April 30, 2010 | 10:44 pm

First Israel, now his own street in Beverly Hills

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Theodor Herzl already has a city named in his honor, and I assume this won’t be his first street, but Beverly Hills on Sunday will rename a block of Clark Drive after the founder of modern Zionism:

The new street name was proposed to the city council by Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad, apparently the first and only Iranian Jewish immigrant at the helm of an American city.

Two council members objected to the name change, fearing a possible breach in the separation of church and state, but they were outvoted.

Israeli Consul General Yaakov Dayan warmly supported the Delshad initiative. “It gives me tremendous pride to see a piece of Israel’s heritage and culture amidst this beautiful city,” Dayan said.

April 30, 2010 | 11:56 am

The Mojave cross stays—what now?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Splitting along predictable lines, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 this week to let stand the Mojave cross honoring fallen war veterans. The decision is being hailed as a major shift in strict church-state separation. But is it really?

And of even more significance, what does this ruling say about what the government can and can’t do in erecting religious monuments on public land?

Experts reading the tea leaves of the opinion had different interpretations.

Jay Sekulow of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice saw the ruling as a green light for religious symbols on public land, whether erected by the government itself or by land transfers to private entities.

“If you look at this case, coupled with the Ten Commandments case,” he said, “it’s becoming very clear that the public display of monuments, even religious monuments, is not a per se violation of the Constitution.”

But Peter Eliasberg of the ACLU disagreed, contending that what might be permissible for a monument in place for 70 years would not be for a relatively new monument.

“I don’t see this as any type of broad pronouncement,” Eliasberg said.

University of Michigan law professor Douglas Laycock, who filed a brief urging the court to uphold the order to dismantle the cross, noted that Wednesday’s ruling did not resolve the big question waiting to be answered: whether the government can itself place a religious symbol on government land.

“The real issue, whether it’s crosses or any other kind of display, is postponed until the next case,” said Laycock, adding that he is “not optimistic about how the next case is going to come out.”

I’m inclined to agree with Eliasberg and Laycock, though not in principle. The specifics of this case were so unique, and the decision so significantly tied to those facts that it’s difficult to see how this decision could apply to the future erection of, for example, the Ten Commandments outside of a courthouse.

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April 28, 2010 | 10:03 pm

Resurrecting the Great Shave

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The VideoJew has had some great sketches. Like this one. But this homage to facial hair for Lag B’Omer remains my favorite.

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April 28, 2010 | 12:16 pm

This time we really found Noah’s Ark. Promise.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is a lot of skepticism about Chinese filmmaker Yeung Wing-Cheung’s claim that he found Noah’s Ark atop Mount Ararat. For one thing, we’ve heard this before.
As the Christian Science Monitor headline said: “Noah’s Ark discovered. Again.”

Here’s how Benjamin Radford, LiveScience’s Bad Science columnist, framed the discovery on the Monitor’s op-ed page:

Yeung Wing-Cheung says he and a team from Noah’s Ark Ministries found the remains of the Ark at an elevation of about 12,000 feet (3,658 meters). They filmed inside the structure and took wood samples that were later analyzed in Iran. He claims the wood was carbon-dated to around the reputed time of Noah’s flood, which would be remarkable since organic material should have long since disintegrated in the last 5,000 years.

Yeung said that he is “99 percent certain that it is Noah’s Ark based on historical accounts, including the Bible and local beliefs of the people in the area, as well as carbon dating.”

While news of the find is making headlines around the world, there’s one part of the story that Yeung is conspicuously silent about: He is only the latest in a long line of people who claim to have found Noah’s Ark. In fact, there have been at least half a dozen others — all of them funded by Christian organizations — who have claimed final, definitive proof of Noah’s Ark. So far none of the claims have proven true.

One of those news headlines from around the world was from ABC News:

“I’m not quite 99.9 percent sure it’s Noah’s Ark, but they’ve got something,” George Washington University’s Eric Cline told “Good Morning America.” “I’m waiting for them to convince me.”

He suggested it could even be a very old shepherd’s hut.

“I would want to first of all try to figure out their data, verify it,” he said.

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April 27, 2010 | 10:59 pm

The man who sues the Vatican

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jeffrey R. Anderson has been a busy man. The New York Times explains:

Mr. Anderson, 62, has been filing suits against priests and bishops since 1983 and, at least once before, against the Vatican itself. But a new wave of accusations reaching ever closer to Rome has emerged in recent weeks, helped along, in part, by Mr. Anderson’s discovery of previously undisclosed documents. Now he is receiving new calls and pressing new cases, with more court filings and news conferences, at an almost frenzied pace.

His critics call him a headline chaser and a self-promoter. And even some in the legal community refer to his role as co-counsel in so many abuse cases around the country as “the Jeff Anderson franchise system.”

Mr. Anderson is unapologetic: “Yes, I am driven. Yes, I am obsessed. Yes, I am. Maybe I’m even manic about it,” he said in an interview that filled the rare gaps between everything else whirling around him. “But it has little to do with their theology. It has everything to do with what they’re doing to kids.”

Read some background on on abuse claims that have recently come to light here.

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April 27, 2010 | 9:20 pm

Goldman’s congressional sh*t show

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If you were looking for me, I was taking a four-hour criminal law exam that demanded six hours and a lot more mental capacity than I have, followed by helping Four Gs and a Jew—yes, that is my rec league basketball team—get to 7 and 2 and week before the playoffs. (Playoffs?!) So what’s been happening out there?

Well, Goldman Sachs got raked over the coals at Congress. No one was blaming the Jews for the economic crisis here. Just senators taking Goldman to task. As John Dickerson of Slate remarked:

With all the excrement expletives this Goldman hearing is now officially a sh*t show.

The video is above. Read more here. I hope no kids were watching on CSPAN or else Sen. Carl Levin might need to fine himself.

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April 26, 2010 | 11:21 pm

The voice of God on your iPhone

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is no tech wave of the future. Faith has been available on cell phones for years. This is Church-On-The-Go 2.0:

There are now hundreds of religious-themed iPhone apps. There’s the Azan Alarm Clock, with Islamic prayer times. There’s the Buddha Buddy, allowing you “to access the wisdom of the Buddha conveniently on your iPhone.” There’s the Daily Tao, the Daily Jesus, the Daily Krishna, the Daily Kabbalah and the Daily Joan of Arc. There’s even the Mobile Atheist, with an inspirational “freethought” of the day.

What sets apart the Daily Sermonettes on Catholic Faith and Scripture with Fr. Mike Manning, besides its epic-length title, is the fact that it offers a daily video, not just text, with relatively high production values, and is being produced for the Vatican Observatory, which receives the major cut of its $5.99 fee.

Read the rest here.

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April 26, 2010 | 2:44 pm

Study Bible prototype leaked in pub

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Even if you’re a Luddite, you likely heard about Apple’s iPod-prototype debacle last week. That inspired a little Christian humor from Xianity, who tweeted:

BREAKING NEWS: Crossway employee fired for losing super-secret ESV Missional Study Bible prototype in brew pub.

And here is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s spin on it.

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April 25, 2010 | 12:30 pm

Obama prays with Billy Graham

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After much delay, Billy Graham finally god his moment today with President Obama:

“The president had a private prayer and conversation with Rev. Graham,” said White House spokesman Bill Burton. “He is extraordinarily gratified that he took the time to meet with him.”

White House spiritual adviser Josh DuBois also attended the session in Graham’s mountaintop cabin in Montreat, N.C.

(skip)

“Rev. Graham has obviously been an important spiritual leader for past presidents and for the American people for decades,” Burton said. “He’s a real treasure for our country. The president appreciates the opportunity to visit him at his home.”

And Obama makes 12.

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April 25, 2010 | 2:35 am

USC’s Jewish football star falls far in NFL Draft

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Poor Taylor Mays. The standout safety from USC whose combination of size and speed wasn’t only unparalleled because he is Jewish, had been projected as a top-15 pick in last seasons’ NFL Draft. But at Pete Carroll’s advice, Mays returned for his senior season.

And during this weekend’s draft he learned what many Angelenos already knew: You can’t trust Carroll:

So when pick after pick was announced and his name wasn’t being called, Mays sat in front of the television, stunned, and he started to blame Carroll for his plight.

“He is someone I’ve trusted for a long time, been very close to,” Mays said Friday. “I put my future in his hands when he told me to come back to school. I just feel like we weren’t on the same page for what I needed to do to get drafted where I wanted to be drafted.”

Mays says all year he had continually asked Carroll what he needed to do to get better, what deficiencies he needed to correct to prove to scouts that he was the brightest, fastest, most physical safety in the country; to maintain the lofty status he had achieved the year before.

“[Pete] kept saying, ‘Taylor, you’ll be fine. You’re fine,’ ” Mays said. “Obviously that wasn’t the case.”

To be fair, it’s difficult to believe Carroll is quite as responsible for Mays’ dropping stock as he makes his former coach, now the head coach and president of the Seattle Seahawks, out to be. The Draft is an unpredictable affair. Just ask Jimmy Clausen.

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April 22, 2010 | 8:56 pm

Matt and Trey respond to Comedy Central’s censoring

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A statement from Matt Stone and Trey Parker:

In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.

In short: Terrorism—1; Comedy Central—0

This has all been a bit surreal. I know, it’s just a TV show. But it represents so, so much more. Amid it all, I can’t help but think of the a scene from the “Cartoon Wars” two-parter, which was, naturally, about intimidating a network into not airing an offensive cartoon. It features Bart Simpson and Cartman discussing plans to get “Family Guy” off the air:

Cartman: Look, kid, if you hate a TV show, all you have to do is get an episode pulled. Pretty soon the show is compromised and it goes off the air.
Bart: Cool, man.

Cartman: Yes. So my plan is to use this whole Muhammad thing as a way to scare the network into pulling tonight’s show. I’m going to use fear to get them to do what I want.
Bart: Isn’t that like, terrorism?

Cartman: …No, it isn’t like terrorism. It is terrorism!

I was going to embed it above, but clips currently aren’t available at South Park Studios. I can only hope this is coincidental.

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April 22, 2010 | 8:43 pm

Tebow drafted in first round

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Only time will tell how Tim Tebow’s pro career pans out. But, so far, he’s off to a good start.

Despite all the haters who said Tebow wouldn’t get drafted or, if he did, probably wouldn’t be picked as a quarterback and certainly wouldn’t go first round, Tebow was selected with the 25th pick in tonight’s NFL draft. Good for the Jesus Christ Football Star. Unfortunately, though, Timmy was picked by the Denver Broncos, which, against my wife’s protest, means Tebow is now a four-letter word in this house.

On the eve of the draft, ESPN.com ran this excellent story about “Fame, Fortune and Being Tim Tebow.” Here’s an excerpt:

With Tebow, the unbending three-word rule is this: Expect the unusual. Once you accept that, it’s easier to understand the amazing phenomenon that has sprung up around him, or why the piping-hot debate about where he should go in the NFL draft has turned into something of a national obsession.

People love Tebow. People hate Tebow. People doubt him. People rave about him.

Tebow, more than any athlete in recent memory, tends to polarize people without doing anything really wrong. Or at least criminal. He’s been called one of the greatest college players ever. Yet he’s also been parodied as “The Chosen One” and blamed for the just-passed NCAA rule banning messages on the little black patches players wear under their eyes (though Reggie Bush actually started the trend years earlier). He’s been both celebrated and mocked for the way his hyper-intense college coach, Urban Meyer, had a post-defeat speech Tebow gave two years ago all but promising a national championship cast on a metal plaque, then bolted onto the side of Florida’s stadium to immortalize it. This, though Tebow still had his senior season to play.

Who else does this stuff happen to? Who else provokes these sorts of responses?

NFL talent guru Gil Brandt has predicted Tebow will be a late first-round pick. Others say he’ll be a bust wherever he’s drafted.

(skip)

When asked for the weirdest question he fielded during his NFL team interviews, Tebow says it came from a club executive who asked him, “Would you rather be the starting quarterback for our franchise, or the governor of Florida?”

Tebow, smiling as beatifically as ever now, said just what you’d expect him to say: “I told him I want to be a starting quarterback first. But later? Why not both?”

Read the rest here.

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