I’ve long felt that Michael Moore greatly underestimated the huge affection that many peace-loving gun control advocates have for Charlton Heston. By the end of ‘Bowling for Columbine’ with Moore howling and cringing in the driveway, I just wanted Heston to march out of the house and kick his ass. In fact, I would pay to see that: a steel cage death match between the 84-year-old Heston and the 300-pound Moore (the loser could be made into soylent green and delivered to a food bank).

At any rate, this is the time of year for two of Heston’s best movies*. Fans of Moses and Passover should tune in to ABC tonight from 7 - 11:30PM for The Ten Commandments. Sure, the special effects are cheesy, but the colors are super-vivid and the acting exquisitely hammy.
If it’s Easter salvation you crave, then go rent Ben-Hur (not one hammy/cheesy frame in the whole 3 hours). Last year I got to see this at Cinemaworld and it was stupendous. During the chariot race I’m pretty sure I was making audible noises. No CGI here — this was a cast of thousands filmed in a real amphitheater, watching a real frigging chariot race. Charlton Heston knows how to drive a chariot.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbQvpJsTvxU]

*Apparently these were books first.

Psyche! There’s no such thing. Yet.

After blunderously claiming that mortal enemies Al-Qaeda and Iran were in cahoots, John McCain and life-partner Joe Lieberman popped over to the Temple Mount yesterday for a little fun, a little nosh, some kibbitzing, and a whole lot of nonplussed Hasidim. CNN tells it:

After slipping the traditional private note into the sacred wall which once supported the western side of the Second Temple, McCain received a tour of the tunnels of 0ld City Jerusalem.

Later, as he approached a railing to wave to the gathered Americans and a smattering of mostly less-interested Israelis, Eli Ezer of New York took a photo, but kept on a running debate with another tourist about McCain’s choice of a running mate.

“Do you think he should pick Lieberman?” the woman asked, referring to Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat-turned-Independent who is a McCain supporter, and was at his side Wednesday.

“I hope not, ” said Ezer.

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Projo’s got it:

A teenager allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail outside a long-vacant Jewish temple in South Providence early yesterday, but the police caught him and two of his apparent accomplices. The teens apparently intended to toss the Molotov cocktail into a vacant lot across the street from the temple in order to enjoy the sight of it shattering and flaming, but it was hastily cast aside onto the grass outside the temple when a police cruiser approached, the police said.

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Obama’s speech yesterday addressing race and the manufactured Jeremiah Wright controversy was brilliant and moving. Whether you agree with that assessment or see him as a crafty politician giving another pretty speech, it is notable for the fact that he actually dared to speak to the voters about a difficult issue as if they were mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

It is unfortunate that we have to praise him for what should be the standard in American political discourse, but the fact remains that such forthright maturity is decidedly not the standard. All that remains to be seen is whether the voters (and pundits, and media, and his political opponents) actually are mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

I have long felt that I am able to have a more nuanced and less personalized view on Israel policy than Jews of my parents’ generation, for whom anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence were and are far more real. But on Saturday night, two Molotov cocktails were thrown into the home of Yossi Knafo, the Jewish Agency’s representative at Brown University. The attack caused no injuries, and “the motive behind the attack is not yet known.” But this is totally crazy and fairly terrifying. The Jerusalem Post reports:

No one was wounded in the attack, which took place just before 2 a.m. near the Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island. One firebomb hit an outside wall of the house and lit a fire in the yard, while a second firebomb passed through a window into the living room, but failed to explode. Knafo, who was awake in the adjacent bedroom at the time of the attack, immediately alerted local police and Jewish Agency security personnel. He was transferred temporarily to a hotel.

Though the attack was spontaneous, “this marks a serious escalation,” a source familiar with the case told the Post. “This isn’t a threatening letter, a stone through the window or an anonymous phone call.”

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Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8]

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

Evangelical nutbags still have a strangle-hold on the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The New York Times reports that three speakers invited to participate in a recent conference on terrorism may not be former Muslim terrorists as they claim, but rather proselytizing Christians.

Members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group suing the federal government to combat what it calls creeping evangelism in the armed forces, said it was typical of the Air Force Academy to invite born-again Christians to address cadets on terrorism rather than experts who could teach students about the Middle East.

“This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues,” said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member.

Experts say their stories just don’t add up and they aren’t even the correct ages, but the three former Muslim terrorists are very sure of one thing… “Jesus can change your life”.

I’m just guessing here, but I think that Governor Carcieri’s wife, Susan, is not an expert in Constitutional law, or anything else for that matter.  A report in this morning’s Providence Journal relates that Sue and Don hosted another anti-choice rally in the State House rotunda…

Sue Carcieri called the concept of life as fundamental a right as liberty and pursuit of happiness. “It is a basic right we have in our Constitution.  It’s really basic” she said.

Except that it’s totally NOT.  “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are among those certain unalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and are not protected under our Constitution.  However, the Governor might want to consult a constitutional expert regarding the First Amendment and see what the Establishment Clause might have to say about holding Catholic services inside the State House.

Over the past few weeks, our political debate has centered on the intersection of race and gender in American politics. Clinton claims to be “proud” of Obama’s transcendence of racial discrimination, and Obama claims to be proud of Clinton’s success in shattering the glass ceiling. And both campaigns have instrumentally used race and gender, both publicly and deceitfully, to smear their opponents.

Journalists, commentators, and public figures have contributed to this debate, at times stirring feminist or African-American solidarity and, at other times, commending a nation that seems, perhaps, finally colorblind and egalitarian. “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” wrote Gloria Steinem, in an attempt to explain the importance of female support for Hillary Clinton. Chris Rock, opening for Obama at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, warned the audience not to waste their votes on “that white lady.” Others still use this contest between a black man and a female front-runner as evidence of our progress as a nation.

Are we left with the realization that we are still racist? Still sexist? Or are we left with the warm feeling that we are somehow less sexist and less racist than ever before? Perhaps this is the most dangerous of all the assumptions. Noticeably absent from the Race/Gender debate over the past few weeks has been a discussion of the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment that has played a significant role in the formation of our voters’ choices.

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Online sympathizers of al Qaida from across the internet have submitted hundreds of questions for deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri over the past two months for an “on-line interview” on a militant Islamic website, and many supporters seem to be as in the dark about their activities and future plans as the rest of the world.

“Knight of Islam,” asks, “We are awaiting a strike against American soil. Why has that not been done? Why are the Jews in the world not struck?”

“We hear a lot about the non-centralization of al-Qaida,” one supporter writes. “Is the loss of direct control by al-Qaida’s leadership over the jihadi cells harmful to al-Qaida? … Does al-Qaida intend to try to reassert its control?”

(HuffPo)

The Wild Colonial
South Water Street

Doors open early today — 2:30 PM — for the Patriots/Chargers game, followed immediately by the Giants/Packers contest. Watch the games on a color television set!

This is the ad I just saw while I was checking out the Laugh Out Loud Cat Bible which is a wiki that is working on translating the Bible into ‘cat pidgin’ (see I Can Has Cheezburger). Which was a little confusing; are actual Christians (like people who go the church and stuff) really going to be reading a made up cat jibberish bible? And if they are, are these the kind of singles they are looking for?

If you click around on the cat bible site you can also see the version of this ad for the ladies, the guy in looks like a dorkier version of the dad from that 7th Heaven show. WTF?