Phil Horner Paroled

I’m making a bit of a break in my usual pattern, here, and there’s a good reason for it — my letter to the editor didn’t get printed.

On Seacoast Online, a local news web site in this area, Chris Dornin has apparently made it an important part of his life to make people adore former doctor Phil Horner, now released from prison. I happen to be strongly opposed to this ambition.

So, let me catch you up on Dornin’s stories, first. Here’s one discussing Phil Horner and his thoughts on the sex offender registration fee.

Then, here’s one about his views on parole and sentencing.

Christian Carnival CCXXIV

The 224th Christian Carnival was posted yesterday at the Evangelical Ecologist, and you should probably check it out.

You should also make a point of checking out the Evangelical Ecologist often. It’s one of my very favorite blogs, though I admit that I haven’t discussed that one much. I was considering running a series of my favorite blogs, but then I had a fear of leaving someone out, or not getting them in the right order, or something irrational. Ah, well … anyway, EvanEco is one of them.

McCain vs. Pro-lifers

Jill Stanek, a wonderful columnist whose work you should read, wrote a commentary about John McCain in the 2000 Presidential race against George Bush and Alan Keyes. The conventional wisdom has been that pro-lifers more or less have to back John McCain in this election, since he is at least a mild pro-lifer, while the Democratic nominee will certainly not be. Barack Obama, in fact, has fought long and hard against even protecting the lives of babies who survive abortions and wind up born alive (he prevented the Born Alive Infant Protection Act from passing while in the state Legislature).

Thoughts on “An Evangelical Manifesto”

First of all … assuming that I have anyone left reading this … I’m sorry that I’ve been gone for so long. There’s been a combination of tiredness, busy-ness, computer problems, and such factoring into it … I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway … Last week, on the 7th (which was also my second wedding anniversary … by which I mean the second anniversary of my wedding, not the anniversary of my second wedding, though I guess that that also applies, as well), a document came out called “An Evangelical Manifesto.” As such documents are wont to do, this one has prompted some interesting response from around the evangelical community. Much of it seems to be from people who haven’t read the Manifesto, and a lot of them seem not to know what the word “evangelical” means. I, though, have read it, do know what the word means, and I would love to comment on it.

Do We Care?

Over the past couple days, I’ve been listening to a story on NPR about soldiers coming home from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Make no mistake, conditions are improving where they were when the Walter Reed scandal broke. However, there are still problems. The Army is often hesitant to classify soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which raises questions of cost-cutting or public relations.

Of coruse, the Army had also ordered Veterans’ Affairs representatives not to help soldiers complete disability paperwork.

President Bush vs. Words

Just a quick post today … sorry, it’s been one of those days.

I was listening to President Bush carefully referring to the economic “slowdown” as he denied that there’s any chance that this is a recession, and I was thinking … he likes to parse things, doesn’t he? Mostly, he likes to deny the applicability of bad-sounding words.

For example, he prefers to call waterboarding, which is clearly torture and for which we prosecuted Japanese troops after the Second World War, and “aggressive interrogation technique.”

When different factions are fighting for control of Iraq, he was very insistent that it wasn’t a civil war, though what the difference would be was pretty unclear.

Worship

An interesting thing is happening in my church, and I have to say that I’m very excited about it. Right now, we’re taking a real, serious look at the nature of worship and the Holy Spirit — and how they relate.

I’m a part of a group from our worship team, which is also meeting with the elders to discuss such matters. It’s very interesting and exciting watching how all of this is playing out. To be perfectly honest, what’s really exciting might be how it’s NOT playing out.

A Consistent Life Ethic: Comments on Joe Schriner

I promised to comment on the Joe Schriner answers, and was hoping to put a few more posts between the original and this, but life is getting very busy, and I’m having a harder time getting things posted than I’d hoped. So, here we go.

The first thing I want to say is that I love his strong belief in a “Consistent Life Ethic.” Relatively early in my interest in politics, I came across certain articles that strongly affected me. One of them was an article in “Christianity Today” talking about the damage done by the “death movement” in the US, and cited the three main parts of that movement as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. I spent a lot of time rethinking that. Being at the time a good Republican, I was all for condemning abortion and euthanasia, but I found it difficult to condemn capital punishment. I still, actually, struggle with that one.

What it did, though, is get me thinking about what it means to be “pro-life.” It’s a nice catchy label used by the anti-abortion movement, but how many of us are really pro-life? I’ve talked about the difference between pro-life and anti-abortion stances in a few different posts, and won’t recap that here. I think it’s obvious.

Tancredo and Dobbs vs. Pope Benedict

In case you don’t know, I am not Catholic. I am, in fact, a Baptist. My church belongs to the Conservative Baptist Convention, which is more or less to say that we’re independent of any other congregation. The reason I’m saying this up front is because I want to drive home my point about what the Pope says, and make it clear that I’m not just backing the Pope because he’s the Pope. Depending on whose Christian history you believe, you might well find that Baptists have been defying Papal authority since well before the Reformation.

But that’s a different story for a different day.

Two anti-immigration stalwarts have decided to take on the Pope himself, and have made themselves look like complete fools in so doing.

Interview With Joe Schriner

Before I go too far, I need to apologize. I actually got this via e-mail two days ago, planned to hold off until Thursday to post it, and then had computer problems and am just now posting it.

I have written before, very briefly, about “Average Joe” Schriner, now on his third Presidential run as an independent. If you’ve seen my comments on other people’s blogs, then you might have seen his name come up as someone that I’m considering supporting actively.

What I hadn’t told a lot of people was that I e-mailed Mr. Schriner and asked him if I could interview him by e-mail. He agreed. While he’s not yet had time to answer every question that I asked, he did give some great answers to the most important ones. I’m about to post those, without comment.

Before this, though, he asked me to add a note … he is looking for a running mate. He said that at this point, the running mate doesn’t have to do too much, but he’s looking for someone who fits the legal requirements (35 or older, born US citizen, etc.), who isn’t from Ohio (Mr. Schriner’s home state), and who shares with Mr. Schriner a Consistent Life Ethic. That will be defined pretty well through his answers, I believe.

I will comment on these answers some other time … for now, I want to present what he had to say in his own words.