Is the church for acceptance and pardon or transformation and costly discipleship? Justification or sanctification? Well, both actually, says John Garvey: While insisting that we must take the cross and transformation seriously, the church should also be a place where those who are weak, who are not ready for the whole of what is demanded,…

Pro-life liberal Melinda Henneberger says social conservatives and pro-lifers have been played for suckers: Among pro-lifers, I have long held the minority view that Bush never had the slightest intention of packing the Supreme Court with justices who would seek to overturn the 1973 decision legalizing abortion. Karl Rove would throw himself in front of…

Fr. Jim Tucker on technology and ethics. Camassia on gender and the church. Kevin Carson on Posse Comitatus. Also, Gutless Pacifist, R.I.P.? Plus Chris at Progressive Protestant is moving on and blog-friend Marvin is going on hiatus (though Ivy Bush co-blogger Jonathan will surely uphold the banner of quality blogging we’ve all come to expect…

In comments below Joshie pointed out that the objectionable aspect of Bill Bennett’s comments was not necessarily that he was advocating a program of African-American genocide, something manifestly untrue (thought that didn’t stop some people from attributing that to him!), but his apparent assumption that African-Americans are, in some sense, more prone to crime than…

Interesting article from Salon on “unschooling,” a radical laissez-faire variant of homeschooling. The author clearly thinks the approach has serious limitations, but finds it to be a refreshing experiment in “dropping out” of the tightly organized and highly competitive environment that a lot of insitutional schooling (public and private) has turned into.

There have been suggestions, from President Bush and others, to amend the Posse Comitatus act in order to make it easier to use the military to respond to natural disasters. The act dates to Reconstruction and essentially makes it illegal (except under certain conditions*) to deploy the military for use in domestic law enforcement. The…

No evidence of shots fired at rescue copters

Robert P. George remembers philosopher John M. Dolan, who recently passed away. Dolan was a colleague of G.E.M. Anscombe (see his remembrance of Anscombe here) and shared with her a strong concern about beginning- and end-of-life issues. Together with the late Cambridge University philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe and the eminent physician and scientist Dr. Hymie Gordon…

I have no love for professional scold and virtue-crat (and high-stakes roller!) Bill Bennett, but this is ridiculous. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is demanding Bennett apologize for some comments he made on his radio show while discussing the book Freakonomics. You may know that the author, Steven Levitt made the controversial argument that legalizing…

Heh. (n.b.: bad language)