Recently in Politics Category

Mitch Daniels for president!

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I actually know very little about the Indiana governor, but:

At 5'7", the Indiana governor wouldn't be the tallest man to occupy the White House, and he'd be the baldest president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

You had me at short and bald. Somebody please tell me he's got a beer gut, too!

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Douthat on Hume and Woods

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Ross Douthat's excellent take on the over-reaction to Brit Hume's altar call:

The knee-jerk outrage that greeted Hume's remarks buried intelligent responses from Buddhists, who made arguments along these lines -- explaining their faith, contrasting it with Christianity, and describing how a lost soul like Woods might use Buddhist concepts to climb from darkness into light.

When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe's religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.

If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher -- including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both -- who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?

It's reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it's the most important one there is.

There is a tension here between religious tolerance and religious dialogue. Believers of all faiths who aspire to any kind of orthodoxy are often scolded that they need to be more tolerant of other religions. Simultaneously, believers and non-believers alike see the need for and value of religious dialogue. Yet when Hume suggests in about the gentlest way possible that Jesus Christ, whom Hume presumably holds to be Lord and Savior of all men, might offer one particular man some answers, heads start exploding.

You can argue that Hume is wrong on the question of Buddhism's teachings, but to scold him for bringing it up is to mock the concept of dialogue. To see how rational this is, I'll only point out that people who riot and kill when the pope quotes Byzantine emperors also mock the concept of dialogue.

The other argument that could be made is that an individual's personal faith, as opposed to religion in general, is something so intensely private that we shouldn't discuss it in public. This is clearly absurd, as is evidenced by the fact that Mark Sanford's intensely private beliefs sure seemed to be legitimate public fodder last year. It's also a bit of a laugher since the media have no problem discussing Woods' sexual life, trotting out his mistresses, publishing his text messages, speculating about his marriage, psychoanalyzing him from every conceivable angle and offering dimestore advice over how to handle the P.R. disaster, maintain his focus on his career and save his marriage. All this, and yet a bit of spiritual advice is outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

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This is how we do scandals in the I-L

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The best part about the Roland Burris/Rob Blagojevich transcript is where Burris (D, IL), in telling the former governor's brother that he hopes to launder campaign contributions to Governor Blagojevich through his law firm so that if Burris gets the senate seat there wouldn't be appearance of a quid pro quo, also mentions that his partner is in New York trying to turn federal bailout money into contracts for his ailing financial law firm.

Burris: So if I can talk to my law partner who's been, you know, in New York trying to drum up business


Blagojevich: Oh, good for you,...

Burris: (chuckles)

Blagojevich: good for you.

Burris: 'Cause you know he's trying to get a part of that, ah, Federal bailout stuff.

Blagojevich: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Burris: Okay, 'cause you know we're, you know he's, we've got a financial law firm here so they're trying to get involved in that.

I note here, that as much as this is all madness, aside from this being excellent evidence that Burris perjured himself, it doesn't appear that there's much illegal going on in this conversation.

And by the way, I never did get myself any of that federal bailout stuff...

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Politics in the Land of Honest Abe

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NYTimes headline: Burris Defends His Evolving Description of Talks

So apparently Burris' story is mutating randomly and he's merely selecting the story that's best adapted to current circumstances. Political Darwinism. So much makes sense now.

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Hacks

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Paterson has appointed Kirsten Gillibrand, a second-term congresswoman from Hudson, near Albany. "Paterson has no comprehension of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has chosen someone better at representing cows than people," Lawrence O'Donnell says. "What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter of a former President or the son of a former governor. This is the hack world producing the hack result that the hacks are happy with."

Much of what's wrong with American politics is reflected in that last sentence -- the arrogance, the entitlement, the adulation of pedigree. I don't throw this word around, ever, but a world where "hack" is an antonym of "blue-blood" can only be described as un-American. And it runs through both parties, as you can still find Republicans who think it's a shame that W ruined Jeb and George P's chances.

Though I disagreed with her politics and thought it ludicrous that she was even being considered, Caroline Kennedy seemed a nice enough person and wouldn't have been the worst Senate Democrat. But it's probably best for both parties and the entire country that she fade back into her life of quiet privilege and let her family's political dynasty come to a quiet end.

I will admit, however, my disappointment that we won't have a Democratic Senate majority bolstered by the illegitimate trifecta of Burris, Franken and Kennedy to laugh at for a few years.

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Under Cover

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Pamela Davis, blond suburban mother of three, was told that her bra would be the best place to wear the wire that kick-started a long investigation into Chicago graft and that ultimately caught the governor of Illinois trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. Davis is the president and C.E.O. of Edward Hospital, in Naperville, Illinois. She is proud of the fact that on her twenty-year watch the hospital has grown from a hundred-and-sixty-two-bed community facility to a four-hundred-and-twenty-seven-bed regional medical center that leads the county in babies delivered.

Back in 2003, Davis was trying to get approval for a new medical office building from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. A night or two before a hearing was to be held, Davis recalled, something strange happened. A business acquaintance of hers, Nicholas Hurtgen, then a managing director of the Chicago office of Bear Stearns, called her at home and told her that unless she agreed to use a certain contractor she should pull her building request, because it wasn't going to be approved.

She ignored the warning and went off to the board hearing, where she was surprised to find that her request was denied. "I was humiliated," she said. "They were mean. So I walk off, and then a different guy comes up to me and he says, 'We told you to pull your project. Call me.' And right then I decided to call the F.B.I."

Read the rest

Don't worry, our next president (D-IL and friend of Tony Rezko) says there will be no pork barrel projects in the trillion dollar stimulus package.

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Civic Literary Quiz

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ISI has a new Civic Literacy Quiz. I got a 93.94% (31 out of 33). I seem to remember getting a much lower score on previous years' quizzes.

Anyway, by coincidence, I scored the same as TSO and Bill White and we all got #33 wrong. My other mistake was 7, which is frustrating because I know where it's from, but I thought he was quoting....

Take the quiz, and then maybe lets start a petition that nobody who fails should be allowed to vote, or, even more importantly, hold elected office.

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Catching Up

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Some good recent-ish reads:

  • 2 from the Claremont Review: "The Audacity of Barack Obama" -- a fairly balance view of Obama's governing and legal philosophies; and "Reforming Big Government" -- a sober assessment of the here-to-stay welfare state:


    Supply-side tax cuts did little to necessitate or even facilitate reducing the welfare state, and there is no reason to believe an explicit campaign for that goal will succeed where Barry Goldwater's failed. Given all that, conservatives need to weigh the costs and benefits of putting liberals' minds at ease by explicitly renouncing the war against the welfare state, the one that's barely being waged and steadily being lost. They could do so by making clear that America will and should have a welfare state, and that the withering away of the welfare state is not the goal of the conservative project, not even in the distant future. What libertarians will regard as a capitulation to statism is better understood as conceding ground conservatives have been losing for 75 years and have no imaginable prospect of regaining.

  • Rathering than listing them all, I'll just tell you to read everything John Zmirak writes at Inside Catholic (yo, Deal, add author archive links!)

  • Remember way back in... January 2008, when Ron Paul was widely dismissed as a nutjob for wanting to put the US back on the gold standard? Well, those loonies at the Wall Street Journal have given prime opinion real estate not once but twice to that fringe idea. Now, I'm not saying I'm a goldbug, but I'm not goign to hold my breath that many gold advocates will be acknowledging that Paul was out front on this.

That's all for now.I have many more I'll try to get around to in the next few days.

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So long!

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Soon after becoming vice-president, Cheney plucked out of obscurity and brought back to government two men, John Poindexter and Elliott Abrams, still under a shadow from having been charged with various crimes in the Iran-contra prosecutions. Poindexter became the projector of Total Information Awareness--a War on Terror idea rejected by Congress, which would have encouraged Americans to spy on their neighbors--while Abrams was made an adviser on Middle East policy and then adviser for global democracy strategy. Poindexter would resign in 2003 over the scuttling of his fantastic proposal that the military run an on-line betting service to reward persons who correctly forecast future terrorist acts, coups, and assassinations. Abrams stayed with Middle East policy and in 2006 secured a declaration of American support for the Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon. A zeal that touched the brink of recklessness had always belonged to the public characters of both men.

Look, Barack Obama was no doubt an unaccepable choice for president, but come on, who's going to miss these guys?

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While you mourn (and I imagine most of my readers are mourning), here's something to cheer you up: Al Franken, Limbaugh of the left, lost his senate bid by less than 700 votes. Congratulations to all the various Yorks for doing their job!

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None of the above

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I should know better than to start an election series so close to election day. Due to being out of time, I'll have to condense my thoughts.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), I'm going to set aside a whole host of issues and look narrowly at issues related to respect for human life. This is in a sense unsatisfying because both candidates have a whole host of stances that are destructive of society and culture, both here and abroad, but I think it works out because they in a sense cancel each other out.

While I think a vote for Barack Obama is morally indefensible for anybody who believes that an embryo is a human being deserving of legal protection, we should not be too quick to support John McCain. For starters, McCain supports embryonic stem cell research, which, last I checked, involves the direct killing of innocent human beings. Of course, Obama supports the direct killing of more innocent humans by his support for abortion, but this is not how the debate has been portrayed by Catholics. We're hearing that Obama supports an intrinsic evil and must be opposed, without reference to McCain's similar problem. I think that is a grave disservice to embryonic human life and is hurting the prolife witness. Analogize this to any other issue -- "McCain supports exterminating Hispanics, but Obame wants to get rid of Hispanics andJews, so obviously we have to support McCain." To the extent that Catholics are not speaking out against McCain's support for ESC research, they are injuring the prolife movement.

Furthermore, although McCain has a decent voting record when it comes to abortion, Rick Santorum, who fought honorably for the unborn when he was a senator, publicly stated last year that John McCain, behind closed Senate doors, opposed prioritizing prolife bills and amendments. Again, that's not nearly as bad as Barack Obama -- who couldn't even bring himself to support medical treatment for babies who accidentally get born because he didn't want to undermine Roe v. Wade -- but it's hardly cause for cheer.

Finally, the dream of most prolifers, myself included, is getting those five votes on the Supreme Court. "We're just one vote away!" That's true, and while the prospect of having Roe v. Wade finally overturned is tantalizing, it's hard to imagine that McCain would have a better record than, say, Ronald Reagan, who, if you count Bork, was only 50% on his Supreme Court picks in terms of their votes on abortion. Once again, we have to believe that McCain's picks are more likely to be pro-life than Obama's, but we're dealing with contingencies here, not facts, and similar contingencies have historically not worked out in our favor.

If you're going to credibly defend a vote for John McCain, it can't be on broad philosophical grounds, because there's just not much there. I think it has to be on very narrow political grounds: the Mexico City policy and the Freedom of Choice Act. Nobody doubts that President Obama, like Clinton before him, would overturn the Mexico City policy, which prohibits government agencies from making abortion one of America's few remaining exports. And he has already stated he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would strip away even more legal protection from the unborn. Those two policies are, I think, decisive in making McCain "better" than Obama on abortion. But is this impact enough to justify voting for McCain, a man who supports the direct killing of human embryos?

Archbishop Charles Chaput put it wonderfully a few months back in a piece on the primacy of abortion. He said something to the effect that if we are going to vote for a candidate that supports legal abortion, we have to have a reason good enough to tell the unborn to their face on Judgment Day. Again, while it's clear that this rules out voting for Obama, I have a hard time envisioning meeting not the victims of abortion, but the victims of embryo destructive research and saying, "I supported a man who favored your death in order to stop a few abortions. Besides, the other guy had no value for your life either. I could have fought and denounced both candidates, but I decided to downplay your plight to serve other noble ends." It's not that I don't think I'd be in a sense justifiable, I just don't think I'd have taken the highest road.

I have trouble with the fact that if I want to vote for one of the major party candidates, I have to perform the grimmest of calculations: take x amount of unjust wars McCain is likely to start, subtract out the 1.5 million abortions per year that he oppposes (but can't really do much about except appoint the right judges, which is at best a 50% shot -- Souter! Kennedy! O'Connor! Stevens!) but add back in all of the frozen embryonic humans he wants to cannibalize for research. And where does that get us? Are we Catholics really transforming society by thinking like that?

I am truly thankful that I don't have to perform that calculation. Living in Illinois, which will go for Obama by about 60%, I'm happy to "waste" my vote on a third party candidate. Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party opposes abortion and embryonic stem research and invading harmless countries. He has some policies I dislike, but none that, as far as I can tell, lead to the direct killing of the innocent.

For those of you who live in a state that matters, I pray for you and ask you to pray for wisdom, prudence and discernment.

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Republicans deserve to lose

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It must be late October in a year divisible by 4. Campaigns are becoming ever more shrill, cheap shot emails are filling my inbox and good friends are putting up hysterical Facebook posts about those they oppose politically. Like any good blogger, it's time to add my own $.02 to the mix.

I wanted to do one big post with all of my thoughts, but instead I find that I need to break it up. So first I'll deal with the principle that when one party controls all branches of government and proceeds to run the country into the ground, that party deserves to lose.

The candidate of the party who has inhabited the White House for the past eight years should not be elected, especially when this candidate agrees with all of the president's worst policies. In fact, one of the few areas where McCain disagrees with the president is that McCain favors embryonic stem cell research. He's actually worse than Bush on the one area where Bush has managed to make a few good decisions.

John McCain represents continuity with the current administration -- continuity with recklessness, irresponsibility, torture and abuse of executive power. All other things being equal, such a man does not deserve to govern.

Alas, all other things are not equal...

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The Good, the Bad, and the Deranged

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What I read during my lunch:

  • GOOD:

    Michael Pollan's letter to the next president:

    This, in brief, is the bad news: the food and agriculture policies you've inherited -- designed to maximize production at all costs and relying on cheap energy to do so -- are in shambles, and the need to address the problems they have caused is acute. The good news is that the twinned crises in food and energy are creating a political environment in which real reform of the food system may actually be possible for the first time in a generation. The American people are paying more attention to food today than they have in decades, worrying not only about its price but about its safety, its provenance and its healthfulness. There is a gathering sense among the public that the industrial-food system is broken. Markets for alternative kinds of food -- organic, local, pasture-based, humane -- are thriving as never before. All this suggests that a political constituency for change is building and not only on the left: lately, conservative voices have also been raised in support of reform. Writing of the movement back to local food economies, traditional foods (and family meals) and more sustainable farming, The American Conservative magazine editorialized last summer that "this is a conservative cause if ever there was one."

    I have a post kicking around in my head on Michael Pollan as one of the most prominent and effective opponents of materialism. Someday I'll find the time to write it.

  • GOODISH:

    John Zmirak on Archbishop Chaput's Render Unto Caesar

    Having elsewhere published a thoughtful review of Archbishop Chaput's book that was mostly positive, Zmirak returns with sharper criticism. The title of his piece -- "Surrender Not Unto Caesar--Resisting Catholic Liberalism" gives you a hint of what he's getting at, but Zmirak is not throwing bombs here:

    In America, by our Constitution as it has been authoritatively interpreted, the State is now relentlessly secular. In practice, it is rigorously relativistic. Altering either of these settled facts in American life would be unthinkably hard. Therefore, any Christian engaged in public life must seek to shrink the sphere of the State, and reduce its functions to their bare, libertarian minimum--in order to leave some room for the practice of Christian life. The bishops' predecessors realized this, when they tapped the meager resources of impoverished immigrants to build an entire, nationwide system of alternative Catholic schools. Instead of trying vainly to Romanize the (then vigorously if vaguely Protestant) schools, they built their own. A very American response to such a problem--and also a deeply Catholic one. Homeschoolers today follow in the footsteps of Abp. "Dagger" John Hughes.


    The Church is officially committed to localism, rather than centralism. Catholic teaching on subsidiarity asserts that no problem should be taken up by the State which can be resolved by private action, and that no local matter should be referred to central authorities unless local institutions are hopelessly inadequate--as they are, for instance, to guard the border against foreign invasion, or prosecute interstate crimes. Empower the federal government to control (as it now does, with bishops' approval) education, social services, health care and retirement benefits, and you guarantee that each of these vital areas of life will be directed according to non-Christian or anti-Christian principles

    After tracing the dissolution of America's once formidable "institutional culture" -- a collapse which had long been stirring, became visible with JFK's embodiment of Catholics' conformity to mainstream American culture and finally exploded with the backlash against Humanae Vitae -- Zmirak notes that the Church's loss of institutional authority has led American Catholics "to depend for what voice she has on the charisma of isolated individuals, such as Mother Angelica, Fr. Joseph Fessio, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Fr. George Rutler" -- admittedly a formidable line-up, but no substitute for being formed in the faith by a family, parish, indeed an entire sub-culture steeped in Catholicism.

    Here is where he gets back to Chaput and here is where the article breaks down a bit (hence the "goodish" tag). He makes some useful comments on the temptation of Catholic liberalism to short-sell justice in favor of mercy, but nowhere does he connect this "sentimental liberalism" with Archbishop Chaput except saying that this is a "problem" with chaput's book.

  • BAD:

    A psychotherapist diagnoses John McCain as suffering from brain damage and PTSD without ever having met him.

    I feel compelled to issue a double disclaimer -- I hold no brief for John McCain and feel incapable of voting for either him or Barack Obama in good conscience and I also really, really like American Conservative.

    That said, come on, now:

    As we explore explanations for some of Senator McCain's actions, it is important to bear in mind that any professional who would render a definitive diagnosis on an individual he has not interviewed or tested is prostituting his credentials

    Buuuuuuuuuut...

    That said, I believe it is highly likely that John McCain suffers from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

    With the tanking economy effectively handing Barry O the presidency, is this really necessary?

  • DERANGED:

    Hanna Rosin on "transgendered" children and their enabler parents.

    Apparently the growing trend is for parents to allow their children to live as the opposite sex, even giving them drugs that block the onset of puberty:

    It took the gay-rights movement 30 years to shift from the Stonewall riots to gay marriage; now its transgender wing, long considered the most subversive, is striving for suburban normalcy too. The change is fuel‑ed mostly by a community of parents who, like many parents of this generation, are open to letting even preschool children define their own needs. Faced with skeptical neighbors and school officials, parents at the conference discussed how to use the kind of quasi-therapeutic language that, these days, inspires deference: tell the school the child has a "medical condition" or a "hormonal imbalance" that can be treated later, suggested a conference speaker, Kim Pearson; using terms like gender-­identity disorder or birth defect would be going too far, she advised. The point was to take the situation out of the realm of deep pathology or mental illness, while at the same time separating it from voluntary behavior, and to put it into the idiom of garden-variety "challenge." As one father told me, "Between all the kids with language problems and learning disabilities and peanut allergies, the school doesn't know who to worry about first."


    A recent medical innovation holds out the promise that this might be the first generation of transsexuals who can live inconspicuously. About three years ago, physicians in the U.S. started treating transgender children with puberty blockers, drugs originally intended to halt precocious puberty. The blockers put teens in a state of suspended development. They prevent boys from growing facial and body hair and an Adam's apple, or developing a deep voice or any of the other physical characteristics that a male-to-female transsexual would later spend tens of thousands of dollars to reverse. They allow girls to grow taller, and prevent them from getting breasts or a period.

    The whole article is pretty shocking and disturbing. I don't mean to be insensitive, and I'm sure parents who have to deal with this have it rough, but letting your 6 year old decide their own sex is too much.

That's all folks!

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Not the kind of transparency we need right now

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In this preseidential campaign, the first of the YouTube era, we've been treated to repeated displays of stunts and pandering that any decent human being would find embarrassing: from Mitt Romney breaking into a chorus of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" to Rudy Giuliani taking a phone call from his wife while talking to the NRA to Barack Obama calling for an undivided Jeruasalem in front of AIPAC without knowing what he was talking about. And yet, I feel safe arguing that John McCain suspending his campaign so he can save America's financial system is the most transparently stupid of all. I don't kow about you, but I want the senator who has a financial scandal in his past and who has publicly professed his lack of knowledge of economics to be as far as hell away from Washington DC as possible right now.

As for the political wisdom of the move, I defer to Daniel Larison:

In the end, knowing when you can contribute something and knowing when to avoid complicating an already difficult situation by intruding on ongoing negotiations is what separates grandstanding from leadership. It is what separates the simple egomaniacs from the ambitious pols who nonetheless have some idea what public service is. McCain's belief that he is indispensable in a time of crisis is the surest sign that he is unfit for any office in republican government, much less the chief magistracy of the Republic.
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A important perspective on the Palin nomination

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Cardinal Egan on Pelosi

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This might be my favorite statement from a bishop ever:

STATEMENT OF HIS EMINENCE, EDWARD CARDINAL EGAN CONCERNING REMARKS MADE BY THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


Like many other citizens of this nation, I was shocked to learn that the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America would make the kind of statements that were made to Mr. Tom Brokaw of NBC-TV on Sunday, August 24, 2008. What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being "chooses" to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

Edward Cardinal Egan

Archbishop of New York

What gets me about this is that faced with an issue about which we have, as Cardinal Egan says, cutting edge technology that shows us that the child in the womb is, in fact, a child, people like Pelosi makes appeals to 5th century theology based on pre-modern embryology to wish away that reality. But, you see, it's the Catholic Church that can't keep with the times.

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Moral theology of politics

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Any ideas on the morality of voting for a McCain-Palin ticket and praying that McCain dies before he gets us into a war with Russia and/or China and/or Iran and/or Venezuela and/or North Korea and/or Syria?

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Negativity Works

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Hendrik Hertzsberg, eulogizing Hillary Clinton's campaign:

...it's hard to find anyone who will dispute that if she had not voted to authorize the Iraq war, or if her delegate-hunting strategy had been as astute as her principal opponent's, or if that opponent had been a slightly more ordinary politician, or, perhaps, if her campaign messages had been more coherent and less negative, then she would have breezed to the nomination and made history all by herself.

Emphasis mine.

Maybe. Or maybe she didn't go negative early enough. For all of the media hand-wringing over her campaigns' attacks on Obama and her stupid pandering (both of which, I should say, I found shameful), she pretty thoroughly whipped him in most states that held primaries, which -- far more than the caucuses that Obama dominated -- favor the less politically engaged, who are the most likely to be persuaded by attacks and inconsistent messages. So maybe if she really wanted the nomination, she should have started smearing Obama from the get-go. Maybe she could have peeled away some of his support in Iowa, or really creamed him in New Hampshire, completely reversing his momentum instead of merely slowing him down until he could roll in South Carolina.

Regardless, the one mistake Clinton made that Hertzberg missed is that for almost a year, until January, Clinton campaigned like she was entitled to the nomination. She assumed she was going to steamroll, barely even campaigning in Iowa until it was too late. She was "inevitable," until she wasn't. She then adopted the "underdog" pose, fighting tooth and nail for every vote in the last half of the campaign. If she had scrapped like that for the first half, she might be the nominee.

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Illinois, only in Illinois

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Democrat Mike Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, issued a memo today to Illinois Democratic legislature candidates urging them to call for the House to investigate whether impeachment proceedings should be brought against our governor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich. The memo (warning: large .pdf) includes a list of reasons why the Governor should be impeached as well as talking points and answers to potential media questions. Some of the reasons are better than others (good reason: in the recent Ali Ata trial, Blagojevich was publicly identified as "Public Official A," implicating him as accepting campaign contributions in return for jobs; bad reason: Blagojevich proposed a gross receipts tax last year. I don't like taxes, but do we impeach officials for stupid policy?), but on the whole I think an impeachment investigation is warranted.

Of course, being Illinois, there has to be an element of ham-handed stupidity. The memo counsels the candidates to deny Madigan's involvement and refuse to comment on the implications of impeachment for Lisa Madigan (current Illinois Attorney General and daughter of the memo's propagator) and her aspirations to the governor's office. Have these morons never heard of the internet? This stuff gets out no matter what. Republican House Minority Leader Tom Cross of course pounced, pointing out that in a memo calling for impeaching the Governor for, among other things, lying, Madigan recommends the candidates lie.

For more, see The Capitol Fax.

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I Will Eat Your Dollars!

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