To Billy Sunday, by Carl Sandburg

  Billy Sunday was a well-known fundamentalist in the early 1900's, famed not only for his crusading against liquor (and for Prohibition), but for also becoming as rich as Croesus in the process. His sermons were of the classic "fire and brimstone" variety. Carl Sandburg wrote [...]

Rear-Ending Scalia at NYU

Props to Eric Berndt, a law student at NYU. Last week, Berndt caused a little bit of a dust-up when Supreme Court Justicy Antonin Scalia came to speak at the school. Scalia’s the most right-wing Justice on the Court, especially well-known for his stance that “the Constitution is a dead document” which should [...]

Arnie — Going Down.

Via Richard – UK, another poster at PeoplesForum. I grew up and lived in California for almost thirty years, so what happens there is particularly interesting to me, so I feel a happy little glow to see Arnie getting his comeuppance.
Arnie loses his hero status with voters after string of gaffes
By Andrew Gumbel in [...]

Tom Tomorrow vs. Ann Coulter

This Tom Tomorrow reminds us what’s really wrong with Ann Coulter with a couple of quotes:
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
–Ann Coulter as quoted in the New York Observer, Aug. 20, 2002
“RE: McVeigh quote. Of course I regret it. I should have added, ‘after [...]

Eschaton

Via Eschaton, another item courtesy of Mambotaxi. This is an excerpt from Michaelangelo Signorile, who talks about confronting Ratzinger in a protest years ago. It’s always worth remembering that Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. While the Congregation/Inquisition may have put away their [...]

A New Pope

The election of Joseph Ratzinger to the Papacy wasn’t really a surprise, but even in the less than 24 hours since the Cardinals chose him, his ascension has sent out a lot of shockwaves among Catholics and non-Catholics. For people like myself, it was an affirmation of what we already knew: the Church is determined [...]

The Pope is Dead. Get Over It.

New York’s smartest and snarkiest Brit, Eurotrash, puts the final brilliant touch on the whole Dead Pope thing, much more concisely than I would.

Gendered Links

Ampersand, at Alas, A Blog has posted a nice collection of links covering a wide spectrum of issues and POV’s about gender, sexism, and homophobia. The tone of the links runs from playful to chilling.

That Sweet Scent of Our Lord….

More religious silliness. As if the gullible hordes singing the praises of the
Pope weren’t enough, The Decadent West has an article about a South Dakota couple who are pimping candles that supposedly give out the scent of Christ’s garments. Sayeth the He-Pimp of the “His Essence” candlemaking scam:

“You can’t see him and you can’t touch [...]

Consumer Reports: What’s the Best Religion?

Courtesy of Fade to Black magazine, the issue of which is the path to Almighty God is finally settled in a scientific, objective manner. As an atheist, it looks like I'm screwed. That's okay, though. I'm used to it.
Christianity This is by far was the most popular belief [...]