Month: October 2006

Moyers Exchange

Letterhead

October 18, 2006


PDF SENT VIA EMAIL (JIMMYAKIN01@GMAILCOM)

Mr. Jimmy Akin


Re: Bill Moyers


Dear Mr. Akin:

This firm represents Bill Moyers. The following statement from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Newsletter dated October 9, 2006, by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner has been brought to our attention:

First, not earthshaking regarding climate science but of some interest to yours truly, Bill Moyers’s documentary "Is God Green?" (Click here: WGBH Programs) airs on PBS Wednesday evening, October 11 (check local listings). When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats. Don’t expect good science, economics, or ethics–or even journalistic balance. (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Beisner’s accusation is false and defamatory as it goes to the heart of Mr. Moyers’s integrity as a journalist. I am enclosing a copy of an e-mail from Mr. Moyers to Dr. Beisner dated October 17, 2006 in which he vigorously denies that any such statement was made and challenges Dr. Beisner to produce proof from his own tape recording to support his allegation. No such proof was produced.

We have demanded on behalf of Mr. Moyers a retraction from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance stating clearly and without qualification that Dr. Beisner’s statement was erroneous, that Mr. Moyers never made any such statement to Dr. Beisner or anything colorably close to it, and apologizing to Mr. Moyers for the error.

You have re-published at https://www.jamesakin.com/reels_squares/2006/10/pay_no_attentio.html,
and perhaps elsewhere as well, Dr. Beisner’s statement as if it were true, and without seeking

————————————————————————————————————-
FRANKLIN, WEINRIB, RUDELL & VASSALLO, P.C.
Jimmy Akin
October 18, 2006 Page 2

corroboration from Mr. Moyers or proof from Dr. Beisner. In doing so, you have also defamed Mr. Moyers.

On behalf of Mr. Moyers, we demand that you immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the false statement of Dr. Beisner.

Nothing in this letter should be construed as a limitation of the rights and remedies of our client, all of which are expressly reserved.

Signiture_1

Neil J. Rosini

NJR/aws

Enclosure
cc: Bill Moyers

281309/1/0471/0000

————————————————————————————————————-
Moyers, Bill
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:47 PM
To: [Dr. E. Calvin Beisner]
Subject: What has come over you?

You are not telling the truth. In fact, what you wrote in the ISA newsletter is an outright lie. You claim that "When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats." I said nothing of the sort — nothing. To the contrary, I told you that I am an independent – members of the crew remember my saying that to you specifically (there were, remember, three other people in the room.) You yourself taped the entire session with your own recorder; show me where in the transcript such a conversation occurred. I also told you, as I told everyone interviewed, that we of course could not usethe entire interview but that I would post it on our Website when the broadcast aired, as was done. If I had said anything approaching what you claim I said, if you perceived any bias on my part. you could have — and should have refused to participate. But you did participate freely, you were treated fairly and honestly, and for you now to bear false witness is not only unChristian but astonishing. What am I to make of the many friendly emails you have sent over these months, signed: "In Christ, Cal"? Or our exchange on how much I have enjoyed your daughter’s CD that you sent? Your conservative evangelical brothers who were also interviewed in the documentary – from Richard Cizik to Tri Robinson to Allan Johnson (not a liberal among them) have written in praise of how they were treated. You and you alone have chosen to bear false witness to our conversation and to defame – in your own words –the ethics and journalistic balance of the documentary. You owe me arid my team an apology and a public retraction.

Bill

ORIGINAL PDF.

————————————————————————————————————-

Letterhead2

October 19, 2006

Neil J. Rosini, Esquire
Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P. C.
488 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022-5707

Re: Jimmy Akin

Dear Mr. Rosini:

This firm represents Jimmy Akin. I am in receipt of your correspondence to my client dated October 18, 2006, in which you claim—without citing any legal authority—that Mr. Akin defamed your client, Bill Moyers, by republishing certain statements from a newsletter penned by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner on behalf of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance dated October 9, 2006.

Mr. Akin categorically rejects your characterization of the blog post in question ("Pay no attention to that man behind the camera: Part Two," October 13, 2006—the only place my client republished the statements in question), and—having reviewed the relevant case law—I find it highly unlikely that you can sustain a case against my client for defamation.

That having been noted, Mr. Akin is certainly willing to "immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the . . . statements of Dr. Beisner"; not because your client demands it, but because he believes it is only fair to allow Mr. Moyers to have his say on the matter. I will email you the text and links to such posts once they are published. A post containing Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner will be published on my client’s blog today, and (as a showing of good faith) will be featured as the top post for a 24-hour time period.

It is my sincere hope that the foregoing actions will resolve this matter between our clients. If you choose, however, to proceed with a civil action against our client, notwithstanding his willingness to comply with Mr. Moyers’s demands, please understand that this firm will vigorously defend Mr. Akin’s rights and good name.

 

Signature2

SLAD/cbt

ORIGINAL PDF.

Action Contra Legem

A reader writes:

On October 16th in "Music Scruples: The Opus Continues" you said,

"If it
does then it would be a matter of prudence as to whether you should
follow the moral law answer in violation of civil law. As long as you’re
doing what’s moral then, by definition, you’re morally safe, and it’s a
question of whether you’re willing to take the risks associated with not
following the civil law answer."

You also in a previous post talked about the concept of a "legamoron."

My question for you is as follows: is it always morally permissible to
do something morally neutral (drive without the proper insurance, speed,
take food into the movie theater, drinking moderately underage, etc) as
long as you are willing to accept the (often unlikely) consequences
associated with those actions?

I was under the previous belief that any
offense against legitimate civil law was an offense against the public
order and common good of society and so even minor crimes were at least
venially sinful. Your clarification on this matter would be most helpful.

It is not always morally permissible to do something that is morally neutral in itself, contrary to what civil law would provide. Civil law has a role in ordering morally neutral actions so that society is benefitted. For example, there is no intrinsic reason why we Americans drive on the right side of the road instead of the left. Considered in itself, driving on either side of the road is morally neutral. But given the amount of traffic on many roads and the speed at which the traffic moves, it is reasonable that the state make requirements about what side we drive on. That reasonableness enables such laws to be ordinances of reason, which is required for a law to be legitimate.

In the same way, requiring the people–under ordinary driving conditions–have a certain amount of insurance coverage also strikes me as reasonable, though in emergency circumstances that requirement would go out the window (e.g., if you’re rushing someone to the hospital or if you’re fleeing a murderer or if you just mailed your check to the insurance company but you can’t afford to stay home from work). In those cases–if the law were to require you to not drive–the law would cease being one of reason and it would be morally legitimate to ignore it as an unjust law, at least in those cases.

While the concept of a legamoron provides some additional flexibility in some cases (e.g., speeding), the default is to obey the law unless it is manifestly unreasonable and thus not a just law in those circumstances (legamorons being laws that, by their nature, would be unjust if rigorously enforced, though we still need to comply with even legamorons when they are functioning reasonably–so you shouldn’t be doing 75 in a school zone when kids are present).

In order to have moral justification for disobeying a civil law, it seems to me that the following conditions need to be met:

1) The law is of itself or at least in this particular case unreasonable and thus is not functioning as an ordinance of reason (or it must otherwise fail to meet the definition of a law as "an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated"; ST I-II:90:4).

2) The benefits to you in ignoring the law are not outweighed by the harm that will come to you if you get caught, weighted by the likelihood of you getting caught.

In judging these matters, we need to carefully evaluate whether these conditions are fulfilled, for it is easy for us to rationalize civil lawbreaking, just as it is easy for us to rationalize sin.

Nevertheless, there are points at which the Christian faith recognizes it as being legitimate to break civil law, as when the apostles were required to stop preaching the name of Christ and they replied "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Moyers Exchange

Letterhead2
October 19, 2006

Neil J. Rosini, Esquire

Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P. C 488 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10022-5707

Re: Jimmy Akin

Dear Mr. Rosini:

This firm represents Jimmy Akin,. I am in receipt of your correspondence to my client dated October 18, 2006, in which you claim—without citing any legal authority—that Mr, Akin defamed your client, Bill Moyers, by republishing certain statements from a newsletter penned by Dr. E.. Calvin Beisner on behalf of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance dated October 9, 2006.

Mr. Akin categorically rejects your characterization of the blog post in question (“Pay no attention to that man behind the camera: Part Two,” October 13, 2006—the only place my client republished the statements in question), and—having reviewed the relevant case law—I find it highly unlikely that you can sustain a case against my client for defamation.

That having been noted, Mr. Akin is certainly willing to “immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the . . . statements of Dr. Beisner”; not because your client demands it, but because he believes it is only fair to allow Mr. Moyers to have his say on the matter. I will email you the text and links to such posts once they are published. A post containing Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner will be published on my client’s blog today, and (as a showing of good faith) will be featured as the top post for a 24-hour time period.

It is my sincere hope that the foregoing actions will resolve this matter between our clients.. If you choose, however, to proceed with a civil action against our client, notwithstanding his willingness to comply with Mr. Moyers’s demands, please understand that this firm will vigorously defend Mr. Akin’s rights and good name.

SLAD/cbt
————————————————————————————————————-

October 18, 2006


PDF SENT VIA EMAIL (JIMMYAKIN01@GMAILCOM)

Mr. Jimmy Akin


Re: Bill Moyers


Dear Mr. Akin:

This firm represents Bill Moyers. The following statement from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Newsletter dated October 9, 2006, by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner has been brought to our attention:

First, not earthshaking regarding climate science but of some interest to yours truly, Bill Moyers’s documentary "Is God Green?" (Click here: WGBH Programs) airs on PBS Wednesday evening, October 11 (check local listings). When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats. Don’t expect good science, economics, or ethics–or even journalistic balance. (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Beisner’s accusation is false and defamatory as it goes to the heart of Mr. Moyers’s integrity as a journalist. I am enclosing a copy of an e-mail from Mr. Moyers to Dr. Beisner dated October 17, 2006 in which he vigorously denies that any such statement was made and challenges Dr. Beisner to produce proof from his own tape recording to support his allegation. No such proof was produced.

We have demanded on behalf of Mr. Moyers a retraction from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance stating clearly and without qualification that Dr. Beisner’s statement was erroneous, that Mr. Moyers never made any such statement to Dr. Beisner or anything colorably close to it, and apologizing to Mr. Moyers for the error.

You have re-published at https://www.jamesakin.com/reels_squares/2006/10/pay_no_attentio.html,
and perhaps elsewhere as well, Dr. Beisner’s statement as if it were true, and without seeking

————————————————————————————————————-
FRANKLIN, WEINRIB, RUDELL & VASSALLO, P.C.
Jimmy Akin
October 18, 2006 Page 2

corroboration from Mr. Moyers or proof from Dr. Beisner. In doing so, you have also defamed Mr. Moyers.

On behalf of Mr. Moyers, we demand that you immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the false statement of Dr. Beisner.

Nothing in this letter should be construed as a limitation of the rights and remedies of our client, all of which are expressly reserved.

Signiture_1

Neil J. Rosini

NJR/aws

Enclosure
cc: Bill Moyers

281309/1/0471/0000

————————————————————————————————————-
Moyers, Bill
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:47 PM
To: [Dr. E. Calvin Beisner]
Subject: What has come over you?

You are not telling the truth. In fact, what you wrote in the ISA newsletter is an outright lie. You claim that "When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats." I said nothing of the sort — nothing. To the contrary, I told you that I am an independent – members of the crew remember my saying that to you specifically (there were, remember, three other people in the room.) You yourself taped the entire session with your own recorder; show me where in the transcript such a conversation occurred. I also told you, as I told everyone interviewed, that we of course could not usethe entire interview but that I would post it on our Website when the broadcast aired, as was done. If I had said anything approaching what you claim I said, if you perceived any bias on my part. you could have — and should have refused to participate. But you did participate freely, you were treated fairly and honestly, and for you now to bear false witness is not only unChristian but astonishing. What am I to make of the many friendly emails you have sent over these months, signed: "In Christ, Cal"? Or our exchange on how much I have enjoyed your daughter’s CD that you sent? Your conservative evangelical brothers who were also interviewed in the documentary – from Richard Cizik to Tri Robinson to Allan Johnson (not a liberal among them) have written in praise of how they were treated. You and you alone have chosen to bear false witness to our conversation and to defame – in your own words –the ethics and journalistic balance of the documentary. You owe me arid my team an apology and a public retraction.

Bill

ORIGINAL PDF.

Spider Men

SpidermanSoon your friendly, neighborhood spider man may be living closer than ever before–even right next door.

Yet because of his secret identity, you may never know it.

Actually, it’s not so much a matter of a secret identity as medical confidentiality.

What am I talking about?

It seems scientists are now trying to find ways to use spider silk in medical applications (EXCERPTS):

Spider web silk, the strongest natural fiber known, could possess untapped medical potential in artificial tendons or for regenerating ligaments, scientists now say.

Studies on animals have revealed that spider silk triggers little if any immune responses, which cause rejection of medical implants.

Scientists are also developing spider silk to make exceptionally fine sutures for stitching up surgeries or wounds to nerves or eyes, to potentially help them heal without scarring.

"Right now we haven’t even optimized the silks we’ve produced yet, and we’re in the ballpark of the material properties you’d want for artificial tendons and ligaments," Lewis told LiveScience.

And where will scientists get all of the silk needed for such applications?

To mass-produce spider silk, Lewis said "our lab is pursuing the production of spider silk in alfalfa." Other researchers are experimenting with producing spider silk proteins in goat milk. Scientists generate these proteins outside spiders by inserting the genes for them into target cells.

Having artificial, spider silk tendons might (for the sake of argument) let you jump long distances, but there is no word about whether applications are being developed that would allow you to stick to walls or have an innate danger sense.

Scientists should, however, bear in mind one thing as they seek to use spidery substances to develop new medical applications . . .

NO ORGANIC WEB SHOOTERS!

In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

Software Query

I’m looking for an application that will allow me to download the entire contents of a web site in one throw. In the old days, I would have used GoZilla for this purpose, but GoZilla seems to have fallen on hard times.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to download just the pages on a site that contain particular keywords, but the whole site would do.

Can anybody recommend an application that does this that (a) runs on Windows XP, (b) ain’t spyware, and (c) is free- or shareware?

Thanks much, folks!

GodBlogCon Update

I just got the final schedule for GodBlogCon 2006, and it turns out that I’ll be speaking on two panels instead of one.

The first panel will be "Bridging the Christian Divide" and will focus on  how Christian bloggers of different stripes (Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox) can work together to promote the common good and how they can handle their theological differences.

This panel will take place at 9 a.m. on Friday, October 27th. I’ll be serving as the Catholic representative and will be joined by Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost, James Kushiner of Mere Comments, and moderator Joe Shroeder of Blogotional.

The folks involved in this panel have already been having an e-mail discussion amongst ourselves, and it has become clear that we do not take ourselves with supreme seriousness. Jokes at each others’ espenses are planned, so it should be a lively and entertaining discussion.

The second panel I’m on is a Roundtable Discussion that will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 28th. This panel will focus on how Christians can make sure that their voices are heard in the blogosphere so that they aren’t shut out of the broader social discussion the way they generally have been on Television and in the news media.

Big names who will be attending the conference include Hugh Hewitt and La Shawn Barber. Info on the speakers can be found HERE, along with snazzy pictures of them.

I was particularly interested to see that, right next to my picture, there is a picture of another speaker who is perhaps best known for being the seventh president of the United States. All I can say is . . . wow, he looks a lot younger than I expected.

If you’ll be within spitting distance of Los Angeles during October 26-28, I hope that you’ll join us for GodConBlog 2006. It’d be great if a sizeable Catholic turnout appears. Many of the organizers of the conference are Evangelical, but they’re Catholic friendly, and any time our friends across the confessional aisle reach out to include Catholics in an event, it’s good for us to reciprocate.

MORE INFO HERE.

On Not Praying For Sinners

A reader writes:

My roommate and I (both devout Catholics) enjoy having theological conversations.  In one of these discussions, a question arose.

We were looking at 1 John 5, and we questioned the meaning of 1 John 5:16:

"If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray" (NAB). 

It seems as though John is telling us not to pray for those in mortal sin, but this command does not seem to make sense.  Obviously repentance, even for one in mortal sin, is only possible through the grace of God given to that person.  So why would we not pray that God would continue to offer grace to a person whose sin is deadly, so that the person would come to repentance? 

Furthermore, given that we cannot judge the state of someone’s soul, we can even pray for people who died in states of objectively serious sin (for example, those who commit suicide) in the hopes that they lacked either full knowledge or full consent, or that they repented in their last moments.  Are we misunderstanding John’s meaning here, or is there a particular reason he would discourage his readers from praying for people whose sin is deadly?

This verse is notoriously difficult for people of all theological stripes to interpret, and one of the reasons for this–at least in the English-speaking world–seems to be that it does not come over into English that smoothly, leading translators to fudge a bit of what the Greek says in order to better fit the idiom of our speech John does not literally refer to someone whose sin is "not deadly." That’s an attempt (a guess, really) at what John meant by the Greek phrase he used (mE pros thanaton).

My own thought is that the verse is easier to understand if you stick with a more literal translation, and to that end let me quote the verse from a translation that I don’t often use–Young’s Literal Translation:

If any one may see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and He shall give to him life to those sinning not unto death; there is sin to death, not concerning it do I speak that he may beseech.

I also should note that the "a" in "sinning a sin" is not there in the Greek (Greek does not have an equivalent of the word "a," so the translator has to decide whether or not to add it based on the context). You could thus translate the first part of this, "If anyone sees his brother sinning sin not unto death." (You could also use "to" instead of the archaic "unto.")

That’s clunky English, but it enables one to see what I think is the most natural interpretation of the text: John is talking about people who sin and keep on sinning until they die, with no repentance. To paraphrase the passage, what I think John is saying is this:

If somebody sees his fellow Christian sinning, but not up to the point of death, then he should pray and God will give the brother life–that is, to those who don’t keep sinning until death; there is such a thing as sinning until death, and I’m not talking about praying about that.

In all of this it is understood that the sin in question is mortal sin, and the point John is making is that as long as a person hasn’t died in mortal sin you can still pray for them and God can give them life (spiritual and/or physical).

If someone has died in mortal sin then, of course, there is no point praying for them, which is why John says what he does.

You’ll note, though, that he doesn’t say not to pray for them. He just says, "I am not saying that he should pray about that." It strikes me that John may avoid saying "Don’t pray for such people" precisely because we can’t ultimately know if someone was in mortal sin when they died. He’s just not advocating prayer for people who appeared to remain in mortal sin until they died.

This is still different than what we tend to do today–we tend to pray for everybody, even those who really STRONGLY appeared to be in mortal sin when they died (e.g., the 9/11 hijackers) because we know that there is some small chance that they weren’t–but in the New Testament era the emphasis tended to be placed on what a person’s outward behavior would indicate about their spiritual status rather than what their hypothetically possible inward state might be.

People in the New Testament recognized that the inward state of a person might not match their outward state (i.e., people who appeared to be righteous outwardly could really be sinners inwardly, and people who sinned outwardly might have diminished culpability for their actions), but there was a tendency in practice to read the outward state as a usually-reliable guide to their inward state.

Incidentally, other folks do other things with this passage, and other interpretations of it are certainly legitimate, but this is the interpretation that strikes me as the most natural.

MST3K Revividus!

MikebotsIt was a sad day, seven years ago now, when Sci-Fi cancelled Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I was watching when Mike and the bots signed off for the last time, the credits rolled, and the haunting Love Theme From MST3K played.

Sniff.

What a great show that was. I and my college buddies had been doing the same thing in our living rooms for years (in fact, I can still annoy people riffing movies we’re watching on DVD), but this show did all the comedy work for you–so you don’t have to!

The show is too cool an idea to remain forever dormant, and it may someday make a return to the airwaves (or at least the coaxial cables).

And now the digital millennium has brought the show back! . . . almost.

In an age when TV show producers are producing podcast commentaries that you can download and listen to as you watch their shows, Mike Nelson and his pals got the idea of cutting out that expensive middleman–the TV network–and bringing their mstings straight to you!

The result is RiffTrax, a service where Mike–together with Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Sci-Fi’s Crow "I’m Different!" T. Robot)–produce mp3 riff-laden commentaries that you can download and watch along with the corresponding DVD (sold separately).

They even have a few DVDs that contain the riff-track ON the DVD, including a version of one of the most-requested movies that they never got around to doing on the show: Plan 9 From Outer Space! I know I’m going to get that one.

I’m pleased as punch to see these guys (a) bringing back their hilarious movie commentaries and (b) finding a way to make some money again after all these years, so

CHECK IT OUT.
(CHT: Catholic Whiteboy)

Don’t know what we’re talking about? Missed out on all the fun?

GET EDJUMACATED.

Incidentally, Mike Nelson is an Evangelical who has a special interest in apologetics. I’ve exchanged e-mail with him before, and he seems like a real nice guy. Some of the other regulars from the show, such as Kevin Murphy and Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) were Catholic, and Christian and Catholic themes often showed up in the commentaries (along with other, less mentionable material on occasion, but you know what Ludwig Wittgenstein said about things we can’t talk about).