Touche

Marriage may sometimes be an uncomfortable state, I can well believe that, and that is as it should be. Are we not also married to our conscience, and would we not often like to be rid of it because it is more uncomfortable than a husband or a wife could ever be.

From Elective Affinities, Johann von Goethe, reprinted in the no-fault divorce section of An Invitation to Family Law, Schneider and Brinig

Hope for tax students

Check it out! Wiki has a whole WikiBook on Federal Income Tax! I love it! Earlier this semester I pored over my casebook's utterly incomprehensible explanation of Alternative Minimum Tax and got more and more confused. Finally in desperation I looked up Alternative Minimum Tax up on Wikipedia just to see if I could figure out what some of the words meant. Within four sentences, I understood what was going on. *sigh* Wikipedia may be derided as open-source and non-authoritative, but at least some of the authors are real people rather than tax law professors.

lawful joinage

The issue of whether priests may be married has been a hot one lately, and some expect a Vatican statement about it. A lot of the Catholics I've talked to (and some of the non-Catholics) say they would hate to see the Vatican capitulate on this one, and it looks like they won't be disappointed. When it's framed as capitulation (to make recruiting priests easier, for example), I agree that it would be sad to see the Church give in. But at the same time, I think it takes a lot of courage to revisit an old rule and evaluate its continuing validity. It always seemed like a hard-line rule for something even Paul was slow to make black-letter statements about. But then, I'm not Catholic, so I approach it from a non-Catholic perspective. I think Catholics view the priests' role a little differently from how non-Catholics view the pastoral role.

And the burrito cases are rolling in...

Ordinarily when I poach from other blogs I try to repackage the story before reselling it, but David K.'s post on Irish Trojan defies improvement. You'll just have to read it yourself.

The abortion cases just won't go away.

ADF's Jordan Lorence posted a report on the Supreme Court arguments on the federal birth abortion ban with his predictions ("cautious optimism," for those of you too indifferent to click the link). We heard a similar report from Nik Nikas of the Bioethics Defense Fund, who was also present at the arguments. Nikas observed that we are likely to see another 5-4 decision, this time with Stevens as the swing vote. We'll see if he's right.

Don't forget to vote!

And don't let all the negative campaigning get you down. Everybody does it.

I'm voting for Samwise.

HT: Irish Trojan's Blog

Prosecutorial priorities?

Um, how come this lady hasn't been tried before now? I mean, I know it seems heartless to try a mother whose child just died, but don't you think there would be some kind of reasonable suspicion that something was fishy after her fourth kid died in such a short time? They would have nailed that in 30 minutes on Law and Order.

A Worthy Addition

Welcome the new link on the right to BJU prof Dr. Camille Lewis's blog, A Time to Laugh. I've always been shy about adding it because I never actually had Dr. Lewis as a teacher and I felt it would be a bit presumptious to claim a friendship when I can't recall that we have actually met. But I feel like I've had her classes by proxy since I have several friends I respect still raving about how awsome they are (and she is), so that has to count for something. Plus, now we're facebook friends, so we must be tight! Besides, A Time to Laugh is a fabulous blog that always makes me smile, or think, or cry, or all of the above, and I want to share it with you if you haven't already discovered it.

Weren't we all thinking it?

What do you bet this guy doesn't get much of a sentence for the infraction? In fact, if there's a jury involved, they'll probably have trouble keeping them from trying to give him parole for it.

Public Service Announcement

The student production of The Tempest is running this weekend. All the student productions I've seen here are excellent, and even if this one isn't, all you stand to lose is $5 and two hours of your life (and they could probably use your $5 anyway to improve the program). Besides, Jeff Eyerman of the 2L class is playing Prospero, so how can it be less than great? I'm going Saturday, so email me if you would like to meet up for it.

In the image of God?

A Sheik in Sydney gave a Ramadan sermon in which he had a few comments about women's responsibility for men's irresponsibility. My favorite excerpt from the news story:

Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

Gaaa!! I'm offended on the behalf of women for being likened to "meat" for consumption, but I'm more outraged on the behalf of men who are regarded as having the moral discretion and behavioral control of feral cats. It would take a harsh religion indeed to control a race of such animals.

By the way, do any of you remember EVERY hall meeting in which there was an announcement resembling "We know you're in dress code, but the guys are complaining that you are still dressing too suggestively and it is causing them to stumble..."

HT: Carissa

Bad news for quitters

Aw, man... Decaf coffee still has caffeine. Researchers will take the fun out of anything.

Some things don't change...

He may be bigger, but Puck has not lost his proclivity for crawling onto my keyboard and taking a snooze while I'm trying to work on stuff. Maybe he thinks the screen is like a tanning lamp...

I'm dreaming of a white... pre-Halloween!?

Pardon my Floridianness once again, but doesn't it seem a bit early to be brushing snow off my car to get to school? I mean, only a couple trees on campus have started to turn colors. The snow-dusted geraniums in full bloom look a little confused. I'm not too good with seasons, having little experience with them, but I think I remember that there was supposed to be one between summer and winter.

Update: The early hours of sunlight this morning were stunningly beautiful and I was kicking myself for not taking my camera to school. Fortunately, 3L Brendan Loy blogger extraordinaire did take his, and he is a much better photographer than I. Enjoy!

Two favorite topics, one post

Given some recent discussion regarding Ian Paisley and Bob Jones University, I thought I'd share an interesting post that mentions them both. Do I get points?

A little more substantively, I think there are some very valid points made both in the post and its comment, particularly regarding the school's insularity and lost opportunities to make statements from the Christian perspective. On one hand, I sort of cringe when the school speaks on a political issue as a school (Remember that infamous letter to Bush?), but on the other I think there's something really disturbing about not allowing your faculty or staff (as the site notes, some of the brightest Fundamentalist thinkers around) to publish even an op ed without approval.

More culture for your listening pleasure

Mark your calenders for the next ND Symphony Orchstra concert on Oct. 27 in DPAC at 8:00. The DPAC website lists Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Smetana on the program, but I (as a humble horn player) have not noticed any Tchaikovsky or Liszt in my folder. Perhaps they meant Brahms. Lovely program either way.

Our "kids"

Nothing follows a good wrestle like a good snuggle.

Shakespeare, convicts, and redemption

I just saw this film tonight at Browning and I highly recommend it. Like, very highly. Like, click the Buy This Film button and have people over and watch it. I mean it. I'll ask you about it later.

On the nature of mysteries

Browsing through a Blackstone Fellowship forum I came across an interesting and honestly seeking discussion on the Eucharist that referred to a few links that some readers might find relevant. I can't comment intelligently on them as I haven't had a chance to sort through them (and might still not be able to comment intelligently after I do), but I'm more than happy to hear (or read) your thoughts, oh gentle readers.

StLouisiana (links from a self-described high church Presbyterian)
Biblical Horizons No.s 33 and 34
Poems cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Other related posts:
Unclogging Protestantism with the Grace of the Eucharist--Not endorsing the content here, just tossing it out as food for thought because I found some of the comments provocative
Cyprian of Carthage on the Eucharist
Paradoxology--a little more Protestant perspective

Update: Does anyone know of any disciplined Protestant answer to the Catholic view of the Eucharist? I mean, something other than "Um, no it's not"?

School safety crisis?

Does anybody know what's up with all the school shootings? Sometimes there's a rash of related news stories just because a certain type of story becomes popular, and it doesn't necessarily mean that type of event wasn't happening before. But school shootings are ALWAYS big news, so I don't think they were happening and just going unreported. It's getting crazy. Just in the last couple weeks we had a guy open fire in a Montreal college, and then another creep takes hostages and shoots a girl in Colorado. Now there's a shooting in (of all places) an Amish one-room school. What's going wrong? What will be the response? Were I a betting person, I'd put money on Congress donning the white hero hat and passing some high-toned bill mandating new safety measures on pain of losing federal funding. I'm skeptical that some broad "safety measures" legislation is going to be terribly effective, but what would make schools safer? I think it could be agreed that there is a serious problem that desperately needs to be addressed, but how?