"Then David said to Abigail 'Blessed is your advice and blessed are you.'"

"Mrs. Phillips chose her pen name herself, taking Abigail after the prophetess in the Book of Samuel... and Van Buren for its old-famil...

The History of Abkhazia.

"According to The Georgian Chronicles, the first inhabitants of what is now Abkhazia and the whole western Georgia were Egrosians, the ...

The Pope with a clown, Susan Rice caught between 2 power-heads, and a heavily tattoo'd quarterback.

I don't know what Matt Drudge is trying to slip into our subconscious today, but it's phantasmagoric. Felliniesque . Click to enlar...

The Queen is the supreme governor of the Church of England, but...

... its General Synod just voted against permitting women to serve as bishops. It has been 36 years since the General Synod declared it had ...

Obama's speech is "coming from his loins."

Says Axelrod, apparently noticing how ... odd that sounds and adding, jocosely, "I just wanted to say loins. I wanted to see if I coul...

"The Emptiest Candidate in Presidential Election History: Mitt Romney truly believes in nothing."

They've got nothing on him, so they call him nothing . Ah, well, Obama's opponents call him Zero. that makes it Nothing vs. Zero . *...

"I believe in the Book of Revelation. I believe in disclosure you know?"

"There’s truth in all books in some kind of way. Confucius, Sun Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, the Koran, the Torah, the New Testament, the Budd...

"Althouse and her followers being expelled from the Garden of Bloggen to the Land of HuffPo."

Writes Meade , after I say "So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator." Here's the illustratio...

"3 Interesting Moments From Dan Savage's Debate With a Gay Marriage Opponent."

Conor Friedersdorf selects some morsels (and has embedded video of the entire 1-hour debate). I've listened to the whole thing and foun...

Another idea for delaying aging.

At last night's open thread, the Coal Café, our beloved commenter Lem got inspired to look for updates on that story from a couple week...

Searching for "ample art," I found a cool blog called judith2you.

"Ample art" was the ridiculous phrase used by the pool reporter to describe the room Sarah Jessica Parker had had prepped to recei...

"Ponchos and sombreros: Partygoers don ‘insensitive’ attire despite student efforts."

Imagine! Student efforts failing to sear prick the conscience of the Mifflin Street Block Party people. The student group that wants respec...

"Nearly a dozen of high school journalists walked out of a lecture by Dan Savage, the prominent ant-bullying advocate..."

Sorry... I just love the typo: ant-bullying. Is that something done with a magnifying glass? But... okay... let's talk about the underly...

"Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"

That's the fifth most "liked" quote on the topic of "sin" at goodreads . It's from Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (whic...

Jeremiad.

Our first Bible reading of the day, at Meadhouse, was Jeremiah 18, "The Potter and the Clay." Never mind how it came up in our con...

"I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up."

Says Pat Robertson , advocating the legalization of marijuana. "I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage al...

"Sarah Palin Says She Will Not Seek the Presidency."

Breaking news at the NYT. ADDED: I've changed the link to get to the specific story, which includes: “Not being a candidate, you are uns...

"Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness...."

Anti-fat insults, from the Bible. No, I didn't go looking for anti-fat insults, though I did have a tab open on the Frank Bruni column ...

Spitzenburg apples.

This was, I keep reading, Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple, but the Monticello Explorer says: 'Esopus Spitzenburg' was one of ...

President Obama reads Psalm 46 at the NYC 9/11 ceremony.

Come, behold, the works of the Lord, who has made desolations in the earth...