From Ron Rosenbaum’s Smithsonian profile of the filmmaker Errol Morris:

I wanted to tell you about his private-eye trick, which he learned from a hard-bitten partner.

It wasn’t a blackjack-, brass knuckles-type thing. “It went like this,” Morris explained. “He’d knock on a door, sometimes of someone not even connected to the case they were investigating. He’d flip open his wallet, show his badge and say, ‘I guess we don’t have to tell you why we’re here.’

“And more often than not the guy starts bawling like an infant, ‘How did you find out?’” And then disgorges some shameful criminal secret no one would ever have known about otherwise.

I have a feeling about why Morris likes this. There’s the obvious lesson—everybody’s got something to hide—and then there’s the subtle finesse of the question: “I guess we don’t have to tell you…” No water-boarding needed, just an opening for the primal force of conscience, the telltale heart’s internal monologue. It’s one of those mysteries of human nature that private eyes know and Morris has made his métier.

You ever see Morris’s stunning documentary, “Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.”? It’s one of the creepiest, but most compelling, things I’ve ever seen. Really, see it if you can. It’s a portrait of this nebbishy guy from Massachusetts who becomes a self-taught expert in the mechanics of prison execution. He gets drawn into the world of Holocaust denial when he’s asked to examine Auschwitz, to see if mass execution of Jews could have happened there. In Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.’s expert opinion, it could not have. He becomes a celebrity on the neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier circuit, and basically destroys his life. All throughout, he really has no idea what he’s done, or why this has happened to him. He comes across as sincerely clueless — which is why his story is so eerily compelling.

You realize, of course, that Morris’s real subject is not the Holocaust, or Holocaust denial, but rather how we know what we know, and how something as common as pride, and the need to be respected, can lead us badly astray. This comment from a historian in the film cuts to the heart of Morris’s subject:

Leuchter is a victim of the myth of Sherlock Holmes. A crime has been committed. You go to the site of the crime and with a magnifying glass you find a hair, or you find a speck of dust on the shoe. Leuchter thinks that is the way reality can be reconstructed. But he is no Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have the training. It was not that he brought any experience, the specific experience needed to look at ruined buildings. The only experience he had was design modifications for the Missouri gas chambers in Jacksonville.

In the film, you can see that Leuchter is not motivated by hatred of Jews. He is motivated by an unshakable faith in himself, and by the attention he gets from the Holocaust deniers. Finally, someone recognizes his genius! The fact that Fred Leuchter is not a snarling, evil figure, but an ordinary, happy-go-lucky geek trapped by his own intellectual pride is what makes this movie so strange and compelling.

Dear God in heaven:

“It never rains, but it pours,” said the fertility doctor — of the three embryos that were implanted, all three took.  We were faced with the news of triplets.  I was shocked, knowing the burden that would entail, but since G-d gave us three, I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to help, manage, and provide.

My wife?  Something snapped.  She insisted that we do a “selective reduction” from three to one, or else she would have a full abortion.  She was adamant.  She would not carry three.  She would not carry two.

I was presented with a Coventry-esque decision: save one, or save none.  I chose the former, though I tried on several occasions to convince her to at least keep twins.  I failed.

More:

My wife didn’t look, but I had to.  I had to know what would happen to my children.  I had to know how they would die.

Each retreated, pushing away, as the needle entered the amniotic sac.  They did not inject into the placenta, but directly into each child’s torso.  Each one crumpled as the needle pierced the body.  I saw the heart stop in the first, and mine almost did, too.  The other’s heart fought, but ten minutes later they looked again, and it too had ceased.

The doctors had the gall to call the potassium chloride, the chemical that stopped children’s hearts, “medicine.”  I wanted to ask what they were trying cure — life?  But bitter words would not undo what had happened.  I swallowed anything I might have said.

I know they felt pain.  I know they felt panic.  And I know this was murder.

Read the whole thing.   The man is consumed by guilt.

(Via First Things).

The other day I wrote to congratulate Beren Academy, an Orthodox Jewish school in Houston, for choosing not to continue in the state basketball tournament rather than play on the Jewish sabbath. The school’s headmaster, a rabbi, said the things of God come before the things of this world. It was a beautiful testimony of faith and an institution that had both its head and its heart in the right place.

Then it emerged that several parents whose kids play for that team sued Tapps, the private Texas entity that oversees the league cobbled together from private and parochial schools, and which had denied Beren the right to have its tournament game changed so as not to conflict with the Jewish sabbath. (Note well: the school itself had nothing to do with the lawsuit). Tapps backed down, and Beren got to play. Here is the complaint the parents filed in court.

If the complaint is accurate, there are two facts here that are especially pertinent: 1) Tapps’ rules allow for rescheduling if both teams agree; 2) Beren’s opponent, the Covenant school of Dallas, had agreed to rescheduling to accomodate Beren.

It appears that Tapps broke its own rules in deciding that Beren couldn’t reschedule, given that Covenant was willing.

Though Tapps does not, according to its constitution, define itself as an exclusively Christian athletic association, it seems pretty clear that that’s what they want to be. A Muslim school that tried to get in was voted down after being sent a very strange set of questions from Tapps (e.g., “Historically, there is nothing in the Koran that fully embraces Christianity or Judaism in the way a Christian and/or a Jew understands his religion. Why, then, are you interested in joining an association whose basic beliefs your religion condemns?”)

Weird, given the fact that Tapps doesn’t call itself a Christian, or a Jewish, organization. If it’s true that Tapps’ rules would have allowed the Beren kids to reschedule the game, as long as Covenant agreed (which it did), and Tapps still wouldn’t allow it, it’s harder to blame the Beren parents for wanting to go to court. Sounds like Tapps better make up its mind about what it wants to be. There was no reason for this problem to get this far.

Texans, am I missing something here? I thought the parents’ lawsuit was out of line because Beren joined knowing these were the rules, and now wanted to get them changed. But it looks like there was both a possibility for exception within the rules, and the precedent of same.

From NPR’s reporting from the tornado zone:

MARTIN: So, what do you do as a minister, as a member of this community? What’s your role in this? What have you been doing?

DONAHUE: Well, it is to do whatever we can. To be honest, this is not a one-man team. This is not a one-organization team. We have got people spearheading all different areas right now. We’ve got donations. We’ve got people taking care of displaced people. We’ve got people preparing food. But we have had just an unbelievable outpouring of community love and support.

MARTIN: I imagine you’ve been talking with your own congregation, people in the community. How are people coping?

DONAHUE: You know, I think a lot of this is just shock. We’ve never seen anything like this. And as they are just coming to grips with it, you’ll see people who just come in wondering what do I do next, because they’ll have a home that is absolutely gone and they had no insurance on it. So, my hope and my experience as we just minister to them is you’re here and things can be replaced. And we’re going to be here and your community is going to be here and we’re ready to help you and get back on your feet. But it’s going to be a one day at a time. This is not a couple of days and we’re back. You see so many things on the news like this, and at the end of the day you forget about it a week out. So, this is going to be an opportunity for our community to really rally around our people and love them and continue just to minister to them.

MARTIN: This will be a profoundly different kind of Sunday. How do you minister to people on this day?

DONAHUE: We don’t have a service. We have totally shifted gears. And so there are no regular services. This is around the clock. And so we – our church has turned into a totally different thing at this point. We are a command post and we are going to continue to serve this community. And so for many days to come, we have the opportunity to lift Christ in this community.

MARTIN: Pastor B.J. Donahue of Piner Baptist Church. He spoke to us from his community, Piner, Kentucky. Pastor Donahue, thanks so much for taking time.

From Bryan Appleyard’s New Statesmen essay about the radicalism of the New Atheists:

De Botton is the most recent and, consequently, the most shocked victim. He has just produced a book, Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, mildly suggesting that atheists like himself have much to learn from religion and that, in fact, religion is too important to be left to believers. He has also proposed an atheists’ temple, a place where non-believers can partake of the consolations of silence and meditation.

This has been enough to bring the full force of a neo-atheist fatwa crashing down on his head. The temple idea in particular made them reach for their best books of curses.

“I am rolling my eyes so hard that it hurts,” wrote the American biologist and neo-atheist blogger P Z Myers. “You may take a moment to retch. I hope you have buckets handy.” Myers has a vivid but limited prose palette.

There have been threats of violence. De Botton has been told he will be beaten up and his guts taken out of him. One email simply said, “You have betrayed Atheism. Go over to the other side and die.”

De Botton finds it bewildering, the unexpected appearance in the culture of a tyrannical sect, content to whip up a mob mentality. “To say something along the lines of ‘I’m an atheist; I think religions are not all bad’ has become a dramatically peculiar thing to say and if you do say it on the internet you will get savage messages calling you a fascist, an idiot or a fool. This is a very odd moment in our culture. Why has this happened?”

More:

Religion is not going to go away. It is a natural and legitimate response to the human condition, to human consciousness and to human ignorance. One of the most striking things revealed by the progress of science has been the revelation of how little we know and how easily what we do know can be overthrown. Furthermore, as Hitchens in effect acknowledged and as the neo-atheists demonstrate by their ideological rigidity and savagery, absence of religion does not guarantee that the demonic side of our natures will be eliminated. People should have learned this from the catastrophic failed atheist project of communism, but too many didn’t.

Happily, the backlash against neo-atheism has begun, inspired by the cult’s own intolerance.

Hmm. If a tornado comes out of the sky and destroys my family’s house, I doubt I’d see any of P.Z. Myers’s followers, or Richard Dawkins’s, coming to my aid. I am certain I’d see Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals.

UPDATE: No, the willingness of people to help in crisis does not make their religious beliefs true. And yes, there are moral atheists. Agreed.

Kirsten Powers talks about them:

Like, for example:

Limbaugh’s statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week.  In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

It should be said that the issue is not, nor ever has been, requiring taxpayers (“American citizens”) to pay for these activities. The issue is whether or not private religious institutions should be compelled by the state to provide for them in health coverage. Even in apologizing, Limbaugh confuses the issue.

It would be a good thing if Republicans took this opportunity to put some distance between themselves and radio talkers. To be sure, Jonathan Tobin was right to point out the double standard here:

Republicans are running for cover as the Democrats and left-wing women’s groups attempt to make Fluke a feminist martyr. Speaker of the House John Boehner called Limbaugh’s comments “inappropriate.” He’s right about that, but the problem is that while Democrats seem to regard Rush as some kind of Republican pope, much of what is said on the show needs to be understood to be no different than the rhetorical excesses of Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” Limbaugh’s use of the words “prostitute” and “slut” in connection to Fluke were not intended to be a literal accusation but a hyperbolic takedown of the notion that women at Georgetown are oppressed because they must spend as much as $1,000 of their own money for contraception the Jesuit-run school refuses to pay for.

Let’s specify that what Limbaugh said did nothing to advance the cause of civil debate on the issue. But those who decry the lack of civility in politics generally tend to limit their complaints to hyperbole uttered by people whose views they do not share. The same people who are voicing outrage at the hurt feelings of Ms. Fluke do not scruple at mocking or name calling when it comes to Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum or others whose beliefs on this or any other subject they believe to be antediluvian. The church and its adherents have been subjected to withering ridicule.

Moreover, though it has been lost amid the outcry against Limbaugh, he’s right to point out that, those who believe institutions ought to be compelled to fund free birth control are, in effect, demanding a subsidy for having sex. Of course, that is not the same thing as being a prostitute. Nor does it make anyone who wishes to take advantage of such a subsidy a “slut.” Such terms are abusive. But that is exactly why an entertainer like Limbaugh uses them much as Stewart and liberal comics employ similarly nasty terms to people they wish to deride. Need we really point out that comments made in the context of this sort of show is not the same thing as remarks recorded in the Congressional Record and should thus be judged by a slightly different standard?

Agreed. Still, it would be a lot more difficult for Democrats to treat Limbaugh as a Republican pope if conservative politicians and pundits weren’t so eager to kiss his ring, and to treat his radio broadcast as ex cathedra pronouncements.

I want to associate myself with Clark Stooksbury’s remarks, in which he wishes conservatives had Walker Percy rather than Rush Limbaugh to analyze Sandra Fluke’s peculiarity, and what a person like her says about our contemporary disorders.

By the way, I was talking the other day to a new friend, a Percy. I asked him if he was related to Walker. Of course he is; all the Percys around here are related. My subject said: “You ever read his stuff? He’s weird. You’d probably like him.” You got that right.

“Much of what drives political passions in the U.S. are different kinds of white women trying to put each other down.” — Steve Sailer.