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At my church‘s Oktoberfest yesterday, I was speaking with some members — he’s a fighter pilot, she’s a writer — about our shared libertarianism. My congregation — located just outside of Washington, D.C. — has all political persuasions (including the wrong ones!) but we have more than a few members who are libertarian.
The New York Times has a very sad story about the lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan. It comes on the heels of news from the State Department that not a single Christian church remains in Afghanistan, following years of crackdowns by Muslim leaders.
One of the men that the recently killed Anwar al-Awlaki worked with was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He’s the guy known as the underwear bomber, after his attempt to take down a Detroit-bound plane two Christmases ago. And you can thank the U.S. response to that failed attempt for the nudie scans and freedom fondles you receive at airports these days.
One of the hazards of being married to a political journalist and living in a small house is that you have to watch or listen to each and every political debate and major policy speech. By my count, we’ve seen 49 Republican debates in the last few months. Or maybe it seems like there are so many because they are so danged interminable. Each one goes on for hours.
Shortly after the Day of Rage that kicked off the Occupy Wall Street movement, I complained about the lack of coverage in general and the lack of religion coverage in particular. (See: “Prayer, song, meditation and ‘rage’“)
On Friday morning, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemeni activist Tawakul Karman were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for womenâs rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
Earlier this week I read a story in the Denver Post about Najibullah Zazi’s plot to set off bombs in the New York subway. The plot was thwarted after someone monitoring the email of a key al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan intercepted a message from Zazi, a Denver-area airport shuttle driver.
We may have anticipated the news but it’s still such a shock to read about Apple founder Steve Jobs’ death, likely from pancreatic cancer. Many of us first read or heard the news on Apple products. I write this on my iMac with two iPhones, an iPad and two Macbooks nearby. And I’m not even one of those Mac evangelists. I just really like the design and function of the products.
An extremely important religious liberty case is being argued in front of the Supreme Court today. I have been meaning to cover the case for months, but it kept falling into the deeper recesses of my guilt file. The case involves the firing of a Lutheran school teacher from a Lutheran school. The particulars of the case are unique and the story of the teacher who was fired is compelling. But because of the way the lower courts have ruled and because of the possible outcomes of a SCOTUS decision, today is just huge.
