A smorgasbord of topics today as I sit here in agonizing pain from a strained neck muscle.

Crowhill lamented about Catholic music over the weekend (see Modern worship), linking to an article about hymn "neutering." I can sympathize a little. Neutering doesn't bother me, but Americanization bugs me. (By which I mean changing all the Anglican "thee"s and "thy"s into "you"s and "your"s.) I spent about a year at a Lutheran church once and I found it a little jarring. It didn't offend me or anything -- I just think the Anglican text sounds more poetic.

Today's Blogburst Topic #1: I'm against the Dubai Port Sale, for obvious reasons (see Bush faces pressure to block port deal). But even if the sale doesn't go through, it still leaves our port security in the hands of the British company P&O. Don't forget that less than 200 years ago the British sailed over here and invaded our country! What if they're still thinking about payback? To solve this problem, I think on future application forms for potential port security companies, they should add two questions: "Have you or your country ever tried to attack America?" and "Does your country name start with 'I', end in 'stan,' or have the word 'Arab' in it?" And, like, don't hire companies that answer yes to either question.

Today's Blogburst Topic #2: The Supreme Court takes a controversial abortion case may not be good news for abortion fans. I don't know much of anything about this partial-birth abortion thing, except that it sounds kind of icky. A complete ban without any provision for medical exceptions, though, seems rather extreme.

Anything that makes the Discovery Institute look bad is blogworthy to me: The DI and the astonishingly tepid petition. Apparently the Discovery Institute's petition of 500+ scientists that don't believe in evolution is, ah, somewhat distorted. (You may recall that the Discovery Institute is the Christianist organization that started the Intelligent Design movement.)

Americablog once again sounds like a bunch of slavering nutjobs (but hey, that's why they're entertaining): Senior GOP Senator lies about Saddam, says he had ties to Al Qaeda when it's already been determined he has not. What the senator said was that Saddam "supported" al-Qaeda. What the 9-11 commission found was no "collaborative relationship." Which is to say, Saddam did not plan and participate in 9-11, but I'm sure he cheered like a mad Arabian mofo when he watched it on CNN. And there is some evidence that Saddam supported al-Qaeda with more than just cheerleading: See Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Marty Kaplan: "It Keeps the Elephants Away" is an amusing article about the Bush administration's homeland security platform, though I'm not sure I agree with it. It's really hard for me to comprehend that a modern presidential administration could possibly be as incompetent as some people (by which I mean the entire democratic party) like to portray the Bush administration. (But then, I never would have believed that a few cartoons would cause a worldwide Muslim uprising either.)

Speaking of which, Muslims are still outraged about those pesky cartoons. Protests and demonstrations continued everywhere over the weekend, including New York and Washington (no burnt embassies there, though). Most shockingly, Nigeria turned into a bloodbath as 15 Christians were killed, but apparently Nigeria has always been a Muslim v. Christian bloodbath (see Nigerians Rampage with Machetes After Koran is Desecrated). Pretty sad. (Both that there is ongoing Muslim v. Christian violence in Nigeria, and that I had no idea it was so bad before now.)