Even if the framers *did* have religion in mind, that doesn’t mean that it is what we should follow today. The times they have a changed.

Not My God
http://www.sarahtrachtenberg.com

But I love Gene Burns’ last word though:

I’d love to have a battle of wits with you, but I have a firm principle that I never fight with an unarmed man.

A faith based on adversarialism cannot flourish without an enemy.

He’s been out here for years. I didn’t know he had a chocolate business. Maybe he sold it. I know that at least some of his family still lives in Florida.

Yeah, he had a handmade chocolate business for years, employed most of his extended family. He was always big on taking care of them. I remember, now, though – the business was always in FL. He came up here for a number of years, but I think the winters got to be too much for him (it’s thirteen degrees here now, so I can’t say I blame him). I think I remember our mutual friend telling me that he was getting ready to move back down there. I guess he got sidetracked.

From his bio page at WKIS:

For 14 years starting in 1971, Gene served as a talk show host, commentator and program director at WKIS-AM 740 in Orlando. Gene even ventured in to the candy business while in Orlando (where his surviving family members live). Do you remember Gene Burns Chocolates, in Winter Park? Gene would have more than one stop at WKIS in his career. Gene arrived from WEEI-AM in Boston in 1971. He would be lured to WCAU-AM in Philadelphia in 1981, but would return to Orlando and WKIS in 1982(?). Gene would run for President in 1984, on the Libertarian Party ticket. Gene was named Operations manager at WKIS in 1984. He moved to WRKO-AM in Boston in 1985, where his show on became the top-rated midday show in the area. In the fall of 1992, he left Boston for WOR-AM 710 in New York. His program was carried on 162 stations across the country. In 1992 Gene was named one of the “25 Greatest Radio Talk Show Hosts of All Time”, by Talkers Magazine. In a dispute with WOR management Gene walked out with (with 1 year remaining on his contract). After leaving WOR, he underwent very complicated neck surgery which kept him housebound in New York for a couple of months. Then In 1994, Gene headed to KGO-AM 810 in San Francisco when he suffered a mild heart attack. Now heard nightly San Francisco on KGO. Gene also does a program about food, wine and travel; “Dining Around with Gene Burns”.

On the subject of the Framers’ beliefs, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Peter Carr:

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Jefferson will always be a hero of mine. The skepticism and value of reason over tradition just brings a smile to my face.

That line is as relevant today as ever. If your god really is the one true creator of this universe and he gave us all the attributes we have (created in his image and so on), would he truly not value reason over blind obedience?

I’m not surprised it’s missing. Try adding some space to the bottom of the post. That’s another thing I have to fix. There isn’t enough space at the bottom, so any graphics at the bottom of a post are getting clipped. If you look at the HTML for that post, you’ll see I added a blank space after the player. That allowed the whole thing to appear for me. I suspect IE8 is just more sensitive.

I opened up the Dev Tools and tried fiddling with the HTML and CSS. It turns out there is plenty of space, it’s just not rendering the object tag. What’s weirder is if I take the object’s URL and open that in its own tab, it works fine. If it’s working for others with IE7, I wouldn’t sweat it, it’s probably just a IE 8 beta bug.