There are about a dozen national holidays in the year. When I was young, it was the common practice to give workers the day off on such a national holiday. Oh, I admit that not every national holiday was observed, but certainly almost all employees in most of the country received most of those holidays […]

Yesterday I posted the first part of my answer to Kurt’s comments on penology. We continue today with his point 4 where he asked that we address: 4. The current reality of harm reduction crime control models that are in place in other Western nations that have culled undesirable behavior, and have provided assistance for […]

Recently Kurt made some comments on penology that I thought were worth following up on. Below are those comments, edited for purposes of the discussion: I would take further comments seriously if you directly addressed my main assertions and provided clear supporting arguments against the following points: The religious community’s responsibility to do no harm, […]

Yesterday, a great person passed away. No, not Steve Jobs, though he was a great person in a different way. No, this great person is not being remembered with all the fanfare of Steve Jobs, but here in Birmingham, he had a great impact several decades ago. His name was Freddie Lee Shuttlesworth. Later when […]

Tonight begins the celebration of the glorification of St. Innocent. His story is below as it is listed on the OCA website. Glorification of St Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America (in the world John Popov-Veniaminov), was born on August 26, 1797 in the village of Anginsk in the […]

I can remember that 1960’s saying all too well. It sounded so good back then. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Syntactically it is true. But, experience says it is not. The saying above was supposed to communicate that there is an endless world of possibilities just waiting for us. […]

Ever has it been, dearest. Those who are blind slaves to principled belief would claim virtue while murdering for their beliefs. Yet they claim that they are exalted above those who profess no such principles at all, even as the bodies pile up. — Modesitt, L.E. Jr., The Shadow Sorceress, The Spellsong Cycle, Book IV. […]

A very good comment was made on yesterday’s blog post about Mexico and a pro-life decision by their Supreme Court. It said in part: My educational background is partly in criminology. I couldn’t help but notice your juxtaposition between the legal prohibition of abortion and the rampant gang activity in Mexico. As my tribe (Methodists) […]

Sometimes we become so accustomed to bad news from a particular country that we sometimes fail to note the good news that can also come out. There is some very good news out of Mexico that actually puts that country ahead of the United States in one very important area. What surprises me is that […]