Thanks, BrentB67, for this.  I couldn't agree more. I have stopped going to NRO because of the pop-unders, and have drastically reduced my visits to Ricochet since they started.  There really couldn't possibly be anything worse for traffic than pop-unders.

I have no interest in re-arguing things that have been thoroughly hashed out elsewhere (without my participating, I might add).  But I have to say that the idea that one can label all of Christian and Jewish and Muslim history, right up to the point a few decades ago when a few minority religious dissidents appeared in the wealthiest and most decadent Western societies, "bigotry under the guise of religion" is just hilarious.

Really? I looked for a bit at his website http://standamerica.us/bishop-jackson-biography/ and didn't see such a thing.  I would have to hear what he had to say to know whether I thought it was problematic. If he's preaching in a religious context against homosexual activity, then no one should be able to fault him for that.  If he's battling the redefinition of marriage, again, that's a perfectly legitimate point of view that might well be popular in Virginia. We've noticed in the past that you tend to define "anti-homosexual" pretty broadly.

I'm still a bit lost about what is supposed to be so crazy about this guy. I gather he has a law degree from Harvard, which is a pretty respectable credential.  And as far as I can tell, "bishop" in the black American church is a much more nebulous title than it is in most liturgical churches.  The criticisms I find seem to be predominantly about his comparing Planned Parenthood to the KKK, which is a perfectly reasonable comparison if you know anything about the roots of Planned Parenthood in the eugenics movement, a link that I am sure most liberals have studiously avoided learning about.

I married late, and was the child of parents who married late. Perhaps as a result, I fall firmly into the "marry early" camp.  I wonder how many of us are simply reacting against our own experiences.

There have also been a lot of allegations of racial discrimination on the part of the store--that they won't hire nonwhite salespeople, for example.  For that reason and because of the sexualization of kids, I would not let my daughter shop there.  It's as if they are taking a "one-size-alienates-all" approach. I wish it weren't succeeding so well.

. . . or perhaps because you don't have any skills, unlike many people from overseas, or feel entitled to earn money out of proportion to your productivity.

I feel plenty sorry for kids who have invested tons of student loan money in "educations" that will never pay off. However, you can't hire people out of pity and stay in business, particularly if you have to compete in a global market.

CPS is frequently pretty awful, isn't it?  I know a woman who was removed from her perfectly decent parents for an extended period as a child, and ended up with serious PTSD.  And yet we seem frequently to hear of kids with real abuse issues recognized and ignored by CPS until the children end up murdered.  I guess I can't imagine doing their job, though, so maybe it isn't fair to judge. 

And yet Kaiser keeps getting held out to the rest of us as the model of how American health care should be run, and my Californian lefty friends just love their Kaiser health care. 

As long as intelligent lay people choose Kaiser for their health care, I don't see how other people can be held legally negligent for doing the same for their child--as much as I, like you DocJay, might be convinced their choice is a mistake.

When I was a kid, not so very long ago, my relatively liberal Episcopal priest talked about seeing a man in the congregation with the woman for whom he had left his wife. He was nervous about whether they would come up for communion, because, of course, he would have had to bar them from taking it.  Fortunately, they did not.

Our culture has certainly deteriorated a great deal in my relatively short lifetime.

Whose job is in greater jeopardy? 

The difference for us Episcopalians is that the church's leaders really didn't care how many people it lost; they were interested in seizing the property and endowments, and in the cultural authority that comes with saying, "Bishop ___, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, supports [insert current political cause celebre]."

I stayed in much longer than I should have. Like you, Amy, I stayed in because of my heritage; ancestors of mine had built those churches, darn it, and why should I let people come in and steal and kill them?  But the Left is really good at fighting these battles, particularly because, unlike us, they see them strictly as political battles rather than spiritual ones--I don't think they really believe in anything much at all. 

Anyway, my deepest sympathies to you, and may you find a better church home.  I have loads of respect for the LCMS, so I hope that works out for you.

As for the first, I like to think it's true, but it would only be by grace and depends on whether I was given it at the time. As to the second, like a shot I'd lie to save my daughter's life.  I'm not sure whether that's right, but I know it's true.

Our Republican senator, Richard Burr, has not been, generally, one to inspire intense enthusiasm. But I had to admit that this small paragraph from the article you linked to cheered me up a bit:

“I have no problems with Congress being under the same guidelines,” Burr said. “I think if this is going to be a disaster — which I think it’s going to be — we ought to enjoy it together with our constituents.”

Thanks for sharing. Lovely.

What does it say?  Dennis Prager's statement the other day that Jewish tradition is not really opposed to divorce has left me, and probably a lot of others here,  interested in learning more.