A new study by Harvard researcher Robert Putnam (from Bowling Alone fame) says that the percentage of young Americans who claim they have no religious affiliation that usually hovers between 5-10% has skyrocketed to 30-40%. While this trend started in the 90’s and has continued through Generation X and Y this is still a startling change. Putnam is releasing his findings and his corresponding musing in a new book, “American Grace” due out later this year.

We’ve had quite a month in South Bend. When the President accepted the invitation to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony, the media jumped all over the supposed re-ignition of the abortion debate. 

There is something about picking a ridiculous concept and building a website around it that puts a quiver in my liver.  Today I found two websites that are mind-blowingly awesome, if only for the fact that they straddle the line between absolutely outlandish and categorically awesome.  I encourage you to visit these sites and bask in their preposterous magnificence.

1)  Black People Love Us - The blacks just can't get enough of them!
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

I've been a very bad dagblogger of late, but I'm full of good excuses for my badness. First, there was the whole engagement to plan and pull off (and already a fair amount of wedding madness), and then right after that I had to help plan my brother's 40th birthday party, which included a week-long visit from the folks (a surprise to my brother).

OK, Hockey Afternoon in America.

Tomorrow (Sunday), at 3 p.m. Eastern, the NHL's Western Conference final series kicks off between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings.

Why should you care? Why should anyone care?

Nancy Pelosi ought to be ashamed of herself for daring to suggest that the CIA has ever done anything untoward, much less that they have misled Congress.  The CIA is 100% on the up-and-up.  They have never bungled analyses, been involved in drugs or arms t

May 13, 2029

Twenty-six years after invading Iraq, the United States closed its military bases and evacuated the last American soldiers from Iraqi soil.

In an address to soldiers at Fort Bragg, President George Prescott Bush praised the U.S. military for accomplishing the mission that his uncle, former President George W. Bush, had set before them in 2003.

Is it bad form to mention a blogger on another blog? I don't know much about blog etiquette. Until about a year ago, I thought blogs were like MySpace pages: self-indulgent and of very little interest to anyone except the author and the author's close friends. 

Happy Train Appreciation Day!  Oh, you didn’t know it was Train Appreciation Day?  Neither did anybody else and it was this past Sunday, so don’t feel bad if you missed it.  Apparently, Congress regularly passes resolutions establishing pseudo-holidays and resolutions of support for all sorts of things that are either: a) insignificant; b) blatant pandering to special interests; or c) down right non-sequitur.

In a comprehensive study, voting experts recently conducted a series of interviews, polls, and focus groups to find out why American voters turned away from Republicans in 2008. While many reasons were cited, analysts observed a clear consensus among swing voters who had voted for President George Bush and other Republican candidates prior to 2006 but changed to Democratic tickets in the past two years.

Having gained the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve set about going forth and multiplying, which is what God said that he wanted them to do in the first place. They had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain became a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Cain offered some of his crops to God, but Abel offered his fattest sheep, so God loved Abel and ignored Cain.

Commentary: Couldn’t God make his own sheep? That’s like giving eggs to a chicken.

So God finished his business and left for vacation. Adam and the woman hung out in the garden with a particularly clever snake. When Adam was off doing something (don’t ask), the snake asked the woman about what fruit she was allowed to eat. The woman explained what God had said about the toxic properties of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The snake, who was apparently smarter than the people, told the woman that what God had said was false.

Question: What do privileged psychopaths from Connecticut have in common with Pakistani propagandists?

Answer: They hate the Jews.

As I said, God took a day off. It’s not clear what he did on his day off, but we hope something fun and relaxing. But before he called it quits, God made a pretty garden for the first man, Adam. The garden had some nice trees, including the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is a long name for a tree. Before heading out, God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree with the long name for “the day you eat from it, you will definitely die.”