MInTheGap

Peggy Noonan has a very good article
today, but I wouldn’t limit it to “What is wrong with those in
Washington?”  I think the problem that she is seeing is something that
is infiltrating all of our lives.  I believe that the biggest problem
we as a society face is pride.  You can see it in the way we talk about
issues– you can’t discuss ideas without someone believing you’re
attacking them personally.  You can see it in how many people demand
“rights”: Rights to abortion, rights to demolish people’s houses,
rights to unholy marriages, etc.  We live in a society that is tending
toward more and more pridefulness.  As the Scripture says, pride comes
before a fall.

Here’s some quotes from Peggy:

I do have to agree with Peggy, though, that it is glaringly obvious in
our elected officials, but I have to disagree that it’s just a problem
there.  I just think the cameras are on these people more, and they
have more power.  True, there are people that are humble and don’t make
a big deal of themselves.  For every one of them, however, there are
many more that are bragging about themselves: Their looks, their
talent, their ability to eat things on TV shows that no one ever
thought of…  This is our society– much different than how it started
out.

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Ann Coulter’s article today
isn’t for those that don’t want to be offended.  In fact, that’s her
point.  She starts with the recent Supreme Court rulings about the Ten
Commandments displays and then goes to listing other offensive speech
and displays that are funded by our tax dollars and protected.

I especially liked that she pointed out that our country was founded on a contract with God (”Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”).

I’m sure you have heard about this one, or maybe you haven’t. Katie Hosking of Everett Washington called off her wedding, and threw the reception for the homeless!
For some reason she decided to cancel her wedding on June 6, and her parents had already made a downpayment for the reception and had to pay full price:

More than 50 family members and close friends were joined by about 40 homeless people, shelter workers and volunteers. The shelter staff arranged rides to the club.

Instead of a wedding cake, chef Michael Greb produced strawberry shortcake to top off a menu that included baron of beef, salmon, shrimp cocktail, fettuccine and fruit.

I guess that if you’re going to call off a wedding, this is a pretty good use for the food. Makes you wonder if churches should be doing things like this?

This is a pretty amazing story. I saw the image on Yahoo! Popular info, and looked around for the man’s story. He’s in the news because he won a lawsuit against a magazine that labeled him one of the ugliest men in America.

Jason Schechterle was in his patrol car answering a call when a taxi cab whose driver was suffering from an epileptic siezure back in 2001. It took most of his face and hands off, and he’s been trying to reclaim his life ever since. He’s had over 30 surgeries, and has just had another child! Talk about someone who exudes the desire to live, though he does not look attractive.

Also this is the testimony of a faithful wife that had her husband as the “third child” for a time being, but hung in there. Check out this story for yourself… you’ll be encouraged, and hopefully remember to be thankful for your everyday life!

I love this idea.  A developer has sent a fax to the local government of Weare, New Hampshire to propose to build “The Lost Liberty Hotel“ 
where a house belonging to Supreme Court Justice David Souter currently
exists.  Certainly a hotel would bring in more money for the city than
his house.  I doubt it will actually happen, but you never know!

I generally like to check out News of the Weird by Chuck Shepard every Monday.  Here are some weird news I thought I’d pass on:

• British
  entrepreneur Colin Dowse recently introduced Sprayonmud (about US$14 a
  quart), dirty water chemically treated for greater stickiness, mainly
  for urban SUV owners to pass themselves off as all-terrain adventurers.
  [Wired.com, 6-10-05]
• In the last few years, Taiwan
  entrepreneurs have opened restaurants with motifs such as prisons,
  zombies and Mao Zedong, but the latest is Eric Wang’s “Marton,” in
  Kaohsiung, whose theme is the toilet. All seats are what you would
  think, with food served on a glass tabletop resting on a bathtub, and
  some of the delicacies are presented in miniature toilet bowls (among
  them, curry hot pot, and disturbingly, chocolate ice cream). [Agence
  France-Presse, 5-23-05]
• Recent scholarly findings (reduced
  to their essence in a May Wall Street Journal column): It’s much easier
  to identify someone if he is physically near you than if he is up to
  450 feet away (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, February). People who
  choose their careers carefully, rather than on a whim, experience
  greater job satisfaction (Journal of Economic Psychology, vol. 26,
  no.3). College students tend to drink more alcoholic beverages than
  they realize (Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, April).
  If patients voluntarily tell a doctor about a bad side effect of a
  medicine, they are more likely to be switched to a safer one than if
  they don’t (Archives of Internal Medicine, January). [Wall Street
  Journal, 5-27-05]

Here’s a few, I hope they give you a good laugh.

It seems that this round goes to the Supreme Court against the
Constitution.  In a set or rulings, the courts determined that

• 10 Commandment displays inside a court house– even if they include other historical documents– are against the Constitution,
• The same displays are legal outside the court house!
• Cable companies don’t have to share their lines
• And those who provided programs to share files can be legally held responsible if copyright material was sent.

It’s crazy, and it’s not getting any better…