This Jack Chick parody (linked to by Orac) is funny, but I think that the original is actually funnier. How come none of this happened in my D&D group?
Along the line of slightly more serious–albeit far more disturbing–entertainment, I saw The Pillowman at ACT Theatre today. Words fail me to describe this play, which is designed to be an intense experience even for hardened theatrical audiences, not just because of its subject matter–although a play about child-murder is obviously no picnic–but because its emotional depth makes it impossible to swat away.
The Pillowman is clever and moving, creatively structured and excellently staged. It is also very, very dark. It is playing in Seattle through April 16, and will undoubtedly play elsewhere due to the awards it received (Olivier in London and Tony nomination in New York). I highly recommend it.
Yeah, I know, I’m way late to the party, but I finally saw Return of Chef on DVR. Parker and Stone outdid themselves.
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the strongest forces holding Iraq back from civil war and probably deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, has reaffirmed the Islamic death penalty for gays:
So is al-Sistani a heroic peacemaker or a wannabe mass-murderer? Both. And that is exactly why we can’t conduct our foreign policy according to moral platitudes (neither the conservative ‘never give in to terrorists’ nor the liberal ‘always put human rights first’).
Via Amy Sullivan, a Rolling Stone profile of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. Quick summary: sex-obsessed, seriously (but not very productively) concerned with the suffering of the third-world poor, and completely in the palm of big business.
Shorter Sullivan: When I called you traitors, I actually meant duped wimps.
Well, I’ve finally upgraded to WordPress 2.0 and installed the latest version of SpamKarma. I’ll be updating my template, but in the meantime, I’m just using the default.
And since I now have an up-to-date spam filter, I’ve re-enabled comments. *crosses fingers*
I don’t have enough First Amendment case-law knowledge to know how closely the opinion actually follows precedent. Marty Lederman has some discussion at SCOTUSblog.
As I suggested below, the opinion specifically makes a comparison to anti-discrimination cases:
Another major issue is whether expressive speech is compelled:
Finally, Dale (the Boy Scouts case) is explicitly distinguished:
IANAL, but based on this SCOTUSblog summary, it appears that Rumsfeld v FAIR was decided by denying the underlying free speech claim, rather than by addressing the issue of permissible funding restrictions. My first reaction was fear of First Amendment rights being eroded, but I found this portion of the summary interesting:
Those arguments are fairly similar to the reasoning used by opponents of anti-discrimination laws. In fact, I believe that FAIR’s brief relied heavily on Boy Scouts v Dale, the case a few years back that held that the Boy Scouts had an ‘expressive association’ right to exclude gays.
So, purely from a liberal policy perspective, this case may be a short-term loss but a long-term gain.
I’ll try and post more after I’ve had a chance to read the decision.
A few months ago I expressed my fear that fundamentalists promoting Bible classes in schools would eventually wise up and make preserving the Establishment Clause more difficult than shooting fish in a barrel.
Rather than realizing my fears, however, a group of Christian and Jewish scholars have actually created a strictly academic, non-devotional Bible Literacy textbook that, by all appearances, I could actually support being taught in public schools.
I still think a general course on ancient religious texts is probably more appropriate to the high-school level than a specific focus on the Bible. But there’s no denying that the Bible has a central role in Western culture; and especially in areas of the country where Christianity is still a very public force in the culture, it’s certainly reasonable to help students make sense of such an important text in a sound academic context. Plus, as Amy Sullivan points out, it can be a great political move to steal some of the Republicans’ pro-religion thunder.
A great way to build contempt for the law is to create a law so silly that it’s routinely and openly flouted. The most common example of this, of course, is speed limits. A few Georgia students decided to poke some fun at their ridiculousness:
“I get a lot of tickets,” said Andy Medlin, 20, the Georgia State student who came up with the idea. “The best way to expose the flaws in the system is by following it.”
…
The video shows drivers’ steadily mounting hostility to the blockade. Cars honk. They drive onto the shoulder to speed around the students. Obscene gestures are made. The money shot, however, was captured beautifully by Hunter, who stood with her camera on the Church Street bridge over I-285 to watch the approaching traffic.
What she saw was … nothing. An empty highway, with one or two stray cars. And then, like the hordes on the horizon, over the rise come the students backed by a phalanx of cars, cars, cars.
The film is on Google Video
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This is not the site of journalist and author Daniel Glick. His website is at danielglick.net
Sick Transit: A directionless train of thought. Sic transit cogitationes Danis.