It would be an understatement to say that the Iraq war has caused some controversy here in the U. S. and abroad. Public opinion about the war ranges all the way from “This is a just war worth winning†to “This war is an evil act of aggression, and the U. S. should pull out of Iraq now.†In other words, opinions range all the way from totally serious to totally not serious. Unfortunately, it appears that the man who was once hailed as the most trusted man in America has joined the ranks of the decidedly not serious. Walter Cronkite, former CBS anchorman, delivered these remarks just yesterday to…
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Peggy Noonan on the Confirmation Hearings
I look forward every week to Peggy Noonan’s column in The Wall Street Journal, and her piece this morning is a gem. Today she decided to lampoon the outlandish senators and their preposterous grand-standing in the confirmation hearings of Judge Alito. My favorite part of the article is when she begins channeling Senator Biden of Delaware, who is notorious for patronizing, self-aggrandizing speeches that do not stay on topic. Here’s the kind of “question†that Biden so often “asks†according to Noonan: What if a fella–I’m just hypothesizing here, Judge Alito–what if a fella said, “Well I don’t want to hire you because I don’t like the kind of eyeglasses…
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The New York Times Blames President Bush for the Mining Disaster!
I can’t believe it. Someone has found a way to blame President Bush for the mining disaster in West Virginia last week. Who better to make such a charge than one of the usual suspects, the editors at The New York Times? Here’s the money-line: The pro-company bias of the administration is itself a factor deserving full investigation if the inquiries now being promised are to have any credible effect. The editorial is titled “Lost Time, Lost Lives in the Mine.â€
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Bird Flu: How Deadly Is It?
I wrote in October that the biggest story of the year might be the possible outbreak of a flu pandemic. According to The New York Times, I and many others may have been sounding the alarm too quickly. Here’s an excerpt from the Time‘s article: Two young brothers, ages 4 and 5, who have tested positive for the dreaded A(H5N1) avian virus but shown no symptoms of the disease were being closely watched at Kecioren Hospital here on Tuesday. Doctors are unsure whether they are for the first time seeing human bird flu in its earliest stages or if they are discovering that infection with the A(H5N1) virus does not…
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Please Pat, We Don’t Need Anymore Help (part 2)
Photo: Jamie-Andrea Yanak/Associated Press Pat Robertson has stepped in it all over again this week with his pronouncement that Ariel Sharon’s illness is a judgment from God. The Washington Post reports:
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Need Christ? Not if you are Jewish.
Today’s Washington Post observes the widespread support for Israel and for Jews among evangelical Christians. The piece is titled, “Among Evangelicals, A Kinship With Jews.†The paper quotes excerpts from an interview with Mark Noll that should raise the eyebrows of anyone who cares about the gospel. Mark A. Noll, a professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College, a center of evangelical scholarship in Illinois, said evangelicals are beginning to move away from supersessionism — the centuries-old belief that with the coming of Jesus, God ended his covenant with the Jews and transferred it to the Christian church. Since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have…
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Who’s Dodging a Judicial Philosophy?
Stephen L. Carter of Christianity Today expresses a bit of cynicism concerning evangelicals who hold to Originalism as a judicial philosophy (see “The ‘Judicial Philosophy’ Dodgeâ€). He thinks the very notion of having a judicial philosophy is a “slippery†business at best. All the talk about opposing judges who “legislate from the bench†and supporting judges who interpret the Constitution according to “original intent†is just code for one’s position on abortion. For Carter, the popular distinction between Originalism and the “Living Constitution†approach is nonsense—“not merely nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.†Carter may be correct that some evangelicals support justices based on outcomes and not based on actual judicial…
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Deliver Us from Kony
Christianity Today has run an article on what U.N. officials have called “one of the worst human-rights crises of the past century.” The article is titled “Deliver Us from Kony” and is about the butchery and inhumanity of a guerilla paramilitary group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. The leader of the LRA is Joseph Kony. The worst of the LRA’s crimes have been perpetrated against children, whom the LRA routinely kidnaps and forces to serve in their ranks. Perhaps the greatest atrocity is teaching these children that they spread this carnage by the power of the Holy Spirit to purify the “unrepentant,” twisting Christianity into…
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Alito Argued That Roe v. Wade Should Be Overturned
In a 1985 amicus brief, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito appears to have supported the overruling of Roe v. Wade. The brief reads as follows: “We should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of-whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled†(“Memorandum,†p. 9). In spite of all the media ballyhoo, I don’t think this is as big of a story as it’s being made out to be. First of all, when this brief was written, Judge Alito was working as a lawyer for President Reagan and was advocating for a position on behalf…
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Anti-Bush Bias at the New York Times (So what else is new?)
Why did the New York Times splash a story about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) secret surveillance program? There appears to be no laws broken (it’s not clear that FISA applies here), and other presidents (like Clinton and Carter) have authorized similar programs in the past. So what was the motivation for the New York Times’s putting forth a story that it has been sitting on for over a year? Why now? Edward Morrissey of The Weekly Standard has a plausible answer to that question in a story titled “Fit to Print? Neither the Bush administration nor the NSA broke the law, so why did the New York Times break…