A Thinking Reed

  • A budget plan that really is brave

    Thought it didn’t receive much coverage, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released its own budget plan last week. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the plan would reduce the debt and actually result in a budget surplus in ten years. It would pull this off by, among other things, raising taxes on the…

  • Friday Links

    —What Makes Life Good? An excerpt from Martha Nussbaum’s new book. –Johann Hari makes the case against the British monarchy. –How progressive are taxes in the U.S.? –Ten teachings on Judaism and the environment. –Marilyn of Left At the Altar reviews Laura Hobgood-Oster’s The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity’s Compassion for Animals. –A very interesting…

  • Friday Metal: The Absence, “Enemy Unbound”

  • Making the world safe for CAFOs

    The NewYork Times gives some coverage today of the ongoing efforts in Iowa, Florida, and now Minnesota to make it impossible for activists to reveal animal abuse in factory farms to the public. I continue to be kind of shocked by how brazen the industry’s attempts to shield itself from public scrutiny are. And that…

  • A leaner, meaner liberalism?

    I’m not qualified to assess the numbers offered in President Obama’s speech on his plan to reduce the federal debt. There’ll be lots of details to come, and lots of commentary on his plan from people far better equipped to crunch the numbers than I am. Plus, whatever we ultimately end up with will no…

  • Freedom isn’t free

    I recently came across this article in The Nation arguing that the Left needs to reclaim the language of freedom from the Right. While liberals have espoused values like equality and social justice, since the 70s, the author contends, they have largely ceded the language of liberty to conservatives. The problem with this strategy is…

  • Friday Links

    I spent the day hanging out with my family, so these are coming a little late… –Why Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal is neither brave nor serious. –Free-range meat isn’t necessarily “natural.” –A case for universalism from the Scottish evangelical preacher and biblical scholar William Barclay. –A review of a recent book called What’s the…

  • Friday Metal: Sylosis, “After Lifeless Years”

    Just discovered these British neo-thrash metallers. Pretty good stuff.

  • Mission creep watch, the continuing series

    From today’s WaPo: An operation billed as a humanitarian intervention in Libya by President Obama was described in starkly more military terms Thursday by the administration’s top two defense officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told lawmakers that continuing coalition attacks on Libyan government troops — even when they were not directly threatening civilians —…

  • The anti-Piper

    Process theologian John Cobb’s reflections on the earthquake in Japan make for an interesting contrast with John Piper’s recent statements. From the perspective of process thought, not only human choices, but even inanimate nature enjoys a certain autonomy: For process thought, however, the contrast of human events and natural ones is not quite this sharp.…