We watched "The Passion of The Christ" with the kids again this year. I always tell people this movie is hard to watch for 3 reasons.

1. Having to read subtitles the whole way through.
2. All the gore and violence.
3. Realizing that all the gore and violence was because of us and for us.

It also brings up some conversation topics as well, e.g. do we blame Jews for "killing Christ"?

(Oh, no, we don’t, any more than we blame Italians because Romans physically nailed Him to the cross. And though my sins were the reason He had to die, He also said that He lays down His life and take it up again. No one takes it from Him. So who killed Christ? Christ did, of His own accord and will, because He loves us.)

So, what do you think of that movie? What thoughts does it evoke or what conversations does it get started for you?

Kenyans have been winning marathons all over the world. The Dutch have decided to try and keep them out by only giving 1% of the prize money to any foreigners who win the Utrech Marathon. I don’t think that’s racism, but I do believe it’s wrong anyway.

Don’t bet your life on outrageous claims by proponents of embryonic stem cell research. Someone  has, though.

Civility Watch: The Left has been sending death threats to the eeevil Koch brothers. The wrong Koch brothers.

Civility Watch 2: Who said, "Civility is the last refuge of scoundrels" and "Let’s not be civil"? (And said it in the same paper that blamed the Giffords shooting on incivility from Republicans.)

Civility Watch 3: If a Republican had said this, he would have been called "racist" or "Islamophobic". But a member of the Obama administration said it, so no outcry.

Do iPads cause unemployment? Does Jesse Jackson, Jr. think we should have banned cars to keep the buggy builders in business?

Hanging a small cross inside your company van is a firing offense in the UK, apparently.

A death panel in Canada pronounced their sentence on a baby in Ontario by saying that life support should be removed, against the parents’ wishes. Instead, they brought him to a country that, so far, does not have a fully socialized system (that would be America), and the child did so well that he was weaned off the ventilator and is now back home.  It’s still touch and go, I imagine, but critics said he’d never get off mechanical breathing. Way to go, baby Joseph! (Which begs the question; if the US goes fully socialized, where will Canadians go for good health care?)

And finally, the same old song. (Click for a larger image.)

Duane Shank, a senior policy advisor for the Sojourners has this to say about bringing Christian meaning to the Jewish Seder supper.

This week I saw an article written last spring on Jews’ concerns over Christians celebrating Passover.  It seems that more Christian churches are using “Christianized” versions of the seder, reinterpreting the meal’s symbols to reflect Christian beliefs.  Said one rabbi, “They take our symbols, our holiday, our ritual and start investing them in Christian meaning.”

This is a concern that I share. Infusing the traditional text with Christian meaning is both dishonest and disrespectful.

Um, didn’t the writers of the Gospels infuse the traditional text of the Old Testament with Christian meaning?

How about you? We have a new poll up today; do you agree or disagree with the use of "Christianized" versions of the seder?

For myself, I’ve participated in many Christian seders, and it is truly amazing to see how, in this celebration of the escape from Egypt by the Israelites, how much New Testament symbolism is actually in there. We see it in the Bible, of course, but also in the traditional remembrance of it that the Jews have written. Remarkable.

If you have had any experiences with Christian Seders you’d like to share, or if you feel they cheapen the actual Jewish tradition, let’s hear in the comments.

If this doesn’t wake up Democrats, and the Americans that vote for them, to the real, actual unsustainability of more and more spending, what will? If the last remaining superpower can’t keep its financial house in order, then what comes next? Are we "spreading the wealth around" so much now, that too many are unwilling to give up their government dependence?

Should the rich pay more? If so, please say how much more, specifically? Should we go back to 91% rates? The problem is, when more that is taxed, it isn’t used to pay for existing debt and spending; it instead spurs on new spending. Our problem is not how much revenue the government is getting; it’s the amount of spending going on.

This is a bi-partisan problem; both parties have contributed to this. The Republicans, however, spurred on by the Tea Party, are making the first real effort in decades to do something about the problem. Nothing was done on this until Republicans won a majority in the House, and even now, Obama and the Democrats are making only token gestures.

Man oh man, I hope the independents are watching, and will remember in 2012. I hope some fiscally responsible Democrats are, too.

OK, lots of questions above. I would love to hear any answers in the comments.

NewsBusters has done a study on how the media covers Earth Day vs how it covers Easter.

Major Findings:

Media Undermine Christian Holiday: Nearly two thirds of all stories about Easter were negative (22 out of 34).

Easter Used to Attack Catholic Church: Ninety-one percent of the negative Easter stories were about the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

Love That Mother Nature: 100 percent of Earth Day stories were positive.

Easter is the quintessential Christian holiday – the celebration of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Although it has been celebrated by billions of people around the world for nearly 2,000 years, the mainstream media would rather celebrate the liberal holiday known as "Earth Day" and connect Easter to the abuse scandal that surrounded the Roman Catholic Church.

Holy Week marks the seven days between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Christians around the world mark it by attending services, praying and piously observing the holiday.

But in 2010, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows mentioned "Easter" primarily in connection to the pedophilia scandals that swirled around the Vatican last year, being sure to highlight the "gravest outrage," "scandal," "sexual abuse" and "crisis."

Instead, the networks chose to worship something else: Mother Earth. In contrast to Easter, the 40-year-old eco-holiday Earth Day that focuses on the "plastic lying around the earth" and "going green," managed to get nothing but positive attention from the broadcast media.

The Culture and Media Institute examined reports during Holy Week (Mar. 28 through Apr. 4, 2010) and Apr. 15, 2010, through Earth Day to contrast the two weeks of media coverage.

More at the link.

It’s been a little while since I had an update, but that doesn’t mean the incivility hasn’t been happening. John Nolte at BigJournalism.com chronicles "20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill". None of which the MSM will ever hold the Left accountable for.

Well, no, it won’t necessarily be, as there’s very little scintillating about that topic (unless you’re an economist, but maybe not even then). But I just wanted to weigh in on the big topic at hand in Washington; the battle over the budget.

Understand that this is the current year’s budget we’re talking about. When the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress, they couldn’t pass a budget. And now that the Republicans have been swept into the budgetary side of the legislature, it’s even more difficult. But the Dems have no one to blame but themselves for this situation. If they’d passed a budget, Republicans, and especially the Tea Partiers among them, would have little to say on real spending until the fall. But free-for-all spending without a budget is sort of liberal utopia in a nutshell, so being hoist on their own petard elicits some satisfying schadenfreude.

OK, enough clichés. Moving on.

Both sides say they want to be responsible with the budget, but the tsunami of red ink the Democrats have drowned us and our grandchildren in doesn’t speak to any real underlying principle of restraint. Things were bad when Republicans held Congress and the Oval Office, but, as predicted, the Democrats were orders of magnitude worse. The Tea Party was a response to both issues, and some of the Republican leadership sees this and is doing something about it. Not nearly enough, mind you, but a more concerted effort than we’ve seen in quite a long time.

Yet both sides have their sacrosanct programs. For Republicans, this is generally the military, and for Democrats, this is generally entitlements. Let’s start with the latter. A blogger I know from the Left asked an open question on how to cut $300 billion. His answer was, of course, stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (though Libya went interestingly unmentioned; perhaps because that’s a "kinetic military action" and not a war) and cut military programs. Viola. He asked for other ideas, with one stipulation being that it shouldn’t be done "on the backs of the poor, sick, elderly and otherwise marginalized". That kind of phrasing generally means "entitlements are untouchable, and if you even look at them sideways, we have a demagogue script all ready to go." Thus, for liberals, entitlements can only ever go up, period. Yet that is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Entitlements are eating up so much of the budget that much of the rest is just a case of nibbling around the edges. One suggestion I heard was to just take the 2008 budget and pass it. It would cut spending, including entitlements, and somehow, with that budget, we didn’t have rampant homelessness and the elderly starving to death. (And don’t talk to me about inflation; that was just 3 years ago.)

Which brings us to the Republicans. If entitlements are an 800 pound gorilla, the military is it’s 600 pound cousin. But here’s are the differences:

• The military is a constitutionally-enumerated power of the government. Wealth redistribution is not.
• While the rest of the world look down their collective noses at the size of our military and the money we spend on it, this is the same world that asks, "Where are the Americans?" anytime we don’t show up to an atrocity or a despot or any other international incident. Europe wouldn’t handle Kosovo. The Arab League wouldn’t handle Libya. Everyone sneers at our military, but wouldn’t know what to do if we didn’t have it.

Indeed, I would like to see some saving in military spending by, for starters, shutting down all those bases in Europe that were there to protect it from Soviet aggression. Turn them over to the locals and let them man the battle stations, or abandon them, whatever. But before you start cutting military spending on current hot spots, let’s get rid of the spending on spots that haven’t been hot for decades. There is money to be cut from the military if you’re willing to look. I’m sorry that manufacturing jobs may be lost, but if you’re keeping the jobs for the jobs’ sake and not for what’s being produced, how is that any different than socialist/communist make-work jobs?

The sacred cows need to be put on a diet. All of them

Last week was Spring Break for us, but that doesn’t mean I stopped reading the news.

The long arm of “Pastor” Terry Jones. Obama bombs a Muslim country, and all’s quiet, but one nut half a world away burns a Koran, and gets disproportional media coverage for it, and Afghans riot, killing at least a dozen people.  Jones may be overreacting, but he’s got nothing on the angry mullahs in Afghanistan. And after all, according to NBC, burning the Koran is worse than burning the Bible because the Bible was written by men, not God. (Where do they get their religion experts?)

A new Broadway musical attacks Muslims! This could spawn more riots! Oh, wait. It attacks Mormons. Well then, never mind.

Say it isn’t so! The New York Times is getting its “facts” from left-wing websites and not checking said “facts” for accuracy. Oh, that liberal media.

The Obama Doctrine; looking more and more like the Bush Doctrine. (And the Bush Doctrine is really just common sense.)

Name the Senator who used to think that a war without congressional authority would be “monarchist”? Click here for the video.

Carbon emissions dropped 21% from 2000-2009, without cap-and-trade. Gee, wonder who the President was during that time.

Jimmy Carter equates Christianity with Islam in how both religions view women as inferior. Really, Jimmy? I guess if nations that are (or were) historically Christian would do things like, oh, allow women to vote, or hold jobs, or drive, or not have to cover their entire bodies with tents, then perhaps we can revisit this question.

And finally, two nuclear questions. (Click for a larger image.)

Six out of ten politicians in don’t think you know enough about the issues facing Washington to form a reasonable opinion. More telling to me is that, broken down by party, most Republicans trust you but way more Democrats don’t.

Another example of why it’s hard for government to cut spending (and why conservatives try to hard to hold back increases); Between 400,000 and 500,000 protest against government spending cuts in the UK.

Media Matters becomes a parody of itself, ignoring the media in general and concentrating solely on Fox News. James Taranto wonders:

Does a group that proclaims its purpose to be industrial sabotage qualify [for tax-exempt status]? It’s hard to imagine the answer is yes. Could, say, AT&T set up an organization to sabotage Sprint and do the whole thing free of taxes?

Did you know that opting out of Medicare (not asking for your tax money back, just not taking advantage of it and paying the tab yourself) will cause you to forfeit Social Security? Big, big government, anyone?

The European Union has an idea for clean air; ban all cars.

Irony Alert: President Obama accepted a transparency award from the open government community, in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House.

Barack Obama was against wars against brutal dictators that did not directly threaten the United State or its interests, before he was for them.

A salute to the men and women of Japan — the Fukushima 50 — who are putting their health and, indeed, lives on the line to bring the reactors under control.

Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.

“He told me they have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term.

And finally, "regulating relationships". (Click for a larger image.)

When they’re about to lose your federal funding, Planned Parenthood will say anything to try to justify their existence. "Hey, we don’t just do abortions. People will lose basic health care services like mammograms."

Yeah, well just try to get one at PP.

Calling 30 clinics in 27 states, every single one said they don’t do them. Thank you, Lila Rose and the folks at Live Action for further exposing the corruption at PP.

The death panels have begun, deciding which newborn babies live or die. Don Surber says, "Under President Obama the purpose of the greatest medical system ever developed has been subverted from saving lives to saving money." To be fair, insurance companies could be accused of that as well. But they could compete on customer service. When the government tells them what they can and can’t do, and co-opts them into a national health system, the government then decides on what and will not be paid for. And there’s no competing with the government.

Eight years ago, the media was deeply concerned over whether Bush would go to war without Congressional approval. Today, when Obama actually does it, a collective yawn (with one small exception).

Running out of things to tax, politicians are now trying to push a toilet paper tax in Washington. No, really.

Hamas terrorists in Gaza broke a cease-fire to toss 50 rockets at Israel last Saturday, while the rest of the world’s gaze was diverted to Libya. Essay question: Did you hear about this in the media, and if not, why not?

And finally, speaking of the media covering for the President (click for a larger version):

Roger Kimball writing at Pajamas Media contrasts the big differences in the world’s response (and by "the world’s" he means "America’s") response to two earthquake/tsunami combinations; the 2004 Boxing Day one in Indonesia and the 2011 on in Japan. George Bush, who supposedly hated brown people, sprang into action, getting the US military (mostly the Navy, with its carriers that have huge desalination plants and bakeries, among other things) involved in the relief. Barack Obama sprang into action, on the golf course and at ESPN.  Kimball notes that, in this and other situations around the world, people everywhere are wondering, "Where are the Americans?"

Is this the kind of new diplomacy Obama said he would bring? Supposedly, we squandered all of the the goodwill we’d ever built up. And yet, now the world is wondering why were so aloof. To be sure, American relief organizations are helping out in full force, and that is one of the beauties of the American culture. We don’t expect the government to bear the full burden of charitable help, because frankly there are things the government just can’t do as efficiently.

But what government can do, and has done in the past, it’s not really doing that as much as it used to. Hope and change.

American cruise missiles struck Libya over the weekend after French war planes flew in first as a show of force, shooting down a Libyan MiG. (That’s something I never thought I’d write; the French went in to harm’s way first, followed by America lobbing missiles.)  This was in preparation for enforcing a no-fly zone over the country. Y’know, George W. Bush had two fistfuls of UN resolutions and Congressional approval before he went into Iraq, and he was called a war criminal. Obama has 1 resolution and nothing from Congress to back him up. One wonders if the Left will get just as anxious this time. While there have been some rumblings so far, it’s nowhere near what Bush had to put up with.

President Obama explained why he was attacking Libya:

"We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy," the president said from Brazil, where he is starting a five-day visit to Latin America. "We must be clear: actions have consequences."

Saddam Hussein did that for years, and the Left would not let the US, nor any other nation, lift a finger to help.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, there have been photos released that make Abu Ghraib look tame.

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Senior officials at Nato‘s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

As much as Bush was blamed for Abu Ghraib, I wonder how much Obama will be blamed for this happening on his watch.

The Left is really going to have its consistency challenged in the coming weeks. As I said, some bloggers and some members of Congress have spoken out against Obama going into Libya, but if all he gets is token resistance, their moral authority will be severely questioned. The biggest question will be, is it moral authority they’re exercising or merely political authority?

Civility Watch (combined with "Oh, that liberal media): If you missed the fact that Wisconsin Republicans were the target of death threats, you need to get your news from somewhere else.

Not taking this seriously were ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR. LexisNexis and closed-caption dump searches of "Wisconsin and ‘death threat’" produced zero results for these so-called news outlets throughout the month of March.

Zero.

When you compare this to the hysterical coverage of last year’s Tea Party rallies and town hall protests, where conservatives were regularly depicted as either hostile or fomenting violence, one has to wonder how actual death threats against sitting politicians would not be considered newsworthy.

This seems particularly curious after all the talk about hostile rhetoric immediately following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in January.

And more civility in DC:

Paul Craney, executive director of the D.C. Republican Committee, says that a shooter took out the windows at the GOP’s storefront office, near 13th and K streets NW, with a small-caliber projectile, possibly from an air gun.

Craney said he got a call from an alarm company early Wednesday morning but didn’t pick up the call. And when he showed up to work this morning the alarm was on. But he didn’t notice the fenestration damage until later in the day. “I was getting lunch, and noticed: Oh my god, our windows are all shot up.”

While on the phone with a reporter, Craney discovered an approximately BB-sized piece of shot on the ground outside the window.

Following 4 closed-door meetings, the President was to get an award for being so open to the press. Sensing the irony, that award got postponed.

And finally, to make up for the dearth of links this week, two political cartoons. (Can you tell I really like Chuck Asay?)

It’s not often I agree with Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, but I certainly do this time. Regarding the issues with the nuclear power plants in Japan that are near meltdown, he advises caution on making pronouncements on the use of nuclear power in general, given that just about any energy source has its drawbacks. There is a bigger picture.

If we imagine a hundred years into the future of fossil fuels and a hundred of nuclear power, at the end of a century, how much damage do we imagine each will have caused? I suspect that if it’s really an either/or, the nuclear route is likely much safer.

Again, I’m not wanting to say anything definitive. But even at these moments when we see the most frightening side of nuclear power, I think we should still draw back and look at the global — meant both literally and figuratively — costs of different fuels and consider the possibility that nuclear power is actually safer for our own health and that of the planet.

It took the 5th strongest earthquake since 1900 and the resulting tsunami to do this. Very little can withstand that.