The Chinese government has submitted its claimed maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. Its proposals give credence to notions that the Beijing regime intends to exercise unquestioned hegemony in Asia, at the expense of neighboring nations. Read the BBC news article on their proposals here or, cut to the chase, and look at their proposed boundaries on a map. I’ve been writing with considerable concern about the threat to international peace and stability represented by the Chinese government....

[This is being crossposted at my personal blog.]

So we won’t be hearing Marty McFly’s guitar solo on Johnny B. Goode. But it would be great if we did! Tonight, in our church fellowship hall, we’ll be offering a Middle-of-the-Night Breakfast to the kids who attend the evening’s Logan High School Prom. It’ll be fun. But if Biff shows up, I may need some help. [This has been crossposted at my personal blog.]

not to be confused with the WaPo columnist, is blogging again. Read his wonderful post on ubiquity and openness to the promise of each new day. I’m so glad to be reading Richard’s honest, insightful prose again.

I’m a Christian and I’m an American. Therefore, I oppose the use of torture. Ever. No exceptions. Because ours is an imperfect world, I accept the fact that nations must sometimes go to war, just as I accept that when lives are threatened–be it one’s own life or the lives of others–defensive action that may result in an attacker’s death is justified. As a Christian, I accept the notion of just war. But torture is never just.

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe is among the last moderate Republican officeholders remaining. In the New York Times she laments the departure of her friend and fellow moderate Arlen Specter for the Democratic Party, claiming that her party has failed to appreciate the need for moderates as well as conservatives in order to win. Then she pulls out the big guns, quoting Ronald Reagan: “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican:...

That’s the picture one gets from Glenn Reynolds’ profile of today’s tea party tax protesters. But can they be as constructive as they are critical? See here. Also see here.

We know what they’re against, argues Andrew Sullivan, but what do they favor? Although he engages in a bit of what seems to me an ad hominem attack on Glenn Reynolds, the question is a good one: All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed...

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice)

When a government’s one-child policy meets a culture’s bias against females, this is what happens. Also see here. [This has been crossposted at my personal blog.]

The President will attack immigration reform in a big way starting next month. The last Democratic president to have so many ambitious priorities was Jimmy Carter. Through most of his term, Carter was largely thwarted by a Democratic Congress anxious to assert itself after Richard Nixon’s imperial presidency. (He was finally undone by the Iran hostage crisis and a sluggish economy, of course.) Carter was much better at eliciting the support of conservative Republicans than he was of liberal...

Here

I don’t know whether Shaun Reins approves or disapproves of President Obama’s performance as a leader during the the president’s second month in office. That isn’t the point of this article from Forbes. In it, he analyzes Obama’s second thirty day period as president for lessons, some positive and some negative, that other leaders, particularly in the business world, can use. It’s interesting, similar to the unbiased analysis of presidents-as-leaders I try to...

Barack Obama is a scintillating orator. That’s partly because, like his Illinois progenitor, Abraham Lincoln, he’s a talented writer who can turn memorable and meaningful phrases. Unlike Lincoln, who loathed extemporaneous speaking, Obama, who began his presidential campaign as an indifferent debater, has become more than passably good in response to questioning, in spite of the long uhs that punctuate his responses. As more than one commentator has mentioned in the past ten hours, the...

I wrote about it here four days ago. (And here.) Now, others are weighing in with the same view.

Back in August, 2006, I wrote about Crocs shoes: The jury is still out as to whether Crocs turn out to be like the PT Cruiser*, a product which looked dorky, became wildly popular, and has remained a consumer fixture, or more on the order of the Pog phenomenon, which took off like a meteor and is now largely forgotten. One indicator of the shoes’ long-term prospects may be this, though: When I had my first Crocs-sighting about a year ago, I never dreamed I’d be blogging about the things! Well,...

A Time for Burning is a cinema verite documentary that shows us what happened in a white Lutheran church in Omaha when its pastor, William Youngdahl, tried to gain congregational approval to foster racial understanding in 1965. His proposal was that ten families from his church meet with ten families from a black Lutheran congregation whose building was several blocks away. That may seem utterly innocuous and unobjectionable. But in 1965, it was a bit like throwing a lit match into an oil refinery. My...

I just finished taking a course, Classics 401, at the Lancaster branch campus of Ohio University. The topic, daily life in ancient Rome, is one that I knew little about, quite honestly, and because I believe that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection happened while his Judean homeland was a province of the Roman Empire, will help me in my preaching and teaching. The final week’s readings dealt with the role played by religion and philosophy in Rome, from the monarchy through the empire....

A bit of unsolicited advice for President Obama: Reduce your number of public appearances. Even before his turn on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, when he committed the first gaffe I remember coming from his mouth since he became a national figure in 2004, the President was at risk of being overexposed to the point of becoming background noise. Mr. Obama is personally popular and the entire country has a stake in his success. But since the Thursday after he was elected last November, we have been...

History is one of the most important subjects with which a functioning human being can be conversant. “A knowledge of the past prepares us for the crisis of the present and the challenge of the future,” President Kennedy once observed. That’s true not because history repeats itself in some cyclical game of futility, but because there are certain constants and frequently recurring themes that run through history. Being aware of history can help–but only help–us avoid...

Republican Rob Portman will likely have no opposition in a bid for his party’s US Senate nomination in 2010. A big reason for that is his access to the deep pockets that made one Cincinnati area the second-most-fertile zip code for George W. Bush’s presidential coffers. Portman’s longtime connection with both of the Bushes and their contributors has apparently frightened off any other Republicans who might have considered seeking what will be an open seat next year. But, while Portman...

So far, this is my favorite track on the newly released U2 album, No Line on the Horizon. I was looking for a live version I saw somewhere, though I don’t think the one below is what I remember seeing. It’s funny because while I prefer this live version to the recorded one on the CD, the harmonies here are definitely off. Perfection isn’t always perfect. The melody for the verses of Get on Your Boots reminds me a lot of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. [Crossposted at my...

Peter J. Leithart is a Biblical scholar widely respected and read by people from all camps of the Church, conservative, liberal, and moderate. Few of his blog posts deal with political issues, like this one, where he shows no restraint. There’s an argument to be made that his negative reaction Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statements in China isn’t really a political pronouncement either. Instead, I see him playing the role played by prophets in ancient Israel: speaking...

See here.

Even if Roland Burris did nothing wrong to obtain former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s interim appointment to the United States Senate, Blagojevich’s corruption would have Burris facing his constituents through a cloud of suspicion. Wisconsin’s senator, Russ Feingold, has a proposal that might prevent future Roland Burris-style imbroglios. But, a little background is in order. The US Constitution, of course, originally stipulated that senators be elected by their state’s...