Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun are reporting that leaked e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming:

The internet is on fire this morning with confirmation computers at one of the world’s leading climate research centres were hacked, and the information released on the internet.

A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.

In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation.

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

As HotAir.com, which has posted a number of the emails, notes: “Do scientists use data to test theories, or do they use theories to test data? Scientists will claim the former, but here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data. That’s not science; it’s religious belief.”

Update: Wesley Smith raises a point that I should have noted earlier. Hacking private email accounts is a crime and should be fully prosecuted. Questions should still be asked about the content of the emails but that has no bearing on the legitimacy of the tactics used to aquire the information.

The Manhattan Declaration is a 4,732-word statement signed by a movement of Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical Christian leaders who are collaborating around moral issues of great concern. Its signers affirm the sanctity of human life, marriage as defined by the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Manhattan Declaration endorses civil disobedience under certain circumstances.

Among the 148 signatories are 14 Roman Catholic bishops, 2 Eastern Orthodox bishops, 20 presidents and 19 faculty members from seminaries and college, 46 leaders of various ministries, 22 pastors, 10 magazine editors and publishers—including First Things editor Joseph Bottum—and various other luminaries.

First Things has posted the text here. You can sign the declaration here.

In 1980 in the Christian Science Monitor coined the acronym NIMBY—Not In My Back Yard—to describe opposition by residents to a proposal for a new development close to them (Nimbies are people who oppose such developments). In America, Nimbies typically oppose subsidized housing, halfway houses, homeless shelters, and other structures that might bring “unsavory characters” into their neighborhood. They are all for such developments in theory—they just don’t want them in their own back yard.

As President Obama is discovering, our allies may want us to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, but they’re Nimbies when it comes to taking the prisoners into their own countries:

President Barack Obama is now confirming what many have long suspected: He will miss his January deadline to close the Guantanamo prison — partly because he cannot persuade other nations to take the detainees.

Prisoners like Walid Abu Hijazi. The 29-year-old Palestinian is nearing his eighth year at February 2008. No one else has been willing to allow him, or dozens of others, into their territory.

This dilemma is one of the chief obstacles to closing the jail, according to lawyers and human rights groups who monitor U.S. detention policy. Most say Washington bears the main blame because it also refuses to accept prisoners on American soil.

“It’s very difficult to persuade third countries to accept the political or security risks involved, especially when the United States has been unwilling to accept that risk itself,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School.

The cynical view would be to assume that Obama knew this all along (since anyone familiar with the situation knew this was the case) and that he made a promise to close Gitmo while knowing full well that he could never make it happen. The more charitable perspective—the one I subscribe to—is that the President really was naive enough to believe that his personal charm and popularity across the world would be enough to convince our allies to take suspected terrorists off our hands. Let’s hope this is a sobering reminder that governing isn’t the same as campaigning and that hope and change have to be more than cute slogans.

(Via: HotAir)

There’s hardly a more disquieting and grotesque topic than pedophilia, but, as Mary Eberstadt reveals in her essay on “pedophilia chic,” it has not always been given the condemnation it deserves, even—as it were—in America.

Present unanimous disapproval comes from the political right and left—so much so that in the thick of the Polanski scandal, “The New York Times and the Washington Post . . . untrue to form, found themselves editorializing about the case in phrases that the Washington Times or the Catholic League could have reprinted verbatim.” Interestingly, both conservatives and liberals arrive at their condemnation of pedophilia through moral reasoning—though liberals, on nearly every other matter of sexual morality, allow only pragmatic considerations in public discussion.

But as late as the 1990s, this unanimity could hardly have been predicted, as a sizable cadre of “enlightened folk” were still wondering whether “intergenerational sex . . . might be worth a cheer or two.” Perhaps current disgust for this attitude is motivated by guilt, as the “enlightened” view of child abuse was entertained by more than a few opinion-machines of the likes of The Nation, New Republic, Vanity Fair, and the American Psychological Association.

Interestingly, Eberstadt identifies this decade’s abuse scandal among priests—or, perhaps, the coverage of it—as a watershed moment for our attitude towards the vice. Not only did the scandals do away with all vestiges of benignity pedophilia retained, but they made the public acutely aware of the lasting harm sexual abuse causes. And while the scandals gave professed enemies of the Church a motive for claiming a moral high ground, “the Church’s harshest critics are, generally speaking, the same sort of enlightened folks from whom pedophilia chic had floated up.” So the libertine view of “pedophilia chic” and hating on the Church were no longer compatible.

While the problem of pedophilia has not gone away, we can take consolation in Eberstadt’s assurance that this grave wrong “remains a marker of right and wrong in a world where other markers have been erased.”

[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host heated, half-serious, half-cocked arguments about some aspect of pop culture. Today’s theme is spiritually significant films. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com]

I’m a sucker for movies, lists, and religious discussions. So when Arts & Faith started compiling lists of Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films in 2004, my interest was naturally piqued. (They’ve put the list out a few other times but this seems to be the best version.)

After seeing the list, though, I was left with a vague sense of disappointment. While there are many worthy inclusions, overall the list feels rather sparse and banal. Maybe that is an inevitable result of the list being compiled by popular vote. Or perhaps its due to the short time film has been an art form as compared to other mediums, such as literature. Then again it could be that I haven’t viewed enough of the films listed (I’ve only seen 48 of the 100). Whatever its shortcomings, the compilation does serve the primary purpose of such listmaking: to offer an abundance of material for debate. In that regard, the effort is a complete success.

Included amidst such spiritual gems as The Apostle and Ponette are ho-hum entries like Fearless and Secrets and Lies. As soon as you begin to wonder what the voters could have been thinking, you find they’ve snuck in a few minor masterpieces (Groundhog Day, Unforgiven) that might have otherwise been overlooked. But just as soon as they regain my confidence I have to question how they could include Lars von Trier’s Dogville but not his hauntingly beautiful Dancer in the Dark. And what about . . . well, you get the idea.

Listed below are the hundred titles that were included (the ones I’ve seen are highlighted in bold). Beside the entries I’ve added a rating of one to four asterisks. The scale is not a measure of the movies overall quality but on what I would deem its “spiritual significance.”

(more…)

I recommend heading straight for the poetry. Mary Ellen is certainly right to point out Dana Gioia’s “Majority” as one of the gems of this issue. I also enjoyed Tim Murphy’s bracing advice in “Farm Boy, Call Kayla” and Rhina P. Espaillat’s tribute to him. Gail White’s “Bavarian Baroque” seems particularly timely as our church’s are filled with evergreens and poinsettias, and all the rich ornaments of Advent and Christmas.

The Senate version of Obamacare is actually an already-passed House Bill, HR 3590.  Why a House Bill?  By gutting the passed bill and substituting the Obamacare plan, it could avoid a conference committee.  If the bill passed, it would go back to the House, and if it passed without amendment, there would be no conference committee. It’s a potential fast track to passage.

Moreover, the Senate bill does not prohibit the “promotion” of assisted suicide in the end of life counseling like its House counterpart.  Moreover, it seems to require coverage for assisted suicide/euthanasia by the public option plans in states where it is legal.  Check out section 1323 of the bill creating the public option (p. 183), beginning at page 186:

(F) PROTECTING ACCESS TO END OF LIFE CARE.—A community health insurance option offered under this section shall be prohibited from limiting access to end of life care.

If assisted suicide, or even euthanasia, are legally considered forms of “end of life care” in a particular state–as it is now in Oregon, Washington, and Montana–it seems to me that the area’s community health insurance option would be required to provide “access” to it under this clause. How else can the provision be read? And because it would have been passed later in time, this clause could be construed to subsume existing federal law that prevents federal funds from being used in assisted suicide.

Tricky. Very tricky.

More details over at Secondhand Smoke.

As someone who considers a well-chosen book the best of all possible gifts, my recommended first stop in the December issue must be the special Christmas for Readers section. Among the “Thrillers and Throwbacks,” Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde mystery looks especially promising, and several of the “Lives and Legacies” (Brad Gooch on Flannery O’Connor, Blake Bailey on John Cheever) sound tempting. I only wish I knew a child to whom to give one of the “Wondrous and Silly” picture books. (I must confess: I’m tempted to buy Leo Politi’s Pedro: The Angel of Olvera Street for myself.)

I also find myself returning to Dana Gioia’s poem “Majority,” which—in this season when we think of Christmases past, present, and to come—makes a fittingly gentle and haunting coda to the children’s books section.

I’m a huge fan of Jon L. Breen’s recap of the best crime and mystery novels of 2009. Breen displays a magisterial command over the genre’s canon, and, along the way, he helps less knowledgeable readers such as myself sort out the wheat from the chaff:

Few writers today attempt the kind of multilayered puzzle common in the Golden Age of Detection of the 1920s and 1930s. Writers of cozies may like to be compared to Agatha Christie, but they rarely even try to duplicate her deftly deceptive plotting. Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile, the third in a series, rather unpromisingly follows an overworked current trend in making a historical figure into a fictional sleuth. But it does go against the contemporary grain in challenging the reader with impossible murders and fairly given clues, all of which lead to a final summation of which Hercule Poirot or Ellery Queen might have been proud.

The December issue is hot off the presses! I know; you’re thinking Where do I start?

Let me suggest “The Needle’s Eye: Why America’s Economic Recovery Needs the Global South,” by Reuven Brenner and David P. Goldman.

First the Episcopalians, and now the Lutherans. . .

The split over gay clergy within the country’s largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August.

“There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened,” said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop from State College, Pa.

Read more . . .

The recent debate about whether the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be held in New York City has overshadowed the question of whether the trial should even be held by a federal criminal court rather than by a military tribunal. The obvious answer, as indicated by a recent exchange between Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Attorney General Eric Holder, is that holding the trial in federal court will make a mockery of our justice system.

From the transcription provided by Jim Geraghty:

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: “I don’t think you can say that failure to convict is not an option, when we have juries in this country.”

Attorney General Eric Holder: I have thought about that possibility. Congress has passed legislation that would not allow the release of these individuals in this country. If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released into this country…

Grassley: My understanding is that if for some reason he’s not convicted, or a judge lets him off on a technicality, he’ll be an enemy combatant, so you’re right back where you started.

Ed Morrissey has the best and most succinct argument for why the trial shouldn’t be held in federal court system:

Not only will we be right back where we started, it will expose the federal trial as nothing more than a show trial. Show trials are conducted by despots and dictators to give only a thin veneer of legality to political detentions and executions. If the state isn’t prepared to abide by the decision of the court, including dismissals and acquittals, then the use of the trial system is worse than useless. It demeans the federal system needed for Americans to seek unbiased justice.

What do you think? Should the show trial commence and should it be held in New York City?

An interesting essay by the economics writer Meghan McArdle in the Atlantic on the evangelical anti-debt preacher—guru? prophet? it’s hard to know just what to call him—named Dave Ramsey.

The essay is surprisingly short: If anything called out for long-form journalism, this seemed to be it. I wonder if constant blogging has injured the wonderful McArdle as a writer, or if the Atlantic feels it just can’t indulge long new-journalism essays anymore.

Still, it’s a fine introduction to the strange world Ramsey inherits—and to McArdle’s embrace of that world. Even her obligatory (and quite perfunctory) dismissals of the religious component of Ramsey’s message are revealing.

From Frank Lockwood, religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

“He’s going to exorcise a demon now,” I whispered to the managing editor of the New York Times, adding, “This is somewhat unusual.”

Read more . . .

It should be no surprise that the language of same-sex marriage is just as controversial as the arguments for it. The rhetorical choices of same-sex marriage proponents—especially their use of rights language—have been effective in winning over the minds of many young people. While rhetoric is unavoidable and hardly a malum in se, it can diminish understanding when it is used to make, rather than merely buttress, an argument. In a recent article, New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak used the phrase “opposite-sex marriage” to refer to unions between heterosexuals. It appears to be the Times’ first revival of the term since the spring of 2004, when same-sex marriages began in Massachusetts. Writing on the details of a court battle in San Francisco, Liptak asserted that the lawyer involved was advocating not, well, marriage, but “opposite-sex marriage.” (Liptak also said the lawyer’s arguments “seemed to fall of their own weight,” in case you’re wondering about his own view).

This kind of language is an anguish, no doubt, to those unrequited Times letter-writers who will soon lose sleep over the new, unwelcome adjective for their marriages. Who was it who said that same-sex marriage wouldn’t change anything but for gays? If we have begun to call marriage by a different name, something significant is afoot. So how is it that the institution that built civilization can so shamelessly be marginalized in a word? The Times could not be reached for comment, but reasons for objection hardly require explanation. On the one hand, there are the obvious objections. Sure, Liptak and the Times are probably trying to exert subtle pressure to change your view of heterosexual marriage as mainstream and same-sex marriage as marginal. And yes, “opposite-sex marriage” is deliberately symmetrical to “same-sex marriage,” suggesting the two kinds of relationships are functionally indistinguishable, or that they are mere variations on an institution that applies identically to gays and straights. But there is, I suspect, a deeper issue as well.

Perhaps Chesterton was on to something when he wrote about fences. In a chapter from The Thing, G.K. fashions an instructive parable on reform:

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Some of you may have noticed that we have recently begun running weekly sermon reviews. We welcome contributions to this feature from writers everywhere, and are interested in reports from all demoninations and faiths. The pieces should run no more than 800-1000 words, include photos of the place of worship, and information to enable fact-checking, i.e. links, phone numbers. The objective is for these pieces to capture the moment we’re living in—chronicling the ways in which ministers, rabbis, and priests address current events, holidays, political issues, social and economic concerns, etc., in their sermons. We want reviews that capture not only the words, but also the setting and emotions of the experience.

Please email your submissions—as soon after the sermon as possible—to FT@firstthings.com.

At St. Therese of Lisieux—the oldest of the Discalced Carmelite foundations in California, located in Alhambra, a small city in the San Gabriel Valley region near Los Angeles—the Saturday 5 p.m. vigil Mass seemed marked by the motif of drawing to a close. Fr. Jan Lundberg, OCD, the 62-year-old pastor, began his homily by noting that this Mass also marked the drawing to a close of the liturgical year, the last time that we would hear the Gospel of Mark proclaimed in the Sunday liturgy until two more years have gone by.

In the Gospel reading, we heard again this message from Christ himself:

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Notice the peculiar pattern on the following book covers?

See the pattern? All of the women displayed are missing part of their face or head—and all of them are missing eyes. (Although I stopped after twenty-one, I could have selected dozens more.)

I started looking for examples after this phenomena was pointed out by A.G. Harmon at Image magazine:

[K]nowing there are platoons of marketers who focus group this kind of stuff—novel titles, and the color and texture of book jackets—I’m sure this fad is the most intentional of things. That is, it’s not why I myself would do it this way: because eyes are hard to draw. No. They must be on to something; this must be a good idea, sales-wise.

But how come? I decided that eyes give too much away; they’re too committal. These books all seem intended to reserve an air of mystery, of exoticism: “if you want to know me, you must pay twenty-five dollars for the hardcover, and still you’ll only scratch the surface.”

Read more . . .

Want to increase the GNP? Preach about the doctrine of hell:

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

Read more . . .

I thought all the jokes about heavy-handed labor unions were, well, just jokes. Apparently not:

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Fortunately, Balzano says “[The union is] probably going to let this one go” so Anderson doesn’t have to worry about some Parks and Recreation goons coming to his house and breaking his hoes.

(Via: Gene Veith)

For years the identify of the pseudonymous Asia Times‘ columnist Spengler remained a well-guarded secret.

Last night on CNBC the mystery man was revealed to be . . .

(more…)

Novelist Cormac McCarthy gives a fascinating interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he discusses, among other things, books, movies, God, cultural permanence, and ideas. At one point, the interview turns to the modern attention span, and how novelists must adapt:

WSJ: Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much?

CM: For modern readers, yeah. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you’re going to write something like “The Brothers Karamazov” or “Moby-Dick,” go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don’t care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.

I think this is largely true—the only 800+ page non-thriller novels I’ve read tended to be old and Russian. The bite/byte-sized culture in which we operate today makes our attention spans struggle to hold beyond 140 characters, much less 140 pages (see Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making us Stupid“). Such indicators would not seem to bode well for Christians who claim to be a people of the book—a book which generally has over a thousand pages, thin paper and double-columns notwithstanding. Could there be any future for ideas that are bigger than a status update? (more…)

Michael Barone examines the latest data on abortion rates and finds an interesting pattern:

Roe v. Wade imposed the same legal abortion regime on the entire nation and made abortion a national political issue. Yet Americans in different regions and states have in effect established very different behavioral abortion regimes. Abortion is very common in New York (abortion rate of 38.2) and New Jersey (34.3), only about half as common in Illinois (18.9) and Texas (17.3), and lower in South Carolina (7.9) and Utah (6.4). Cultural liberals have noted that divorce rates are relatively low in some politically liberal states like Massachusetts and relatively high in some politically conservative states like Oklahoma. But abortion rates seem highly correlated with cultural attitudes and with, at least during the time that abortion has been a major political issue, voting behavior.

(Via: The Corner)

What do numbers mean, anyway? If someone believes a job is saved or created, then for them it’s a job saved or created. I’m just saying.

Don’t miss the fresh-brewed theology from FT’s November issue:

Meir Y. Soloveichik, associate rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York, writes on the theology of Michael Wyschogrod:

To Jewish critics, Wyschogrod’s emphasis on divine love and on the indwelling of the divine sounds more Christian than Jewish. Wyschogrod, however, insists on demanding that Jews refresh their religion from its original sources, arguing that a general and unspecific love is no love at all—and thus that God’s particular love for Israel is what makes possible his love for all humanity.

Despite—or perhaps precisely because—he is so rooted in Jewish Orthodoxy and so persuaded of God’s special love for Israel, Wyschogrod has not hesitated to engage Christians. One of his great contributions has been to transform the way Christian theologians understand Judaism. The Methodist theologian Kendall Soulen (editor of an anthology of Wyschogrod’s essays) first read him when he was in graduate school studying Christian theology. He felt “an almost physical sense of discovery, as if I had bumped into a hitherto unforeseen rock. What I had just read was undoubtedly the most unapologetic statement of Jewish faith I had ever encountered.”