A Thinking Reed

  • A good night for American chickens, sows, and calves too

    Proposition 2 passes by about a 2/3 margin! Yay!

  • PA represents!

    11 o’clock Eastern time: Well, looks like it’s all over but the crying. No significant election blogging for me, but I just want to give a shout-out to my home state of Pennsylvania. All those people who said that awful Appalachian rednecks would tip the state to McCain will be eating their words tomorrow. I…

  • CA voters – don’t forget Prop 2!

    Just a friendly request to any readers in California to consider voting “yes” on Proposition 2 tomorrow, which would make modest–but significant–improvements in the lives of millions of farmed animals. Yes on Prop 2 California Voter’s Guide to Prop 2 And, just for balance, here’s an argument against proposition 2. Yes, we here at ATR…

  • Wanted: Augustinian liberals

    Jason Byassee reviews two promising-sounding books that try to reappropriate Augustine for a political theology that steers between Niebuhrian realism and Hauerwasian sectarianism. Sounds good to me.

  • Last word

    For what it’s worth (not much at this point, presumably), my top three reasons for supporting Obama: —A saner foreign policy. Hard core peaceniks and non-interventionists (among whom I count myself) will, I suspect, find much to dislike about an Obama foreign policy, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be far…

  • One party (non-)state

    All the hoopla of the presidential contest aside, voting as a DC resident is a pretty unexciting prospect. First off, there’s no doubt that DC’s 3 electoral votes will go to Obama. Democrats enjoy third world dictator-levels of support in the District, and last I checked Obama was polling above 80% here. You could vote…

  • Friday metal – All Hallow’s Eve edition

    Well, there was really no choice here:

  • The reason for the season

    An important discussion.

  • Socialism and stuff

    Great piece by Hendrik Hertzberg on the “socialism” nonsense: The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would…

  • (Re)birth of the Reformation?

    This is a very interesting article about the efforts of the Evangelical (that is, Lutheran) Church in Germany to reestablish itself in the east, after years of suppression under Communism. One idea being floated is to turn Wittenberg into a kind of “Protestant Rome” and to amp up the public face of Protestantism with more…