Fetal pain as a "pro-life strategy" — a successful pro-life strategy.

An article in The Atlantic by Olga Khazan. Excerpt:

On the basis of... uncertain science rests one of the most comprehensive rollbacks of abortion rights in decades. It’s also a sign of the major gains the pro-life movement has made by emphasizing the agony that fetuses might feel, rather than what the movement sees as their God-given right to be born....

“The life at conception issue gets to a spiritual question that's unknowable and unanswerable to a lot of people,” said Alesha Doan, chair of the women, gender, and sexuality studies department at the University of Kansas. But the fetal pain argument touches on the fact that, “we anesthetize for all surgeries, and it's considered cruel and unusual punishment not to do so.”

You don't have to believe in God to believe in pain, but where do you go with your morality when you put pain — not God — at the center of your thinking?

Hitchens, animated, contemplates death and the afterlife.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

Did God prank-call Scott Walker?

Slate columnist David Weigel has a piece titled "Why Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Credits God for his Political Success." Weigel has Walker's new memoir, "Unintimidated," which has a bit in it about something we talked about back in February 2011 (during the big protests): A prankster pretending to be David Koch got through on the phone to Scott Walker, who talked to him for a while, even as he said things like "You gotta crush that union" to try to get Walker to blurt out something that would be used against him. From Weigel's summary:

[W]hen Murphy/Koch asked about the wisdom of “planting some troublemakers,” Walker said his team had “thought about that” but dismissed it.

Walker haters used that "planting some troublemakers" business as much as they could. (In March 2011, when Meade was physically attacked by protesters, a woman pointed and said "These are Walker plants.")

Back to Weigel, summarizing Walker:

The governor claims that he “hesitated” to take it, and “was upset that my staff had let the call get through to my office, making me look so silly.” He never actually “thought about” the fake troublemakers—he now writes that he “did not want to insult Mr. Koch by saying that we would never do something so stupid.”...

“Only later did I realize that God had a plan for me with that episode,” writes Walker. After his press conference, he picked up his daily devotional and saw the title for Feb. 23: The power of humility, the burden of pride.

“I looked up and said, ‘I hear you, Lord,’” writes Walker. “God was sending me a clear message to not do things for personal glory or fame. It was a turning point that helped me in future challenges, helped me stay focused on the people I was elected to serve, and reminded me of God’s abundant grace and the paramount need to stay humble.”

I can't really tell if Weigel (or the Slate headline writers) think Walker is getting too religion-y here and is claiming that God has special messages and plans for him. (Is Scott Walker a God plant?) I can't even tell if Walker is honestly describing his stages of processing the unpleasant incident. But I do think this account is conventional, mainstream religion. Something bad happens, and you realize that God had a plan. You extract a lesson that lightens the burden from the past and redirects you toward a future.

You don't even need God in the mix to indulge in this sort of positive thinking. What doesn't kill atheists makes them stronger — don't you know?

But Walker haters are going to want to use his religion talk against him. They use anything they can against him. I'm going to be looking out for this, because there's a tendency amongst the media elite to mock religion, to assume — like a governor assuming he's got true supporter on the phone — that everyone they're talking to thinks that anyone who feels God's presence in his life is weird, scary, and surely not to be trusted with the levers of power. They're quite wrong. Especially if they are writing on the internet, where everyone sees what they are saying.

And 90% of Americans believe in God — or as Gallup charmingly puts it "More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in God/Professed belief is lower among younger Americans, Easterners, and liberals." (I love the "Continue to," which implies: Come on, people, after all the evidence, what's your problem?!)

"Mailer thought that God exists but is not completely in control of his creation. He needs us to help him in his struggle with the Devil."

"How can we help? By acting instinctively and taking risks, on the understanding, as Mailer liked to say, that the best move lies close to the worst. It’s no good choosing a middle path. We have to risk being damned if we hope to save God, preserve our souls for reincarnation, and avoid cancer. The guiding power in all this business is the unconscious, which Mailer thought had 'an enormous teleological sense,' and which he named 'the navigator.'"

Another extract from that subscribers-only New Yorker article by Louis Menand about Norman Mailer. That jumped out at me in part because of the recent excitement over Justice Scalia's revelation that he believes in the Devil.

"And Mr. Chandor can verify to skeptics Mr. Redford’s claim that his hair remains naturally Hubbell strawberry blond."

"His locks survived the months of sun and chlorine, with no colorist in sight," writes Maureen Dowd in that NYT article that we're already talking about in that first post of the day.

“No one believes me,” Mr. Redford said. “Even my kids didn’t believe me. I keep thinking of Reagan. It’s freaking me out.”

Chandor is J. C. Chandor, the director of Redford's new movie, "All Is Lost," which is a seafaring tale, hence the "sun and chlorine."

Dowd doesn't say whether she believes him, but she quotes "No one believes me" without stating her view. She has the mysterious line "Mr. Chandor can verify," but did she ask Mr. Chandor, and who can believe that Mr. Chandor watched Mr. Redford at all times? Who thinks Ronald Reagan didn't dye his hair? But it's nice of Robert Redford to keep thinking about Ronald Reagan. These slow-aging Hollywood RRs need to stick together with their age-defying secrets.

What does Hubbell refer to in "naturally Hubbell strawberry blond"? The Hubbell telescope? "There are no 'natural color' cameras aboard the Hubble and never have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras, which take images as grayscale pixels." It's Hubble, not Hubbell, so it can't be that — though I'm interested in the fakeness of all those colorful photographs of the universe that we've been looking at all these years.

Here's the atheist Christopher Hitchens burbling about "the color and depth and majesty" of the Hubble photographs as he urges us to see the revelations of science as more awe-inspiring than the old stories told by religions:



But the color is fake! The purveyors of science, like religionists, can scam us too.

Now, back to the possible scam of the color of Robert Redford's hair. And I got a sudden inspiration about the meaning of Hubbell. Some character Redford played long ago? I go to his IMDB page and search. Ah! It's the name of the guy he played in "The Way We Were." Am I ashamed not to have known? Absolutely not! I'm damned proud I never saw that movie. It was back in 1973 too, when we went to see every movie we thought was supposed to be good. We knew better.

In the comments at that first post of the day, Amexpat calls bullshit on Redford:

He hasn't aged honestly or gracefully (Paul Newman did a better job at that). His hair looks ridiculous for a man his age.

I note that he claims it's all natural, and the lovely redhead Maureen Dowd backs him up at least insofar as no one on set saw a hairdresser. I offer a poem parody (original here):

Who has seen the hairdresser
Neither you nor I
But when the 77-year-old has yellow hair
The hairdresser has passed by

One of the stated themes of that post is "Where's God?" (which came up in the context of Redford's sidekick Nick Nolte, who asked the question in the context of saying you'll kill yourself trying to answer it). So I say:

Where's God?

With the hairdresser.

But that's a joke, everyone knows that like Nick Nolte, God has gray hair:



What if God were one of us? He might go grocery shopping with Nick Nolte:



But go ahead, if you're the creative type — you don't have to be as creative as The Creator (He's so creative!) —  to take that iconic Michelangelo image of God and photoshop us a post-hairdresser pic, with God's flowing tresses rejuvenated into Hubbell strawberry blond.

Here:



You could change Adam into Robert Redford. Did you know that in the movie "All Is Lost," Robert Redford's character is called only "Our Man" and that in the Bible, Adam means "man"? Anyway, the scenario here in this imagined photoshop is God and The Man at The Hairdresser. They look about ready to consult The Manicurist. While we're punching up awe-inspiring images with color, it's probably time to repaint God's pink dress. Maybe something effulgently red, gold, and green, like the colors with which a science huckster would infuse the Hubble's pixels.

"I don’t see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me 'hay head.'"

Said Robert Redford, who also reports that when he was 18, studying art in Italy and France, the women there did not find him attractive.

So — if we can believe that — even the prettiest pretty boy may still fall within the shadow of the old adage "You're only pretty as you feel."

Now, after years of recognition as incredibly good-looking — he's 77 — he says:

"And I guess the nice thing about getting older is that you don’t have that [beauty] quite so much anymore. I never had a problem with my face on screen. I thought it is what it is, and I was turned off by actors and actresses that tried to keep themselves young."

That face is the only face we get to see in his new movie — "All Is Lost" — in which he's (apparently) the only actor.  I've seen the trailer. He's lost at sea. Tom Hanks is also having lonesome, though not that lonesome, trouble at sea in a big movie this fall, and Sandra Bullock is alone in a space suit, bereft even of gravity in a grave situation in "Gravity."

It must say something about us that we're being presented with tales of rugged individualists far adrift from any foundation. Did we ask for that? It's what Hollywood decided, back when this fall's movies were given the go, that we'd need in the Fall of 2013. There's no reason to give much credence to Hollywood's notion of who we are right now. Hollywood thought we were the Lone Ranger and Tonto last summer, and the people said no. Perhaps the Lone Ranger isn't lone enough for our alienated psyches. He had Tonto. Where's my sidekick? the public that shunned "The Lone Ranger" might have thought. How can we identify with his loneliness when he has Johnny Depp?

Robert Redford famously had a sidekick, Paul Newman, in the 2 movies that made him seem to be even more handsome than the already-impossibly-handsome Paul Newman — "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting." And Redford did have another movie in the works with Newman — a movie version of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" (my second-most-listened-to audiobook). Newman died 5 years ago, but now the news is that it will be made with the not-always-completely-cute Nick Nolte. If you know the book, you may agree with me that Nolte seems more like Bryson's "Walk in the Woods" sidekick Stephen Katz than does Paul Newman.

You might think Newman was more like Katz because he was (half) Jewish. ("Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, saying, 'it's more of a challenge.'") Nolte, on the other hand, is (apparently) a man disconnected from any particular religion. ("'Where’s God?' You’re gonna kill yourself with that. You’ll never be able to answer that.")

But Bryson's Katz — despite the distinctively Jewish name — is not Jewish, as Bryson reveals in his memoir of childhood, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" (my most-listened-to audiobook):

Some years ago when I came to apply a pseudonym to one of my boyhood friends, I chose the name Stephen Katz partly in honor of a Des Moines drugstore called Katz’s, which was something of a local institution in my childhood, and partly because I wanted a short name that was easy to type. Never did it occur to me that the name was Semitic. I never thought of anybody in Des Moines as being Jewish. I don’t believe anyone did. Even when they had names like Wasserstein and Liebowitz, it was always a surprise to learn they were Jewish. Des Moines wasn’t a very ethnic place.

Anyway, Katz wasn’t Jewish. He was Catholic.

You've come to the end of this longish first-post-of-the-day, and maybe you're wondering, What are we supposed to talk about now? The issues are: beauty, aging, loneliness, sidekicks, floating adrift without foundation, the extent to which Hollywood may know who we really are, and Where's God?

I do a Bloggingheads with Glenn Loury that's ostensibly about whether Obama has weakened and what the NYC police are doing after stop and frisk.

The folks at Bloggingheads put it this way:

On The Glenn Show, Glenn and Ann check in on Obama a year into his second term. Has his vacillation on Syria and the Fed hurt his credibility? Ann argues that the Larry Summers controversy exposed an anti-science crowd on the left—but maybe a small dose of delusion is healthy. Turning to the end of NYC's stop-and-frisk program, Ann worries that emotions adulterated the public debate. Are liberal gun-control measures breeding a nation of victims? Finally, Glenn criticizes the secrecy of the security state under Obama.

There's an awful lot going on in that diavlog, and I think we talk past each other more than usual. "Ann worries that emotions adulterated the public debate" is a terrible summary of what I say. 

Go to the link if you want to hear the whole thing. I'll excerpt a part that deals with something I care about: the unlikelihood that anyone is really making truth their highest value.



I'm highlighting what I had to say, so click to continue the video when you get to the end of this clip if you want to hear Loury's response. The lead-up to this clip is about the trouble Larry Summers got into at Harvard when he suggested that there might be a biological explanation for the scarcity of females in the highest levels of math and science.

Looking for the war protest. Part 2: The video.

Meade and I approach the Capitol, here in Madison, Wisconsin, on a Saturday morning, thinking if there's going to be action, it will be here. This is before Obama emerged to say that he was going to ask permission from Congress. This is a 10 minute video, but it's edited and moves quickly, I think. Look at the tags below to get an idea of what's in store:

"If someone says I believe God requires me to wear a hat..."

"... it's considered completely inappropriate for the authorities or people who aren't intimate with the person to pressure him about whether there really is a God and whether that God cares about who's wearing hats."

The last sentence of my long comment at the end of the thread on the post "Not much is getting said about the Chelsea/Bradley Manning transgender announcement."

Who said...?

A series of quotes:

I never enjoyed working in a film.

In Europe, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman - we make love with anyone we find attractive.

A country without bordellos is like a house without bathrooms.

The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong.

If there is a supreme being, he's crazy.

Answer: here.

Is Will.i.am suing Pharrell Williams for using "I am OTHER" and horning in on his "I am"?

I am so you can't be. Will.i.am's lawyer provided this legalistic argle-bargle:

"Will.i.am is not suing Pharrell Williams... What Will.i.am has done is what any trademark owner must do to protect and maintain a trademark. This is a run-of-the-mill trademark dispute that has been going on since late last year. In order to avoid weakening or losing his trademark, Will.i.am has an obligation under trademark law to monitor and defend his trademarks against confusingly similar marks. Will.i.am has registered several trademarks, including 'I AM', which is also emphasised in, and a significant element of, his professional name. We think their proposed trademark is too close to our registered and common law trademarks. They disagree. We hope to work out a sensible compromise that will allow both parties to move forward without unnecessary acrimony."

So don't call this suing AND don't call yourself "I am," especially in the music business and where you seem to be exploiting the "William" name and the simple cleverness of seeing the "I am" in William, and anyway, your name is Williams, with an "s," so that's some awkward appropriated cleverness. Like I ams. So go infringe on that dogfood, why don't you? Or... I mean... cease this unnecessary acrimony.

By the way, I thought God owned the trademark on "I am":

I Am that I Am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh...) is a common English translation...  of the response God used in the Hebrew Bible when Moses asked for his name (Exodus 3:14)....

Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition. The phrase is also found in other world religious literature, used to describe the Supreme Being, generally referring back to its use in Exodus.

If God is I Am that I Am, then Will.i.am must already be an OTHER I am. Suggested legalistic argle-bargle: one more reason for Pharrell Williams to step back.

"God is great! He moved the mountain! Sarah got THE CALL."

Dying 10-year-old whose family wanted her on the list to receive adult lungs, is getting her lungs.

"But, at the same time, there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, 'Well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar'..."

"... and you have to wonder about that guy's personality — the big guy's personality. And the thing is — I may have told you last time that I believe in God — what I'm saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I'm totally inconsistent."

Stephen King, elaborating on his choice to believe in God.

As expected, I got some pushback for saying "I hope the Supreme Court blesses us with" a right to same-sex marriage.

That was a provocative way to say that it will be a blessing if the upcoming Supreme Court cases resolve this issue that is dogging and distorting the political discourse in our country.

Even to say "it will be a blessing" would have been provocative, since it seems to give God credit for whatever good happens. But that usage of "blessing" has constitutional text to support it:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

Liberty is a set of blessings, our Founders told us. The human task is to secure the blessings. If the Supreme Court says it has found a liberty — let's say a right to same-sex marriage — we may say that it is securing a liberty that is already there. When someone says "bless you," that doesn't mean that the blessing emanates from the speaker. It's short for "God bless you." It's asking God to deliver a blessing. In the Constitution, what we see is that the Framers believed that God had blessed us with liberty.

So to say "I hope the Supreme Court blesses us" is to identify the Court as the source of the blessing, to put the Court in the place of God, and to prompt and tease those who think the Court improperly makes up rights. That was deliberate and devilish temptation. Thanks for succumbing!

Below the fold are the comments that inspired this post:

1. Gahrie:

This is a perfect example of our country's problems right here. You, a Constitutional law professor, our hoping that the Supreme Court will create a "right" that you favor.

The Supreme Court doesn't "bless us" with rights, or create rights. It protects the ones given to us by our creator and enumerated by the people in the Constitution.

2. MayBee:

Yes, the "blessing us" idea is troubling from a constitutional law professor. Perhaps it is some of her famous humor.

3. alwaysfiredup:

"I hope the Supreme Court blesses us with the requisite constitutional right"

Oh dear lord...

Surely, SURELY, as a law prof you could phrase this to be less off-putting.

4. Chuck:

Prof. Althouse;

Huh?

You "hope the Supreme Court blesses us with the requisite constitutional right..."?

Say what? Since when was the Supreme Court in the business of 'blessing us with constitutional rights'? I thought they were in the business of constitutional interpretation, and working on judicial review of legislation. Not "blessings."

I hope that the Supreme Court "blesses me" with a new Cadillac and a Rolex watch.

Since you are a highly intelligent person, and an expert in constitutional interpretation, I am curious what you think is a plausible basis for the Court to extend such a blessing. Given that whatever the Court decides to bestow as a "blessing," it is taking away from individual states. If the test for reviewing DOMA and California's Prop 8 is not "rational basis," what is the proper test? And if the test is rational basis, how does DOMA or Prop 8 offend?

5. Hagar:

The Supreme Court cannot "bless us" with a non-existent Constitutional right.

It is the word "marriage" that causes the problem for people.

It is not that hard for the Federal Gov't and the States to get out of the "marriage" business. Just declare that for the future "marriage" is a religious ceremony outside their purview, but existing "marriages" will be accepted as Civil Unions for taxes and other secular purposes.

6. ed:

@ Gahrie "The Supreme Court doesn't "bless us" with rights, or create rights. It protects the ones given to us by our creator and enumerated by the people in the Constitution."

You're forgetting the penumbra of the umbrella of the awning of the cockleshell of the reflected shadow on a latrine wall of unenumerated rights as recognized only when someone on the Supreme Court has a wet fart.

Because evidently I do not have the right to not have a federal drone hovering over my yard or a DEA SWAT team breaking down my door, shooting my dogs and handcuffing me on the say-so of a drug abusing informant looking to buy his freedom but two gay men have the right to bugger each other in privacy.

But then again if you look at the various opinions set forth by the multitude of SCOTUS decisions you can find just about any kind of idiotic retarded nonsense because it appears to be more of justifying what the justices want rather than what the Constitution actually has written.

7. Unknown:

I thought Althouse's original post was a tounge on cheek [sic] reference to how we just moved on after the Supreme Court blessed us with Roe v Wade. Her follow comment leaves me scratching my head.

I think the "follow comment" of mine that he's referring to is: "The GOP will be better off if the Supreme Court trumps this political issue. Democrats will may [sic] rejoice publicly, but privately they should curse." I used the word "curse" in deliberate counterpoint to "bless." And this actually should make sense in connection with Roe v. Wade. Politically, the decision undercut the liberals who would have fought for the right and gave huge energy to those who opposed it.

But I don't think a right to same-sex marriage will play out politically the same way. The pro-life movement is propelled by the belief that what's going on in the zone of privacy is the murder of helpless, innocent human beings. Pro-lifers can never move on. There is no corresponding moral compulsion to continue to agonize over what's happening inside someone else's marriage. Even if you think it's terrible and sinful, you can move on. That's the political blessing I foresee.

"Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of [the words of the Declaration of Independence] with the realities of our time."

The words President Obama had just quoted, in his Inaugural Address, were: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

More from the text of the speech:

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  

God! God is well-represented in this speech. In addition to that "gift from God" (and "their Creator"), there's:

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own....

We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God....

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service....

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

God is the source of our rights, God makes us stewards of the environment, public servants swear oaths to God, and the blessings of God are requested.

Obama also dealt with the question of federalism, the role of federal power. There are the things we do "together," he said, listing matters that call for uniform national policy: providing for "railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce," "schools and colleges to train our workers, regulation of the "free market... to ensure competition and fair play," "care for the vulnerable," and "protect[ion] ... from life’s worst hazards and misfortune."

But then he gives attention to some conservative ideas, "skepticism of central authority," rejection of "the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone," "celebration of initiative and enterprise," and "insistence on hard work and personal responsibility."

Turning back to the left, he asserts that "preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action." Collective action is needed "Now, more than ever," he says: "My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together." Made for this moment? That's an odd phrase, echoed later with "That is what this moment requires," which comes after vague references to "outworn programs, and the need to "harness new ideas and technology," to fix: 1. "our government," 2. "our tax code," and 3. "our schools." Nothing particularly "this moment" about any of that, so this "moment" theme fizzled. Maybe it was an incorporation by reference to his huge "This is the moment" speech from June 2008.

There's more to the speech — attention to the environment, national security, "our gay brothers and sisters," and so forth, and it finally comes back to the Declaration of Independence material. We need to "lift" our "voices... in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals" and "embrace... our lasting birthright... of freedom."

"The Charmin corporate Twitter account got in on it with a surprisingly trenchant commentary on the disposability of American currency."

That's the way Slate — displaying the winners of its design-a-$1-trillion-coin contest — refers to the symbolism here:



"Surprisingly trenchant commentary." Come on! I like delicate toilet paper, but why the delicacy talking about toilet paper? What, exactly, is the commentary? I assumed it was: American currency is something you may as well wipe your ass with. But then I thought the idea was: Uh, oh, we just pooped ourselves.

Maybe you're wracking your brain for a way to use the old "Don't Squeeze the Charmin" slogan, but that was the 1960s. The current slogans — if I am to believe the Charmin Wikipedia page — are: "Enjoy the Charmin experience" and "Enjoy The Go." Enjoy the go?! Put that on the coin. Hell, make that the national motto. "In God We Trust" is getting old. It's divisive. And, frankly, it's unfair to God.

"Enjoy the Go"... I looked it up to see how they were playing this slogan in the commercials:



The relief. The calm. The clean. The comfort.

See? That's the way you'll feel after that $1-trillion is deposited in the toilet bank. This image evokes Sigmund Freud:

Freud suggested that children in the anal stage of development regard the release of their feces as a gift to the parent — a gift that can be given or withheld. Children will release the feces if given sufficient love and withhold them if not. In Freudian thought, fecal matter becomes a type of currency in the parent-child relationship, which can be withheld or dispensed, thus giving the child a sense of control. The word currency is appropriate in this context; Freud assumed that the human unconscious makes a symbolic equation between feces and money. In a 1911 paper on dreams in folklore, he noted that according to ancient Eastern mythology, “gold is the excrement of hell” (Freud & Oppenheim, 1911/1958, p. 157).

Hell!

(I'm riffing on the toilet paper topic topic Meade introduced late last night. That was Meade — did you notice? — not me.)

"Is God happy?"

"The question is not absurd."

... If He is not indifferent, but subject to emotion like us, He must live in a constant state of sorrow when He witnesses human suffering....

If, on the other hand, He is perfectly immutable, He cannot be perturbed by our misery; He must therefore be indifferent. But if He is indifferent, how can He be a loving father? And if He is not immutable, then He takes part in our suffering, and feels sorrow.

"The Elvis Problem: Defining Religion Under The First Amendment."

Instapundit weighs in on the Kwanzaa question I brought up yesterday.

And I want to drag something I wrote in my own comments section up to the front page. The Madison School District portrays Kwanzaa as something that belongs in government-run schools because it's a "culturally relevant practice," but:

Religion is a "culturally relevant practice."

It just doesn't belong in public schools.

And:

I mean practicing it doesn't belong in public schools.

It's fine and even desirable to teach children about the various religious traditions. It's part of history and social studies, and it should be taught competently and with a fact-based approach, not infused with promptings to feel inspired and devoted.

I think this is such a solid point that the definition of religion — for these school-based Establishment Clause cases — should be built around the idea that the compulsory attendance coerced in the name of education should not be exploited to capture the part of the child's mind that turns to God when the child is religious. All human beings have this aspect of their minds, whether they are religious or not, and the state's power does not belong there. When we see devotional exercises in public schools we should be revolted.

Background note: In the most relevant Supreme Court case (which is in a somewhat different context), the Court spoke of religion as "a sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those [religions] admittedly qualifying for the exemption." (The context was conscientious objection from the military draft.) The value of the Court's definition was that it avoided making distinctions and favored equal treatment under the laws.

Are you keeping up with the tweeting of the Pope?

I started "following" him, but then there were no tweets, and I check Twitter so rarely, that I hadn't read any of his tweets. Then, I read in Vanity Fair: "Pope Starts Tweeting, Can’t Stop Tweeting, Is Called a 'Huge Bummer." Wow. Okay. So, I'll check what the Pope is tweeting. (I am not Catholic, so I'm under no obligation!)

Mary is filled with joy on learning that she is to be the mother of Jesus, God’s Son made man.True joy comes from union with God
— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 19, 2012

Going for the embed code, I get to see everyone who's replying to that:

@pontifex dear Pope, we can read it in Bible, Twitter is for posting something trendy. Try it please.
— Jānis Palkavnieks (@Palkavnieks) December 19, 2012

. @pontifex Who is this 'God' you keep talking about?
— Carl Maxim (@carlmaxim) December 19, 2012