Month: October 2007

Robert Penn Warren got it right a while back in an interview Paris Review now has online:

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that there are certain themes which are basic to the American experience, even though a body of writing in a given period might ignore or evade them?

WARREN: First thing, without being systematic, what comes to mind without running off a week and praying about it, would be that America was based on a big promise—a great big one: the Declaration of Independence. When you have to live with that in the house, that’s quite a problem—particularly when you’ve got to make money and get ahead, open world markets, do all the things you have to, raise your children, and so forth. America is stuck with its self-definition put on paper in 1776, and that was just like putting a burr under the metaphysical saddle of America—you see, that saddle’s going to jump now and then and it pricks.

A new twelve-step group goes where no twelve-step group has gone before.

An event promoter trips over himself.

The awful truth of campus life:

Matt reads the fine print. Yep: nothing specific there at all. With the Clintons, you always have to go back later and read the transcript very, very closely. They reflexively lie, the way other people breathe.

That’s the new GOP moniker for supporters of Ron Paul. Classy.

That’s according to the Concerned Women For America. The rationale for vetoing a bill that would give gays the same federal protection from job discrimination as countless other minorities:

H.R. 3685 is inconsistent with the right to the free exercise of religion as codified by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The Act prohibits the Federal Government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion except for compelling reasons, and then only in the least restrictive manner possible. H.R. 3685 does not meet this standard. For instance, schools that are owned by or directed toward a particular religion are exempted by the bill; but those that emphasize religious principles broadly will find their religious liberties burdened by H.R. 3685. 

If you ban employers in large firms from firing employees just because they’re gay, you are violating their religious freedom. Christianity, it seems, is reflected in punishing gay people for no other reason than their sexual orientation. The Christianity of this president, anyway.

"Actually, just look at what Osam, uh, Barack Obama, said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq. That is the battlefield. That is the central place, he said. Come join us under one banner," – Mitt Romney.

This is actually bizarre. He got it right the first time and then switched so that he describes Obama as the head of al Qaeda, fomenting Jihadist opposition to US troops in Iraq. The campaign apologized. But I have a feeling this wasn’t entirely accidental. And will happen again.

Hillary Clinton is obviously the GOP’s last hope for keeping the White House next year. But is she enough to compensate for the lack of new ideas, aura of nastiness, stench of corruption, and intellectual incoherence that festoons the right? Dave Weigel is skeptical. James Joyner thinks pure negativism doesn’t work. Drum disagrees. Dreher quips:

Do Republicans have new arguments? I hadn’t noticed.

They want him out of the party now altogether.