Sarah Pulliam Bailey gets former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to talk about her libertarian views on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Rice identifies herself as an evangelical, but she says she also supports abortion rights and civil unions. Here’s the relevant excerpt: CT: In the past you said you worry about the government trying to legislate morality, and you know that evangelicals care very much about the issue of abortion. Rice: I’m generally pretty libertarian in these matters, because Americans are quite good, actually, at finding a way to deal with these extremely divisive and difficult moral issues. And it’s not that I’m a relativist. It’s not…
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Princeton Scholars Cross Swords
Here’s an interesting conversation between Robby George and Cornell West. They are colleagues at Princeton University, but they represent radically different worldviews. George is perhaps the leading conservative intellectual alive today, and West is a noted liberal. (HT: @DrMoore)
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Health Law Ruled Unconstitutional
The Wall Street Journal has the story: “A federal court ruled Monday that a central plank of the health law violates the Constitution, dealing the biggest setback yet to the Obama administration’s signature legislative accomplishment. “In a 42-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson said the law’s requirement that most Americans carry insurance or pay a penalty ‘exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.’ “The individual mandate ‘would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers,’ wrote Judge Hudson, of the Eastern District of Virginia. ‘At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it’s about an individual’s…
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Faces of the Christian Right?
Did you see the bit on Newsweek’s website last week about “Faces of the Christian Right“? The piece purports to list several individuals who are emerging leaders in the Christian Right. Guess who’s on the list. Here it is: Robert George, Jim Daly, Maggie Gallagher, Matthew and Nancy Sleeth, Melissa Rogers, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Tony Perkins, Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter.
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Losing the Base
Peggy Noonan has a particularly harsh assessment of President Obama’s political fortunes. Here’s the opening salvo: “We have not in our lifetimes seen a president in this position. He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn’t much left to lose!” On the possibility of someone challenging the President in the 2012 primary, Noonan writes: “The Democrats’ problem is that most of them know that the person who would emerge, who would challenge Mr. Obama from the left, would never, could never, win the 2012 general election. He’d lose badly and take the…
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Blindly Partisan and the Worse for It
Ross Douthat has an insightful word in today’s New York Times about the brain-stultifying effects of hyper-partisanship. He writes: “Up to a point, American politics reflects abiding philosophical divisions. But people who follow politics closely — whether voters, activists or pundits — are often partisans first and ideologues second. Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing. Our ideological convictions may be real enough, but our deepest conviction is often that the other guys can’t be trusted.” Douthat argues that the controversy over TSA searches would have gone differently had a Republican been…
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Cal Thomas on Media Bias
I love this excerpt from a Cal Thomas column explaining how liberal media bias usually happens: “For a conservative guest, the questioning by a liberal usually goes something like this: ‘What do you say to people who think you are a jerk?’ Translated this means, ‘I think you’re a jerk, but I’ll couch it in a way that makes me look professional.’ To a liberal guest, the liberal host asks: ‘When did you first realize you were right about everything and the opposition was wrong?’ I exaggerate only slightly to make a point. What passes for modern ‘journalism’ is something quite different from what I remember growing up.” (HT: Trevin…
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Matt Lauer’s Interview with President George W. Bush
Just in case you missed Matt Lauer’s interview with President George W. Bush earlier this week, here it is. Part 1 is above, and the rest are below.
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Interview with George W. Bush
Matt Lauer has an exclusive interview with President George W. Bush that will air tonight at 8pm ET / 7pm CT. The interview is timed to coincide with the release of President Bush’s memoir Decision Points, which hits the shelves tomorrow (3am tomorrow morning if you’re downloading to Kindle). In the excerpt above, President Bush talks about Vice-president Cheney’s angry reaction to Bush’s decision not to pardon Scooter Libby. He also talks about his decision to quit drinking.
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Kentuckians, are you ready to vote?
Millions of Americans will go to the polls tomorrow for the mid-term election. By all accounts, this election will likely cause a sea change in the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps in the U.S. Senate. Many voters have some knowledge of these high-profile national races, but many of those same voters are unaware of the candidates and issues at stake in local and state races. I received an e-mail tonight, for instance, asking me if I knew anything about the candidates running for judge in our city. If you are in this position and you are a Kentucky voter, I want to direct you to the Courier-Journal website. The…