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Over the past few days, anyone interested in American politics has read more than a few stories about U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican stalwart from Idaho, and his adventures in a men’s bathroom in Minnesota. It will be some time before people in this town are able to talk about a politician taking a unique “stance” on a tricky issue without thinking about him.
New York Times health and science reporter Benedict Carey has had more than a few interesting stories this summer. I particularly liked his write-up about how firstborn children have higher IQs. I’m a last born, for what it’s worth. For years he’s covered the case of one J. Michael Bailey, a pscyhologist at Northwestern University. Yesterday he wrote about the academic dispute involving Bailey, the former head of the psychology department:
Michael Paulson of The Boston Globe has written one of the most poignant feature stories about the Episcopal Church’s sexuality debate that I have seen in more than 15 years of writing about the topic. In writing about two brothers who are priests, Paulson reveals their deep division on sexuality (“Bill Murdoch calls homosexual activity a sin, while Brian Murdoch calls it a gift”) and persuades the brothers to talk about how they have remained close.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has ordained gay clergy for years. Since it formed out of a merger of three Lutheran church bodies in 1988, it has defrocked three clergy for violating the church body’s requirement that gay clergy abstain from sexual relationships. At the group’s national assembly last week in Chicago, a vote to permit homosexual clergy to engage in sexual relationships failed on Friday but another vote requesting that the church body avoid disciplining gay clergy who violate the celibacy policy was passed on Saturday.
Bruce Tomaso at the Dallas Morning News‘ fine religion blog highlights a horrible Reuters story that Christianity Today‘s Ted Olsen found.
A reader of ours, UndergroundPewster, wrote us a note asking for our thoughts on this International Herald Tribune article on a new secular civics course being introduced in Spain.
I completely gave up coffee (quelle horreur!) when I found out I was pregnant late last year. Later I was told by my wonderful doctor that I could have up to 300 mg or so of caffeine a day. I promptly left her office and went to the nearest coffee shop. Over the months of pregnancy, a fascinating thing has happened to me. While no one has begrudged me an occasional sip of wine or my husband’s beer — no disapproving looks, even — I have had tremendous trouble ordering coffee.
While visiting the blog of Episcopal priest Joseph Howard I came across a link to a new journalism and religion site. Funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, the site has blogs, links to a Second Life community, and other features. Here’s how it’s described:
One of the greatest challenges that journalists face, in my humble opinion, is knowing how to handle a strong, newsworthy statement of fact by a person of authority that simply cannot be verified as accurate.
