1. Rust and wheat and the unanticipated disaster.
2. The self sufficient.
3. Film.
4. 10 myths and the bike.
5. Some (milder?) images and Iran.
6. A mid-East rebuttal to Mr Obama’s speech?
7. One man’s statement on Iran.
8. Is this the best key to use to drive education policy? I’d offer, uhm, not.
9. Some good econ links.
10. On IVF.
11. CBO on the Kennedy healthcare plan, not so good.
12. Name and spots.
13. Evangelicals notice (lifelong) celibacy.
14. Considering late term abortions.
15. In Graphic form, TV transition and the tobacco industry.
16. Heh.
17. Sex and theology the discussion continues.

1. Of Theodicy and politics.
2. Only insofar as we let him get away with it.
3. This thing called Iran.
4. Some more remarks here.
5. Social evolution and religion.
6. A patristics dictionary recommended.
7. Next line of really bad ideas, the pay czar … debated by Becker & Posner.
8. The next scandal?
9. Nuclear energy (more here).
10. Want rust?
11. I’m going to check this out.
12. The consequences of denying slavery exists in the modern world.
13. The (un)importance of sex.
14. A homily for the Saints (day).
15. Watching the car industry.
16. Of bees.

I haven’t posted as much recently.  I thought summer would slow things down, but apparently not so much around our house.  I’ve been collecting things to write on, but they’re starting to get stale, so before they’re completely irrelevant, here are a few quick hits to start the week.

Economy: Never mind whether or not you got TARP funds, the Obama administration may be looking to cap your executive’s pay.

Gene Sperling, a top counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, conceded to a congressional committee that imposing compensation caps on companies could lead to a flight of talent.

“I can say with certainty that nobody in the Obama administration is proposing such a thing,” he said.

Yet, at the same time, he and officials with the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission laid out a case for how payment structures rewarded short-term gains at the expense of long-term performance and contributed to the nation’s financial crisis.

The administration plans to seek legislation that would try to rein in compensation at publicly traded companies through nonbinding shareholder votes and by decreasing management influence on pay decisions.

No mention of how incentivizing the giving loans to people who couldn’t afford them contributed to the nation’s financial crisis, nor any talk of reining that in.

Abortion: Warner Todd Hudson asks and answers, “Why is Killing Abortionists Wrong? Because it is Un-Christian, That’s Why!” He uses logic and scripture to back up his position.  The key paragraphs:

The final word here is that a Christian ethic posits that men are subject to man’s laws and willfully violating them is not a Christian thing to do — but for extreme cases, and then in a more passive manner than not. Additionally man’s duly constituted law is the sword of punishment and punishment should not be carried out by the individual going off on his own hook. Christians do not take the law into their own hands.

So, in answer to Jacob Sullum’s tough question, killing abortionists IS wrong. It is also quite in keeping with Christian practice to suffer under pro-abortion laws without taking the law into one’s own hands to end the life of a doctor committing abortions. The law says that abortion is legal, only the law may impose the sentence of death, and the individual is bound by those facts under a Christian worldview.

Definitely worth a read.

Health Care: So will all those saving we’re supposed to come from health care reform going to come after the trillion dollar cost is recouped?

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.” Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.

And, as we all know, government estimates of the cost of a government program are a low end guess.  Somehow, I think that net tax decrease that Obama promised was never going to materialize anyway.

1. Right wing … why right? Just to demonize the right I guess.
2. Why is the left denying affirmative action regarding Ms Sotomayor? (As opposed to pointing to it as a shining example)
3. Drifting left.
4. Betrayal.
5. Politics in the land of the cossacks.
6. A happy blogger.
7. Mr Biden then and … now?
8. Endoxes.
9. Open your mind.
10. A problem for the Treas Sec.
11. Of Constantine the Ethnomartyr.
12. Hope.
13. And zombies.
14. 7 notes.
15. A choir.
16. This meme is resurfacing again … why now?

1. Praising Keynes … but a different book perhaps and a look at inflation and our debt.
2. Exams noted.
3. In which it is noted we are all crazy.
4. DIY 3-d.
5. Stating the obvious.
6. Rearranging those deck chairs (on the Titanic).
7. Recursion and art.
8. Do what I say and not what I do is commonly seen, less known is the do what I say and not what I say.
9. Although perhaps its not as uncommon as I thought.
10. No. It’s not a right. If rights are at all intelligible (and that is doubtful) then you have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … healthcare, a good education and so on … not on the list.
11. Teaching Edwards.
12. Praising modesty.
13. Oops.
14. Heh.
15. Discussing disgust and morals in two parts.
16. Elegance.
17. Considering Sodom.
18. Anti-Semitism. Three statements from … a liberal Jew, a conservative Jew, and a theological study noted.

1. Rewarding the wrong bunch.
2. Viewing polarization and Congress.
3. Of Che and Burke.
4. Math is beautiful … and if you can’t take the class, this book (The Book of Numbers) might do in a pinch.
5. Of tolerance.
6. I think this is misleading and is being used dishonestly. A number of banks were forced against their will to take TARP money. They weren’t in distress and didn’t need or want it. Now they’ve paid it back. To not recall that in noting this is dishonest.
7. Stories conservatives tell their children to scare them before bedtime.
8. In other news, Mr Biden remains clueless, which I gather is his primary function.
9. The MSM just noticed?
10. Star Trek and Mr Obama.
11. Watching Pakistan.
12. Evangelism as abuse?
13. Morton’s fork.
14. Core strength training.
15. A stumbling block for recovery.
16. A translation project?
17. Alas, the next kerfuffle … and this is probably not unrelated. People need thicker skins.
18. Ikon and corner.
19. A YA book recommended.

1. Race error? Heh.
2. A taster?
3. Very pretty.
4. Misunderstanding markets (and perhaps the role of government).
5. Not candy coating works too.
6. Links and a hope that our President will get some needed education.
7. Pimping your parish … or not.
8. Lebanon.
9. Considering end of life.
10. Kids. They’re just so darn immature.
11. And keep them away from operating heavy machinery (in some cases).
12. A book noted.
13. Isn’t “chronically homeless” a euphimism for the mentally ill?
14. A Saint.

1. Mr Tiller, a Lutheran, had been excommunicated by the LCMS and was attending an ELCA church. So … how may articles about him attempted to explain the different Lutheran denominations? Is that relevant as a background to the story?
2. More on Mr Tiller’s killing here.
3. Outing as a conservative/liberal issue, in which a particular liberal forgets “outing” is a standard tactic against gay GOP members, which brings one to the logical conclusion that painting this as a left/right matter is a partisan fiction.
4. Some philosophers consider the matter.
5. And the point is made that pseudonymity requires increased not decreased politeness.
6. An inconsistency on the left, noted.
7. A educators prayer.
8. Or … there might be other reasons.
9. On the health care debate, a discussion here and here.
10. We are all democrats now.
11. Not to die in vain.
12. A comparison Mr Alito and Ms Sotomayor.
13. Grist for the legalize prostitution libertarian mill.
14. A Baptist preacher goes to an Orthodox service and finds much to like.

1. Ten men a half century ago.
2. Some reading suggestions in the fantasy genre.
3. Another take on Mr Obama’s speech and memory of another Cairo speech.
4. Continued fractions.
5. Some econometrics look good.
6. Do as I say, not alas as I do is a recurring trope.
7. So … in picking the date for the speech, was Tienanmen or Midway to be connected in any way.
8. In which a load of old bull figures prominently.
9. Some Sotomayor background.
10. So Long. Farewell. An esteemed blogger bows out.
11. A wedding.
12. Why don’t they just have a run off election?
13. Race, resentment as replacements for normal freshman fears.
14. On natural law.

1. A quote from Habermas on Christianity.
2. Pentecostal petal drop.
3. The quick pitch.
4. Dresden and Tienanmen.
5. A letter from Beirut for the President.
6. The transcript of the Cairo speech.
7. Indiana muscles in on the Administrations illegal car company moves.
8. Well, it’s because its not the Christian response … and not a cognitive dissonance problem.
9. Ford tech.
10. Good signs.
11. Hmmm.
12. Net savvy administration indeed.
13. Devilish book.

1. Reading suggestions for leaders. What would you suggest?
2. Tears of a geographer, noted here too. Or is this just more evidence of innumeracy?
3. Nuts noted. Nuts who don’t know the two words which are Mr Obama’s best insurance, i.e., Biden and Pelosi.
4. That’s why it took so long to catch Mr Madoff (he was being groomed).
5. Slavery.
6. Of human evils.
7. The socialism notion.
8. Still trying to spin. Remind us why (coincendentally white) non-Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union are unable to comprehend discrimination?
9. A related (and counter) point made here.
10. St. Brenden.
11. Mr Kass in science.
12. An interesting discussion on A Secular Age.
13. In the context of advise and consent … recalling Mr Obama on Mr Roberts.
14. Covering for judges.
15. Summarizing the McArdle/ObWings abortion discussion.
16. Marriage and Tolstoy.

1. Acronyms and the merry band of robbers in the beltway.
2. Eugenics OK in Sweden.
3. A back and forth on abortion and Mr Tiller (follow the links for the whole thing). For what it’s worth, I think that Ms McArdles rejoinder, “My argument is that abortion, like slavery, is becoming in this country
   an issue upon which people have no reasonable political recourse. ” is correct but that the Christian response to “having no recourse” is not violence.
4. Mr Murtha’s bridge to nowhere.
5. Intelligence and the big universe.
6. Poop and a map.
7. Some movement of some of the conservative Christian blogs.
8. Against divorce.
9. Ill omens and Mr Obama’s Cairo address.
10. Conservative praise for Twilight? And of course, Pixar.
11. Wind power generation, which begs the question, will Mr Obama’s administration get serious about nuclear energy? Because if they don’t this whole “global warming” carbon thing is just a stinking crock of hooey.
12. Hmm.
13. Income discrepancy.
14. The clarion call for Asian representation on the court.

1. Pentecost and the holy mountain. More on Pentacost from the Fathers here.
2. Marriage and crime.
3. A point to be made regarding the rhetoric of the wacky pro-abortion contingent in the wake of Mr Tiller’s murder. Which I heard of first here, and I might add is a pretty typical response from the Christian right blogs.
4. The term economy and its theological meaning.
5. Contra the “other.”
6. Terrorism and policy and what we do “just to feel better” about ourselves, but which is materially morally worse.
7. Sober thoughts on the nomination of Ms Sotomayor.
8. Missing the point in grand style. The point isn’t that this is some sort of faked sympathy for other groups, the point is that the “mend it, don’t end it” project is clearly impossible.
9. To look out for (eagerly), Judge Dee.
10. Against using the eye of the heart in judicial matters.
11. Math and music.
12. Heh.
13. In case you’re grumpy on this Monday morning.
14. Narrative and man.
15. The churcn and the Nazi regime.
16. On Meyendorff about Palamas.
17. Wanna bet Mr Obama won’t mention Coptic Christians during his Cairo address? Some reasons why he should.
18. A little song.
19. The GM boondoggle.
20. The fall of unfaith.

1. When one is a crook.
2. A look at the catholicism of two Obama appointees, one basically lapsed the other possibly linked to liberation theology.
3. A call for sanity.
4. Mr Obama as one of three detestable men.
5. Ms Sotomayor and Princeton.
6. Men in Chicago.
7. An important book on fighting small wars.
8. Heh.
9. Some thoughts on learning Greek.
10. On the “experience” question.
11. Japan and nuclear devices.
12. Ms Sotomayor’s compelling life story, which is compelling in a way that Mr Thomas’ and Mr Alito’s were not apparently. Just as Ms Rice was neither Black nor a woman. More here.
13. The haert and God.
14. Co-induction.

1. The future and strategy and a question.
2. Seagulls and earthquake.
3. A complaint lodged against Mr Obama’s Memorial Day speech.
4. Hail.
5. Considering atheism.
6. Differences and Europe.
7. Christopsomos, or Christ Bread.
8. Democracy and Religion.
9. How long will the lying thing stay popular?
10. Alcohol and the reasonable parent.
11. The housing bubble, not done popping?
12. On energy.
13. Two saints who changed world history remembered.
14. Memory and a passing.
15. The eagle and the bear compared.
16. It was a brilliant attack, as they say.
17. Perceptions of Obama and their consequences.