An interesting article from the NY Times:
Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
May 22, 2004
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General
Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined
conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along
liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook
the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this
month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken
away to form a dissident network of their own.
In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but
there is another common denominator as well. In each case,
the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small
organization based in Washington, has helped incubate
traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics
of the denomination’s leaders.
With financing from a handful of conservative donors,
including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and
Olin Foundations and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson’s
Fieldstead and Company, the 23-year-old Institute is now
playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the
future of American Protestantism since churches split over
slavery at the time of the Civil War.

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This is a quote from Focus on the Family’s CitizenUpdate:

“Constitutions should consist only of general provisions;
the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and
that they cannot calculate for the possible change of
things.”
–Alexander Hamilton
Wouldn’t this negate the proposed Constitutional amendment on gay-marriage? Was there lesson learned with the Prohibition amendments?

The Atlantic Monthly magazine’s lead article for May is entitled, “The Tragedy of Tony Blair: Spin, Scandal, and the Fearful ‘Yes’ to a War He could have Stopped.” The cover photo of Blair is barely recognizable
As I initially browsed through the article, I felt a strange sense of sadness. Over the years whenever I heard Blair speak, I wished my own president sounded as good.
Reading the article more intently, the following lines struck me:

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Okay, this just has to stop! On my flight home to Ohio for our new bishop’s consecration last weekend, there were two girls on the flight – high school or early college age, I suspect. Both were trying to do the Paris Hilton and sister bit. One had very low-riding jeans with a cloth belt that included thingies that hung down from the belt. Her only problem was that she was probably 100 pounds heavier than Paris Hilton. Tanned? Yes. Bleached? Yes. Mid-drift shirt? Yes. Flab hanging over her belt? Yes. Crack showing? More times than I wanted to count. She was on my return flight, also. Same thing. STOP THE MADNESS!
Then, jogging down the Hudson parkway last Sunday, there was a young guy and I suspect his girlfriend sitting on a bench over looking the river. The girl, yes with low-rise jeans, was exposing several inches of her crack – not just the tippy-top mind you, but inches! Of course, the current fashion of having a thong on and having the top portion of the thong exposed while the jeans ride down most of you butt was not her goal, it seems. From what was showing, she had no thong, period. Uggggghhhhhh.

Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, writing about the meaning of The Bill of Rights; “Today, those fundamentally American words are nearly forgotten. Constitutional rulings of the courts are evaluated by looking to polling numbers. People no longer agree wit the courts, they attach the legitimacy of our system of government. That is dangerous.
From: GayCityNews, ‘GOP Splits on Amendment’ VOLUME 3, ISSUE 314 | April 1 – 7, 2004.

I got this from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. It is very poignant without being nasty.
It is the winner of MoveOn.org advertisement competition.
I remember the WR Grace Company putting together a series of ads during the Reagan administration making a very similar point. Grace’s ads were much darker. Set in the near future, they showed the younger generations in near destitution along the lines of ‘Mad-Max’ or ‘1984’ putting on trial the elder generation for their irresponsible and greedy spending spree that plunged the economy and nation into ruin. The ads never ran because the television powers that were considered them too extreme. It seemed their premise would not come to pass when Clinton came into office and the deficits where eliminated. This occurred under a Democratic administration, no less. So, here we are under Bush, a Republican, and deficit spending is back in a rampage.
Yes, the situations between Reagan tenure and Bush’s are different, but the fact is that we have returned to fiscally immoral deficit spending without restraint, thus the new round of commercials. It seems for me, considering myself a ‘progressive-conservative,’ Bush has turned into a Republican I cannot support.
(Watch all the winning entries.)