Internet Sales Tax?

I'm not entirely sure if this is even do-able, but it looks like there is another push underway to tax interstate commerce on the internet (story here). Currently, I do not like to buy online from companies like Costco.com, Walmart, and other major companies with local branches of their business because they charge sales tax (in addition to shipping). Companies like Amazon.com can have only a few shipping facilities spaced throughout the country. According to my understanding, companies on the internet only have to charge sales tax in the state in which their "nexus of operations" is located. So I live in Arizona. I buy everything from Amazon, especially now that they have Amazon prime with free two-day shipping on any order. Because Amazon does not have a location here in Arizona, should they be forced to pay sales tax to Arizona? In which state did the sale occur anyway? I'm no legal whiz, so don't cite me on this, but the 1992 Supreme Court ruling Quill Corp v. North Dakota, it was decided that for a state with no physical operations within a state to collect sales tax for that state placed an unconstitutional tax burden on interstate commerce. They did caveat their ruling by saying that Congress is ultimately better qualified to resolve and has the power to resolve the problem of taxing interstate commerce. So who knows.

Please feel free to comment if you know more than I do about this whole business (It probably wouldn't take much). Just like the days of the early internet when everybody was willing to give you free stuff for signing up for accounts (Remember the dot-com boom when you could sign up for an account with each of your email addresses and get $15 off a $15 purchase. I loved those day)...so anyway, just like those days, if sales tax hits, we can look back and say, "It was good while it lasted."

On Phil Johnson's "Quick-and-Dirty Calvinism"

I just got finished reading Phil Johnson's new post, "Quick-and-Dirty Calvinism" on his new blog, PyroManiac...Right on! In just a few short paragraph's Phil distilled the recent polarizing trends on the web (possibly reflecting views in the real world, but who knows?) in a very convincing fashion. I was saved early in 2000; coming from a background where when I heard the term "Calvinist" I thought of separatist, harsh, unthinking, religious prudes. Then, within weeks after my conversion from fruitless and sin-indulgent religiosity to Christianity, I was exposed to the doctrines of grace at my first church East Valley Bible Church Gilbert. At first, I am very ashamed to say, I took my new-found knowledge and "shared" it with everyone...in all actuality my old pastor, Walter Crutchfield, probably characterized me best as Barney Fife with "Calvinism" as the one bullet in my gun: "I shouldn't have been trusted with it for fear of accidentally shooting myself or an innocent bystander." Somehow I was deceived by the unthinkable, that the fact that I had nothing to do with my salvation, that I was so dead in my trespasses as to be unable to even respond to a glorious message of salvation, and that even now in my sanctification I was powerless apart from the willing of God...that in the knowledge of all of that I became proud. At the discovery of the most humbling message around, I became boastful, proud, and arrogant, even harsh. I became to a degree the very characterization that I had applied to Calvinists. Thankfully, being exposed to the godly lives of my two mentors in the faith--Walter Crutchfield (who began to really temper me by giving me his very marked-up copy of Spurgeon v. Hypercalvinism) and Daryl Ridgely--the teaching of so many Godly men who thankfully did not characterize those traits, men like John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, Tom Shrader and others, and now to the shepherding of my amazing elders my life was transformed. My Calvinism became humbling; no longer was it a systematic theology to be merely refined and debated. My understanding of the doctrines of grace as expressed in the Bible (not in tradition) help me understand my conversion--not it defines my conversion. It makes me sure that God loves me, loves me personally, not just mankind generally. It makes me gracious. It drives my sanctification. It fuels my understanding of the cross. It thrusts me to my knees. It leaves no room to "play church" or to "play Christianity."

500+ Essential-to-Know Aquarium Species

A review of two books, Marine Fishes by Scott Michael and Marine Invertebrates by Ronald Shimek:

The Sith Sense

A buddy told me to go to sithsense.com, a site put out to promote Burger King at the release of the new Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith movie (A much better promotion than the Paris Hilton Carl's Jr. commercial that kept making me leave the room during a recent Suns playoff game; I'm never going to Carls Jr. again). Basically the idea is that you challenge an artificial-intelligence Darth Vader to a game of 20 questions. I was like, "This can't possibly work. I'll try something hard like rhubarb so I can mock the attempt and be done with it." 19 questions later, Lord Vader says, "I'm thinking it's rhubarb." Ok, well maybe it got lucky. How about coffe bean? 18 questions. Refrigerator: 16 questions. My friend Matt Dodd told me to try platinum; it'd never get platinum: 16 questions. My wife and mother-in-law arrive home. I tell them about it and ask them to think of something. Right then our chihuahua, Andronicus Maximus the Great, runs by. They say in unison, "chihuahua." At question 16 Vader was running down the wrong trail asking seemingly unrelated questions; I was worried that as soon as I was showing him off, he wouldn't get it. Not to worry, for question 19 he said, "I'm thinking it's chihuahua." He proceeded to correctly get bat. Then he missed cave but redeemed himself with cichlid. Give it a shot. Then leave a comment on the blog and let me know how Darth Vader did. According to the prologue, the more he plays, the "smarter" he gets. This thing could become ridiculous.

The Leaves

A leaf. Behold a single leaf. So fragile, it tears like paper, crushes in your hand to a moist stain, sharply fragrant. Dry, it burns swift and crackling as newsprint, pungent as gunpowder. Yet a leaf may withstand hurricanes, stubbornly clinging to its limb.

Hold it open in your palm. It is perfect as a newborn’s smile. Pinch its stem between thumb and forefinger and hold it to the light. Eden bleeds through. Its veins are like bone work in silhouette. This single leaf, joined to the tree, drinks poison from the air, drinks it serenely as Socrates downing his cup of hemlock, and refuses to return in kind, instead spilling out life-giving oxygen. This leaf tilts to catch the sun, its warmth and radiance, to distill the heat and light down to the shadows, down to the roots, back up to limbs. To shade the earth. To feed you and me.

A leaf. God makes these season after season, one after the other, billions upon billions, from the Garden to the New Jerusalem, most for no eye but His own. He does it faithfully, or else I would not live to tell about it, or you to hear.

Monotonous?

I gave the following short message for communion preparation on September 2, 2004 at East Valley Bible Church Tempe. I pray that you will find it useful in shepherding your heart away from montonous comfort and familiarity with Christ and Him crucified. In our church we have communion each and every Sunday. Also, in order to keep us from forgetting our Savior, in my smallgroup we partake in the Lord's Supper as well. I hope in the future to post my communion meditations from each week that I lead on my blog. I pray that this serves whoever might happen upon this site.

Prayer: O Lord, we are prone to wander but you are so faithful. We have praised you with our lips, our hearts, and our minds. We will now praise you through the breaking of the bread of your body and the drinking of the cup of grace. We thank you for giving us this simple physical representation of the gospel, just another way that you remind us of your grace. Your word says that it's your kindness that brings us to repentance just like we sang, "Let Your goodness, like a fetter--a chain--bind our wandering hearts to You." As we take the next few minutes as a Body, Your Body, to corporately remember your goodness, grip our hearts, pull us from the monotony of the week, the distractions of life, and shove us to the foot of the cross. We give you our hearts and our minds, guide them to repentance and to praise in this time. In Jesus' name, by his blood, we pray. Amen.
 
Welcome to East Valley Bible Church Tempe. Every week we take part in the Lord's Supper. If you a Christian, if all your hope for this life and the next are placed in Christ alone, you are welcome to participate with us in this time. This time is a wonderful gift for us who have been adopted into God's family; this is family time.
 
However, if you cannot honestly say that Christ is your only hope--if you have hope in your own goodness, in your own actions, in anybody or anything other than Jesus' Christ's death and resurrection paying your debt of sin--this time is not for you. We do not say this to embarrass you. We aren't judging. This is between you and God. So if you are not a Christian, please pass the cup and bread by. But please don't stop there, listen intently to what I'm about to say and please accept it, embrace it. Talk to whoever brought you or to me or one of the elders after service.
 
Doing this every week, it may be easy to view the Lord's Supper as monotonous, what we do after we sing and before the announcements and the message. Just another part of what we do. So you will get the bread and the juice and confess a few sins and say "thank you" for dying and that's about it.
 
So let me guide our hearts through the Lord's Supper this week: