Nottamun Town

Some links: May 14, 2012

• Mitt Romney Religion Speech 2012 - Mitt Romney’s Religious Act of Political Accommodation - Esquire

  I am a struggling Roman Catholic Christian my own self — and it’s none of your damn business why — and I think that Mr. James Madison, because he was a fk of a lot smarter than all of us are, was dead right when he pointed out that involving your religion in politics, and your politics in religion, works only to unreasonably secularize religious belief and unreasonably sanctify profane secular power:

  Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

• Colleges as Merchants of Debt

  This juxtaposition confirms that colleges, like the financial services industry, have become increasingly extractive: whatever financial benefits accrue to getting an undergraduate education, they are more and more captured by the schools, though their ability to persuade students to go into hock to get a degree.

• Military Balked At Avengers Team Up

  The Pentagon halted its cooperation with Marvel Studios’ blockbuster movie The Avengers because the Defense Department didn’t think a movie about superheroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy.