Category: The Dish

Rare footage of JFK’s speech to the Houston ministers in 1960:

The haunting blog of a pseudonymous soldier in Iraq has been taken down. I don’t know why – presumably a military decision. If I hear any more about it, I’ll let you know. It was great while it lasted. I hope I didn’t cause the guy any trouble by linking.

A much tougher stance – all of a sudden. Here’s his policy page on immigration. And his latest – taken from the pages of National Review.

Rod Dreher sees past them:

We pro-lifers have placed so much stock in getting the right justices in place to overturn Roe that we have forgotten, or seemed to have done, that all overturning Roe would do is leave abortion policy up to the states — most of which would take about two days to restore Roe’s protections.

Culturally conservative voters need to get beyond the assumption that creating a culture of life — and indeed, a culture built around the values of duty and obligation, not autonomy and choice — depends wholly on the judiciary, and instead and "to begin doing the hard work of cultivation." I agree with this, which is why, taking the long view, I am far more hopeful about extrapolitical work of cultural renewal.

Filling in the evolutionary gaps:

The rapidity of speciation has perplexed generations of scientists, among them Darwin himself, who devoted a whole chapter to the Cambrian in On the Origin of Species and considered it a potential objection to his theory of evolution. Darwin eventually concluded that the Cambrian’s evolutionary divergences started earlier, but left no trace in the fossil record. Stephen Jay Gould called it "the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life."

What’s at the heart, then, of this most remarkable and puzzling event? Poop, says [geoscientist Graham] Logan.

From the world of strange scientific studies:

The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability.

The first Mormon candidate for the presidency of the United States was Joseph Smith himself. Here’s his pitch:

Smith directly pushed what he called "theodemocracy," the blending of religious belief and democracy. And his campaign was rooted entirely within the church that he founded; at the April 1844 LDS general conference, 244 church elders heeded the call to volunteer for Smith’s campaign.

Hundreds of Mormons traveled the United States to spread the word not just of Smith’s prophesies but his candidacy; many of them met with angry mobs and violence.

"There is not a nation or a dynasty now occupying the Earth which acknowledges almighty God as their lawgiver," Smith told the Neighbor newspaper in Nauvoo, Ill., where he and his church brethren were then headquartered. "I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely, for a theodemocracy, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness."

A sad piece on the disappearance of gay bars in Boston. Takes me back. I came out in Campus/Man-Ray in Cambridge, loved Chaps, and often went to Buddies and Luxor. Boston without them seems a very different place.

An enlightening little apercu about the Bush White House’s interest in talking to certain bloggers. Bartlett doesn’t put great store in worrying about any particular journalist, but there are exceptions:

Q: Yeah, or what if Hugh Hewitt called?

Bartlett: That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because they do reach people who are influential.

Q: Well, they reach the president’s base.

Bartlett: That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

Meet the regurgitation chorus. So much more reliable than the MSM.

A restatement of a long-standing policy.