Senator Joe Biden has announced that he will run for President of the United States, but I think he may have deep-sixed his candidacy on his first day out. According to the New York Observer, Biden offered this reflection on Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man” (audio). The worst part about this quote is that it appears that neither Biden nor the interviewer perceived the implicit racism of the statement. If any of the other candidates (like this one) chooses to make hay of this boner, I…
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What Huckabee Should Have Said
Yesterday, Governor Mike Huckabee announced his plans to run for President of the United States. He made the announcement in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Governor Huckabee is a former Baptist pastor and is widely regarded as an evangelical-friendly candidate.
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Saturday Snickers: Bipartisan Blathering
Bush may be master of the malapropism, but Hillary Clinton is the master of the monotone. Which is worse? You be the judge. The following videos confirm that Hillary can’t sing, and Bush can’t talk. [HT’s: Drudge Report, The Late Show]
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N.T. Wright Repeats Jim Wallis’ Error
I wrote last week about Jim Wallis’ harsh (and I think unfair) criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq (click here to see it). Wallis alleged that President Bush manipulated the U.S. into invading Iraq by intentionally deceiving the American people into believing that Iraq was behind 9-11. In a recent essay for the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” forum, N. T. Wright makes the same charge. He writes, “I believe, and have said so from early 2002 when the idea was first mooted, that for Britain and the USA to go to war in Iraq was not, could not be, and would not be seen as a just war. It…
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Katrina Didn’t Do It
I wrote last week about the alarming murder rate in post-Katrina New Orleans—nine murders in the first eight days of 2007 (previous post). I also pointed out that the problems that New Orleans is facing are not mainly due to Katrina. Katrina merely exacerbated problems that were there before the storm.
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Dick Cheney Tells Wolf Blitzer, “You’re out of line!â€
Wolf Blitzer conducted a contentious interview with Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday. They covered a wide range of topics, but the most contentious exchange came at the end when Wolf Blitzer asked about Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s daughter. [You can watch a video of the exchange below.]
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Addicted to Violence or to Love?
California Assemblywoman, Sally Lieber, is sponsoring a bill that would make it illegal for parents to spank children under the age of four. Ms. Lieber does not have children, but she has compared spanking to wife-beating. So far, the reaction to her proposal has been overwhelmingly negative. Surprised that so many people would oppose the measure, Lieber said this:
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Thirty-four Years of Legal Abortions
“The most consequential cultural and political event in American history in the past half century was the Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973. An argument can be made that it is rivaled by September 11, but that fateful day did not result in the deep realignment of religious, cultural, and political dynamics resulting from the Supreme Court’s ukase, which established an unlimited abortion license that wiped from the books of all fifty states any legal protection of unborn children. . . This Monday marks the thirty-fourth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. On January 23, 1973, the New York Times reported that the Court had ‘settled’ the dispute over…
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SMU Professor in Favor of Bush Library
Dr. James Hollifield, a professor of political science at SMU, does not jump on the bandwagon of faculty protests against the Bush Library to be built on SMU’s campus. “It is legitimate for anyone to criticize the president and his policies, but it is presumptuous for us as scholars to say that we know in advance and with certainty what the legacy of a sitting president will be . . . faculty members are not disconnected from the politics of the moment” (‘The Biggest Man on Campus’ – NY Times). I think Dr. Hollifield has wisely reserved judgment and has taken the long view. That is precisely what I was…
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A “Middle Ground” on the Life Issue?
Two recent opinion editorials talk about coming to a “middle ground” compromise on the human life issue, but they each take positions that are anything but a compromise. Ellen Goodman’s piece in the Boston Globe (“Abortion’s elusive middle ground”) is decidedly pro-choice. Yuval Levin’s essay in the New York Times (“A Middle Ground for Stem Cells”) is decidedly pro-life.