Home
Nathan Rein's Library tagged → View Popular
Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins | World news | guardian.co.uk
-
The event, which happens every five years, began with decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.
-
The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls blaring music and offering tea and sugary snacks.
- 2 more annotations...
Christian registrar should not be disciplined over same-sex marriage refusal - Telegraph
From the UK: a clerk who refused to solemnize a same-sex marriage is claiming that her refusal to do so -- which she says stems from her religious beliefs -- is protected under freedom-of-conscience laws. She is suing her employer, the Islington Council, for religious discrimination, and she "claims she suffered ridicule and bullying as a result of her stance and said she had been harassed ... by the council."
-
James Dingemans QC, representing her, told a panel of three appeal judges that
Ms Ladele had never wanted to undermine the human rights or respect due to
members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities.
But human rights laws must also be there to protect people with committed
views about marriage, he said. -
'Modern human rights jurisprudence was not intended to obliterate religious
beliefs held for millennia.''
Mr Dingemans said she could not go against her faith and take an active part
to enable same-sex unions. - 1 more annotations...
Stephen Colbert interviews Fr. Randall Balmer on the papal appeal to Anglicans, Oct. 27, 2009
East London Advertiser - Muslim councillor faces protests as she takes prayer break at Tower Hamlets
Healthcare reform rationing ‘precisely what the Nazis did,’ Land says
Quotations from Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religoius Liberty Commission, speaking to the "God and Country Banquet" held by the Christian Coalition of Florida. What he said: "I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did... Let's remember... the first 10,000 victims of the Holocaust were not Jews, they were mentally handicapped German children who were gassed and burned in ovens because they were considered to have... lives unworthy of life... [The healthcare debate is] about whether we are going to continue to believe our founding documents, which say that we believe that all people are equal and we're created in the image of our Creator and that we have certain unalienable rights -- and among these is the right to life... [At stake] is the definition of a human being... We are faced with what I call 'biological bigotry' and it is every bit as pernicious, every bit as evil, every bit as destructive as the racial and ethnic bigotry that has plagued us in the past... There is loose within the liberal culture which dominates the Democratic Party and dominates our government at present, a biological bigotry that is feeding a euthanasia mentality."
Gloucester Lawyer Defends Satirical Glenn Beck Website - Bostonist
This seems a little far-fetched for a possible blog post, but the issue is authenticity. Who owns the name "Glenn Beck"? What counts as satire as opposed to defamation? What sorts of rhetorical gestures are acceptable in what contexts? In other words, if you make the suggestion that Glenn Beck committed a horrible crime, but couch that suggestion in a form of sarcasm easily recognizable to anyone familiar with cyberculture, have you sufficiently protected yourself against the charge of defamation?
-
Add Sticky NoteLink to the filing via ArsTechnica.
- The filing is really worth reading -- it's a fourteen-page PDF. - on 2009-10-02
Residents carried their own signs Wednesday evening calling for peace not hate in response to a northwest Gainesville church that recently posted a sign with an anti-Islamic message. | Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, FL
-
-
"We're part of this community, and we deserve some respect," said Rais, who questioned how she could feel safe walking with their two children on a street where a message like the one in front of the church was displayed.
Another child, accompanied by adults, held his own sign proclaiming, "I am a Muslim. Please don't hate me," as cars passed by with motorists honking or giving a thumbs-up sign.
Frank Rich, "Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day," The New York Times (Sept. 19, 2009)
Frank Rich on why Democrats should be paying attention to Glenn Beck. This is actually a really good opinion piece.
Maureen Dowd, "Boy, Oh, Boy" (op-ed on Obama and race), NYTimes.com (Sept. 13, 2009)
Jim Clyburn, a Democratic House member from South Carolina, talking about the attacks on Obama: "A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president... In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom... You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, 'Son, always remember that silence gives consent.'"
Rick Perlstein -- Birthers, Health Care Hecklers and the Rise of Right-Wing Rage - washingtonpost.com
Cf. David Brion Davis and the "paranoid style" in U.S. political culture. Archived: http://sqrl.it/?fsq7a
NYT: ‘Death panel’ rumor has familiar roots - The New York Times- msnbc.com
The ludicrous idea that Obama will engage in forced-euthanasia policies doesn't come from random Internet mouth-breathers. It comes from respected conservative opinion leaders.
Michael Gerson - Invoking Nazism in Health Care Debate Trivializes the Holocaust - washingtonpost.com
I'm not sure I agree with Gerson here, though I understand the principle. What he's saying could be interpreted as equivalent to the idea that Nazism should be treated as incommensurable with any other form of evil. I don't buy that. I do buy that genocide is exponentially worse than any other kind of crime. But drawing a comparison between the PATRIOT Act and NSDAP policies towards dissent in the thirties is not the same as howling that Obama is a Nazi because he wants to provide a "public option" in health insurance. The former, if you ask me, is legitimate, if maybe a little extreme; the latter is offensive.
Peter Singer, "Why We Must Ration Health Care," The New York Times (July 15, 2009)
Peter Singer's controversial article on why "rationing" health care is inevitable and on some principles for thinking about how it should be done.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Top Contributors
Groups interested in controve...
-
Controversy
Items: 5 | Visits: 43
Created by: aeschylus
-
Texas Strengths and Weaknesses Blog Sources
Blog sources dealing the Te...
Items: 30 | Visits: 3
Created by: Jeremy Price
Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »
Join Diigo