Book Review: The God Delusion (2006)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Brian Wright

by Richard Dawkins
2006, Houghton Mifflin Co., 374 pgs.

Dawkins is a celebrated evolutionary biologist who, along with Sam Harris (The End of Faith), has emerged as one of the better known proponents of atheism in contemporary literature. Both books have been New York Times best sellers.

In my own work, New Pilgrim Chronicles, I have likewise argued for the critical need of the species to evolve from faith to reason:

“Faith, as the antithesis of reason, is a barbarous relic that must be discarded if civilization, much less any prospect for freedom, is to emerge.”— from Chapter 5

Dawkins’ main thesis is the natural world and even sentient beings such as ourselves are accounted for by natural explanations. Thus, God is not a requirement for and has a vanishingly small probability of existence. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Love Song for Bobby Long (2004)

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Brian Wright

Lush tribute to the soul (and body) of New Orleans

Lawson Pines: Some people reach a place in time where they’ve gone as far as they can. A place where wives and jobs collide with desire. That which is unknowable and those who remain out of sight. See what it is invisible and you will see what to write. That’s how Bobby used to put it. It was the invisible people he wanted to live with. The ones that we walk past everyday, the ones we sometimes become. The ones in books who live only in someone’s mind’s eye. He was a man who was destined to go through life and not around it. A man who was sure the shortest path to Heaven was straight through Hell. But the truth of his handicap lay only in a mind both exalted and crippled by too many stories and the path he chose to become one. Bobby Long’s tragic flaw was his romance with all that he saw. And I guess if people want to believe in some form of justice, then Bobby Long got his for a song. Continue reading →

Guest Column: The Doreen Hendrickson Statement

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Brian Wright

… on the occasion of her sentencing (formally called an allocution)
Full statement on the losthorizons.com site here

Editor’s note: I attended the sentencing hearing, and like the trial, it was one of the most outrageously contemptuous acts toward anything decent or human that I’ve seen any pack of public officials take part in. Nor have I led a particularly sheltered life. The fix was in, the federal mob bosses had handed down their orders to their nonentity enforcer-drones in justice and on the bench: “we’re going after women now, next month it will be children and invalids.” Doreen was in the crosshairs.

Well, we’ll see about that.

Hell’s a poppin’ out here in real people land: we have an appeal in progress, a major Pontiac Tribune video in the works, and are going to pressure Michigan public officials to do their jobs to interpose on behalf of protecting the Constitutional liberty of one Michigan’s premier leading ladies… and thus the rest of us who live in the Wolverine State. But tonight I simply want to present key excerpts from Doreen’s allocution; from her lips to God’s ears.

Stand up and cheer, then circulate EVERYWHERE. Go to the original page and respond to the call to action.— bw. Continue reading →

A Convenient Truth: Cracking the Code

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Brian Wright

After the unconscionable attack on Doreen, now more than ever…

Just as a preliminary announcement, the author of the liberating, watershed book—that removes forever the burden of federal ‘income’ taxes on all Americans’ direct earnings—has suffered one of the most horrific attacks by a pack of renegade, law-debasing hoodlums in the so-called federal justice system: they pounced upon his dear wife, Doreen, for refusing to commit perjury on federal judge Nancy Edmunds’ unlawful order. It took two sham trials (a hung jury in the first one) for judge Victoria Roberts and her DOJ prosecution tag-team to mis- instruct and browbeat a cowed jury into a wholly ambiguous conviction in August last year. Then on Thursday, April 9, this week, Roberts sentenced Doreen to 18 months in federal prison. Doreen has 60 days to self-surrender, but only 30 days in the event she continues to refuse the unlawful judicial order to falsify her sworn tax statements. Continue reading →

The Hot Kid (2005)

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Brian Wright

The feeling of authenticity is astounding
by Elmore Leonard

2005, William Morrow Co., 312 pgs.

A lot of readers confess to a guilty secret for, say, liking a particular romance writer or mystery-suspense-crime novelist. Well, no guilt is required when the author you enjoy is Elmore Leonard. Especially in this particular book, where the jacket states:

“The next time the members of the Swedish Academy think about giving the Nobel Prize for literature, they should take a look at Elmore Leonard.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

Too true.

The Hot Kid is different from Leonard’s other work in being a historical period piece—the action takes place in oil-boom eastern Oklahoma during the late Prohibition-era 1920s and into the Depression-era 1930s. Continue reading →

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Brian Wright

David goes after the disgraced political Goliath (8 stars out of 10)

James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Stand Up for Doreen, Big Time!

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Brian Wright

Flyer document linked here, Please forward to America

Threatened with Jail for Refusing to Lie!
Court Watchers Unite

Doreen Hendrickson,
wife of Pete Hendrickson, author of
Cracking the Code:
The Fascinating Truth About Taxation in America,
has a court hearing set for:

Thursday, April 9, 2015, 12 Noon
231 W. Lafayette, Detroit, 2^nd floor
Victoria Roberts courtroom
… for sentencing on a contempt of court charge

This is a case of retaliation against Doreen’s husband for his book, which clearly defines the difference between taxable income and earnings that are not taxable under the IRS Code. Though numerous attempts have been made to discredit and suppress the book, especially through deliberate misrepresentation of its contents by government officials, nothing actually revealed in the book has ever been disputed. Continue reading →