West Coast Can-Am Politics

USA Today reports " Some Megachurches Closing for Christmas ": "Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day ." (emphasis added). The article mentions that these churches are holding many Christmas worship services in the days up to and including Christmas Eve, but quotes one source that " church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources . The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said." Your host here, SpaceNeedleBoy, is speechless at the thought that churches would actually CLOSE THEIR DOORS on Sunday morning worship, a tradition among most Christian churches for over two thousand years. It's one thing to reduce the Christmas schedule to a single...

A scant two weeks ago, North American mass media were inundated with horrific images of a deranged gunman holding hostages in a Tacoma, Washington shopping mall. A Seattle alternative media paper, The Stranger, has an interesting view of this situation. The alleged gunman, Dominick Sergio Maldonado, demonstrated a reckless lack of personal responsibility as well as engaging in criminal trespass - but somehow I have doubts that the Washington State criminal justice system is going to give him the kind of correctional punishment which he so richly deserves. In the meantime, the story reinforces the ridiculous stereotype many folks in the Northwest (and throughout the States) have that Tacoma is an abnormally dangerous city. I'll post some more story links here, and more blog links on the story about Mr. Maldonado's attack on the lives and liberty of other citizens just because he wanted to punish the rest of the world.