Mitt Romney’s “Mormon” speech must have been awful; Chris Matthews loved it. Clearly, I’m not the target audience for this sort of thing so it’s perhaps unsurprising that I found it entirely unpersuasive and, in places, quite appalling. Some immediate thoughts… It was nice of Governor Romney to concede that jihadist terrorists are “worse” than
No religious test? No of course not. Who would dream that there could – let alone should – be such a thing? Oh, hang on. Here’s Mark Levin at The Corner: Now that Mitt Romney is giving a speech about faith, I’d like to hear speeches from all the candidates on faith. There seems to
Mitt’s Mightiest Fan, K-Lo, on the speech: I think a non-talking-head American watching the speech might be embarrassed at the thought that any American might be asked to prove he’s qualified to be president despite his religion. Really? What if the candidate were a Scientologist? Or a Jehovah’s Witness? Or, shudder, a Muslim? I think
The nice folks at Comedy Central email to say they’ve put a whole bunch of South Park Does Mormonism cartoons online. Just the ticket to entertain you on a cold winter afternoon. See the rest of them here
Mike Huckabee might not be ready for prime time. Here he is on national security: During the Cold War, we had hawks and doves, but this new war requires us to be a phoenix, rising reborn to meet each new challenge and seize each new opportunity. Really, governor? Yes, really: When the sun rose on
December 5th, 1933, American becomes a better country as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution is repealed and the Prohibition era ends. Now, about that War on Drugs…?
What should Mitt Romney say in his impossible-to-live-up-to-the-hype speech in Texas tomorrow? Noah Millman puts some fine words into the governor’s mouth here: “This is the place.” That’s what Brigham Young said when he came to the valley of the Great Salt Lake for the first time. I don’t know if he heard him say
I agree with Garance that there’s lots of interest in Bill Keller’s Hugo Young lecture. And like her I was struck by this passage: The New York Times has six correspondents assigned to Iraq, plus a rotating cast of photographers, plus Pentagon correspondents who regularly travel with the troops. We employ, in addition, about 80
I meant to comment on the death of Congressman Henry Hyde before now but never got around to it. National Review says: During the height of the impeachment controversy, Rep. Maxine Waters, a left-wing Democrat, tried to scold Hyde: “History will not be kind to you.” She was wrong. History will remember Henry Hyde for
“News” you expected from Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party has won a landslide election victory, official results show. With more than 80% of ballots counted, his United Russia had 63% of the vote. The opposition Communists and two other parties were also poised to win seats. Opposition allegations of fraud were dismissed by the
Daniel Larison explains why Mitt Romney’s speech on “religious liberty” on Thursday is going to be a tricky balancing act: His speech will have to go something like this: “My faith, which is very important to me and has made me who I am, should not be important to you, but it is important that
National Review Online’s Andy McCarthy believes that the premise that: “we are all quite aware that the Muslims we take seriously are the formers and reformers'” — is mistaken. We, as in you and I and many of us Corner types, may be aware of that. But the American people generally are not. They have
While I’m at it, here’s more deranged idiocy from The Corner. A fellow named Peter Wehner, who until March 2007 apparently served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives, has this to say about The New Republic and the gruesome Scott Beauchamp affair: What The New Republic didn’t understand, and still
So it’s all-Corner all the time here today. Next up is the never-knowingly-undersold Mark Steyn: The Islamic “reformation” is, in a sense, the opposite of Christianity’s. The Saudis have used their vast oil enrichment to promote themselves as a kind of Holy See for Muslims, and the Wahhabization of previously low-key syncretic localized Islams in
The Blasphemy of Paddington Bear: here UPDATE: I forgot to ask – is Paddington Bear known at all, let alone famous, in the United States? If not then you’ve all had deprived upbringings, my friends.
If true, this is the best news to come out of Washington in a long, long time. Turns out the Iranians may not be nuts after all. Who knew? The NYT reports: A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on
Verily, it’s useful to be reminded that the United States of America is a very different kind of country. A foreigner – or a New Yorker – could spend a lifetime here and never understand this sort of thing. It is so extreme, so un-modern (for better or for worse), so convinced of the imminent
If you only read one article this weekend, might I suggest you make it Ben Wallace-Wells long and brilliant Rolling Stone piece on the multiple – if well-intentioned – idiocies and failures of the War on Drugs. Since it’s been running since the Nixon administration you might think that it’s time for a fresh approach.
I used to think that the feebleness of the scandals that occasionally brought down a minister or two in Edinburgh was matched only by the embarrassment one felt watching the Scottish press corps work itself into a frenzy in anticipation of feeding upon cheap cuts that properly corrupt countries would never consider feeding their dogs
Megan offers her annual Christmas cooking recommendations. Kit here; manuals here. As usual, there’s lots of good stuff. But permit me to offer some supplementary ideas on the matter of cookbooks. If, as Megan suggests you should, you own several of Julia Child’s books you may not think you need another set of classic volumes