Christian self-defense
David Ross has an interesting take. I'm not sure the verses he uses are properly contextualized, but he cites an interesting interpretation by one of the Jesus Seminar guys:

"In a Jennings special on the Historical Jesus, back in Y2k A.D., John Dominic Crossan said that being slapped on your cheek was a symbol of shame. In this case, assuming a right-handed population, you would be slapped on the same cheek. To turn the other cheek to such an assailant would force the assailant to strike you as an equal - to start a fight, in other words. It is in this spirit of resistance that Jesus talks back when the High Priest slaps him in John 18:22-23 (as pointed out here). Ditto the 'take my shirt' comment - removing one's own shirt in front of an aggressor is an internationally recognised challenge. The message is clear: if one insults you, your response is to call him on it."

This is news to me, and I'll have to look into it, but it's an interesting and plausible interpretation in my view.

And St. Augustine says....
"Wars are always unfortunate but it would be more unfortunate for the unjust to triumph over the just. The necessity of going to war to prevent this may certainly be regarded by good people as being a blessed course of action."

Via "The Sanity Inspector" found at this post's comments.

Jesus, war, and coins
This is the best essay on Christian pacifism and just war theory that I have read in a long time. The skinny:

"And so Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's...."

"'Must a Christian be a pacifist?' I am not trying to answer this question, because it cannot be answered. It is as fatuous as the question, 'Must a Christian be a warmonger?' Instead I am writing for the one purpose, to my readers both Christian and not, of exposing nonsense."

"For to say that, because we are Christian, Caesar must never fight wars, is to present Caesar's coin to Christ. He does not want it."

David Warren correctly notes the fallacy of taking the admonition of Jesus to "turn the other cheek" and applying it to states and political authority. Indeed, Jesus and the disciples are largely silent on political theory as the complicated ethics of war, as Warren points out, I think the best we can do is extrapolate from Old Testament examples, but even then most of the arguments I've seen are very tenuous. I do believe Christians put themselves in quite the precarious bind when they presume that all truth, knowledge, and good advice is somewhere, somehow, directly rooted in the Bible. Yes, I believe the Bible is God's Word, and I believe it is authoritative on what it speaks about, but I do not believe it speaks about everything under the sun, as convenient as that would be for us.

Speaking of bad litigation...
If ever there was proof that the antitrust strategies the government has pursued over the past quarter-century were unnecessary and harmful to the overall direction of the economy, the collapse of WorldCom is all we need. Borne of AT&T's legal difficulties in the '80s, WorldCom was founded on a business strategy that ultimately was proven to be ineffective and a step backward for telecommunications, driven as it was by the regulatory denial of the more commonsensical integration of long distance and local coverage. Not only are we light years behind the rest of the world--and especially Europe, Asia, and even parts of Latin America--in the basic health of our telecommunications industry, but we are sufficiently handicapped that we risk losing our role as a global player in this vital cog of the Information Age economy.

Whither the fury?
So two of my friends and loyal readers have asked me, "Why haven't you written anything on the Pledge decision?" Well, I've been pretty busy the past couple days--busy as in I now have a job. (Whoah, where'd that come from?) Anyway, it was a bunch of last-minute stuff that kept me from really even being able to sit down at a computer long enough to do anything beyond checking email, and then I had to catch up on sleep (I had a nice four-hour afternoon snooze today...I feel refreshed) since I ended up being out really late the past two nights in relation to what time I had to be up in the morning (or was woken up against my will). So yeah, I figured I'd just sit down and have a reaction this weekend, but whaddaya know, with so many bloggers out there and the 24-hour news cycle and all, it's become almost redundant of me to even think about the subject. I'll type something up soon, taking a look at both court cases (neither of which I've even had a chance to read yet), and even link to a few other responses if I feel up to it.

So, the job? Yes, I am now working for the Committee to Elect Ross Moen. Ross is the Republican candidate in the 35th California Congressional District, and he's up against the incumbent and incompetent Democrat Maxine Waters (wait, incompetent and Democrat...was I being redundant? ;-) ). Supposedly this job will involve dinero heading my way at some point (legally!), and as long as I get enough to get by for now and have enough down the road to start paying off student loans in November, I'm cool. It's a good opportunity and if we win, it'll probably land me in Washington, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have a huge mountain to climb with this campaign, and are clear underdogs...but redistricting/reapportionment has given us a clear chance. Plus, Waters is reviled by just about everyone who breathes, so we've got that going for us as well.

As a matter of fact, I need to put together a press release for Ross on the school vouchers case and the Pledge of Allegiance case. I'm going to do that first and I'll post something on here later.

Haha!
I'm sorry, but this just made me laugh.

More nonsense and wasteful spending
Does this mean we're back to normal, that guys like Ted Kennedy are showing us almost on a daily basis that they have their heads in the ground? This is only the latest example.

A Buckley view
So what will come of Bush's speech? Will Palestinians push for the changes Bush demanded? William F. Buckley has his answer, which essentially boils down to "ain't gonna happen." That's one of the ultimate ironies about this whole situation: even though Bush has done right by injecting plain-spoken truth into the diplomatic mess surrounding the Middle East situation, the equal and opposite reaction is just going to be more lies, more hate, more bombs. Buckley notes, with distanced disdain,

"The Germans taught us at Lidice one approach to terrorism, they just killed everybody in town."

Well, guess what? The terrorism won't stop until that happens. Either the Israelis are going to have to wipe out scores of people, or the Palestinians are going to have to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to kill off scores of Jews. Otherwise neither side is budging, as the Palestinians have shown already they prefer to inculcate a culture of anti-Semitism and bloodlust into their progeny rather than sow the seeds of peace. And the Jews aren't going anywhere. Many commentators have suggested that as much as one would like to hold onto hope, all reason points to utter despair in this situation. Nobody has come out and said it, but I don't doubt that many really do feel that there will never be peace in Israel and Palestine. That's the only truth left yet to be spoken by a prominent world leader.

WTC ideas
I like this.

Required reading
I'm completely in agreement with Steven Den Beste's analysis here and here. He breaks down the speech and tells you exactly what it means for everybody involved.

Barry on politics
Normally Dave Barry covers politics from such a distance that you'd be hard pressed to accuse him of taking sides. Well, his past column takes a break from that. My favorite line:

"At this rate, in a few years farmers will be so stable that they'll have to huddle in their root cellars for fear of being struck by bales of taxpayer-supplied cash raining down on the Heartland states from Air Force bombers."

We seriously need to get these welfare porkers out of the public trough and open up our markets to cheaper foreign producers. All that money spent on crops that will eventually be destroyed would go a lot further to benefit society and build the economy and create new jobs for displaced farmers if it was staying in taxpayers' pockets.

Bush's speech
It was huge. I mean, the president said so many things in this speech that will rock the diplomatic boat; I can just imagine the gnashing of teeth by UN and European leaders, as well as the disingenuous leadership in the Arab world. In essence, Bush said Arafat must go, Israel has a free hand to defend herself with whichever measures her leaders deem necessary against terrorism, and Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia must stop funding, financing, and funneling the terrorists and their weapons. The backlash will be here soon. In fact, an Instapundit reader reports that the BBC cut out its coverage in the middle of the speech. That wouldn't surprise me at all, but tuning out the leader of the free world won't change the impact his monumental words are sure to have.

Helpful Flash graphic
Check out this neat little Flash graphic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Washington Post. It's fairly unbiased and pretty accurate; there are certain facts and explanations I'd like to see added to better contextualize the information provided, but I can tell they chose to leave it out on purpose in order to appear balanced and fair.

Added: Comments
Feel free to comment on anything posted. I will generally let anything go, but if I find something way out of line, I will not hesitate to delete it and block the user if necessary. For the most part, though, I'm a libertarian on such matters, so fire away!

A reference point
Andrew Sullivan gets it--as usual. In his Sunday article, he discusses the quibblings of civil libertarians over police searches on buses, and what is constitutional. Then he puts in proper perspective:

"And then later that day, the news came through that another Islamist homicidal maniac had detonated a bomb on a bus in Israel, killing 19 innocents. Suddenly, the bus-search issue seemed placed in a whole new light. What if that happens here, you could hear people asking themselves. What would we say then?"

Indeed, much of the debate over civil liberties in this country--from speech and self-expression, sex and pornography, gun rights, and religion, to search and seizures, drug busts, internet and broadcasting liberties, and civil rights and equality issues--has taken place in a virtual bubble over the past few decades, with liberal interpretations of the Constitution gradually becoming the norm in each arena. Maybe now is a good time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and set the debate within a framework of priorities. The sooner we do this, the better we will be able to respond when--God forbid--our own city buses begin exploding.

"Beautiful friend, the end"
I never thought I'd be saying this, but I am extremely impressed with Time magazine's story on evangelical Christian apocalypticism. The subject is treated with respect, which is unusual for the secular media when it comes to dabbling in, understanding, and explaining Christian issues to the public. I've personally never read any of the Left Behind books--I'm not sure I want to for various reasons--but I am well aware of the biblical passages they are based upon. I think it's great that more people are paying attention to this; even as a sociological phenomenon, I see a whole lot of good in this, provided people don't start predicting or trying to jumpstart the end of the world with the thought that they are doing God a favor.

Go Augie Go!
I'm not surprised in the least that Augie Garrido has led the Texas Longhorns to their fifth national title today. He was great here in Southern California when he was the coach at Cal State Fullerton and is still loved and respected by a lot of people around here. Congrats guys.

It's also nice to see the imposter USC lose. ;-)

Want to buy a bridge?
Did the French invent the word gullible? The author of this book should be shot.

"[N]o Muslims took part in the attacks 'because the Koran forbids suicide.'"

And all those exploding bodies in Israel are really booby-trapped dummies planted by the Mossad, right? What an idiot.

Kinsley and Stephanopoulos
Michael Kinsley often frustrates me, but his recent piece on TV anchors is good. I think it'd be refreshing to see George Stephanopoulos be overtly biased rather than practice the high-minded elitist liberalism exuded by the rest of the TV news-world anchors. His appraisal of Fox News is great as well; I've been saying something along these lines since I first discovered the channel:

"Fox News is a brilliant experiment in overt, honest bias....Fox is usually fair but rarely balanced. In fact it is a good example of how you can be the one without the other."

Now if they would just stop claiming to be "fair and balanced," I'd have true respect for them. It's a refreshing step-up from the New York Times/Dan Rather-style subtle liberalism masquerading as objective news, though.

How long has it been?
I'm afraid my soccer commentaries below are way out of date by now, but oh well. I had a good couple weeks in Oregon/Seattle/New York, but I didn't find any time to blog (didn't have much for computer access). I'll be light for a while right now because I have a ton of stuff going on, and because I just installed XP on my laptop and it wiped out my modem driver, so I gotta figure out how to get that working.

I don't understand how so few people in America have World Cup fever; this has been such a great tournament so far, it's wide open for once, and hey, the USA is still in it! I think we can beat Germany, and Germany is supposedly weaker than normal, but they've been looking very solid and will be tough to beat. I'm picking Spain, England, and Turkey to win. I love Senegal but I think they'll lose their cool against a very physical and intelligent Turkish side. Brazil has also looked impressive, but their defense looks very vulnerable and I think England can shut down their attack. I'm not very sure on my Spain pick, though; the magic seems to be with Korea right now and Spain has a history of choking. Still, on talent alone, they are the best team in their side of the bracket.