Love, Don’t Fear God

Philosophy starts (and one may effectively joke ends) with a question.  Here’s one.  Why fear God?  Mike writes:
The total lack of the fear of God is what marks the ungodly. (Romans 3:18)
I’d argue that it is a transpersonal love of God and all sentient beings which marks the godly.  If it says anything, then the [...]

Why Cigna’s Stance is Suspect

Cigna has apparently decided to stand by their decision to override her doctors and deny a teenager a vital liver transplant.  The teenager later died.
Initially, they reversed course at the very last minute.  It was too late by that point to save the girl.  Now they are saying their decision was the correct one:
Philadelphia-based [...]

J Edgar Hoover and Giuliani

Via NewsCat, this set off some alarms:
Over the holidays there was a little noticed story published about recently declassified papers showing that in July 1950, only a few days after the beginning of the Korean War, J. Edgar Hoover wanted President Truman to round up and detain 12,000 American citizens.
Who was he targeting?  Does anyone [...]

Republicans: Eliminating Muslims

Its always startling when a nasty bout of hate breaks out close to home. There’s a lot of nastiness in Herndon, VA. I was living in Reston when this joyful little gathering took place. So again I was startled when I came across this item over at Feministe (Jill):

That’s a short [...]

Gay Rights Rhetoric

Daisy at Our Descent Into Madness has hit upon a rhetorical tactic I think can be extended to many liberal positions.  (Emphasis mine):
If he’s going to claim to support equality, he should support full equality. If he’s not going to that — and he doesn’t seem about to — I’d like him to at least [...]

Web Hosting: Allowing Spam Blogs

This post is going to be stolen.  A while back I noticed an upsurge in splogs taking content off this site (thanks to Technorati, which doesn’t really filter them out of its stats).   So I decided to notify registrars and hosts (thanks to SlightlyShadySEO’s comment):
Dynamic Dolphin: Report SpamGoDaddy:  Spam Abuse
MyDomain:  Spam
Note that for MyDomain, they [...]

Eliminationist Rudy Aide On the Rise of the Muslims

Greg Sargent puts it best:
This has already gotten some attention, but it deserves a lot more.
So what happened?  (Emphasis mine)
The Guardian of London is conducting video documentaries up in New Hampshire. And they did a segment on Rudy in which they got a very off-kilter quote about Muslims from a Rudy campaign official [...]

Pakistan’s Tragedy: Bhutto’s Assassination

With all the talk of pain, impact, and blame, it is necessary to focus on our own role in Bhutto’s assassination (TIME):
Haqqani, now a professor at Boston University, isn’t sure what the latest bloodshed means for his country. “Will the Pakistani military realize that this is going to tear the fabric of the nation apart, [...]

McCain, Still not a Maverick

As McCain eases his aching old bones into another primary, the media is at it again with the maverick label.  This is to be expected of Fox News, but even the Boston Herald is getting into the act:
I like and admire Sen. John McCain for a lot of reasons. Most of us do.
John McCain is [...]

This Ron Paul White Supremacist Thing Just Won’t Die Already

$*#@_*& Arrrrgh!  Yet in the frustration a part of me wants to just soak in all that delicious stupid just floating about.   It can’t be all bad, can it?  The cheeky optimism that looks facts right in the face, and stars with glassy eyed conviction right the fuck through.  How awesome would life be if [...]

Republicans Might Want Huckabee After All

The hand wringing(Auguste, Pandagon) about how Huckabee “isn’t a true conservative” has been going on so long I’m beginning to see some shifty eyes were before I saw blushing cheeks only.  MeThinks the Elephant doth protest too much.
Huckabee is the heavy breathing sweaty dream of every repressed Christ-o-fascist in this country.  His election would start [...]

HuffPo Misses the Point on Edwards

In discussing the 527 group “controversy”, Sam Stein of the Huffington post writes:
In 2004, ironically, Edwards was on the opposite side of the 527 debate, criticizing President Bush for not personally stopping Swift Boat Veterans for Truth from attacking John Kerry’s Vietnam service.
“There’s one person, one person who can put an end to this today [...]

President Huckabee: Theocratic States of America

Imagine this scenario. In a close primary, Hillary takes the nomination. The up for grabs “we don’t really want any of them” Republican field collapses and Huckabee emerges with his bloody cross held triumphant.
Disgusted with a Lieberman Democrat as the candidate for the general, boatloads of Dems stay home and protest the vote. [...]

Obama’s Big 527 Mistake

Barack Obama is criticizing Edward’s connection with a 527 group that plans to run an ad in his favor (ABC Political Radar, via The Huffington Post).  That in itself is a pretty normal move to make during a campaign season.  The problem is in Obama’s own attitude towards 527 groups:
Obama would not definitively answer if [...]

Mitt Romney IS Martin Luther King Jr

Apparently some creepy liberals caught Mitt Romney being modest (Kagro X, Daily Kos):
Yeah, it’s getting more ridiculous by the minute. George Romney never marched with Martin Luther King, but Mitt says he was speaking “figuratively.” That his father marched at some other time, in some other place, with King elsewhere, but that the march was [...]