The Dish

There’s always Frank’s version of "Angel Eyes." My vote still goes to Ella.

A reader writes:

If there is any "gay" view of Jeremiah Wright, it is that’s he’s seen as the proponent of the highly dubious theory that AIDS is a government plot against black people. Criticizing that theory, and his belief in it, is a perfectly reasonable, indeed essential, thing to do. However, much of the rest of the demonizing of Wright deflect from three items of immediate gay interest:

1) the UCC is probably the most pro-gay Christian denomination outside of MCC;

2) Wright’s church, Trinity, is the largest member of the UCC; and

3) Wright himself has become gay-affirming in recent years, though he wasn’t always.

Very, very few black pastors have confronted homophobia in the black community in the name of Jesus as powerfully as Wright has. His ghastly paranoia about the origins of HIV is indefensible, and wicked. But his Christian defense of the dignity of gay people in a very homophobic subculture is remarkable, as is his outreach to some of the most vulnerable people with HIV. And I doubt that Obama’s unprecedented defense of gay dignity in a black and a Christian context would have taken the form it has without Wright’s influence. Certainly both Wright and Obama have taken more risks and spoken more truth about gay people when it might have hurt them than the Clintons or McCain ever have or ever will. I will not defend Wright, but I do think this is worth putting out there for a fuller picture.

Disney’s subliminal environmentalist agenda revealed.

Chris Orr wonders.

Douglas Kmiec in a fascinating interview with Beliefnet:

As a Catholic looking at candidates, my faith instructs me to look at the whole person respective to the church’s social teaching on wages, education, issues of family, culture, responsibility toward the environment, the reduction of mindless or excess consumption. And the Catholic Church was quite explicit about the concept of preemptive war being contrary to the principles of just war. One of the things that happened to Catholics over the last two decades is because of the evil of abortion, we’ve been somewhat less mindful of the need to serve those around us—those who are calling upon us for assistance in a tangible way.

Excerpts from Kmiec’s email in-tray in response to his Obama endorsement can be read here.

Ron Paul won’t quit the race, insisting that actual conservatives have a candidate to vote for at the Convention. He has been smeared as a racist by association, as now seems to be the main way to destroy or attempt to destroy any genuinely reformist politics in America. But his legacy will endure because, as Michael Grunwald points out, he actually represents something honorable:

When his fellow candidates denounced big government, Paul was there to remind them that President Bush and the G.O.P. Congress had shattered spending records and exploded the deficit. When they hailed freedom, Paul asked why they all supported the Patriot Act and other expansions of executive power. And when they called themselves conservatives, Paul asked what was so conservative about sending thousands of young Americans to try to transform the Middle East.

These questions have not and will not go away. At its very best, Iraq, it is now more than apparent, is a decades-long, bankrupting, utopian liberal attempt to build a democratic culture where no such culture has ever existed; and at worst, it is a corrupting, demoralizing cancer on America’s reputation and power in the world. At home, the long term fiscal situation is at a crisis-level, with Republicans adding $32 trillion to future unfunded liabilities by the federal government in seven years, and with a commitment not to raise any more revenue for the indefinite future. Neither Obama nor Clinton has any plan to tackle this debt or to restrain entitlement spending in any serious way. Millions of private individuals have  taken out idiotic mortgage loans on houses they cannot afford and should never have been reckless enough to buy. The dollar is headed into the toilet as much of the US economy is leveraged on the bona fides of a still-authoritarian regime that is currently brutally suppressing human rights in Tibet and across its territory.

For all his quirks, and for all his unseemly past associations, Ron Paul had some serious view about the gravity of the situation and a philosophy that was once called conservative and is now smeared as nuts. History will be far kinder to him that today’s chattering classes.

"I think [Obama] is an extraordinary political talent. Likeable, a non-threatening liberal in the same way that Ronald Reagan was a non-threatening conservative. Eloquent, naturally eloquent, but also a compelling figure in the context of American history. It would be an historic day for him to take the oath of office," – Michael Gerson, with Danny Finklestein. He has good things to say about McCain as well, of course.

"Hillary Clinton has many admirable qualities, but candor and openness and transparency and a commitment to well-established fact have not been notable among them," – Carl Bernstein, on Anderson’s blog.

Exclusive alternative footage of what actually happened in Tuzla:

A provocative question:

Are health insurance mandates constitutional? They are certainly unprecedented. The federal government does not ordinarily require Americans to purchase particular goods or services from private parties.

The closest we come is when government imposes a condition on the grant of discretionary benefit or permit. For instance, in most states, you must have auto insurance to drive a car, or you are required to install fire sprinklers when building a new house. But in such cases, the "mandate" is discretionary – you don’t have to drive a car or build a house. Nor do you have a constitutional right to do so.

But Americans do have a constitutional right to live in the United States. Accordingly, neither federal nor state governments can require you to purchase health insurance as a "condition" for residency.