John Wilson writes in today’s Wall Street Journal about Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton’s “New Baptist Covenant.” I am happy to read that Wilson is not too keen on this new coalition of “above the fray” Baptists (a.k.a., moderate and liberal Baptists). Even though the former Presidents are Baptists, it still takes a lot of chutzpah for two politicians to pose as the new uniters of Christendom, especially when the big meeting is set to take place in 2008 right in time for the Presidential primaries. The whole thing smells more of politics than of piety. So I share Wilson’s low estimation of the so-called “New Baptist Covenant.”

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:

“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…

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.