BUT THEY CAN'T HAVE A TYLENOL...

The wise heads who are called judges have struck down a New Hampshire parental notification law as unconstitutional:

A federal judge on Monday declared a New Hampshire law that would require parental notice (search) before a minor could get an abortion to be unconstitutional....

U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico said the law is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception to protect the minor's health.

Obviously this girl should have gotten an abortion instead of taken a Tylenol. That our government would have been proud of.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

LENNY BRUCE PARDONED

New York Governor George Pataki has has posthumously pardoned "potty-mouthed" comic Lenny Bruce for some reason. Bruce was convicted 39 years ago on obscenity charges for a profanity laced stand-up routine. The New York Times put it well, however:

Being dead, Mr. Bruce is not expected to reap any immediate benefit from the pardon.

Theosebes suspects the move is in anticipation of the Democratic Presidential primary where the whole field appears to be potty mouthed. New York would hate to be forced to arrest the lot of them.

MAKING UP YOUR OWN HOLIDAY

The President who called Islam a great faith is preparing to issue Kwanzaa message. But the success of Kwanzaa, the holiday that sprang full grown like (black) Athene from the head of Zeus (actually of Dr Maulana Karenga in 1966), has alarmed its own inventor and proponents:

Corporate America has caught on. For the duration of the holiday, from Dec 26 until Jan 1, stores will put on Kwanzaa displays, featuring African clothes, perhaps, and a kinara - the seven-branched candlestick at the centre of the festival.

You can buy your kinara from Avon, the catalogue giant. Hallmark sells Kwanzaa cards and wrapping paper, there are Kwanzaa cookbooks, and - from Paramount pictures - a "Rugrats" Kwanzaa cartoon.

Yet Dr Karenga - a former firebrand of the Black Power movement, now chairman of black studies at California State University - is far from happy.

Dr Karenga has denounced what he dubs "the corporate world's move to penetrate and dominate the Kwanzaa market"....

"Manipulating the language and symbols of Kwanzaa, they will seek not only to sell corporation-generated Kwanzaa items, but also to introduce a full range of corporate products as necessary for the practice of Kwanzaa," he said recently in a statement issued by the official Kwanzaa website.

Black people must build a "wall of resistance", and "refuse to co-operate with the corporate drive to dominate and redefine it and make it simply another holiday to maximise sales", Dr Karenga said.

You've got to love a holiday with an official website. I wonder if the leprechauns have one for St. Patrick's Day?

HOW TO GET OUT OF JURY DUTY

Don't want to serve on a jury? Just be a Christian:

Religious folk looking for a way to get out of jury duty may have been handed one by an unlikely ally in civic sloth: trial lawyers. According to a new guidebook for the plaintiff's bar, trial lawyers are advised to be wary of potential jurors with "extreme attitudes about personal responsibility." These jurors, the guidebook counsels, often reveal themselves by chatting up "traditional family values" — values that reflect "strong religious beliefs." If you want to get off the hook, chant a beatitude or two. That may well do the trick....

"It is helpful to divide the jurors into two groups: the personal responsibility group and compassion-altruistic group," Wenner writes in the guidebook. "Jurors who are extreme on the personal responsibility bias, or who have a high need for personal responsibility, will strongly favor the defendant. In contrast, jurors who are extreme on the compassionate-altruistic bias, or who have a high need for compassion, will strongly favor the plaintiff."

Religious in the USA need not apply.

SHAPED NOTES

The folks who put together the 'Cold Mountain' soundtrack (primarily T. Bone Burnett of 'O Brother' fame) have used Sacred Harp singers, giving the traditional singing style new exposure:

The music, also known as shape-note or fasola singing, has been waiting a long time for that attention. The style of singing, whose rudiments stretch back at least to Elizabethan England, flourished in Colonial New England and in its present form took deep root in the rural South, where it is still sung today in four-part harmony. But many of its practitioners — whose parents and grandparents and great-grandparents sang it in little churches and town squares throughout the South — fear it could die out. So they are waiting eagerly to see whether the use of Sacred Harp music on the movie's soundtrack, released on Dec. 16, could do for their music what the soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," the Coen brothers comedy, did for rural blues and bluegrass. (The "O Brother" album unexpectedly sold more than five million copies and won the album-of-the-year Grammy in 2002.)

It's an article worth reading, and likely a soundtrack worth picking up.*

But doesn't everyone's hymnals have shaped notes?!

* I highly recommend buying Tim O'Brien's CD 'Songs From the Mountain', which was put together before there was a 'Cold Mountain' movie. They should have just used this for the soundtrack.

YOUR COUNTRY AT WORK

Don't think things are upside down in our country? How about:

Burning the flag is considered free speech; erecting crosses as roadside memorials is not. The FCC allows the "F-word" on television, but thanking God at a high school graduation is a no-no. And some schools freely dispense condoms to kids, but pencils that read "Jesus loves little children" were confiscated from a first-grade class in Virginia.

And that about says it all.

WE'VE ALWAYS SUSPECTED...

Brad Edmonds believes he's found Satan, and it involves the BCS and pigskin.

WIDE SUPPORT FOR BAN ON HOMOSEXUAL 'MARRIAGE'

A new New York Times/CBS poll has found strong opposition to homosexual 'marriage':

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found widespread support for an amendment to the United States Constitution to ban gay marriage. It also found unease about homosexual relations in general, making the issue a potentially divisive one for the Democrats and an opportunity for the Republicans in the 2004 election.

Support for a constitutional amendment extends across a wide swath of the public and includes a majority of people traditionally viewed as supportive of gay rights, including Democrats, women and people who live on the East Coast.

The nationwide poll found that 55 percent of Americans favored an amendment to the constitution that would allow marriage only between a man and a woman, while 40 percent opposed the idea.

I generally oppose nationalizing traditionally state issues, but I think it's time to strike while the iron is hot on this one. An amendment needs to be pushed now, and hard. There is a window of opportunity now, but I fear there will be no action until it's lost forever.

"CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW..."

A panel of judges from the 6th US Circuit Court has ordered the Ten Commandments down in three Kentucky counties:

The Ten Commandments displayed in two Kentucky courthouses and in Harlan County schools must come down because the motive to hang them on the walls was "blatantly religious," not educational, a divided panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

The court said that after the displays met legal challenges from some residents and the American Civil Liberties Union, officials in McCreary, Pulaski and Harlan counties tried to cover up their religious motivations by adding other items, such as the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner, the text of the Declaration of Independence and a quote from Abraham Lincoln that "The Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man" into the mix.

That attempt was a sham, Judge Eric Clay wrote in his majority opinion.

Now when did a Kentucky county become "Congress" passing a law establishing a religion?

RIGHT BETWEEN MOTHER THERESA AND PRINCESS DI

In a poll of Brits, Jesus ranks second behind Mother Theresa and just above Princess Diana as the most compassionate person in history:

Mother Teresa is seen as more caring than Christ, a survey to identify the most compassionate person from history indicated today. Princess Diana has been ranked third, followed by Florence Nightingale. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Bob Geldof come joint fifth. Mr Tony Blair is at the bottom of the table, just below the Pope.

While the findings may signify no more than the ascendancy of the contemporary media over the power of the pulpit and a widespread ignorance of history, a spokeswoman for Crisis, a charity that commissioned the survey, said the results seemed to indicate a growing public-unease and confusion about the value of compassion.

And that goes a long way toward explaining where our culture is.

POPE SAYS THUMBS UP

The pope has seen a special screening of Mel Gibson's 'Passion' film. Reports are he liked it:

Pope John Paul has seen Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion" about Christ's final hours and was moved by it, a Vatican source said on Thursday.

He said the pope saw the film with his long-time Polish secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, about 10 days ago.

The source also confirmed reports that the pope told his secretary after viewing the film: "It is as it was," meaning he considered it an authentic portrayal of Gospel accounts of the last hours in Christ's life.

The Vatican is also rejecting claims by some Jewish groups that the film is anti-semitic:

"I loved it and it is not anti-Semitic," Father Augustine Di Noia, a senior official in the Vatican's doctrinal department, told Reuters on Thursday.

Asked if the film was as violent as has been reported, Di Noia said: "It not just violent, it's brutal."

Which is as it was.

NOW THAT'S WHO WE NEED TEACHING...

A former biology (I'm not making that up) teacher has pleaded no contest to "disturbing the peace" after being arrested for prostitution. Now she wants back in the classroom:

Shannon Williams, 37, a former biology teacher who became a field-trip coordinator last year, was arrested in August in her Oakland apartment. Police say she agreed to have sex with an undercover cop for $250 an hour.

Williams has defended her moonlighting career as a prostitute, comparing herself to Martin Luther King Jr. in her fight to decriminalize the vocation.

"As a feminist, I believe in every woman's right to self-determination, and that includes sexually and economically,'' she told the San Jose Mercury News in August.

You see, she's really only interested in the life of the mind:

"I realized that doing this I could work one or two nights a week and really focus on my studies," she told the Mercury News.

Williams said that prior to her arrest, she carried out her work in a rented condo, earning enough to buy a vacation home in the mountains near Yosemite National Park.

"It pays well, and I like the work," she told the San Jose paper. "I consider it to be a healing profession, in line with therapy and bodywork, kind of a combination of the two."

Ah, of course. And now the head of the Alameda County PTA would like to see her back in the classroom, too:

the head of the California PTA for Alameda County, which includes Berkeley, said she personally might be open to Williams coming back.

"As long as she's not bringing it into the classroom, maybe it's not a problem," said Carol-Ann Kock-Weser, according to the Mercury News.

She emphasized, though, she was not speaking for the PTA.

I can't imagine how our public schools got in the shape they're in.

My favorite, though, is that Williams not only has a degree in biology (really, I'm not making that up), but also religious studies. *sigh*

EPISCOPAL COUNTER-REFORMATION

Responding to the elevation of homosexual bishop Gene Robinson, a group of conservative bishops have founded a new network of churches:

hirteen Episcopal bishops opposed to their church's approval of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire plan to announce today that they are forming a rival network of dioceses and parishes, Bishop Robert W. Duncan of Pittsburgh said....

"We are called," the [group's] statement says, "to oppose assaults on the authority of the Scriptures."

While leaders of the new group insist they are not creating a schism, they are laying the groundwork for a confrontation that could test the authority of the leadership of the the Episcopal Church U.S.A., which has 100 dioceses in the United States.

In an interview, Bishop Duncan said that the network is not seceding from the Episcopal Church U.S.A.. Instead, he said the eventual goal is for the network to win recognition as the authentic Episcopal Church from Anglican bishops overseas and from Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox denominations that have already condemned the Episcopal Church for its actions.

And objections aside, without a doubt it is the beginning of open schism.

MERIDAN LIBRARY CAVES

After first refusing to display pictures of Jesus in an art show, the Meridan library's board of directors has voted to allow the paintings after all:

Directors voted unanimously Monday to allow artist Mary Morley to display her paintings of Jesus at the library as part of her exhibit.

Library director Marcia Trotta recently asked Morley to omit three paintings that included Jesus from her show, which included 14 other paintings and was titled, "Visions, Hopes and Dreams."

"Reviewing the facts of the matter in light of constitutional requirements as the board presently understands them, the board has decided to allow Ms. Morley to exhibit all of her submitted paintings, as has been the past practice with other individuals," read a prepared statement from the board.

"The Board hopes that Ms. Morley accepts that offer in the gracious spirit that we intend to extend it."

Morley, who did not attend the meeting, responded, "Amen to this."

The three paintings in question depicted the Crucifixion, the Nativity and Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary.

Trotta asked Morley last month to omit the three from the exhibit. But Trotta allowed two paintings of Jesus' face, as well as images of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a tribute to the World Trade Center, an image of Old Testament prophet Elijah and one of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

All of those were historical, Trotta argued at the time.

The phrase "in light of constitutional requirements" means our lawyers are telling us that this public, tax supported institution must--in this instance since everyone is looking--actually refrain from discriminating against those wishing to express a Christian faith. At least they did end up doing the right thing.

BETTER TO LIVE ON A ROOFTOP...

An Italian prisoner who was given a pass for good behavior has returned to jail early to escape from his wife:

An Italian prisoner who was given home leave for good behaviour asked to go back to his cell after spending less than a day with his wife.

The 40-year-old was given a 72 hour pass by the governor at Vigevano prison, near Pavia in northern Italy.

But within minutes of meeting his wife they had an argument and he called the prison asking to be taken back inside.

A spokesman at the jail said: "We got a call from him saying he couldn't stand being with his wife and was it possible to go back to his cell. He said he didn't want to spend another minute with her.

It's nice to see the Proverbs shown to be true! (Proverbs 21:9)

SINGER BLASTS CATHOLICS AT VATICAN

Grammy Award winning singer Lauryn Hill was invited to sing at a Vatican Christmas concert. She gave those in attendance more than they bargained for:

Hill read a statement criticizing the church and its leaders Saturday night during the concert, where she was a featured performer....

"I realize some of you may be offended by what I'm saying, but what do you say to the families who were betrayed by the people in whom they believed?" The newspaper La Repubblica quoted her as saying.

Hill was speaking out on the sex scandals the Catholic Church has been embroiled in. The attendees were none too pleased:

Stunned hierarchy in the front row at Saturday night's concert included one of the most senior figures in the Church, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who is head of the Italian bishops conference.

An aide to Ruini, Bishop Rino Fisichella, described the singer's speech as "a rash outburst. An uneducated act showing a lack of respect for the place she was a guest and for those who invited her."

Reports suggest her criticism will be excluded from the broadcast version.

SADDAM IN, JESUS OUT

Both Time and Newsweek pulled Jesus from their covers at the last minute replacing Him with Saddam Hussein:

Saddam Hussein upstaged Jesus and U.S. politics yesterday, wiping them off the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines, which stopped their presses to update the news. Both newsweeklies remade their covers and had their Baghdad correspondents prepare special reports after their editors learned that the ousted Iraqi leader had been captured.

They were likely more comfortable with the new choice anyway.

HISTORY FROM THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Robert Cheeks has given us a fine review of my former teacher Clyde Wilson's new book, from Union to Empire:

For Clyde Wilson republicanism is not only an ideologly, it is the only political system that can guarantee the intrinsic needs of men: "liberty, order, and popular rule." He has studied America's republican founding, taught the subject to a phalanx of young men and women, arming them for the Jacobin wars, and defended the true republican history of this country. He is intimately aware that the nation has devolved into an effete social democracy where elitists, bureaucrats, job stockers, communists, and capitalists alike have all fastened themselves onto government like some parasite sucking the lifeblood out of the American people. And, before we grieve too much for the "American people," let us remember that it was Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation that gave us FDR, LBJ, and state sponsored socialism. Mencken was right: we truly do get the government we deserve!

My trinity of political influences consists of Russell Kirk, Wendell Berry and Clyde Wilson. You'll never go wrong reading anything by any of them.

IF THEY ASK, DON'T TELL

A school counselor in North Carolina has been suspended for answering a student's question about what the Bible had to say on homosexuality:

A dropout-prevention counselor at a North Carolina high school has been suspended for reportedly sharing Scripture with a student who was struggling with homosexuality.

Beth Pinto, 38, was suspended with pay from Concord High School in Cabarrus County pending an investigation into whether she gave the student religious advice.

Citing sources familiar with the situation, the Independent Tribune reports a female student came to Pinto and said she was wrestling with the issue of homosexuality. The girl asked Pinto, who is active in First Baptist Church in Concord, N.C., for the Bible's take on the matter. Pinto reportedly responded by sharing specific Scripture with the girl.

According to the local paper, a third person caught wind of the conversation and tipped off a school administrator.

One imagines a Polonius behind the curtain, waiting to hear if the Bible is mentioned. Perhaps this "third party" should have suffered the same fate.

I wonder what would have been the reaction if the student had requested information about a group that promotes the homosexual lifestyle. Well, I think we don't have to wonder at all--of course that would be okay.