. Some vignettes:
The Oswego River, outside Oswego, NY.
100' outside a poll site in Madison County.
Port Oswego, looking towards the breakers leading to Lake Ontario.
