Search for "smart travel cheap airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Eat, Pray, Trash: What the Critics Don’t See

By Ben Brazil

…Transformative Power of Travel In part, it has to do with the way in which travel (and especially travel to “exotic” locations) has become a central but ethically fraught practice of contemporary “spirituality.” But it’s not just Oprah, or Elizabeth Gilbert, or those who proclaim themselves “spiritual but not religious”: faith in the transformative power of travel informs British kids on gap years, American study abroad students, Israeli backpacke…

Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…

Did Mormon Morality Teachings Really Make it Harder for Elizabeth Smart to Run?

By Joanna Brooks

…mon women as a stock object lesson from our own Mormon upbringings. And so Smart’s remarks and the coverage that has followed have set off a fierce debate among LDS people: is this what we really believe? Is this what we really teach? Or is this kind of object lesson fringe? Isn’t it unfair to pin Smart’s feelings of post-rape worthlessness on her religion? Fringe it is not. This post at a Mormon women’s blog (and its many comments) document that…

“I Chose Esther”: Elizabeth Smart Testifies

By Joanna Brooks

…h painful, horrific experiences to the world, but she’s doing it, and setting a brave example. The story of Esther sure fits Elizabeth Smart. And so does the story of Persephone.…

Traditional Mormon Sexual Purity Lesson Contributed to Captivity, Elizabeth Smart Tells University Audience

By Joanna Brooks

…st her virginity. And after surviving sexual assault during her captivity, Smart recalls: “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.” In my class,…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

By Andrew Aghapour

…ed: they couldn’t facilitate bribery. We would have to buy new, full-price tickets to Iran. On the phone with JetBlue’s customer service line that night, my righteous fury dissipated quickly. Could JetBlue really be to blame for bad weather, or a mechanical problem, or whatever system error had made our flight impossible? Don’t I benefit regularly from this massive travel infrastructure that, like Lady Justice, doles its punishments out blindly? I…

Elizabeth Smart Kidnapper Guilty, But Not Insane

By Joanna Brooks

…led by delusional thinking to believe that he was directed by God to take Smart as a polygamous wife. Prosecutors, meanwhile, urged jurors not to view Mitchell as insane. His “delusional” worldview, they noted, did not come out of thin air, but from his own opportunistic amalgamation of elements of Mormon belief and culture. And he did not suffer some dramatic break with reality typically associated with delusional thinking. Smart, who returned f…