June 23, 2010 | 12:40 am

Manute Bol: Self-less superstar

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Manute Bol was a big man—both on the basketball court and off it. Somehow, at 7’7”, he was larger than life.

After retiring from the NBA in 1994, Bol became even more active in his native Sudan. As U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback said in remembrance of Bol on the Senate floor, Bol’s Christian faith “guided his advocacy.”

Bol, who died Saturday of kidney failure, is being remembered as much for his stature and his NBA legacy—he was the only player to average more blocks (3.3 per game) than points (2.6 per game)—as he is for his life off the court. He was, as John Zogby, the president and CEO of Zogby International, said, “The Real NBA Hero.”

From Zogby’s HuffPo piece:

He was so much more than an NBA legend. He was living proof that none of us could ever claim that we had a bad day. Manute had seen so much more than any of us and he triumphed. He said he was going to build reconciliation schools in southern Sudan. This from a man who lost 250 members of his own family from religious violence. He put together schools taught by Christians and Muslims for children who were Christian and Muslim. They would learn and study under the shade of trees, using sticks and rocks to write. Manute moved forward to build the first school with the help of volunteers from all faiths. The builders learned to make bricks in a town that had a shortage of water and no electricity, no infrastructure and no contact with the outside world.

This commitment to serving others, Zogby writes, made Bol “the richest man ever to have played in the NBA.”

June 22, 2010 | 11:44 pm

Vouching for a problem priest

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Gustavo Arellano does some navelgazing, and writes that Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod Brown, when he was the head of the Diocese of Boise, wrote a letter recommending a long-time problem priest for placement in Tijuana:

Brown’s official endorsement of a pedo-priest—never before revealed—came to light only because of a lawsuit filed against the Boise diocese in 1994 by one of Garcia’s victims in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where the priest practiced in the mid-1970s. At that time, Garcia was on loan from the Boise diocese, and you’ll remember that Brownie’s legal-defense team maintained that “the bishop from the Diocese of incardination of a priest has the responsibility for that priest” in order to wiggle out of a previous sex-abuse lawsuit, right? Not this time!

For the Garcia lawsuit, Brownie sought to dismiss the case against Boise on the grounds that his diocese had no jurisdiction over Garcia at the time of the New Mexico molestation. He went as far as hiring canonical experts to try and worm his way out of the responsibility of owning up to a Boise pedo-priest. The problem was that the Boise diocese had always considered Garcia one of their own, and Brown’s letter to Berlie was the smoking gun that proved it in the eyes of Samuel Herrera, the lawyer representing Garcia’s victim who sued Boise, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe (which includes Las Vegas) and the Servants of the Paraclete (the Catholic order that ran Jemez Springs) for Garcia’s abuse.

More about the discovery process here. Really, it’s amazing that after all these years endless dirt on how Catholic leaders handled pedophile priests keeps coming out. Remember the pope’s Easter?

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June 22, 2010 | 2:25 pm

Loose lips sink Gen. McChrystal’s ship

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s not religion, but Gen. McChrystal’s loose lips are all anyone is talking about right now.

The commander of troops of Afghanistan has been summoned back to Washington for disparaging another general and Vice President Joe Biden. (I thought the veep was the one famous for putting his foot in his mouth.) Here’s an excerpt of Rolling Stone’s “The Runaway General”:

The next morning, McChrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, a French military academy. The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan.” The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the f—- and keep a lower profile

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

Read the rest here, and check out Media Decoder for the story behind the story.

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June 21, 2010 | 6:14 pm

A look into God’s brain

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Source: Neurosurgery

Michelangelo’s masterpiece upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has long been studied. Who would have thought that 500 years later a major new discovery could have been made within the fresco—and not by art experts but neuroscientists?

From The New York Times:

Michelangelo was a conscientious student of human anatomy and enthusiastically dissected corpses throughout his life, but few of his anatomical drawings survive. This one, a depiction of the human brain and brain stem, appears to be drawn on the neck of God, but not all art historians can see it there.

This is not the first picture of a human organ someone has found, or at least imagined, in Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes. In 1990, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a physician described what he saw as a rendering of the human brain in the Creation of Adam, the panel showing God touching Adam’s finger. And one physician, a professor of medicine at Baylor University, published an article in a medical journal in 2000 suggesting that Michelangelo had included a drawing of a kidney in another ceiling panel. The author was, perhaps not coincidentally, a kidney specialist.

The latest find, described in a study in the May issue of the journal Neurosurgery, appears directly above the altar in “The Separation of Light From Darkness,” another panel from the series of nine depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis.

It seems a bit wacky. But one look at the image and it’s hard to reject the resemblance. One of the journal article’s authors makes the case even more convincing in this interview with NPR.

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June 21, 2010 | 1:32 pm

Rubashkin gets 27 years in surprising sentence

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I know Rubashkin was in some real trouble, but the sentencing today was more than a little surprising:

Kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin was sentenced to 27 years in a federal prison for his conviction on federal financial fraud charges.

U.S. District Judge Linda Reade filed the sentencing memorandum Monday and will present the sentence in federal court Tuesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Rubashkin was convicted last November on 86 counts of fraud in connection with the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa.

The prison term will be followed by five years of parole, according to Reade’s ruling. Rubashkin also will be required to make restitution of nearly $27 million to several financial institutions.

Prosecutors had requested a 25-year sentence, according to the Des Moines Register.

Rubashkin lawyer Guy Cook, noting the prosecutors’ request, called the sentence “unfair and excessive.”

“It’s essentially a life sentence for a 51-year-old man, and it’s not in the public interest,” he told the newspaper.

Rubashkin was acquitted earlier this month in an Iowa state court on 67 counts of child labor violations relating to 26 teenagers from South America who worked at the plant.

I have to agree with the kosher big beef’s lawyer, though it’s not clear when he would be eligible for parole. Hey, you do the crime, be ready to do the time. But is he being scapegoated?

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June 21, 2010 | 11:30 am

Louisiana close to permitting firearms in churches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Georgian lawmakers previously discussed a bill that would allow people to carry a gun to church. Not sure whatever happened with that, But it looks like Louisiana is about to go the distance:

The Louisiana Legislature last week may have cleared parishioners to carry guns to church, but the idea seems to sit pretty uncomfortably with clergy, whom legislators thought they were helping by providing homegrown security.

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But soon after, lots of New Orleans clergy recoiled at the notion, including those whose churches try to act as stabilizing influences in high-crime neighborhoods.

The Rev. John Raphael, a cop-turned-pastor who shepherds New Hope Baptist church in Central City, knows too well how dangerous his neighborhood can be. Filing out of a service one Sunday, some of his congregation had to duck for cover when gunfire suddenly broke out nearby.

Raphael said he understands measures like parking lot security outdoors. But he said an armed presence in the sanctuary is incompatible with what a church is supposed to be.

He called it a “gut check” for faith. ... “We should project the image that we trust in God.”

It seems a lot of pastors talked to for this story aren’t too happy with the idea of bring-your-gun-to-church day. Amen.

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June 21, 2010 | 9:18 am

Supreme Court upholds terrorist support law

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Supreme Court really went out on a limb today:

The Supreme Court has upheld a federal law that bars ‘‘material support’’ to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups.

The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

I hope you picked up on my sarcasm.

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June 20, 2010 | 4:55 pm

Drake: Last name Ever, first name Greatest, middle name—Jewish?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Asher Roth swears he isn’t Jewish, and the Beastie Boys famously are. But who knew that Drake was Jewish? Besides Danielle Berrin, who has a good post about him at her Hollywood Jew blog. An excerpt:

In a culture of misfits and outsiders, he is the ultimate outsider – the first-ever black Jewish rapper.

According to an interview with Heeb magazine:

Drake was born to an African-American father and a Jewish mother, who divorced when he was five. Raised by his mother in Forest Hill, a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Toronto, he attended a Jewish day school, and was even Bar Mitzvah’d (the song of the night was Backstreet Boys’s “I Want It That Way”).

His upbringing wasn’t as rosy as it sounds. His father was primarily absent, and according to The Times, struggled with drug addiction and spent time in prison. His mother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which precluded her from working and forced Drake to grow up fast. In interviews, he often portrays himself as a loner.

“I went to a Jewish school, where nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish,” he told Heeb. “When kids are young it’s hard for them to understand the make-up of religion and race.”

Jordan Farmar knows how that feels. When I profiled the Lakers’ backup point guard last year, his coach told me that Farmar used to love going to play pick up and having someone on the other team say they were guarding “white boy”—before Farmar owned them.

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June 20, 2010 | 3:32 pm

A religion writer comes to grips with his own mortality

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Bruce Feiler is the author of “Walking the Bible,” a book a very much enjoyed, and has received other mentions on this blog.

I thought I had been keeping tabs on the religion author and former Beliefnet blogger, so this CNN link from my wife Friday caught me by surprise—and watered my eyes as I took a break from working on Holocaust reparations cases. The story discussed, as Feiler had revealed two years ago and wrestled with for a while after, that doctors had discovered a large tumor on his leg:

The official diagnosis was an osteosarcoma. Osteosarcomas strike just 900 Americans a year. Two-thirds of them are younger than 40. Feiler was 43.

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News of the diagnosis terrified Feiler. “There’s never a moment that is not shadowed in some way by that cancer, illness, the idea of dying is never that far away,” he says.

The man who’d made a living by walking knew he might never walk again. He knew that he might not live to see his twin daughters, Eden and Tybee, grow up. “I’m a person who has tried in my life to dream undreamable dreams. Who’s gonna teach them how to dream? Who’s the person that’s gonna tell them if they want to run a marathon, open a restaurant, write a book, cook the hardest soufflé. Who’s gonna say to them, ‘You can do it?’”

Feiler came up with a extraordinary answer. He would put together a group of men and call them his council of dads. Six men from different stages of Feiler’s life who could be Feiler’s voice, and could teach his girls the life lessons he might not be there to teach.

It was around this point that I wanted to cry, partially for Feiler, partially for his girls and partially because Father’s Day was on my mind.

Ever the journalist, Feiler has written a book about his plan and aptly named it “The Council of Dads.” Get to know the guys in the above clip.

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June 19, 2010 | 8:38 pm

Ultra-Orthodox Jews rally for ‘racism’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There’s a lot that has been going in Jerusalem since the Israeli Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a religious girls’ school needs to integrate. (I wrote a bit about the coverage of this story this morning.) The impermissible segregation pertained not to boys and girls, but Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, who is Orthodox, breaks the conflict down to it’s bare bones. This is about the ability to resist one segment of Israeli society because of an internal Haredi perspective that those other Jews, who have a different racial lineage, are an impure people. It’s remnants of Jim Crow, and Hirschfield pulls no punches:

How tragically ironic given that most of their ancestors came to Israel to escape the handiwork of others who wanted the exact same thing!

Of course, I am not calling the Haredim who protested today, Nazis. But it does help explain why they often use that word to describe those with whom they have political and religious disagreements, from women who want to pray while wearing a talit (prayer shawl) at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, to police who keep them from assaulting those women, etc.

To be sure, there are myriad challenges with Israeli public schools which are divided between Arab and Jewish (itself and oxymoron since Jews from Arab lands are no less “Arab” than Muslims and Christians from the same places), so-called religious and non-religious, etc. But unlike these other schools, which students from communities outside the stated target population can and do attend, the Hareidi community wants an enforced ban ala’ George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse doors.

On top of that, they demand public dollars for schools that operate in contravention of the law. If that isn’t; the definition of chutzpah, I don’t know what is.

Read the rest here.

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June 16, 2010 | 2:03 pm

What Mahony said about protecting pedophile priests

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Don’t worry, Cardinal Roger Mahony, you’re name couldn’t be any more besmirched as your tenure atop the Archdiocese of Los Angeles comes to a close. The latest information comes from a deposition about whether Mahony should have informed police in 1986 of what the once-Rev. Michael Baker was up to. From the LAT:

Mahony has long said he made mistakes in allowing Michael Baker to stay in the priesthood after he confessed to having sexually assaulted young boys.

But in the deposition — the first to be publicly released covering Mahony’s handling of Los Angeles Archdiocese molestation cases — the cardinal gives the clearest picture yet of his actions regarding Baker, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for child molestation.

The archdiocese attempted unsuccessfully to have a judge seal the document from public view.

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Mahony said in the Jan. 25 deposition that church policy at the time was to deal with problem priests “pastorally” by providing counseling in church facilities and restricting their duties in subsequent ministries to keep them away from children.

“The challenge is trying to look at 1986 through the lenses of 2010,” Mahony told attorney John Manly, explaining that more proactive measures are taken now after reports of abuse.

Read the rest here.

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June 15, 2010 | 9:32 am

‘Touchdown Jesus’ destroyed by act of God

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A 62-foot-tall statue known as touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning yesterday and destroyed outside of Cincinatti:

The only thing visible this morning is the charred frame of the structure.

“It burned to the ground. The whole statue is gone,” said Kim Peace, a police dispatcher.

The large “King of Kings” statue was a Butler County landmark since it was erected in 2004 outside Solid Rock Church, 904 N. Union Rd., along northbound Interstate 75 in Monroe just north of the Ohio 63 exit.

Fire crews were called to the church at 11:15 p.m. after several people phoned 911 to report the blaze as a severe thunderstorm swept through Greater Cincinnati, producing a spectacular lightning show, Peace said.

“The lightning was just amazing,” she said, wryly adding: “It was a lot of fun in here last night.”

The statue alone cost $300,000 to build. And you thought God was a football fan ...

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