Legendary thrash metal pioneers (and, yes, one of my all-time favorite bands) Anthrax are putting back together their original lineup (well, not their original original lineup – their first album, Fistful of Metal, featured singer Neil Turbin, rather than Joey Belladonna, the singer during the band’s glory years). However, contrary to what one might think,…

Self-styled “anarchist” Noam Chomsky (what, you didn’t know he had a blog?) thinks not only that there should be military conscription, but that all jobs (or at least the unpleasant ones) should be divvied up by conscription: One preliminary question is whether it is a democratically determined community decision that an army is necessary. Sometimes…

See here. Also, Australian bioethicist Michael Cook argues that ineptitude doomed the effort to keep Ms. Schiavo alive. Meanwhile, The Netherlands continues to position itself on the cutting edge of Western civilization’s slide into barbarism.

The very erudite Secret Agent Man has the most thorough debunking of the Republicans’ efforts to intervene in the Schiavo case that I’ve seen: The federal government’s role in the American mythos is the deus ex machina, swooping down onto the stage of corrupt local politics and setting all things right. So it may be…

Camassia (recently returned from bandwidth limbo) posts on her experience of giving up meat, fish, dairy, and eggs for Lent. She also hints that she may make it a regular thing (at least the beast, fowl, and reptile – hey, alligators are amniotes too!). I’m what you might call a “demi” vegetarian (or, as I…

Eric at Xphiles is doing a series on Lutherans and the so-called Emerging Church. See here, here, and here. I myself am a bit skeptical of this “new and improved” version of Christianity which tends to throw around buzzwords like “postmodernity” a little too cavalierly for my taste, but Eric makes a good case that…

What does it say when probably the highest-profile advocate in America of a “consistent ethic of life” is a Jewish atheist? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Link here. (via A Conservative Blog for Peace)

At Counterpunch Carl G. Estabrook writes on “The Subversive Commandments”: Ignoring government assaults on the Bill of Rights (for which, admittedly, the remedy under the present US Constitution is impeachment, the responsibility of Congress) the US Supreme Court has instead fastened its attention on a political fetish-object: the Ten Commandments. In the midst of an…

Speaking of Atonement theories, Hugo had a very good post yesterday talking about his attachment to traditional theories of the Atonement despite the fact that many in his progressive milieu sharply reject them. He also linked to an article by Richard Mouw defending a Reformed doctrine of the Atonement against criticisms that it promotes violence…

Randall Sullivan, author of The Miracle Detective, isn’t so sure (link via Amy Welborn): I was discovering something a lot of people on the right already understand very well, and that is the depth and breadth of America’s cultural divide, especially when it comes to religion. Back when Publishers Weekly praised The Miracle Detective as…