UK: Prince Andrew arrested. South Korea: Former President Yoon sentenced for life. Brazil: Former President Bolsonaro serving a 27-year sentence. USA: President Trump demands $10 billion payout from taxpayers.

Not for nothing, but few of the Europeans who settled what would come to be the United States (or immigrated to it later) felt they shared a “common civilization.” Go back in time and ask a Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony if they have “shared … Christian faith” with a Spanish Catholic.

This is your regular reminder that the idea that Christianity is a thing uniform beliefs that everyone within “Western Civilization” believed and agreed on is a fiction that just ignores centuries of Christians killing each other and fighting literal wars over their different beliefs.

When it comes to the economy, it always comes down to nuts and bolts, but only rarely literally.

This is a really interesting and tragic interweaving of past and present. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/fe...

DEI and LGBTQ programs are being gutted at public universities across the state. Now, progressive Christian student ministries are ensuring those programs live on. https://religionnews.com/2026/02/05/as-universities-shutter-dei-offices-christian-groups-open-their-doors/ 

One Boston Children’s Hospital researcher said, “This is like asking, how do you think dropping an atomic bomb on New York City will affect the future of Broadway musicals? This is a generational loss of innovation, technology, and economic power.” www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

For no particular reason: today.emerson.edu/2026/02/02/e...

What a superb owl! Perky pre-Colombian finial.

A well deserved end zone dance, at that.

Oh I know this one! You just fill in the bubble next to their name with black ink just like any other candidate.

The library? Yes, the library is hosting a series for Chicagoans to learn about Puerto Rican history ahead of Bad Bunny’s historical Super Bowl halftime show performance this weekend.

Well at least one thing is right with the world.

Well I’ll be. My representative managed to get something right!

Tag yourself

😒

😳😬

It appears several clergy were just arrested as they staged an anti-ICE protest in the Russell Rotunda in the U.S. Senate office building. A number of faith leaders, who were in town urging Senators to vote against additional ICE funding, were led away by police: www.facebook.com/FIAnational/...

Of course, if they’re sending them to Greenland, they’re not sending them to Ukraine, which may well be the whole point of this exercise.

One of the best things I’ve read in a while:

Donny Boy not being able to face real patriots… checks out.

His new book, “The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us,” examines how political polarization has changed congregational life over the past several decades. religionnews.com/2026/01/22/r...

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they shot him in the street? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they shot him in the street?

A wise monk once taught me that “the only way to withstand humiliation is by cultivating humility.” See below for an example of such cultivation in practice. Worth keeping in mind as we bring back shame.

Apparently the proper thing for Nekima Levy Armstrong to do is to sue the White House for $5 billion. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This is 100% FALSE. Immigration judges do NOT play any role in issuing administrative warrants. They are generated and signed by ICE officers themselves. ICE’s own training materials say they can’t be used for a search of a home! Here’s a blank warrant form. Note who signs it.

The justices keep returning to the hypo of a Fed governor posting pro-Nazi videos to ask whether that would meet the bar for for-cause removal. The idea that this kind of content would obviously cross the line seems a bit farcical given some of the material that DHS regularly posts on social media

🙋‍♂️

Ah, yes, we all deserve a little nonsense for dessert. How, pray tell, does one leave a post one was never properly in? apnews.com/article/just...

Wow! Patriarch Bartholomew must be doing everything right!

Sigh.

Turns out, we almost had a national health plan all the way back in 1971! www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/18/m...

When the goal is not actually to accomplish anything but rather merely to be seen to be doing something, anything at all will do, really.

This will make a great RLUIPA lawsuit, much like the one Chabad filed here in Brookline, Massachusetts to get their synagogue built. brookline.news/chabad-cente...

For anyone wondering where ICE gets their leg irons and handcuffs, it’s apparently right here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 😳😒🤬

Since the Massachuetts state legislature just shot down Wu's latest effort to get temporary property tax relief for people, here's one of the features I wrote last year; a look at how the state has an unreasonable amount of power in deciding what Boston can do. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/24/o...

“grief didn’t just wash over people passively; it mobilized them toward concrete acts of loyalty and generosity.”

Again it is something that people in previous eras have commented on but I still find it just astonishing to witness in my own: fascism is somehow the natural ideology of loser men, just all of our most pathetic and contemptible instincts rendered into a worldview.

Turns out he doesn’t even have concepts, let alone concepts of a plan. Shocking. 🙄 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’m sad to see Orinoco close, and hope the other three can relocate during construction, but the redevelopment of this property to be multistory and mixed use is extraordinarily good news for the Village. Huzzah! #TeamYIMBY

Wisdom! Let us attend:

If there’s any hope of stopping a U.S. military incursion into Greenland, this is clearly it.

On this day, 250 years ago, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the radical pamphlet that is credited with supercharging the American Revolution. Among other things, Paine argued passionately against kings/monarchies, and railed against its theological backing — namely, the Divine Right of Kings.

Making the claim that Plato is corrupting the youth new again.

Oh no, this was my reaction when I got the first summer camp registration reminder in early November!

Published this warning about what could happen to the memory of January 6 on the first anniversary of the attack. Never imagined so much of the country would — willfully, foolishly — forget so soon. www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/o...

Among the reasons Vermont is such a beautiful state:

As relevant as ever, Albert Camus, who died on this day.