Link roundup for 25 October 2007

Ugh. I guess Giuliani really is Catholic.

Here's another example of the administration distorting science for ideological reasons.

Some encouraging signs from Europe on the Iran problem and on Russia.

"Can you imagine one of our guys talking in a foreign language at that level of sophistication?" An interview with Russian opposition Presidential candidate Garry Kasparov.

The Catholic League is taking umbrage about the upcoming movie version of The Golden Compass. Meanwhile, fundamentalists can now get their usual Christmas chip-on-the-shoulder online.

373 electoral votes for Hillary? Here's a graphic look at what a Christian Right third-party candidate could do. Things don't look so hot for Republicans in Congress either.

ChooseDoubt ponders the injustice of the Christian concept of Hell. Ascendance takes another approach to the same issue.

The Senate has voted down another plan to give "a path to legal status" (that is, amnesty) to some illegal aliens. (Note the biased language of the article -- "again dashing hopes for any meaningful action on immigration reform before 2008 elections", as if "reform" can only mean amnesty and as if this is what all right-thinking people "hope" for.) As with the higher-profile amnesty fight in June, public outrage helped persuade Senators -- including some Democrats -- to squelch the bill. Yeesh, it's almost as if people didn't appreciate how illegal immigration enriches American culture!

Besides illegal immigration, we should take a look at offshoring, which also destroys American jobs -- and while it may make products and services cheaper, the quality also often suffers, as the recent wave of revelations about toxic imports from China shows. Some companies are wising up.

Some more thoughts on that Israeli airstrike on Syria.

Most Russians and Ukrainians have an inherited Eastern Orthodox Christian religious identity and are in practice thoroughly secular. There is, however, a Protestant minority which is anything but. Within this group, there has recently emerged a fanatical and violent anti-homosexual association calling itself "The Watchmen on the Walls". Protestants make up a disproportionate share of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants to the US, where they find a society fast becoming as secular as the one they left behind -- and already far more tolerant of homosexuality. Now the Watchmen are becoming active right here in the Pacific Northwest, where recent Protestant Slavic immigrants are concentrated.