“The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical congress in history.” — Nancy Pelosi, 2006

I wonder how Speaker Pelosi would grade herself and her party on having fulfilled this intention. 

Is honesty the hallmark of 2,000 page bills that, because of their sheer enormity and complexity, are designed to hide political payoffs to special interests?

Is “openness” the term one would use to describe the partisan closed-door meetings that have defined the modus operandi of this Congress?

Is the sale of key Senate votes in exchange for federal dollars targeted at states like Louisiana and Nebraska best described as “ethical”? 

Speaker Pelosi’s statement appears to be the Democratic equivalent of the infamous “Read my lips: no new taxes.”

This is the kind of thing that happens when the government assumes the obligation of protecting people from being offended.  (And by that I am referring to the Illinois state government’s decision to allow an atheist group to mock Christmas on state property, not the comptroller’s decision to try to stop it).

But the main reason I am linking to this story is not to discuss the complicated issue of church and state but rather to invite you to read the whole story, especially the last line.  That is hilarious.

Brilliant.

Why is it that when the federal government plays a minimalist role and the states are given broad powers to regulate their own affairs, it is called federalism?

And why is it that when the federal government plays a maximalist role and tramples the rights of states to regulate their own affairs, it is called statism? 

Confusing as the terms may be, the truth is that we have had way too much statism in recent decades.  It’s time to get back to federalism.

In a word, yes.  Rush Limbaugh stirred up controversy by being the first to say so several months ago, but if you think about what he means, it makes perfect sense. 

Like Rush, I want President Obama to fail because President Obama is essentially a socialist.  His political theory is saturated in big government, lavish spending, high taxes, and the multiplication of entitlements.  Like he said to Joe the Plumber, he wants to “spread the wealth” around.  He is pushing hefty, unprecedented environmental regulations at a time when we are facing 10% unemployment and cannot afford to strangle businesses with more regulations (and it just so happens that in recent days the whole global warming theory has taken a massive credibility beating, yet the President remains undeterred in his desire to unilaterally save the world from carbon). 

I want President Obama’s health care plan to fail.  I want cap-and-trade to fail.  I want high taxes to fail.  I want big government stimulus packages to fail.  I want everything this President stands for to fail, because he stands for everything that is against the well-being and prosperity of our nation.  If his domestic agenda crashes to the ground and burns, then America will have succeeded, and my loyalty is to my country first, not to the man who happens to be leading it for these four years.

But there is one exception.  I want President Obama to succeed in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  He gave a good speech tonight.  This was one of those rare occasions when he talks about 9/11 and about the ongoing terrorist threat to our national security.  I hope and pray that his strategy works, that we pave the way for a secure and stable Afghanistan, that we put Al-Qaida and the Taliban on the run, and that we bring our boys home soon enough.  I don’t trust my President on anything related to domestic policy.  But listening to him speak tonight, I am giving him my trust and support on the objective of victory in Afghanistan.  I hope that if a politically divided country can find unity in nothing else, that perhaps we might be able to find some measure of unity in this.

This poster from Despair.com accurately communicates the general worthlessness of 99% of the blogosphere.  And yet, every once in a while in this sea of insignificance you come across an island with a buried treasure.

Thanks to Justin Taylor’s link, I found one today.  Kevin DeYoung’s post about the “New Gospel” (written in response to this letter to unbelievers by Shane Claiborne) is the most significant blog post I have read in a long time, perhaps ever.  Do not miss it.

Every generation faces challenges to the true gospel.  Every alternative gospel that arises contains some elements of truth and therefore possesses some measure of plausibility.  In our day the most popular alternative gospel is the one that accomodates itself to the prevailing climate of postmodern uncertainty.  This “new gospel” is not entirely wrong.  In fact, it gets many things right, even offering a much-needed corrective to older emphases and formulations.  And therein lies its chief danger: it represents an ever-so-subtle denial of truths that belong to the very essence of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Read Shane Claiborne’s letter.  And then read Kevin DeYoung’s post.  The latter will likely be the most significant thing you will read today.

This is nothing more than a sophisticated form of bribery.  Senate Majority Leader Reid is apparently trying to buy Senator Landrieu”s (D-La) vote for healthcare reform by sneaking into the 2,000 page monstrosity a $100 million favor for her state. 

Other than the fact that Landrieu’s single vote on this question is of massive significance for the future of our country, I realize that this kind of thing happens all the time in Washington and that both parties do it. 

And that is what is so disturbing.  Washington is a cesspool of corruption, a big game where powerful people take turns scratching each other’s backs.

I would wholeheartedly support term limits for all congressional seats.  Among politicians (not an admired group to begin with), career politicians are at the bottom of the barrel.  And the career politicians (who like to refer to themselves as “public servants”) are the ones who have made Washington what it is today.

“One of the few advantages to the country in having Congress overwhelmingly in the hands of one party is that the lack of need to compromise lets the leaders of that party reveal themselves for what they are– in this case, people with unbounded arrogance and utter contempt for the right of ordinary people to live their lives as they see fit, much less the right to know as citizens what laws are going to be passed by their government. The question is whether voters will remember on election day in 2010.”—-Thomas Sowell

So I heard about John Franke’s new book, Manifold Witness, a book whose thesis is apparently that truth is inherently plural and that this is a profoundly Christian way of thinking.  Doug Wilson has begun reviewing the book here.  Wilson quotes from Brian McLaren’s foreword:

That for human beings, truth is inherently plural. John asserts this, not because it is fashionable (it’s the very opposite among his guild in the theological academy), but rather because he believes it is true, and is willing to suffer the scorn of some of his peers for this truth as he sees it. He asserts the plurality of truth, not as a capitulation to non- or anti- Christian thought, but rather as an expression of profoundly Christian thought — and specifically, of emergent, missional, and trinitarian Christian thought. In so doing, he gently implies that the dominant alternative view — that white, modernist, Western Christian scholars and institutions have a monopoly on truth — is actually a capitulation to modes of thought and power that have betrayed the life and gospel of Jesus Christ” (p. xii).

Aside from the fact that McLaren has the audacity to claim that Franke’s postmodern muddle is not fashionable in the academy (the academy is the engine that drives it!), does anyone else notice the profound irony in what McLaren says here?  Allow me to paraphrase:

John Franke advocates a pluralist view of truth, thereby denying a singular view of truth, because he is deeply convinced that his view is singularly true.  Anyone (probably a white male) who disagrees with him is hopelessly lost in falsehood, because the singular truth that Franke proclaims about truth being manifold can make no room for competing views of truth.  All truth is manifold, except of course, for the absolute, singular truth that truth itself is manifold.  Of that, I am absolutely certain, and anyone who looks at it differently is captive to modernist presuppositions and is, therefore, promoting falsehood.  John Franke is so certain of the absolute truth of his view that truth is manifold that he will gladly become a martyr for the cause. 

It looks like Manifold Witness is going to be another journey into self-contradictory postmodern quicksand, as if we haven’t had enough of that lately.