Culture

Justice Groups Start Work On 'Common Good' Platform For 2012 Election; The 5 Biggest Failures Of The 112th Congress; An AIDS-Free Generation; At Occupy LA Eviction, Police Restrict Media CoverageThousands Of Immigrant Kids Ask Obama To Stop Deportations; Evangelism And Environmentalism: A Time To Act (OPINION); When Rehab Is Cut -- You Hurt Too.

Coptics Fear Islamists Will Sweep Egypt Elections; Why Columbus, Ohio, Needs Somali Cops On Its Force; Anti-Mormon Bias Persistent In Presidential Politics; Rampant Levels Of Poverty In Florida Force Families To Live In Cars; Religion: A Growing, Changing God Lobby In D.C.; Poll Numbers Suggest Gingrich’s ‘Humane’ Immigration Stance Could Help Him; How 2008 Radicalized Me; Cornel West: Ultimate Fight For Entitlements Will Be In "The Streets"

For the uninitiated, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (that's its official name) is a folk classic, an epic musical monologue from Arlo's 1967 album also called "Alice's Restaurant." it tell the mostly-true story of Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25 1965 in Stockbridge, Mass., when then-18-year-old Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins, 19, were arrested by  police officer William "Obie" Obanhein for illegally dumping garbage at the town dump that was closed for the holiday. Two days later, they pled guilty in court before a blind judge.

Two Muslim Americans resopnd in different ways to TLC's All-American Muslim; authors honored at 2011 National Books Awards; solar organizations introduce Occupy Rooftops; how cloud seeding effects water shortages and weather systems; Google's new music store; and much more.

Unlike the earlier turn-of-the-20^th-century Pentecostal movement, which created a plethora of new denominations, the Charismatic Movement  — with its emphasis on the felt-presence of the Holy Spirit, intimate worship, healings, and spiritual gifts as written about in the New Testament — united Lutherans and Catholics, East Orthodox and Episcopalians, promising in its early years to utterly remake ecumenical dialogues into a fully-felt move of the Spirit.

These heady early days inspired everyone from the Jesus Movement to Richard Rohr and many believed that a new fullness of Christian faith was being formed.

Then, as often happens as new movements grow and spread, things got messy. Denominational officials became suspicious; new denominations like the Vineyard were born, attracting new Christians such as Bob Dylan.

Both Colson and Land are such diehard fans that they can -- and did, during conversations with Boorstein -- quote lines from Allen's movies.

Can you imagine Land, with his low Texas drawl, reciting Allen's famous monologue from Annie Hall?:

"The other important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx but I think it appears originally in Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious - and it goes like this. I'm paraphrasing. I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women."

Yeah, me neither.

With the opening of the G20 Summit in Cannes, France today, an idea that’s been around for awhile is in the news again and gaining more attention as a result of the #OWS movement: The so-called “Robin Hood tax,” a minimal tax on all financial transactions with the resulting revenue dedicated to anti-poverty programs….Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in his response to the occupation of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, endorsed the Vatican proposals. Williams observed that ”people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism,” and urged a full debate on “a Financial Transaction Tax … or, popularly, a ‘Robin Hood Tax.’”