Pontifications

In Georgia, a sting operation snares members of the “Final Exit Network.” The Times has the story, and it doesn’t sound like euthanasia. On emotional issues like this, an over-the-top case can change the national discourse is this such a case. Read on… ATLANTA — An undercover state investigator told a right-to-die network that he…

Or is it vice versa? I guess we’ll have to wait for video of the 2009 Speaker Series, which features right-wing harridan Ann Coulter against left-wing God-baiter Bill Maher. Now there’s a choice. The NYT has a story (and photos below) about the matchup. A tease: She [Coulter] and Mr. Maher had agreed to face…

How many ways did Barack Obama go wrong in yesterday’s policy change on stem cell research? Here are a few of the larger themes, and some able dissections of them: ONE: Why didn’t Obama say more about the promise of adult stem cells–and do something to promote that promise? He said that the administration will support…

Catholic News Service has the best coverage I’ve seen (no surprise) that clears up many of the confusions of the previous coverage (and in my post) about the nine-year-old Brazilian gril who was raped by her stepfather, impregnated with twins (she herself is 66 pounds), then prescribed an abortion. For one thing, she could not have been automatically…

Is this the only image of the Bard from life? Time magazine reports on the portrait, unveiled today in this newly-discovered–or rather attributed–portrait of William Shakespeare, whose likeness had heretofore never been rendered. (The NYT has a news update.) Shakespeare is in fact a man of mystery, despite the fact that so much of him is…

The Catholic League statement was prompted by today’s stem cell research order. According to League president Bill Donohue: “Obama has stepped on a slope so slippery that many of his supporters may eventually regret he did so. It is not for nothing that Germany has the most rigorous ethical guidelines on human research. Our model…

…He gives an answer to the earlier question, “Whose party is it, anyway?”   Hat tip: dotCommonweal

So in the earlier thread on Obama’s stem cell order today, “Reaganite” took me to task for wondering about the possible paths Obama would choose: “Please don’t pretend to us that there is any doubt or suspense in your mind on this. David, the readers of your blog are not as dumb as you think.”…

“Believing without belonging” has been the American religious mantra for years, and the real-time effects of that anti-“religion” (or anti-institution?) bias was never so apparent as in the latest American Religious Identification Survey. ARIS 2008 surveyed more than 50,000 Americans about their beliefs and builds on two previous sweeping studies, in 1990 and 2001. The…

Monday at sundown marks the start of the Jewish festival of Purim, drawn from the story of Queen Esther and recounting the deliverance of the Jews from disaster at the hands of the Persians. As The Jewish Encyclopedia notes, this is the most secular of all holidays–barely registering as “holy”–much like the biblical Book of Esther…

More from Beliefnet and our partners