General News

Election Day 2012

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I voted yesterday, Election Day Eve, at my city’s Board of Elections Commissioner’s office. I had errands to run yesterday, and I wanted to work uninterrupted today. So, I went to the third floor of City Hall and cast an in-person absentee ballot. I was happy to have the choice to vote early, yet the convenience of it did not in any way detract from the importance and the beauty of casting my vote. The office is a small room, and when I arrived there were only a couple of people in line ahead of me.

General News

Halloween After Ms Sandy (A Short Story)

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Ms Pearl lives directly below me in our apartment building in Orange, New Jersey. We exchange pleasantries at the mailbox or in the parking lot as we go about our day. She is a beautiful elder woman. I hope I look that good when I am her age, and it is hard to know just how old she is. She is perhaps in her late sixties or early seventies.

General News

Dear Mr. President

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Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to remind you that from a just peace perspective no one can “win” a debate with political prevarications – a.k.a. lies. In my interpretation of just peace, truth, respect and security are three primary principles rooted and grounded in the Golden Rule that are necessary for peace. Just peace is not only a relatively new paradigm for thinking about war and peace, but it is also a way of conducting our lives in ways that make for both personal and political, for local and global peace. Truth-telling is a necessary component of justice. And without the due regard that justice is, there can be no peace.

General News

Frank Luntz, Paul Ryan, and the GOP Inauguration Night Conspiracy

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Few successful conspiracies are published. Most conspiracy theories are incredible because they presuppose that the conspirators can keep a secret. The truth is the more people involved the less likely that the conspiracy will remain secret. In the GOP inauguration night conspiracy, somebody talked. And Robert Draper reported it in his book “Do Not Ask What Good We Do.”

General News

Is Palestinian President Abbas Telling the Truth?

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Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love you. Psalm 122:6
Those of us who spend time thinking about the connection between justice and peace, thinking about ways to make peace– personal and political, local and global – can learn very much from the speeches of world leaders at the opening of the UN General Assembly. Since the question of whether or not Iran will develop a nuclear weapon is an issue in the presidential campaign, the remarks of President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad received the lion’s share of media attention around this year’s opening. However, one speech that we ought to consider carefully is that of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He painted a disturbing portrait of the state of the relationship between the Government of Israel (GOI) and the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

General News

Peace Day 2012

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In just peace theory, three primary principles – truth, respect, security – stand as categories of both personal morality and public policy that can make for peace. October 21 is the UN Day of International Peace and Global Ceasefire. It is a day to rededicate ourselves to the goal of ending violent conflict in the world, both local and global. This Peace Day comes as scorching drought-dry summer turns to a cool green autumn of an exhausting US presidential campaign. Mercifully, this will be over in a few weeks.

General News

The Idea of America

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When Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, announced Representative Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate, Ryan said that America was an idea. He spoke of the idea that human rights derive from God and from nature and not from government. Whether or not human rights ought to be grounded in natural law is a discussion for another day. For now, let us think about the opposition Ryan asserts between God and nature on one hand and government on the other. His remarks intimate that government is some tyrannical bogey man out to debilitate righteous free enterprise, binding it with red tape and stealing our liberties and our hard-earned money through taxes.

General News

Revolutionary Elections and Revolutionary Acts

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We do not talk much about human rights in our current public discourse. We reference them when we are scolding some murderous oppressive dictator, but we rarely speak about them when speaking about our own policy goals. Speaking about human rights is a revolutionary act, and far too many politicians and pundits shy away from revolutionary ideas because such ideas threaten the status quo. I say: Let the next election be a revolutionary election. Our struggle for a progressive political agenda is a revolutionary act.

Politics & Society

Congress Reaps What it Sows

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In his book, “Don’t Ask What Good We Do”, Robert Draper describes a dinner meeting of a group of Republicans on the night of President Obama’s inauguration. The group decided they would not cooperate with President Obama, that they would do everything in their power to obstruct his agenda for the country. They would attack Democrats in the media at every turn in order to take back the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. According to Draper, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Pete Sessions, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, and Dan Lungren from the House of Representatives and Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn, John Ensign and Bob Corker from the Senate attended the dinner. Newt Gingrich also attended the dinner hosted by Frank Luntz.

Christianity

When God Does a New Thing

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When the living God sends new mercies, when God is ready to do a new thing, it is important that we do not stand as an obstruction because to do so separates us not only from our sisters and brothers, but it separates us from God. In the current discussion about LGBTQIA rights in general and same-sex marriage in particular, the questions for believers are: what is God doing? What does God require of me? I am a Bible-believing Baptist. I say: God said it.