Culture Clips – March 13, 2007

Science Says Bury Jesus

Oh goody, another lovely round of that increasingly popular parlor game, "Science Says." And just in time for Lent! James Cameron, the masterful storyteller who directed "Titantic," is clearly banking on the special media power this game has when someone (preferably a scientist, but a Hollywood director in a pinch will do) asserts that what science says ... is that the Bible is wrong.

Science vs. religion, round 457!

Science says Jesus married Mary Magdelene, produced a son named Judah, and the whole family of Nazarenes is buried in a tomb in Jerusalem. We have the mitochondrial DNA and the Discovery Channel documentary to prove it!

When science and "The Da Vinci Code" start saying the same thing, you have a marketing powerhouse.

The filmmakers' DNA tests suggest that the "Yeshua" remains and the "Mariamene e Mara" remains (aka "Mary Magdalene," through the complex theories of a Harvard professor) were not related on their mother's side. So who knows? Heck, they could have been married, right? The DNA proves it, unless, of course, they were related on their father's side, or Mariamene e Mara was married to or maybe just the daughter or sister of someone else in the tomb. Amos Kloner, a former Jerusalem district archeologist who examined the tomb in 1980, calls the allegedly new evidence "not serious."

But the Science Says game works so well that people play it with the same dogmatic fervor they once played The Pope Says, and for a similar reason: Because if science really says something, you no longer need brook the irritation of tolerating dissent.

Maggie Gallagher

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Maggie
Gallagher/2007/02/28/science_says_bury_jesus
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Romney, Channeling Reagan, Reveals Economic Agenda

After his well-received speech before the conservative political action conference here last week, former governor Mitt Romney met with two key leaders in the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.

Romney's dinner guests were Jack Kemp, the architect of the Reagan tax cuts that lifted the economy out of a deep recession, and former congressman Vin Weber of Minnesota, a key leader in the Opportunity Society band of House warriors who fought for lower tax rates to spur economic growth and entrepreneurial expansion.

Kemp has not signed on to any Republican presidential campaign as yet, but he likes Romney's emphasis on further cutting taxes on investment and savings and overhauling the tax code. Weber, a supporter of Sen. John McCain in the 2000 presidential primaries, has joined Mitt Romney's team and is encouraging Kemp to climb aboard early.

The meeting illustrates how much importance Romney is placing on tax cuts in his presidential bid and on economic advisers who share his belief in the Reagan economic model. Reagan made tax cuts the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, and Romney intends to do the same in his campaign for the Republican nomination.

In a PowerPoint presentation at the Detroit Economic Club last month, replete with an economic slide show, Romney said the country would face two choices on taxes next year, asking the business leaders, "What is the better course for America? A European model of high taxes and regulations, or low taxes and free trade, the Ronald Reagan model?"

"That's the choice the next president is going to make," he said, adding ominously that the Democrats were "already working hard to implement a massive tax increase."

Donald Lambro

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DonaldLambro
/2007/03/08/romney,_channeling_reagan,_reveals_
economic_agenda
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Youthful Indiscretions Online

The MySpace-Facebook-dot-com generation has come of age, and some are finding that their silly stunts have come back to haunt them as they enter the grown-up marketplace. Others are finding that their private moments are not so private after all.

Three young women featured anonymously in a recent Washington Post article told horror stories of their attempts to find jobs, only to discover that they may have been disqualified by online postings by virtual strangers. Gossip and graphics included.

One, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and Yale law student who had gotten articles published in law journals, interviewed at 16 firms for a summer job and received no offers. How could that be?

It turned out that she and others had been discussed in not-so-flattering terms on an online message board, AutoAdmit, which is run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent, according to the Post. The board boasts up to 1 million visitors a month, and postings can be anonymous.
And vicious.

Kathleen Parker

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Kathleen
Parker/2007/03/09/youthful_indiscretions_online
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U.S. Doing Fine without International Violence against Women Act

A new feminist front group called the Women's Edge Coalition is partnering with Amnesty International U.S. to lobby for congressional passage of International Violence Against Women Act, which would create millions of dollars of feminist pork. The act's stated mission is to carry out a campaign of policy advocacy and education, consulting with dozens of U.S organizations, grass-roots organizing, and working with strategic media partners (i.e., getting the media to do their propagandizing).

You can bet that a primary purpose of International Violence Against Women Act money will be to lobby the U.S. Senate for ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women so that its U.N. monitoring committee can force U.S. compliance with feminist goals. That agenda includes everything from requiring unlimited abortion rights to rewriting schoolbooks to eliminate so-called "stereotypes" and gender-specific references.

Our senators are taunted with the assertion that the United States should be embarrassed because 185 countries have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, while the United States has not. I'm glad the Senate so far has had the good sense to reject a treaty that fraudulently makes naive people believe it will improve the lot of U.S. women.

Pakistan has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. That's the country where a tribal council ordered a young woman gang-raped to avenge her brother's crime of being seen with an unchaperoned woman from another tribe. Gang rape is common in Pakistan.

Phyllis Schlafly

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Phyllis
Schlafly/2007/02/27/ us_women_doing_fine_
without_international_violence_against_women_act

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