Oral Roberts University Receives Huge Cash Infusion

It looks like ORU is headed back into the black after a retail tycoon has pledged to stop up ORU's leaky hull with wads of cash. $70 million to be precise.

Our previous posts here and here tell the sordid story of a scandal that greatly damaged the pious image the evangelical university seeks to uphold.

Donor Mart Green's donation comes with strings. After an initial donation of $8 million, he will appoint two members to sit on ORU's board of regents. Disbursement of the remaining $62 is contingent on a thorough review of the University's finances.

AP

Revelatory Ridiculous

Consider this: The doctrine of the Mormon Church consists of revelations given first to its founder Joseph Smith, and after his death the gift of these divine revelations was passed on to church elders that succeeded him.

Late in the 19th Century, the Mormon rulers of Utah, having to make the choice between polygamy and statehood, received yet another "revelation" from god enjoining them from taking plural wives, thus clearing the way for statehood.

In 1978, several years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the Mormons still held that people of dark complexion were cursed, barred from even the lowest tier of church leadership, and inferior to the light haired and skinned inhabitants of the Great Basin. That same year, Church elders received another "revelation" that put blacks on equal footing.

It then comes as no surprise that another scion of the dynastic leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, Mitt Romney, sees no irony in the fact that only three years ago, his views on reproductive rights took a u-turn. A revelation...maybe?

And should he be faced with the question, "boxer's or briefs" will he ask for a third category?

Note: Your correspondent apologizes for the lull in blog posts. He was on hiatus, reveling in the stunning natural beauty of the great state of Oregon.

Coin! Toss Judge

The Sullivaine money shot:

"The woman dropped her pants once to display the wound, then dropped them a second time after Shull left the bench for a closer look to determine whether the woman had received stitches."

Racy stuff for a courtroom in Virginia.

-Yahoo News/AP

Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would send him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing:
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

-Edward Arlington Robinson