2008 archive

Shakespeare wrote for the ages.

And he summed up the Current Federal Administration:

The evil that men do lives after them . . .

If you hold the remote control backwards, you get the reciprocal of the desired station.

In reacting to Duncan’s comment about this kerfluffle over Christmas displays in the Washington State capitol building, Mithras points out that

The Washington State case involves the state opening up a space for speech by private actors. Once it does that, it must not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. So, if it takes religious messages, then it must take messages from all religions (or those who oppose religion). That’s different from the government speaking. In the case of private speech on public property, “nativity scenes and crosses” are fine, iff all other religious displays are permitted, too. Olympia just found out what it means to do that.

Part of the hubbub involved a local atheist group wanting to place something in the display area, followed by requests from hell-and-brimstone Christianists, Seinfeldian “Festivus” celebrants, Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees, you name the creed–serious or surreal–its adherents wanted to get in on the action.

As I have pointed out on numerous occasions in this space, the purpose of the religion clause in the First Amendment was to prevent the state or its agents from dictating, either overtly or covertly, religious beliefs or doctrine to the populace, not to restrict the ability of citizens acting personally to exercise or discuss their faiths or lack thereof.

More below the fold

. . . this whole who-shot-john over Rick Warren is to governance.

And forests have lots of trees and other stuff. Little trees, big trees, rotten trees, saplings, underbrush, poison ivy, snakes, bugs, and bears (and, given the bears, no Colberts).

One of the annoying habits amongst us lefties is a tendency to get all worked up over not much of anything and forget the larger goal. It’s like those churches which split over minor stuff, like what kind of candles shall be on the altar, and forget that altar candles are peripheral even to peripheries.

Knock it off, already.

Addendum:

Some food for thought.

Also posted, with slight edits, at the Great Orange Satan.

I suggest “Bushboroughs.”

If I hear one more bozo in any form of media refer to the scandal of the day as “the perfect storm,” I think I shall be ill.