This is my favorite news story in weeks

Ousted Pastor ‘Completely Heterosexual’ reads the headline in The New York Times. And when one reads the accompanying article one discovers that the less-than-Reverend Ted Haggard has decided, "after three weeks of intensive counseling," that he is not gay.

This must be news to the man with whom he had a sexual relationship. By this reasoning, if one has only one heterosexual relationship in one's life (e.g., one might have been a virgin when one was married and then remained faithful to one's spouse for the rest of one's life [i.e., what many believe to be the Christian ideal]), one isn't straight.

I am impressed at the speed with which Haggard has found his way back onto the "straight" and narrow. No doubt he will be in the pulpit again soon. Maybe a real miracle will occur and he will preach that Christians should love all their neighbors, even the lesbian and gay ones. I am not holding my breath while I await that.

More on Peter Boyle

There is a good column on the site of In These Times magazine on the late Peter Boyle and what he was really like. Boyle was not only a talented actor; he was also a man of integrity.

Joe Biden's presidential campaign, R.I.P.

Is there a powerful U.S. senator who has worse political instincts than Joe Biden? Plagiarizing Neil Kinnock during his 1988 presidential campaign was bad enough, but describing Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," is a new, deeper level of stupidity for Biden. John Kerry has good political instincts compared to this guy.

Neil Kinnock is not a bad person, by the way, but he is not a politician whom I would emulate, given his lack of success as leader of the Labour Party. His political instincts weren't very good either.