Cup o' Joel

Fare thee well…

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:23:30 +0000

Today is the end of my blogging for Philadelphia Weekly. Thanks to all of you who’ve read it the last couple of years. See ya down the trail.

Michael Gerson: Gays can keep their rights if they don’t sue for them

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:35:19 +0000

In today’s Washington Post, Michael Gerson compares and contrasts the debates over gay rights with the debate over abortion rights — and concludes that gay rights, once gained, will be longer-lasting and more “settled” because they (mostly) haven’t been imposed by an out-of-control judiciary on an unwilling or divided public. Instead, the cause has advanced [...]

Jim Wallis’ un-Christian response to Glenn Beck

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:58:56 +0000

As much as I hated Glenn Beck’s call on Christians to flee churches that emphasize “social justice” — which is to say, just about every church there is — I’m still disappointed in the response of lefty Christian Jim Wallis: “What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no [...]

Krugman: Health reform “looks good”

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:30:43 +0000

Paul Krugman on the health reform bill: So what’s the reality of the proposed reform? Compared with the Platonic ideal of reform, Obamacare comes up short. If the votes were there, I would much prefer to see Medicare for all. For a real piece of passable legislation, however, it looks very good. It wouldn’t transform our health [...]

Lindsey Graham: If Obama defeats GOP obstructionism on health care, the GOP will obstruct even more!

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:15:30 +0000

Apparently President Obama and Congressional Republicans are interested in reforming the nation’s immigration system. Time for some bipartisan agreement! Well, yes and no: (Lindsey) Graham, in a statement, said he had told Mr. Obama “in no uncertain terms” that the immigration debate “could come to a halt for the year” if the president moved to pass [...]

Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia are ok with savage prison beatings

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:49:22 +0000

At the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse notes that Clarence Thomas is OK with savage treatment of prisoners at the hands of prison officials — saying teeth-loosening beatings don’t violate the Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” if a judge didn’t formally sentence the inmate to teeth-loosening savage beatings. It’s a stance that goes [...]

‘The Green Zone’: Some books aren’t really movies

Joel Mathis — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:06:57 +0000

Matt Damon’s The Green Zone opens today in theaters, and I’ve got to say : This movie looks nothing like Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the book upon which it’s supposedly based. Here’s Slate’s Dana Stevens describing the movie: As the camera jerked and joggled its way through an impossible-to-follow action sequence late in The Green [...]

Corey Haim is dead. So is our sense of proportion.

Joel Mathis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:57:32 +0000

Between the John Hughes orgy at the Academy Awards and the explosion of grief at the passing of Corey Haim, I realize that my generation is every bit as mawkish and self-obsessed as the Baby Boomers we used to mock. Hey Generation X: Weren’t we supposed to be a bit more cynical than this? In [...]

JihadJane, the Pakistani VIPs and why racial profiling at the airport may not make us that much safer

Joel Mathis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:36:17 +0000

A couple of items in today’s newspapers need to be juxtaposed. First, this: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A tour of the United States arranged by the State Department to improve ties to Pakistani legislators ended in a public relations fiasco when the members of the group refused to submit to extra airport screening in Washington, and they are [...]

Eric Massa just gave us the best New York Times headline ever

Joel Mathis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:30:09 +0000

And beyond that, commentary seems impossible.