(cross-posted)

Some interesting things are afoot in the conservative movement, including something about which I was made aware just last week, The Culture Project. Here’s its press release:

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That’s the headline on Yahoo News. No comment.

You can read about it in Rolling Stone Magazine online here. (cross-posted)

Update: USA Today includes a video of one of the album’s live numbers, “Ring Them Bells.” You can see the video on this page (click “Play Video” on the right). Here are the lyrics:

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Captive Miranda, Lord knows I have not given a thought to the paperwork you sent me.

Let me tell you, Captive, that our release is not in the hands of the lawyers or the hands of America. Our release is in the hands of He who created us.

The poem, “To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda,” was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. That’s the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the constitutional right to challenge, in habeas corpus proceedings, whether they were properly classified by the military as enemy combatants. Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, on the left [above], in a martyrdom video posted on an al Qaeda Web site. Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in one of several coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul this year.

That’s how Debra Burlingame’s op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal begins. Read the whole thing here.

(cross-posted)

So says Nancy Pelosi. As you read the story, keep in mind that the Democrats will almost certainly have larger Congressional majorities next January than they do now.

The 2008 edition of Clyde Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments was released earlier this month.  If you’re curious at all about the size and scope of America’s regulatory bureaucracy, Crews offers a very good survey.  You can download it as a PDF file by clicking here. (more…)

Andrew Ferguson offers a deft and (to me) surprising analysis of Obama’s Berlin speech: “For all the talk about this being our time and us being the people, Obama shows no sign of really believing we live in portentous times. This is surely part of his appeal. It’s not surprising that when he came to Berlin and said nothing at all, none of his admirers seemed disappointed. After eight years of overheated history, nothing comes as a relief.”

David Pryce-Jones thinks that western Europeans’ “Obama mania is only the flip side of anti-Americanism.”

Investors’ Business Daily considers Obama’s rhetoric about ”economic justice” and concludes that it ”simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.”

Michael Boskin makes the case that Obama’s tax and trade views, if enacted into law, would result in “a serious setback” for the US economy. 

Just FYI:  Today RCP’s Electoral College crystal ball says Obama 238, McCain 163, Toss-Up 137.  However, their No Toss-Ups call is Obama 322, McCain 216.

This is a July 26 photo of me, my nephew Jordan Wiegand, and our pastor, Fr. Timothy Vaverek of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Bellmead, Texas. This was taken following Jordan’s Confirmation and full reception into the Catholic Church. I was blessed to be his sponsor.

Jordan, a Navy veteran, is an engineering major and a student in Baylor’s Honors College. My wife, Frankie, and I are so proud of his accomplishments.

Jordan, the eldest son of my wife’s younger sister Lexi, is the second nephew for whom I served as a Confirmation sponsor. The first was Dean Beckwith, the eldest son of my younger brother Jim. Dean’s request that I be his sponsor for his May 13, 2007 Confirmation led to my April 29, 2007 public reception into the Catholic Church. (You can read about that here as well as in my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic). Here’s a photo of me, my wife, and our nephew Dean following his Confirmation last year:

(Cross-posted)

From Rod Dreher at the Dallas Morning News blog:

Dear “Francis Cunningham:”

You may wonder why the post of yours commenting about me, and Catholic priests as child molesters, was taken down.

I took it down for taste reasons, but also because you pretended to be a well-known Baylor professor in the e-mail address you left with this post. But I knew this couldn’t be that particular professor, for various reasons. So I checked your IP address against records on my Beliefnet blog, on the off chance that you’d posted there before, and what do you know, I’ve found out your name, that you are a Baylor alum, and the name of the McKinney Ave. law firm where you work.

You are welcome to post on this blog, guy, and we won’t even ask your real name. But you have no right to assume the identity of someone else (in this case, a Baylor professor whose views you have openly opposed). You might want to think about that before coming around here again.

And, regarding your views on Catholic priests, you are mistaken that a) I am still a Catholic, and b) that all Catholic priests are child molesters. But that’s okay. Judging by your picture on your firm’s website, I imagine people misjudge you as a stand-up guy.

I’ve been iJacked!

I consider myself a die hard cynic, but I never envisioned the day when the phrase “Republican” would mean the opposite of what it meant in 1980. Thank you California for showing me that even I can dream.

Begin here.

Here’s my latest at The Washington Examiner. Short version: Specter and company have a good plan for fairness on judicial nominations, and it is timely, considering that Robert Conrad of North Carolina has waited a whole year, exactly, for the courtesy of a hearing. (cross posted from The AmSpec blog).

Hysterical satire of the 2008 presidential race by the folks at JibJab:

(h/t RedState)

Over at the AmSpec Blog, I wished Happy Birthday to former Louisiana Gov. Dave Treen. Please DO read that post about this remarkable, and remarkably good, man. I cross-post it here because, if reason and justice had prevailed, Gov. Treen would right now be a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, either active or perhaps on senior status. The back story is this: At the 1968 GOP convention, Treen, then a candidate who was giving House Majority Leader (or maybe he was Whip at the time; I am not sure) Hale Boggs all the fight he could handle for re-election (with my mom, by the way, as Treen’s campaign scheduler), could not make up his mind whether to support Dick Nixon for the nomination or to support the last-minute effort (a surprisingly strong one) of Ronald Reagan. A high-ranking Nixon operative came around to the LA delegation and threatened Treen with reprisals if Treen backed Reagan. As the story goes, Treen told the guy in no uncertain terms to get lost, and then voted for Reagan largely in response to the Nixon threats. Treen never much cared for that kind of politics, and had a high sense of personal honor. Anyway, sure enough, after Treen barely lost to Boggs while Nixon won, the tiny LA GOP forwarded Treen’s name to the Nixon White House for the first open Fifth Circuit judgeship. Nixon, however, refused to nominate him: payback for Treen’s honorable convention stance. (more…)

First, I  have not seen any polling since the primary.  Second, I have not had the time I would have liked to have had to make some calls.  All of that being said, I am predicting that Senator Harri Anne Smith will narrowly win the run-off tomorrow.  The George Jones ad which I previously mentioned along with her illegal immigration ad and ad discussing Rep. Jay Love’s vote on a bill which would have raised taxes on certain oil companies were all very effective.  Second, I think that Rep. Love’s support in Montgomery is not as strong as many would think.  Love has been repeatedly linked to the ASEA (the state employee’s union) and many of the GOP Faithful in the Montgomery area are not real big ASEA fans.  Plus, I have been told that Love has had some short term memory problems when it comes to remembering the folks who got him elected in the first place and is viewed as quickly going from an outsider who was going to fight for change to an insider who is more interested in winning the next election.  Regardless of whether this perception is correct, it will likely costs Love votes he has to get in order to win. 

(HT: Lex Communis).

Contrast Professor Myers’ public treatment of Catholics and their beliefs with his public posture when, over two year ago, Muslims were upset about Danish cartoons published that depicted Muhammed in unflattering ways. He writes:

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In the combox of a WWWtW post about my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, someone who calls himself “Aristocles” suggested I post some excerpts from the book. I have done so at the website returntorome.com. I have also included a detailed table of contents on the site. Just click “Excerpts” or “Table of Contents” at the top of page.

These two articles provide a pretty clear explanation of the structural flaws in Freddie and Fannie. Last night, the same institution that created these time bombs passed legislation “designed to provide better regulatory oversight” for them.

Riiiiiiight.

The Tennessee-born financial genius was 95.  NRO has a fitting memorial here.  The Financial Times has collected some of his “aphorisms and adages” here.

“You Can Go Home Again” by Quin Hillyer.

“Individual Liberty and the Constitution” by Robert Bork, and the responses by Roger Pilon, Steve Calabresi, and Barry Friedman.

“Talking About Everything But What Matters” by Robert Samuelson.

“What onions teach us about oil prices” by Jon Birger.

My latest at the Examiner.

Just saw this on the Catholic League’s website:

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website.

Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”:

“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“The Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the ‘Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.’ One of the school’s policies, ‘Code of Conduct,’ says that ‘When dealing with others,’ faculty et al. must be ‘respectful, fair and civil.’ Accordingly, we are contacting the President and the Board of Regents to see what they are going to do about this matter. Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.

“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.”

Here’s Professor Myers’ contact info, and his reply to the Catholic League.

(cross-posted)

I lived through many of the events described in Return to Rome with Dr. Beckwith and have enjoyed some gut-busting laughs as he shared passages from the book with me.  If you are curious about what happened at Baylor, how a Catholic goes evangelical and back again, and want to know the Beckwith beneath the prolific pile of philosophy, this is your book.

I am extremely confident no one will be disappointed except perhaps those who end up on the end of Beckwith’s bayonet pen.  There are a few of those.

While putting together a post at What’s Wrong With the World, I discovered that Brazos Press has now created a page for my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic. Here’s the cover:

That’s me in the bottom right corner in 1968 at my First Holy Communion.

(cross-posted)

Here is today’s spit-take inducing comment, courtesy of David Broder, concerning Justice Anthony Kennedy appointment to the Supreme Court:

It turned out to be successful beyond Reagan’s wildest dreams.

And it gets, er, better:

Kennedy was exactly what Reagan thought — “a true conservative” and “a courageous, tough, but fair” jurist.

The 1987 edition of the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary went further, describing Kennedy as “courteous, stern on the bench, somewhat conservative, bright, well-prepared, filled with nervous energy, asks many questions, good analytical mind, not afraid to break new ground, open-minded, good business lawyer, hard to peg, an enigma, tends to agonize over opinions.”

None of those terms need revision 21 years later.

Okay, now that I’m done with my aneurysm, I can point out this article by Rich Lowry of National Review simply entitled “America’s Worst Justice” that nails Kennedy pretty well.

(h/t Confirm Them)

I have been a bit busy of late with work and family and have not been able to spend all of the time I would like detailing the run-off between Senator Harri Anne Smith and Rep. Jay Love.  With a week to go before the run-off, things are getting interesting – such as this radio adby George Jones.  (Only in Alabama are you likely to see country music, economic development, gambling and politics intertwine like this.)   This story will explain the basis for this ad.   This link will give you a pretty good run down of what has been happening.  I suspect that the 11th Commandment of Republican Politics is about to be broken repeatedly between now and next Tuesday.  I’ll make my prediction on the outcome next Monday. 

More from the SA A/V corner — I recommend this video from February ‘07 showing P.J. in fine form, turning Adam Smith into a insightful comedy routine.  Info on his related book is here.

The June issue of Engage is available here, and you can watch the 2 hour Supreme Court review from July 1 here.  Podcasts discussing particular Scotus decisions are available here, including Nelson Lund on D.C. v. Heller, posted June 30.

Cool photo and story are here.

Here’s how you find out: if someone tells you that there are embryonic stem cells buried at ANWR, would you drill? If you answer “yes,” your inner liberal should have no problem if the embryos were replaced by oil.