Will Pennsylvanians ever be free from the despotism of our commonwealth’s ridiculous blue laws? Here’s a step in the right direction anyway.

Russ Feingold (D-Wis) could be the antiwar candidate in 2008. He was one of only three senators to vote against the authorization of force in Iraq, so he has the kind of credibility that someone like Kerry lacked. He was also the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT (sic!) Act that was rammed through…

Pro-war bloggers and pundits have made much hay of George Orwell’s dictum that pacifists are “objectively pro-fascist” because their aim is to obstruct the war effort and, thus, aid the enemy. This bit of rhetoric got particularly nasty during the run-up to the Iraq war when war opponents (pacifist or not) were routinely characterized as…

You are a Black Coffee At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high What Kind of Coffee Are You? (via Lutheran Chik)

Now I think Peter Singer is a philosophical and moral disaster. He has consistently applied utilitarian principles to argue, for instance, that infanticide is justifiable in some cases, and that human beings are not intrinsically more valuable than other animals. Indeed, I would regard that as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. Nevertheless,…

One of the great things about a long weekend is the chance to catch up on my reading. I’m one who’ll go to library and check out an armfull of books, intending to get to them all…eventually. This weekend I finally got to John Wesley’s A Simple Account of Christian Perfection. It’s basically a collection…

Open Court Press appears to have stumbled on to a publishing goldmine with their Popular Culture and Philosophy series – each title offers a collection of essays reflecting on some aspect of pop culture. Initially I was suspicious that anything good could come of this, but a friend bought me The Simpsons and Philosopy as…

“Fr. Jape” has a long, rambling, at times snarky, critique of the new “chastity movement” among hip young evangelicals in the latest New Pantagruel. This, however, is a good point: Much of the energy of the purity brigade is generated by the opposite notion—that it is the chaste, rather than the unchaste, who suffer. Thus,…

All the ink spilled over Cindy Sheehan and Pat Robertson over the last few weeks seems pretty trivial now doesn’t it?

Just another quick post to highlight some hurricane relief efforts. Here is a good list of organizations. This site has some tips on giving wisely and effectively. Some specific church groups providing relief: ELCA Disaster ResponseCatholic CharitiesMethodist ReliefPresbyterian Disaster AssistanceMennonite Central Committee