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I love religion.
I love the holy texts, the rituals, the art, the histories, the practices, the mystical teachings and the sacred spaces. I love religion, while very aware of its obvious dangers and limitations, because for the last 15 years religion has provided insight, intellectual growth, friendships and inspiration that continue to transform my life for the better.
We all know that religion can be harsh and divisive, and these destructive qualities need to be brought in the light and

The Iraqi troops are finally on their way to home sweet home from a long and winding road. I welcome them as heroes. They are Freedom Fighters. As a veteran of the United States Air Force, my heart is happy to see them come home to their families and the news is timely for the

So the Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday finally released the findings on its 3-year investigation of Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, btw, is the sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona who touts himself as the toughest sheriff, and has made a career of harassing Latinos and letting sex crimes go uninvestigated. And to no one’s surprise, the DOJ found Arpaio’s office treated “Latinos as if they are all undocumented,” among numerous other unconstitutional acts. The DOJ found that the sheriff and his deputiestargeted Latinodrivers, violated their 4th Amendment rights with unreasonable seizures and mistreated inmates who did not speak English.
This is exactly what every Latino and informed citizen in Arizona knew of Arpaio.He is a failure and a stain on law

While I’ve always been an avid NFL fan, I never thought that the sport would call for two different blog posts about one particular player and his faith. One discussion after another, Tim Tebow and his miraculous feats on the football field have stirred up another week’s worth of water cooler discussion, sending the media into a frenzy over Tebow, his football skills, and his faith.
This week, many “pundits” noted that Tebow is not the first sports figure to represent his faith publicly through some kind of prayer, hand gesture, in-zone celebration, or quiet reflection with bibles all around in the locker room. Pittsburgh Steelers star safety Troy Polamalu is known around the league as someone who prays during plays. (Is that considered an audible?) Even Tebow’s own teammate Brian Dawkins is recognized for his outspokenness about his

Judaism understands love to be covenantal — the dynamic and persistent integration of the inner emotion/virtues of affection, empathy, desire, yearning and delight with deeds of tzedek (justice), shalom (wholeness/integrity) and berakhah (blessing/wellbeing).
That definition is a mouthful, and it will reward us to analyze it’s component parts in turn.
Jewish love is covenantal. Covenants are not necessarily restricted to equal parties. Kings and vassals are not equal, yet they provide the sociopolitical context for the biblical

Exactly 900 years ago today, on Dec. 19, 1111, the world bid a sad farewell to one of its most influential contemporaries: Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. That same world still has a reason to be nostalgic.
Al-Ghazali was a Persian theologian, philosopher, jurist and mystic, acclaimed in both East and West as the most influential Muslim after the Prophet

Iowans are strongly pro-life and supportive of traditional marriage. These remain strong “bridge” issues that unite economic conservatives with social conservatives whenever questions like abortion funding or overturning true marriage are put on the ballot. When pollsters find that Iowa’s likely caucus-goers — including large blocks of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Lutherans — are citing the stricken economy as their greatest concern, this does not mean social issues have been forgotten.
First, most of the GOP candidates are already on board for the defense of human life and true marriage. So it makes sense for Iowa voters to tell pollsters and focus group moderators that their primary concern is the

During the Third Sunday of Advent, I preached from the fourth gospel this text. I make it no secret that the Gospel of John is my least favorite gospel but was enlightened more than I’ve ever been before in seeing the significance of the Logos in the “word made flesh and dwelt among us.” I have come to see the Logos in the reality that ideas are powerful. Books make a difference even with the invention and popularity of kindle. Words on a page; spelling important notations; telling dramatic stories are terribly important.
But this passage is not about words; ideas or

It has been just three weeks since Thanksgiving, and thankfulness has lost its’ place in the spotlight. In fact, the holiday hadn’t even lived out its’ full 24 hours before people turned their sights to what they could acquire in the Black Friday sales. This doesn’t just occur with Thanksgiving, but with holidays throughout the year like: Christmas, Valentines Day, and even the American Independence day. This reference to how we treat holidays is just an analogy for something even more

This week, the Pentagon marked the official end to the war in Iraq with a brief ceremony in a secure part of the Baghdad airport — helicopters hovering protectively overhead. Although Defense Secretary Leon Panetta later declared that the cost paid by America was “worth it,” a look at the price tag offers a more sobering assessment: 4,487 U.S. military personnel killed, over 2,000 U.S.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Source:Associated Press
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BOISE, Idaho — Tyler Tettleton scored on a 1-yard keeper with 13 seconds left to give Ohio its first bowl victory, 24-23 over Utah State on Saturday in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.After the Aggies failed to run out the clock in the final minutes, Tettleton and the Bobcats’ offense took over at their own 39 with one timeout and 2:02 left.
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Tettleton was 3 of 4 on the final drive, and his biggest completion was a 14-yarder on fourth down to LaVon Brazill that gave the Bobcats a first down inside the 1 with 37 seconds left.Tettleton was stuffed on his first try to score. On the next play, he rolled right and outran two defenders to cap the comeback and give the Bobcats their first 10-win season since 1968.Tettleton was 19 of 26 for 220 yards and he rushed 16 times for another 31 yards.For Utah State, the loss was a heartbreaker.The Aggies dominated the first half and extended their lead to 23-10 in the third quarter behind a bruising rushing attack that rolled up 345 yards.Michael Smith rushed for 157 yards and two touchdowns on 12 carries, including a 63-yard scoring run early in the third quarter that put Utah State up 16-10. Smith scored later in the third on an 11-yard run up the middle, giving the Aggies a 13-point lead.Robert Turbin added for 101 yards on 20 carries, and Kerwynn Williams had 69 yards on nine carries.But Utah State, which finished second in the Western Athletic Conference and was making its first bowl appearance since 1997, failed to close the deal.After Smith’s second touchdown, Tettleton started the rally by marching the Bobcats quickly down the field, capping the drive with a 44-yard TD pass to Brazill, who jumped high over a defender and fell just beyond the goal line to make it 23-17.The Aggies had a chance to run out the clock when they took possession at their own 7 with 4:23 to go. But Ohio’s defense stopped the Aggies on three straight plays to force a punt.On the winning drive, Tettleton scrambled for 14 yards and completed passes of 19, 7 and 14 yards to Brazill. The last reception was initially ruled a touchdown, but a review concluded he was down before the end zone, giving Ohio a first down inside the 1.Brazill led the Bobcats with eight catches for 108 yards and the Ohio offense had 345 total yards.
Links:Full news story
Source:espn.go.com

Movie poster for Juan of the Dead
The nothingness, the apathy, the wall at the corner to sit on, forever wasting time. The hero of the film Juan of the Dead was already acting like a corpse before the zombies invaded Havana, a city in fact shrouded and dead. This fictional antihero calls on his creativity and ingenuity — in the midst of chaos — to establish a blood-chilling business. “We kill your loved ones,” reads the slogan of the company he creates with other pals as dysfunctional as he is; its market niche is to hunt the living

Perhaps for obvious reasons of predictability, dependability and reliability, we used to expect our leaders to conform to convention. And the boundaries of convention were formed by political society, history, and tradition. Thus, presidents should be sufficiently ambitious to seek office, but not so ambitious as to trample on others. They should be transparent, but be able to harbor dark

This past summer, in the heat of the Arab revolution movements, I joined American hip hop collective Remarkable Current (RC), Tunisian hip hop artists and youth activists for the remaining days of the tour–a tour that occurred only a couple of weeks after a national curfew was lifted and 24 hour sit-ins in the Tunis’s famous Casbah took place. My experience in Tunis has taught me that the U.S. should reexamine its diplomatic approach: one that challenges the notion of top-down diplomacy and includes youth in the dialogue. After all, it was the Tunisian youth, from a self-immolated 26 year-old street vendor to a jailed rapper to those who are still organizing sit-ins and food-banking for Libyan refugees, who were the architects and infrastructure builders of the thawret al-ahrar (revolution of the free) or thawret al-karama (revolution of dignity) and are demanding political incorporation into its democratic

Editor’s Note: This piece is co-authored by:
Rabbi Jack Bemporad, Center for Interreligious Understanding, New Jersey
Professor Marshall Breger, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
Suhail A. Khan, Buxton Initiative, Washington, DC
The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York
Last summer, an angry and emotionally-charged debate erupted over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” in New York and the perceived threat and rights of a religious minority, American

It isn’t nice to want to punch someone who’s dead in the face.
But, on Wednesday night, I did. On Wednesday night, when I saw a man called Steve say that he had cried when he’d read in a book that another man called Steve had paid him much less than he’d paid himself, for a job that was meant to be split 50/50, I really wanted to punch the Steve who had died, who was meant to be his friend, in the face.
The Steve who cried was called Steve Wozniak. The Steve who had died was called Steve Jobs. Together, they founded a company called

Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol is an outstanding action thriller that happens to be the fourth entry in a long-running franchise (series retrospective). Like the three previous entries, this is a mostly stand-alone picture that feels absolutely like the work of its director.And if this entry feels a bit more like “just another day at the office” than the prior entries, it makes up for it with uncommonly impressive big-screen splendor. There is beautiful location work and obscenely impressive stunt-work that reminds us how wonderful action films can be when we are seeing something astounding while still being able to believe our eyes. It is easily the best entry since Brian DePalma’s initial installment way back in 1996 and a top-notch piece of genre

The hotel room is tacky. The English seaside town is drenched in rain. And the two misfits desperate for a romantic escape reek of pathos. They also make for great

I found out I was pregnant at the beginning of November. It was a dream come true. Love, wedding then baby.
I was so excited I told

LYSISTRATA JONES * out of ****
WALTER KERR THEATRE
This thin idea for a sketch on Saturday Night Live — much less a full-fledged musical — has an appealing if generally vocally challenged cast let down by the book of award-winning playwright Douglas Carter Beane (Sister Act) and the music and lyrics of his collaborator (both professionally and personally) Lewis Flinn. This is surely one of the first if not the first time an openly gay couple has created a Broadway musical. Sadly, that happy bit of trivia is the most memorable thing about the show.
The story is a spin on the Greek play by Aristophanes in which women strive to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sexual favors until their men stop fighting. In our show, new college student Lysistrata Jones (Patti Murin) starts dating basketball player Mick (Josh Segarra) but is, like, totally bummed he and the other guys on the team don’t really

Nine months into the “Arab Spring,” we surveyed public opinion in seven Arab countries and Iran, asking over 6,000 respondents about their primary political concerns and their degree of satisfaction with the pace of change taking place in their countries. What we found was that an “Arab Spring” effect had occurred, with reform and rights issues now being perceived as political priorities in most countries. The polls were conducted by Zogby Research Services and jzanalytics in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran. They had a margin of error of between 3.1 percent (in Egypt) to 4.5 percent (in

A criminal complaint was filed yesterday against Sam Hurd, the now-former wide receiver of the Chicago Bears. It is a shocking account of a pattern of activity from a player well-respected and seen as nothing like the one depicted in the complaint. An official at the Bears told me “He seemed like a great guy, quoting the Bible and always friendly.” Most con men are.
The complaint includes an affidavit attached to it, required to show probable cause to arrest, wherein the federal agent swears under oath that this story is true.
Days before signing with Bears
On July 27, T.L. (a Hurd co-conspirator) attempted to purchase 4 kgs of cocaine on behalf of Hurd from a Homeland Security confidential informant.
They set up a meeting in Dallas and federal agents intervened, stopping