The Republic of T.

I won’t watch a movie if I’ve missed the beginning, and I hate missing endings so much that I won’t start watching a movie I can’t see through to the end. As a writer, the beginning and end are two of the most important parts of the story to me. They answer two important important questions in any story: “How did we get into this?” and “How do we get out of this?”

Monday night, I watched Too Big To Fail — HBO’s eponymous adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book — from start to finish. Yet, I still ended up feeling like I’d missed the two most important parts of the story: the beginning and the end. Thus, I never got answers to those important questions: How did we get into this mess? How do we get out of this mess?

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Wow. Break out the spatulas, and get ready to scrape the exploded brains of right-wingers off the ceiling, walls, etc. Apparently, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

US President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. prepare for a Level Five Spatula Alert

The Nobel Committee said he won it for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”.

The committee highlighted Mr Obama’s efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament.

Mr Obama’s spokesman said the president was “humbled” to have won the prize. He said he woke Mr Obama up when he called with the news early on Friday.

There were a record 205 nominations for this year’s peace prize. Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Chinese dissident Hu Jia had been among the favourites.

The laureate – chosen by a five-member committee – wins a gold medal, a diploma and 10m Swedish kronor ($1.4m).

It’s a surprise, but I think I understand why the committee made this choice: You generate a lot of good will among people when your foreign policy message is something besides “It’s our world, and the rest of you are just living in it.”

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I know I’ve said it before, but I just love Keith Olberman. This time, it’s his take on the Bush “legacy.”

Unfortunately, PZ, this kind of thing—from this administration—is all to believable.

Every year, overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS, hepatitis or homicide.

And the number of overdoses has gone up dramatically over the past decade.

But now, public health workers from New York to Los Angeles, North Carolina to New Mexico, are preventing thousands of deaths by giving $9.50 rescue kits to drug users. The kits turn drug users into first responders by giving them the tools to save a life.

Sounds good so far, right? After all, before you can get someone into recovery or treatment, you’ve got to keep them alive. I’ve never yet heard of a dead junkie graduating from rehab. So fewer overdoses is a good thing, even if it’s only the first step towards maybe getting some people the help they need.

You’d think so. Right? Well, if you do, you’re likely not a part of the Bush administration. Keep reading.
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Evidently, there’s a new trend underway in some churches. But it’s one that seems, at best, to be a strange way to make church more appealing: to fill the pews by emptying them.

First, you have to imagine being arrested because you went to church. Then you have to imagine a 71-year-old woman showing up for church, one she attended for 50 years, and being arrested because she refused to leave.

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. “And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P.”

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

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