Religion Dispatches
…half. There were still probably 80 empty seats, and it was clear that some number of attendees had free tickets. The largest financial supporter of the event was a local news/talk radio station and its representatives were the only media allowed in. As I arrived with my Religion Dispatches press badge they stopped me before I even got to the door. I chatted with an AP reporter and he said AP had been trying for weeks to gain media access—but that…
Read More…es place as lawmakers are considering the fate of energy legislation and a sweeping financial regulatory bill.” So who do you suppose is buying high-priced tickets to these events? Well, you could get an idea about that from a profile in today’s Times on the rise and rise of corporate fixer Tony Podesta (“The Proud Lobbyist” reads the Times headline). Tony boasts that he lobbied on 25 different issues related to Wall Street regulation for major pl…
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…that Democrats need to get better at telling stories than at crunching the numbers, in this battle of the budget, the numbers actually matter. Hell, it’s a fight about numbers. And balance. And the virtue of justice. What this latest budget battle, and the question of raising the debt ceiling, and the straw polls are revealing, is just how Tertullian a wing of the Republican Party has become. It not only offers absurd arguments with a straight fac…
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…y not have worked in the past, institutionalized structures for venting or swallowing underclass rage are not the answer. One wishes that some productive combination of government attention and grassroots organization might allow things like education, opportunity, and economic equity to transform so much misdirected pain and anger into lives of meaning and purpose. Otherwise, whoever picked the Clash’s apocalyptic “London Calling” as the anthem f…
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…n Catholic Church remains the biggest one) in the United States. My only answer is that at the level of teaching and structure nothing—but nothing—has changed this year. 2. Women and Gays A second difficulty flows from the first, in that nothing has changed for women or LGBTIQ people with regard to Catholicism during the early months of this papacy. Nor is there much prospect on either issue given what the pope has said publicly. Regarding women’s…
Read More…osophy of history, leaves no other way to understand it—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Huckabee seems to be selling tickets on the Titanic….
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…from a back room. She studied me, then curtly nodded. He hurried back and swept up the manuscript. “This way. I asked for special permission to talk.” We went into the back room, where a trio who looked like professor and students were discussing another manuscript. We sat down at the opposite end of the long table; the clerk closed the door. Juste relaxed. He began flipping through the pages, pointing to letters, running his finger along a lin…
Read More…stitutional watchdogs. According to the Courier-Journal: Gov. Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson declined to answer questions Tuesday about possible incentives for the project. The developers are seeking incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act, which allows up to 25 percent of the cost of a project to be recovered. Under the law, the state each year returns to developers of approved projects the sales tax paid by visitors on admiss…
Read More…of protest is to wear the niqab and nothing else. Then, the women will get tickets, not for being nude, but for being clothed. In my opinion, that would show the absolute absurdity of the state trying to control women’s dress. I have written elsewhere that this sort of action, of controlling a woman’s body, is simply male penis worship run amok. These ladies, who call themselves Niqabitches, have done a great service in showing the inherent contra…
Read More…reduced to a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my parking tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of a courtesy than a necessity.” Gone, too, from Osteen’s theology is any mention of topics that might intrude on happy thoughts: Osteen avoids using current events in his messages so he doesn’t get sidetracked in controversy….
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