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The lev­el to which oppo­nents of same-sex mar­riage are mis­un­der­stood (and there­by mis­rep­re­sent­ed) on this issue (and a host of oth­ers) is stag­ger­ing. 

WPost: Yes, we fear and loathe reli­gious tra­di­tion­al­istsW­Post: Yes, we fear and loathe reli­gious tra­di­tion­al­ists

mol­lie | Catholi­cism, Evan­gel­i­cals, Mar­riage & fam­i­ly, Pol­i­tics, Reli­gion, Same-sex mar­riage, Social Issues, Uncat­e­go­rized

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How have I not heard of this? This seems like a basic fact to know.

Jef­frey Sachs on Oba­ma and dis­cre­tionary spend­ing

…the sur­pris­ing truth is that from the start of his pres­i­den­cy Mr Oba­ma has planned a steep decrease in dis­cre­tionary spend­ing as a share of nation­al income. Each year he has put a bud­get on the table…

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Unex­pect­ed (at least by me).

Sen­tences to pon­der

Loca­tion mat­ters for online edu­ca­tion: most stu­dents enroll in insti­tu­tions with­in 100 miles from home. The link is here, the source is here.

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This is crazy awe­some rambling/musing. I could read Scott Adams all day.

Scott Adams Blog: Mar­ket Manip­u­la­tors — Clar­i­fi­ca­tion 03/04/2013

The Offi­cial Dil­bert Web­site fea­tur­ing Scott Adams Dil­bert strips, ani­ma­tion, mashups and more star­ring Dil­bert, Dog­bert, Wal­ly, The Pointy Haired Boss, Alice, Asok, Dog­bert’s New Rul­ing Class and mor…

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I am pleased by this find­ing, although I would not have pre­dict­ed it.

Amer­i­cans Far More Con­nect­ed to Local Church than Any Oth­er Insti­tu­tion

Ras­mussen finds local reli­gious insti­tu­tions rank first (54%), mak­ing local char­i­ties and recre­ation­al groups (12%) a dis­tant sec­ond.

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Fas­ci­nat­ing. 3.5 per­cent of adult Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy at LGBT of one stripe or anoth­er, but the den­si­ty is three times greater in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. In fact, D.C. has a den­si­ty twice as great as the next entry on the list. I bet there’s an engross­ing back­sto­ry which explains this dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Ground­break­ing Study Ranks States by LGBT Pop­u­la­tion

It isn’t even close. Ten per­cent of adult res­i­dents in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. iden­ti­fy as les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al, or trans­gen­der, accord­ing to a ground­break­ing new Gallup study that for the first time has e…

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This is a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view. Sev­er­al bits stood out to me. I men­tion two here:
“Joe Nocera at the Times runs a dai­ly tal­ly of gun killings. He’s not run­ning a dai­ly tal­ly of how many peo­ple defend them­selves with guns. For one thing we don’t know about it most of the time. David Hemen­way at Har­vard is very pro gun-con­trol and he thinks it hap­pens about 80,000 times a year. If that’s true, that means that guns are sav­ing 10 times as many peo­ple as they’re killing.”

“We have this impulse in the U.S. to do some­thing. We have no nation­al church, so the only way we can express our pub­lic moral­i­ty is to say there ought to be a law. It’s anti­thet­i­cal to the Amer­i­can can-do char­ac­ter to say there are cer­tain things we just can’t do much about.”

For the record, I am not a “gun guy.”

What Lib­er­als Need to Under­stand About ‘Gun Guys’

The author of a new book tries to rec­on­cile his per­son­al pol­i­tics with his fond­ness for firearms.

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This is an inter­est­ing argu­ment. I need to think about it more.

Words of wis­dom

Aus­ter­i­ty is the result of coun­tries’ demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sions to wait until the last minute before act­ing, under the pres­sure of the mar­kets, main­ly by rais­ing tax­es rather than imple­ment­ing long-wait­ed …

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I some­times feel I could lis­ten to Penn all day. In this clip he makes a great point: many Amer­i­can Catholics are actu­al­ly Protes­tants unwill­ing to act on their con­vic­tions.

Watch this: Out­spo­ken athe­ist Penn Jil­lette (Penn & Teller) defends Catholic ortho­doxy on CNN’s Piers Mor­gan Tonight

“I think I may be some­body who believes in the Pope’s posi­tion more than most Catholics. I real­ly take peo­ple at their word. And it seems like all of the cyn­i­cism and all of the — who are we going to…

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I am not sure how to blurb this arti­cle. I will sim­ply say this: I thought this was com­mon knowl­edge, but appar­ent­ly it is not.

What You Should Know About ‘Monogamish’ Rela­tion­ships

What you should know about the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of monogamy and same-sex relationships.What you should know about the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of monogamy and same-sex rela­tion­ships.