Eve Tushnet is not your father’s and mother’s lesbian. She grew up Reform Jewish and secular, depending on the parent, the child of a Harvard law prof and prison-industrial-issues lawyer, is a Yale alum who found God there in a debating society, converting to Catholic.
Now, at age 32, Tushnet is a unique voice in the discussion of religion and homosexuality. She very openly embraces her sexual orientation but is celibate and advocates against same sex marriage. She is the darling of numerous church conservatives but is also a great admirer of radical pacifist and Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day.
Ultimately, however — as our discussion below indicates — simple labels and categories are unhelpful with regard to Tushnet , whose greatest commitment appears to be to an “ethos to pursue truth wherever it takes you, and then live up to that no matter what it costs.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are asking the public what [they should know] to make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car. The two agencies are proposing changesto the fuel economy labels consumers see on the window of every new vehicle in dealer showrooms.
To which Freedomist adds this advice:
Learn more and find out how you can view the proposed changes and offer your feedback. Make Your Voice Heard- tell the EPA where they can put their attempt to sell a Government Motors Car (GM) by emailing them here: newlabels@epa.gov.
You should do this because of your abiding trust in gummint officials, both as to their wisdom and their loving care for you.
While you’re at it, you might do some checking from non-gummint sources, however.
Tuesday in Delaware was a bad day not only for Republicans but also for conservatives. Tea partier Christine O’Donnell scored a stunning victory over establishment Republican Mike Castle. Stunning but Pyrrhic. The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Barack Obama’s social democratic agenda may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda,
He just knows this to be true. No chance for her, he would like to say, but as a pundit he must cover options, so to O’Reilly he said one in ten.
I say he believes it but is also repelled by the woman, who is socially conservative and un-Harvard-like in ways he finds repellent. Like Sarah Palin.
These women do not fit into his worldview except as viewed from the tip of one’s nose, head down slightly, just enough to make his point.
Sorry, Charles, you do not speak to my condition, I being for many months in a life of quiet desperation, politically speaking.
Later great (second) thought: Another interpretation is possible: Charles wants Obama held up at the pass so much that he’s extremely exercised about what he considers blowing the opportunity. Which makes him too much the rational thinker, not enough the romantic. The O’Donnell nomination is pressing Tea Party luck — too far, he says. But this is no time to be squeamish, say the gung-ho revolutionaries, or at least rebellion-pushers. Among which am I.
“The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.” — Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
“People ask me if I’m the father of the Tea Party movement,” the CNBC commentator said outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “I was the spark …that started it. If being the lightning rod that started the Tea Party is what’s written on my tombstone, I’ll be very happy.
Etc.
That’s the (usual apocalypse-size) page one on S-T. “His ‘rant’ started it all, leading to major pages 4&5 story, right after page 3 on Glenn Beck, “We are 40 days from . . . changing America”:
Five thousand conservative true believers cheered Fox News host Glenn Beck and other right-leaning firebrands at Right Nation 2010 in Hoffman Estates on Saturday night in a call-to-arms 45 days before Election Day.
With his trademark chalkboard behind him, Beck invoked God, the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson.
“We are 40 days from fundamentally changing America,’’ Beck said. “. . . What the Tea Party movement wants is an end to out-of-control spending, an end to the insanity, an end to the growth in government that is gobbling everything up.’’
Now that, by professional newsman Abdon Pallasch, is how a news story is supposed to read.
Chi Trib, on the other hand, has — on page 15 of home-delivery hard copy — an account by a free-lancer (“special to the Tribune”) that is loaded with ambivalence.
Fresh off a week of stunning Republican primary victories, several thousand exuberant and newly-empowered tea party followers descended on the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates on Saturday for Right Nation 2010 — a carefully choreographed night of conservative political cheerleading, headlined by radio and TV host Glenn Beck.
What means this “carefully choreographed”? Well organized? He doesn’t say, but gives us a hint-hint of something bad.
Also making an appearance was Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, who used the tea party’s mantra to stir up an enthusiastic and suddenly crucial electorate.
“We’re going to take this state, and this country back, after this election,” he said. “We’ll take back the government. “
Mantra? Come on. Every political rally has a pitch. Every out party promises big changes. Some also promise hope, do they not?
Last month, Beck led a huge and controversial rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Controversial is so generic as to be meaningless, but like the other items here listed, it’s negative. Stirring maybe? No. But some hot quotes will do. The reporter is supposed to find and display them to encapsulate the flavor and fervor of the event.
But worse than this to many, many Chi Trib readers is its inability to tell you in home delivery THE NOTRE DAME SCORE, which is slapped across the Sun-Times main sports page — 34–31 Mich. State — just flip the paper over, and there it is. WHY CAN’T THE TRIB PRINT THE SCORE OF A NIGHT GAME IN EAST LANSING?
Voters are upset about the economy, the debt and the culture of Washington. The Democrats are the party of government and of the status quo. They have done their best to remind people of that. This week, Democratic voters renominated Charles Rangel, the epitome of Washington scandal. Democratic voters in the District of Columbia ousted Mayor Adrian Fenty, one of the nation’s bravest education reformers, and replaced him with an orthodox pol.
But those are black voters, are they not, for whom blood is thicker than — what? common sense? I’d say so, in view of how harmful economic policy always hurts lower– more than higher-income people.
Autumn at 1893 Expo. Oriental Garden- Now Jackson Park, Chicago
#2 Son reports on last Sunday’s Chicago Half Marathon, which he and others ran to raise moolah for Heshima Kenya, which speaks for itself as
the first and only organization in Kenya devoted to identifying, protecting and empowering unaccompanied refugee children and youth living in Nairobi
“after 19 years of regional refugee crisis.”
Heshima K can use your moolah, easily donated here.
The report:
Hello Team Heshima supporters!
On Saturday I spent the entire day meditating on the big race. I got a haircut, stretched my muscles, and then walked it out. I thought, I got a pretty good chance of winning this thing. Anne’s folks generously invited the runners over for a large pasta dinner on Saturday night, where I ate my fill. Then I bought a hat to shield my bald head from the sun, which I then forgot when the taxi came at 5:45 the next morning. Luckily my sister Mar had brought an extra. What a gal!
Anne and Mar and I took the taxi to Jackson Park where we met the rest of the red jerseys. Go team! We were few, but mighty. We were a drop in a bucket of 20,000 runners, and it was exciting to be a part of something so massive, but also to be in it together. Minutes before the race everyone scattered for the long lines of the portable washrooms, and then tried to merge into the huddled masses as they moved towards the start line. Then we just ran for 13.1 miles, mostly along Lake Shore Dr., encouraged by bands set up along the way and loud speakers pumping Bruce Springsteen or Rhianna, and lots of volunteers, friends, family and strangers.
It was a beautiful day. My sister Mar really kept pace for me along the way. And when my sister Mag jumped in at mile 11, Mar checked to see if I was okay, then ran up ahead of us. Mag brought me up the last couple miles, just a little more, and then [Heshima Kenya
co-founder] Anne ran the home stretch with me, straight through to the finish line, arms up. 2 hours and 25 minutes, 9,628th place! They even had a medal for me. I was wobbly, sort of numb, and very happy to be done.
Thanks very much for contributing to Heshima Kenya and encouraging me on my run! And thanks to my family and friends for coming out to witness! And thanks to the Team; I’m very proud to have run with them. The community is strong, even half-way across the world.
Love,
Pete.
P.S. I’ve attached a picture of my sister Mar and me at the end of the race, stretching it out. It sums it all up: she’s tough, I’m about to cry.
Lisa Murkowski (RINO loser in Alaska) apparently will launch a write-in candidacy thus giving Democrats an excellent possibility of having two U.S. Senators from Alaska. Bush’s Justice Dep’t gave Dems the other Alaskan senate seat two years ago by unethically prosecuting the incumbent Republican.
This is still further evidence that RINOs are more comfortable electing a Liberal Democrat than electing a Palin-endorsed Conservative Republican.
iii. Encouraging smart-aleck soundbites rather than hard, detailed, historically scrupulous reasoning;
iv. Related to (iii), a general degrading of language, and of the writers role as languages custodian (not to say as breadwinner);
v. De facto anticlericalism.
For instance:
The Internets capacity for creating addicts is something that even the stupidest Panglossian social worker no longer attempts to deny. Every conscientious priest is aware of it; many a priest worries about it; some priests actually issue warnings to their flock about it. More priests should do so.
Etc.
But “many a priest worries about it”? Hell, most of them don’t know what it is or look on it with — shall we say — clerical condescension. For one thing, blogging has built into an interactivity that’s not in many priests’ vocabulary either.
In its heyday, liberation theology was not without controversy: some in the church, and some in the Vatican, thought it skirted too close to Marxism–including Pope John Paul II. On the other hand, John Paul didnt shy away from personally involving himself in direct political activism in Poland.
Activism specifically to counter communism, to which threat Martin gives no attention, using “liberation” and announced intention to help poor people as if they were celebrated in a political vacuum, which they were not, as Bill McIlhany argues here.
Blithe Spirit 