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McCain’s best “Maverick” Performance: as a witness against torture
I have to start here by repeating a caveat, best stated by Esquire‘s Charles Pierce: “It has been fashionable for a while now to place McCain somehow above politics; the “maverick” thing was based on a...
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Kavanaugh Wrap-Up: The Wheat from the Chaff
Too many media people around this past week’s supreme Court hearings wasted their energy doing horse race and atmosphere coverage. Political sportscasters, I call them; and pretty bush league at that....
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Notes on a Terrible Day In Our History
I listened to and watched almost all the Kavanaugh-Ford hearing Thursday; 9 hours I’ll never get back. Can any sense be made of the ordeal? Here are a few observations One, Ford was very credible. She...
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A Quaker Meditation: Hating the Good News?
Except for how it turned out, I hate almost everything about this report: A mass school shooting was foiled on Thursday, December 13; that’s the good part. College students and adults too: warning...
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All God’s Quakers Got a “Place In The Choir”— Even the Non-Theists Who...
So we’re hearing some complaints about sniping back & forth between “theists” and “non-theists in some liberal Friends meetings. I have some thoughts on that. Kind of a long read . . . . I Let me...
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Abortion & Civil War – 2019 Update
In 1988 I wrote a substantial essay laying out my views about abortion, and describing how they had evolved over time. The piece also considered the increasing parallels, both rhetorical and political,...
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Religious Liberty? Or Dogmatic Transphobia?
May 24 was (Authentic) Religious Liberty Day (at least it was here), but the Administration has some strange ideas about how to mark it. Like: turn it upside down & inside out. Roger Severino,...
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Harriet Tubman: Beyond the Underground Railroad
This Memorial Day, I’m setting aside my Quaker pacifism (briefly), to remember one of the most unique and valiant war veterans I know of. Yeah, I’m talking about U.S. Army veteran Harriet Tubman....
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Church Sex Scandals, and the Buried Lead
The Southern Baptists, you ask me, buried the lead (or lede if you’re old school) about their 2019 national convention as deep as possible: The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in Birmingham,...
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Hiroshima, El Paso, Dayton & Us
Ross Douthat, a very conservative Catholic, is persistently the most interesting of The NY Times’s stable of right wing columnists. For me that’s because he frequently articulates perspectives that...
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The Fight Over the Supreme Court is not Over — Just Ask Sheldon Whitehouse
Flashbacks: an article in the August 17 (2019) Washington Post, about a donnybrook developing around the vacationing Supreme Court, is giving me flashbacks: It seems like a century ago — October 4,...
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Quaker House at 50: We tried everything to stop U.S. torture. Even Bible study.
In 2004, like the rest of the world, at Quaker House we began to learn about U. S. torture in the “War On terror.” An exhibition parachutist shows his stuff at a ball game near Fort Bragg. summer 2019....
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Mayor Pete & his notorious (Christmas) Tweet
So how offensive is this? “Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a...
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The Hungarian Religious Resistance: a Mirror & a Beacon to Our Own
A report in The Guardian on December 28 compellingly describes the small, marginalized religious resistance to the self-described ”Christian” authoritarianism of the current Hungarian regime. In this...
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David vs. Goliath, The “Friendly” Version: Orange County Quakers Face Off in...
A bulletin from southern California: The biggest Quaker church in the world wants to shut down one of the smallest. The small church sued in late 2018 to stop the shutdown. But a hearing in Orange...
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Midway City Update: Quaker David, Goliath & the Two Witnesses
The little church challenging the huge California Quaker megachurch (described in the blog post, David vs. Goliath, the “Friendly” Version, of January 30), won a round in court on January 31; but its...
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A Sad Yearly Meeting Report: SAYMA Is Not Safe
Dear SAYMA, Recently I received an invitation to propose a workshop for SAYMA 2020 this June. [NOTE: SAYMA is the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association; it has member meetings in North...
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Gorsuch, LGBTQs, & the Rightwing Freakout
From “The Bulwark,” a Never Trump blog run by Charlie Sykes, an anti-Trump/somewhat repentant/former right wing radio talk show host. Trigger warning: this post quotes numerous conservatives who are...
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Removing the Statue of John C. Calhoun will be easy. Banishing his Ghost will...
For Juneteenth, I should be completely pleased with the news that the City Council in Charleston SC will be doing its best to dethrone a statue of John C. Calhoun. The plan was announced in connection...
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Sunday Funnies: Trump & The Revenge of The Tik-Tok Nerds
I know about the register-for-Free-on-the-net thing for Trump rallies. I did it myself in 2016, twice. But not as a trick. I actually went to those rallies, in Fayetteville NC, one before and one after...
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