New

I recorded a demo of a new song yesterday and posted it over at myspace/miafrate. It

WordPress update

Well, I updated my WordPress to the latest version. It seems to have worked fine with one exception: some of the quotation marks (both single and double) are showing up as weird symbols. Not all of them are doing this (e.g. see post below).

Anyone know why this is …

The future is dark, and that's a good thing: Rebecca Solnit on hope in dark times

Nearly everyone felt, after September 11, 2001, along with grief and fear, a huge upwelling of idealism, of openness, of a readiness to question and to learn, a sense of being connected and a desire to live our lives for something more, even if it wasn't familiar, safe, …

U.S. bombs Pakistan again

Among Obama's agenda items for the first week of his presidency? Bombing Pakistan. Awesome.

Incredibly low blow

I refuse to link to this particular post, so as not to attract traffic to such filth, but a new america-centered Catholic group blog today unbelievably claimed that not only is Jeremiah Wright

Politics of Jesus

Best reads of 2008

Here are a few of the best books I read in 2008:

Christ the Liberator - Jon Sobrino

No Salvation Outside the Poor - Jon Sobrino

Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology - Kathryn Tanner

Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural-Political Theology for North American …

Come Lord Jesus

Merry Christmas to all. Hope to pick blogging back up in the new year. Peace.

Open Letter to Barack Obama

I was pleased to be one of the initial endorsers of the following open letter to president-elect Barack Obama, spearheaded and drafted by my co-blogger at Vox Nova, Henry Karlson. Additional signatures and supporters here.

____________________

November 14, …

If Obama wins

Why I decided to vote

I have actually never abstained in a presidential election. Four years ago was when I started thinking more seriously about not voting, both as a Christian and as an anarchist. But ultimately I decided to vote then, defensively, against Bush.

In the months leading up …

Bush is over

Globalization

I agree with the objections that so-called anti-globalization movements make against economic globalization. I think, though, that sometimes discussions about what is wrong with "globalization" are a way of not talking about what is wrong with capitalism.

Discuss.

Misleading numbers, misleading claims

In a recent article Deal Hudson implies that 61 bishops have come forward to "clarify" what Faithful Citizenship means, implying or saying outright that a vote for Barack Obama is unacceptable. This statistic, and accompanying list of bishops, has been parroted around …

More from Chomsky on the '08 presidential election

Click here for a video interview with Noam Chomsky on the presidential election. While he has argued for years that the political system of the united states has one party -- the Business Party -- which has two factions, to hold the view that there are no differences at …

Episcopal and ecclesial communion? Not this time.

We Roman Catholics talk an awful lot about being in communion with one another. Whether we are describing the nature of the Church, as in "communion ecclesiology," or describing what we are doing at eucharist, or describing the collegial relationship of the bishops …

Hazel Mae and Hazel Dickens

So Emily and I become parents on Friday afternoon and we decided to name this (freakin' amazing!) kid Hazel after one of West Virginia's most loved bluegrass singers, Hazel Dickens, who wrote a lot of songs about coal injustice and sang at protests, strikes, rallies, …

WV voting machine complaints; Republican voting officials blame the voters

From the Charleston Gazette:

Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.

This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, …

Welcome Hazel!

Hazel was born Friday, Oct. 17 at 1:43pm. 6 lbs, 10 oz, 20 in. Mom, baby, and Dad are doing fine!

Recruiters are child predators

src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/us/2008/10/18/roesgen.virtual.army.cnn" type="text/javascript"Embedded video from CNN Video

A few years ago the u.s. army released a shoot-em-up video game as a recruiting tool. …