In the fallout of Fr. Michael Pfleger’s recent "sermon" at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Senator Barack Obama resigned his membership there. This was the culmination of several months of political trauma for the Obama campaign, beginning with revelations in the national media that Obama's pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, has made many politically contentious statements. My intention here is not to judge Senator Obama, Father Pfleger, or Jeremiah Wright, but I do wa...

I'm writing an exposé on homosexuality. I'm not sure what will become of it in the end, but I invite you to make comments as I go along. ---- Growing up, especially during adolescence, we all encounter a variety of influences that help to shape our values and worldviews. For me, growing up in a Roman Catholic family and attending public elementary schools in the relatively liberal town of Webster Groves, Missouri, my influences were varied and sometimes conflicting. While my paren...

Top Ten Reasons to Go Back to the Moon: 10. “To [re]organize and [re]measure the best of our energies and skills.” 9. To stay technologically ahead of other nations that have active plans to go to the Moon, particularly those who do not recognize basic human rights. 8. To conduct scientific research, in order to understand how the Moon was created. 7. To determine if water ice and other volatiles exist in permanently shadowed craters, not only for the potential use of these resources,...

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6081512 I just read this article from Dayn Perry of FoxSports.com, analyzing the three worst records of those teams who have gone to the World Series. Every honest sports fan knows the Cardinals had a horrible finish to an otherwise very respectable, injury-plagued season and just barely made the postseason by the hair of Scott Spiezio's chinny-chin-chin. But we made it. We had a better record than the Houston Astros or anyone else in our division, and t...

Update: No response from NASA was received. Mr. Deutsch has been been fired ( well, technically he resigned ). There is no indication that it had anything to do with my letter, but perhaps it had some effect. Overwhelmingly though, it probably was due to the fact that NASA found out that Mr. Deutsch didn't actually hold a college degree. I hope if he goes back to school, he takes some more science classes! Recently there has been some controversy surrounding a young man named George De...

I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but I taught her never to dishonor her family. --Amerigo Bonasera from “The Godfather” (Film, 1972) Military Action in Iraq is a deeply controversial issue, but ultimately it is an issue of competing values: Freedom vs. Peace; Democracy vs. International Order; and even, as we will see, Law vs. Family Values. I have great respect for both sides of argument for ...

I'm Torn. I want to keep up some sort of "public" chronicles of my usually boring, but sometimes interesting life, so that friends, family, and strangers can occasionally be updated about my life, should they feel so inclined as to type in my sole stationary coordinates (i.e. this universal resource locator). Of course, I keep my closest friends, family, and strangers up-to-date via more traditional means, but sometimes (almost always), I'm pretty bad about following through on my otherwise i...

Today is my one year anniversary of blogging on JoeUser.com, so I thought it would be appropriate to look back on what I may or may not have accomplished in my many hours of time spent on JoeUser over the past year. First, I have posted a total of 120 articles. Now I don’t claim all of these to be gems exactly—some have just been random musings of the mind. Others though have been significant exercises in writing and argument. I have written on a wide variety of subjects, from politics to ...

I finally saw the clip from Monday night football where Nicollette Sheridan from Desperate Houswifes jumps naked into the arms of Terrell Owens. Now I can sort of understand why people made complaints about the seen being sexually explicit, seeing as how part of our population lives in a sexually-deprived, puritan culture. There is much more sexually explicit material already on TV that goes by unnoticed, but you've got to realize that something high-profile and high-rating like Monday Night ...

I just saw the movie The Motorcycle Diaries . Beautiful movie, and beautiful story. I hope everyone sees it. It makes you think a lot about the injustice in the world, and what we should do about it. It also shows some great shots of some of the most beautiful places and people in the world. Check it out. -rob

I care about abortion. I care so much that I called Cam Kerry a couple weeks ago. Cam Kerry is John Kerry’s younger brother, and he is the closest person to John Kerry I could contact. I called him to get the facts about John Kerry’s position on abortion. I needed to know, since we both John Kerry and I are fellow Catholics, whether abortion is an issue that is important to John Kerry personally. He assured me that the tragedy of abortion is an issue that is important to John personally, as...

Introduction As one priest put it, “The environment is the mother of all pro-life issues.” Despite the widespread evil of abortion, war, and violence, there is no other issue that more drastically impacts life than the environment. Even President Richard Nixon, in his 1970 State of the Union Address, demonstrated that the environmental cause is “as fundamental as life itself," according to Nixon's EPA Aministrator (Train and Russman, 2004) There is also no other conflict that incites...