Month: May 2006

Instapundit believes that the positions of John Kerry and George W. Bush were and are identical on the issue of marriage rights for gay couples. Isn’t there the small matter of a federal constitutional amendment to bar most legal rights for gay couples, backed by Bush, opposed by Kerry? It’s up for another vote next month. Even Ms Cheney has called it a "gross affront." I’d say that’s a difference.

Channeled through Michelle Malkin:

Some Bush supporters are admonishing immigration enforcement activists to "tone it down" because the criticism will hurt Bush.
Maybe he should of [sic] thought of that all the years when he could have been raiding worksites and strengthening border protection for their own sake. Instead, he has chosen to offer a too little, too late, and all-too-expedient gesture of immigration enforcement as a phony bargaining chip to bribe his base into supporting a historically doomed, dangerous, and utterly unmanageable amnesty proposal.
Tone it down? No, crank it up.
What does he take us for?

And they call me excitable.

I have to say I found little wrong with it. The president’s insistence on both goals – border security and gradual legalization of millions of illegal immigrants already here – makes sense to me. His eschewal of inflammatory rhetoric was welcome. His enthusiasm for immigration and his empathy with immigrants are genuine, it seems to me. The rhetoric wasn’t inspiring, but it wasn’t pedestrian either. In all this, he was doing what a president should do: try and bring factions together for a constructive and comprehensive reform. I fear the tenor of the debate on the right has gone too far for the president to win back much of his base; and the Democrats are not likely to go out of their way to help him win a victory this year. But the future base of the Republican party, if it manages to appeal to the exploding Latino population, will be in a better mood. The Bush we saw tonight was more like the Bush we thought we were getting in 2000. Which is why, perhaps, his increasingly extreme and angry party will only turn on him some more.

(Photo by Q. Sakamaki/Redux).

"In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday," – Dutch zoo-keepers, after a bear ate a monkey in the Beekse Bergen Safari Park. Over to you, Mr Colbert …

A fascinating look at the perils of sex-selective abortions in the developing world. The social problems of a disproportionately male population mirror some of the disadvantages of polygamous cultures.

An in-depth look at Patrick Henry College. Money quote:

"I’ve been told there are things I cannot teach," Root said. "There are things I cannot ask." At most any liberal arts college, political science students study Thomas Hobbes and his State of Nature, in which the lack of government causes chaos and an ugly, every-man-for-himself state.

To illustrate this point, Root gave his class a fictional example of the State of Nature, in which two people were stranded on a lifeboat that would only be able to save the life of one person. What would ensue? In Hobbes‚Äô State of Nature, the result would likely not be pretty. This example, Stacey said, was perceived as an example of postmodern deconstruction and used to break down morality. So Root’s lifeboat example was gone.

But there were other instances that rubbed Noe, Root and Stacey the wrong way. A work of literature, which chronicles the birth of Hinduism, was banned. A text, used to teach the Theology Sequence, which had been chosen by various instructors, was pulled from the shelves unless another, balancing view was added to the curriculum.

"We don’t know from day to day, what is going to be accepted or what is not going to be accepted," Root said. "It’s a moving target."

Fundamentalism and liberal education: oil and water.

Steve Chapman is on the case:

His latest extralegal initiative furnishes more evidence that George W. Bush regards himself as an elected dictator, free to do anything he wants in the name of national security. Never mind what the U.S. Supreme Court said two years ago: "A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens." … Even if you don’t care about the privacy of your phone records, you might care that we have a president who feels no obligation to obey the law. You might care that if the government was secretly doing this, it may be doing other things that are even more worrisome. And you might care that one day, we may find that the free society we claim to cherish has become a police state.

I look forward to Chapman being described as a "leftist."

A reader writes:

I just finished a biography of James Madison – the father of the Constitution.  He was a weighty advocate for the separation of Church and State. For example, he didn’t want religious education at the University of Virginia. As for the current debate regarding prayer by military chaplins, Madison was against having chaplains in the military at all. Now, the Christianists are not only ignoring that stricture, but they want a Christian prayer whenever there is prayer. Madison is turning over in his grave.

One thing you cannot repeat enough: The founding fathers were the opposite of Christianists. In fact, their constitution is designed to protect us from Christianism. And, by and large, it does. But in the Christianists’ attempt to stack the courts and in undermining critical secular institutions like the military, they still represent a threat to limited government and religious freedom. And that threat needs to be exposed and resisted.

"I think that is what the federal marriage amendment is, it is writing discrimination into the constitution. It is writing discrimination into the constitution and, as I say, it is fundamentally wrong. I would also hope that no one would think about trying to amend the constitution as a political strategy," – Mary Cheney, yesterday. Good for Cheney. Now testify before the Senate next month.

Sane, helpful analyses of confusing poll results here and here.