An informal poll of the Internet:

invade Iraq now -- 38,100 hits
leave Saddam alone -- 40,800 hits

George Bush is a doody-head -- 51 hits
Saddam Hussein is a doody-head -- 6 hits

The internet is not on the President's side.

Monsignor Says Gays Shouldn't Be Priests Monsignor Baker also said that a vow of celibacy by a homosexual man is "superfluous" because it is a promise to abstain from homosexual acts that are already sinful and must be abstained from. The homosexual priest, moreover, cannot be "genuinely a sign of Christ's spousal love for the church," which implies a male-female relationship, he said.

I'm setting aside all the problems with the opening and middle of the article -- I'm not here to tell the Catholics how to read their Bibles or understand human biology, sociology, and psychology. What I found interesting was the bit I quoted above, from the end of the article. I had always understood the rationale behind celibacy to be that having a romantic relationship interfered with priestly duty. It diverted the priest's energy from the work of serving God, and made him somehow impure. Which to me suggested that the priesthood would be a good option for gay Catholics (and it's no doubt attracted a few on these grounds) -- if your religion says you have to be celibate either way, you might as well take advantage of it.

But what Baker is suggesting here is that the act of abstaining from something desirable and (in general) permissible is inherently virtuous, and priests must exercise extraordinary virtue. Abstaining from gay sex doesn't count toward this, as it's a sunk cost -- you'd have to abstain anyway. (To step into the realm of the frivolous for a moment, perhaps gay priests could even the score by keeping kosher.)

The second paragraph I quoted I can't make any sense out of. In what way do straight priests symbolize Jesus' "spousal love" for the Church by remaining single?

I was going to deconstruct the President's proposed Iraq resolution or his new American Imperialism Manifesto. But there's just too much there. Too much internal contradiction, too much hypocrisy, too many falsehoods, too many statements that could incriminate the US as easily as Iraq. Maybe I should have gone to McGill after all.

This is impressive. Despite the media's fixation on Iraq, a major mainstream cartoonist found the time to address an issue as (undeservedly) low-profile as corrupt mismanagement of Native American trust funds. The problem is, a candidate's position on reforming the BIA is never going to be a decisive issue in any election for a federal office, so Carlson's efforts won't accomplish as much as if he had drawn about Iraq.

Addendum: The Christian Science Monitor weighed in today as well.

Our Secularist Democratic Party Anyone who has followed American politics over the past decade cannot help but feel some concern about the supposed fundamentalist Christian threat to democratic civility, pluralism, and tolerance. At the very least, the attentive citizen would find it hard not to regard the cultural and political positions of fundamentalists as outside the mainstream, given the volume of media stories that have conveyed this point. At the same time, the media's obsession with politicized fundamentalism distracts public attention from the changing role of religion in political life today. ... The media mistakenly frames cultural conflict since the 1970s as entirely the result of fundamentalist revanchism. In so doing, the media ignores the growing influence of secularists in the Democratic party and obfuscates how their worldview is just as powerful a determinant of social attitudes and voting behavior as is a religiously traditionalist outlook.

This is a very long, but interesting article pointing out the importance of secularism as a cultural and political force in America today. In some ways it rings true as as point worth making. In many places I notice that there's a strong current of antagonism toward "fundamentalists," a sort of stereotype of a Bible-thumping Christian conservative. In circles that have few people of strong Christian faith, fundamentalists are seen as the premier threat to their preferred way of life in the same way that those fundamentalists raise the specter of the secular threat to traditional culture (and there's truth in both sides' assessments of the situation, as well as in each of their assumptions that they defend the views of the middle while the other is a fringe group). But this trend gets little attention as a social phenomenon. Just like white is not a race and male is not a gender, secular is not seen as a religio-cultural position.

However, the article overlooks several points in its attempt to present the Secular Left as a mirror image of the Religious Right. First is the question of leadership. It's clear that not only are fundamentalists a key voting bloc for the Republicans, but they also furnish much of its leadership and policy direction. However, secularists -- while voting consistently Democratic -- do not have a comparable position of leadership in the party. Most Democratic politicians profess religious faith, as evidenced by the reaction to the Pledge ruling. The rise of the Green Party further testifies to the frustration of secularists with their inability to drive the Democratic truck. Further, they don't frame their identity in terms of their secularness. The lack of God in their worldview does not define it the way the presence of God defines fundamentalism. Their shared cultural values brings them together, not their secularism.

Arrrr, that George W. Bush is a scurvy dog. I'll hoist him from the yardarm if he be talkin' about keelhauling Saddam again. Even Blackbeard respected my civil libarrrrrrrrrrrrrrties!

Maya Text Points to War Between Two Superpowers Newly translated inscriptions at an ancient pyramid in Guatemala suggest that the Maya civilization, at its peak, was dominated by two powerful city-states that engaged in a protracted "superpower" struggle. The east section of the staircase describes a "star war" attack on Dos Pilas by the king of Calakmul�so-called because the attack was influenced by astrological movements and the dominance of Venus.

This is a very interesting development in Maya archaeology, and so far as I can judge from the article it seems based on solid science. But the two elements I quoted -- the war between two great powers, and the astronomical influence on the timing of battle -- are going to provide encouragement to Erich von Däniken and his ilk. Obviously, these hieroglyphics must be referring to a battle between two alien races in the distant past.

The Incredible Shrinking Ozone Hole The level of chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is falling, and the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica should close by 2050, Australian scientists have revealed. A jubilant Paul Fraser, chief research scientist with the CSIRO's atmospheric research division, which made the discovery, said it was now clear that the pain Western nations, including Australia, had accepted after CFCs were banned in the mid-1990s had been worthwhile. "This is big news ... we have been waiting for this," he said yesterday. "I think this shows global protocols can work."

Finally, some good news about the environment.

Upon further thought, it may be that Bush's UN speech isn't quite as paradoxical as I made it out to be. It could be said that if the UN doesn't enforce its principle with regard to Iraq, it loses its legitimacy, thus freeing the US to attack whoever it wants.

Iraq Briefings: Don't Ask, Don't Tell With the windowless room swept for bugs and lawmakers sworn to deepest secrecy, Rumsfeld proceeded to disclose, well, absolutely nothing this group of lawmakers couldn't have read in the morning papers or watched on TV news channels, according to participants. Actually, they weren't told even that much. "It was a joke," said McCain (R-Ariz.), who soon rose and strode out the door. This has become an increasingly familiar scene on Capitol Hill, especially since the Bush administration blamed senators this summer for leaking classified information about top-secret intercepts of communications among terrorists in the days leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Bush Administration motto: "Trust us, because we definitely don't trust you."