Category: The Dish

Deal Hudson notices – surprise! – that Romney’s refusal to tell Catholic bishops anything in the debate last night is not borne out by Romney’s actual record. Money quote:

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney ordered Catholic hospitals to administer emergency contraception to women who claim they had been raped.

According to the Boston Herald on December 9th, 2005, "Gov. Mitt Romney abruptly ordered his administration to reverse course yesterday and require Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception medication to rape victims. In a turnaround that foes derided as politically motivated, Romney directed his Department of Public Health to scrap rules that exempted the Catholic institutions from a new law governing the medicine."

The man will say literally anything.

If you missed my final entry in the Sam Harris debate on faith and reason, and are interested, you can read it here. The entire debate can be read beginning here.

A powerful critique at Obsidian Wings. My own view is that my former professor over-states the power of the executive in the American system, but that his view comes from a deeper and more radical take on what politics in the modern age is really about. He is not one of the most accomplished Machiavelli scholars in the world for nothing.

Thimphu, Bhutan, 7 am.

For a flash animation world map of Dish window views, click here.

He did quite well in the MSNBC online poll. I guess the libertarian skew of the Internet might help. But he sure did say things no one else would.

Mark Blumenthal has them. RedState agrees with me on the debate. Surprise!

What do they both do best? Money-transfers! Money quote:

While almost 2% of U.S. grandparents live with their grandkids and provide full-time care, the most common type of grandparental support these days is just plain money, a resource that travels across vast distances and is (nearly) impervious to cognitive decline … While it might not be the same as helping to gather food or help a new mother with domestic tasks, it may just be the modern-day equivalent for the generally well off. Education level is highly correlated with socioeconomic status, which in turn is related to overall health and longevity, so perhaps putting the grandbaby through Harvard is sort of like bringing home a basket of wild veggies every day for 18 years.

Yes, it is slightly worrying that National Review publishes material from people openly hoping for military coups, while it supports a president who backs torture and abridging habeas corpus. But hey, look on the bright side. It’s an interesting thought-experiment. Kevin Drum wonders what Buckley is thinking. We know what Buckley is thinking. He’s mortified as any decent conservative would be. James Joyner joins in here.

Rex Reed gets his comeuppance in Britain.

He’s against the bill on federalist grounds. If that’s his argument, he’s probably right. My philosophical point about double standards and hate crimes stands, and I don’t believe for a minute that George W. Bush’s real objection to this bill is on federalist grounds. This is a man who signed the Schiavo bill and endorsed the FMA and the Leave No Child Behind Act. But the bill does violate for me a basic federalist principle, and further entrenches a concept of hate crimes that I deeply dislike, regardless of the group involved. I also don’t believe that the bill would prevent a single crime against a single person. Jamie Kirchik has a good take on National Review’s take, which at least openly champions the idea of excluding gay people from such protections, while allowing others – because of ""historic teaching[s] of our major religions". I had no idea that Christianity teaches hatred of gay people, but NRO appears to believe so. My favorite line from the CBN story is the following:

I know you Rudy haters will say that the federalism argument is a cop out but if you’re a social conservative, as long as he’s against it, that’s all that matters right?

Yeah, they’re against it for principled federalist reasons, aren’t they? Just ask yourself: what socially conservative argument conceivably exists against treating hate crimes against gays the same as hate crimes against blacks? Unless your "social conservatism" is entirely about legitimizing hatred.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)