art's blog

The papers in California were filled with news last week about U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's ruling on a new case regarding the Pledge of Allegiance. The judge sided with Michael Newdow and three other unnamed parents of Sacramento-area public school children, requiring the districts to stop reciting the pledge. Newdow had brought a similar case to court last year, but the case was dismissed because Newdow is divorced and no longer has custody of his child.

Since there have been a few posts on this topic recently, I finally made time to write up my opinion on the matter.  Read More »

Fellow bloggers, check this out. Apparently some people have gotten the mistaken impression that Garry Trudeau, author of the comic strip Doonesbury, hates bloggers. Nothing could be further from the truth, says one of GBT's top aides:

Regular readers know that for several years GBT has repeatedly addressed blogging from a variety of angles, often sympathetically. In fact, no fewer than five Doonesbury characters are currently bloggers themselves, and some of them were online long before blogs became ubiquitous.  Read More »

The New York Times ran a good story today about podcasting by churches, AKA "godcasting." I think this is a good sign for progressive churches. For years talk radio has been dominated by the radical right, with people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson getting millions of listeners. Podcasting breaks down the barriers to entry, and it sounds like we're getting a much better selection of material for progressives of all religious stripes.

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I have seen this book in the bookshops for weeks now, and even glanced at the jacket cover, but it didn't seem interesting enough to justify my time reading it. Until now. I read a review of the book in Inc. Magazine last weekend, and I decided that I will read the book at some point.

Here's what piqued my interest: Levitt explains in the book that he has discovered the reason for the decline in violent crimes starting in the early 1990s. The reasons we had all come to accept -- innovative policing practices, gun control, and the booming 1990's economy -- were all incorrect, says Levitt (or at least not as important as his explanation). The largest single contributor to the reduction in violent crime was Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.  Read More »

I heard a fascinating interview on the radio yesterday. An army sergeant named Neal Saunders put together a hip hop group called 4th25 (pronounced "fourth quarter") while he was serving in Iraq, and recorded an entire album in a makeshift studio. The album is called, appropriately enough, Live From Iraq.  Read More »

I met the Executive Director of a nonprofit group called Community Voice Mail earlier this year at a course at Stanford. Community Voice Mail a great organization; they provide voicemail to people who don't have their own phones, which can often make a huge difference to people in turning their lives back around.

I just found out that they have been selected by Amazon and Stanford as one of 10 finalists in the Amazon's Nonprofit Innovation Award. If they win, they get $1 million from Amazon!

You can help them win by donating and thereby "voting" for them using the link below.  Read More »

For those of you who like audio, here is a great summary of the story a lot of us have been reading about for the last year.  This NPR piece by Peter Overby summarizes how conservatives took hold of all branches of government by creating a political and media noise machine over the last 30 years, and what progressives are doing to turn things back around.

Sorry it's not a podcast, so you'll need to be tethered, but it's a great 5 minute summary of an important story.

Before Live-8, concert promoter Bob Geldof asked all performers not to badmouth President Bush or other conservative administrations. Geldof was concerned that unless rockers were nice to Mr. Bush, he might get angry and refuse to pony up aid money for Africa and other worthy causes. Apparently the Rolling Stones didn't get the memo.

Word on the street is that the Rolling Stones' soon-to-be-released album contains a track called Sweet NeoCon, which is sharply critical of neo-conservative policies. Here are some excerpts from the lyrics:  Read More »