Columns
Shirley Sherrod, an old source of mine
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
For the story I wrote back in 1993.
Angle glosses Jefferson
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
Tea Party paladina and Southern Baptist Sharron Angle, the Republican running to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada, recently offered the following interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he interpreted the religion clauses of the First Amendment as erecting a “wall of separation” between church and state. “Thomas Jefferson […]
The Shirley Sherrod story
By Mark Silk — July 21, 2010
My take, from my turn in Georgia, over at Beliefnet.
Evangelicals Heart Immigration Reform
By Mark Silk — July 20, 2010
How to explain the willingness of some conservative evangelicals to join forces with President Obama to support comprehensive immigration, as the NYT reported yesterday? Well it could be that it’s the Judeo-Christian thing to do. (Or maybe not, if you’re Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association.) But for sure there’s a political calculus, as […]
Apples and Oranges at the Vatican
By Mark Silk — July 19, 2010
The widespread astonishment, contempt, and anger that has greeted the Vatican’s decision to include the “attempted ordination of women” among the “graver crimes” falling under the juridical purview of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has forced apologists for the new norms to issue explanations for how it’s really not the case […]
Huckabee over Palin et al.
By Mark Silk — July 18, 2010
If I were Mike Huckabee (and planning to run for president in 2012), I’d be happy with the latest Gallup poll. Among the leading GOP contenders, he’s got by far the best ratios of approval to disapproval with both Republican voters and the public at large. With Republicans, it’s better than 6-1 favorable, compared to […]
Vatican Norms: Cherchez la femme
By Mark Silk — July 16, 2010
The new set of canon law norms issued by the Vatican yesterday was intended to win some PR points on the sexual abuse front, but its substantive goal is to ensure that no Roman Catholic bishop starts ordaining women. Far from being a maladroit add-on to the list of “graver crimes” (graviora delicta) subject to […]
“Kill the Ground Zero Mosque”
By Mark Silk — July 14, 2010
The most religiously bigoted political attack ad in U.S. history, according to me.
Destroying religious freedom
By Mark Silk — July 13, 2010
Ever alert for Republican wackiness, TPM calls our attention to a recent TV interview with Ed Martin, who’s got the GOP nomination to run against Rep. Russ Carnahan to represent Missouri’s Third District in Congress. One thing I like to say is: America is great, not because of our genetics. We’re great because we created […]
Getting GetReligion
By Mark Silk — July 12, 2010
Because GetReligion’s Mollie Hemingway is gracious enough to concede that I’ve offered the “best defense” of the Goodstein/Halbfinger NYT article on Pope Benedict’s performance as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and because I was perhaps ungracious enough to smack her around a little in a subsequent post, let me […]
Ordaining Women = Raping Children
By Mark Silk — July 9, 2010
According to the Vatican’s new norms, both count as graviora delicta–most serious abuses. H/T David Gibson.
Times v. Benedict Redux
By Mark Silk — July 9, 2010
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but Mollie Hemingway’s latest defense of the critics of the Goodstein/Halbfinger story in last Friday’s New York Times shouldn’t go unanswered. According to Hemingway, the the critics assert (and she agrees) that it is false to say, as the Times alleges, that the 2001 action by Pope […]
DOMA Unconstitutional!
By Mark Silk — July 8, 2010
U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro’s peroration in Gill v. Personnel Management: To further divide the class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning. And where, as here, “there is no reason to believe that the disadvantaged […]
