The Dish

It’s up 150 percent since 1990. Adult mortality has increased as well – a lot since the invasion.

A new study finds 40 percent of 3-month-old babies now watch television. Maybe that explains the survival of Blake.

Not so alarming in the first place, but now we find this out:

The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

So the main instigator of Jihad was a government informer! It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in court. At least they’ll have access to a court.

As head of the doctrinal watchdog, Joseph Ratzinger wanted to refuse John Kerry communion for being pro-choice. Only some deft footwork from the American bishops avoided a mega-clash. But as Pope, Benedict seems to have ratcheted up the pressure on his way to Brazil:

On the plane from Rome, Benedict appeared to go further than the Vatican had before on the contentious issue of Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights. He seemed to suggest that Mexico City legislators who recently voted to allow abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy had excommunicated themselves.

"Yes, the excommunication isn’t something arbitrary — it’s part of the code" of church law, the pope said in Italian, in response to a question during the first full-fledged news conference of his two-year pontificate. "The killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going into communion in the body of Christ," …

 

The pope’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, quickly issued a clarification that played down his words, but then issued a statement approved by the pope that seemed to confirm a new gravity on politicians who allow abortion. "Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," the statement said, and politicians who vote that way should "exclude themselves from communion."

This news came on the same day that Rudy Giuliani decided to run an explicitly pro-choice presidential campaign, hoping to withstand early pro-life primary pressure and survive until the bigger, more socially moderate states. Giuliani doesn’t just support abortion rights legislatively, he has done so as an executive and favors public financing of some. By the Pope’s own logic, he has excommunicated himself. I wonder when all those Republican theocons who tried to get Kerry excommunicated will hammer this point home.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

How does one write about a former teacher? It’s hard, because my respect and affection for Harvey C. Mansfield is immeasurable. One thing I’d say, though, is that his lectures are designed to be provocative and fun. I attended scores at Harvard and taught for him, so I’m aware that much is sometimes lost in translation. His thought is often designed to shock people into a deeper understanding of the world, as his mentor Machiavelli did. And as Mansfield has grown older, I sense more of old Nick’s influence than one of his early interests, Burke. Harvey is also absolutely right, moreover, to disdain the rationalist and quantitative approach to political matters now so dominant in the school of political science. He’s right, as well, to identify thymos as a vastly under-rated human impulse behind all politics. Perhaps in his attempt to remind people of this phenomenon, he has slighted the fact that liberal constitutionalism was designed to control and check exactly thymos – not by ignoring it, but by pitting the thymos of some against the thymos of others. At least that is what Harvey taught me about liberal constitutionalism in grad school.

One insight that this Washington Post piece highlights is worth underlining. Harvey understood the civil rights movement as motivated by thymos …

By thymos, he means the urge to be respected, to be awarded dignity and standing as human beings – and particularly as men (that’s his manliness point). The pursuit of justice is not, in other words, a completely altruistic thing. It is also about social standing and honor. When I examine my own passion for gay equality, for example, I realize that I have indeed made logical arguments but I’m also fighting for the right not to be dissed. It’s pride that has motivated my politics – personal pride as well as communal pride. Part of the gay rights movement is about gay men demanding to be treated like men. That impulse is thymos. And without it, no campaign for justice would ever start, let alone succeed.

San Francisco, California, 6.28 pm. For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

"So how about it Senators Clinton and Obama? You too John Edwards. It’s not your vote yet, but you could sure tell us where you stand on what should be the least controversial topic of our time: respect for habeas corpus (a well established principle in the Western tradition since…the freakin’ Magna Carta!).  If you can’t spine up about that, what good are you. Habeas corpus is deal breaker territory," – Eric Martin, American Footprints.

Here’s a list of congressmen to call. I’m saddened but not surprised that only the "left" part of the blogosphere is fighting for this most basic and ancient of political liberties. But there you go. That’s what American conservatism has now become. Just count me out, okay?

Pakistan’s government – besieged by Islamists and providing a safe haven to al Qaeda – has placed ads in national newspapers asking people for information on missing radioactive material.  They say not to worry:

A spokesman for the nuclear authority said that there was a "very remote chance" that nuclear materials imported 40-50 years ago were unaccounted for.

Reassured? Me neither.

Well, well, well. It’s good to see that there’s some bigotry Hugh Hewitt won’t be a shill for. He has five posts on Al Sharpton’s bigotry toward Romney. I agree that Sharpton’s tone and remarks were bigoted; I certainly defend the right of Mormons to run for any public office without their faith being used against them. But then I haven’t made religious faith a central tenet of my conservatism, unlike Hewitt and Romney. And Romney, for his part, has gone further in bigotry than Sharpton. Romney has stated that "we need to have a person of faith lead the country." Atheists, in other words, should not apply. How is that different from Sharpton exactly? Or is bigotry only bigotry when it’s directed at people who have faith and not bigotry when it’s directed at atheists? Somehow, I don’t think Hewitt will address that point.

Who are you going to believe? K-Lo or the man’s wife?