The Road To Amman

Tuesday's Israel-Palestinian talks and the rise of political Islam.

The Scones Of January

By 7:15 a.m. on the 11th day of Christmas at Starbucks in Yorba Linda, there were no fruit cups left, nor any yogurt with honey and granola -- just 5,160 calories worth of scones.

I like Gen. 1's Version Better, Anyway

As Rick Warren, Saddleback's energetic pastor, adds the the cause of America's alarming biblical illiteracy to his portfolio, Paul Wallace wonders if influential Christian leaders are contributing to a rise in scientific illiteracy:

I suspect more moderate leaders like Warren have a lot to do with it. Warren’s own views on evolution, while less hysterically expressed than those of [Albert] Mohler and [Ken] Ham, are not finally distinguishable from them. In a 2007 Newsweek debate with Sam Harris, Warren declared, “Do I believe in evolution[?] The answer is no, I don’t. I believe that God, at a moment, created man... Did God come down and blow in man’s nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.”

In his opinion on evolution, Warren displays his own considerable scientific illiteracy. That in itself is not too big a deal; one man rejecting evolution is not news. But when that man is Rick Warren, a major Christian figure who has, despite his conservative credentials, pushed the evangelical envelope on a number of environmental and social issues, the rejection carries a lot of freight.

Palestinians Dash Hope For Progress At Talks

Lowering expectations is one thing; prohibiting them is another.

Free Ticket To Rome, Double Berth (wink, wink)

The New York Times on the pope's shepherd-stealing.

The Nixon Line Is Not Pauline

Ron Paul's odious newsletters notwithstanding, Andrew Sullivan likes the GOP candidate's George McGovern-like foreign policy isolationism opposition to the U.S.'s tendency toward global hegemony -- and so does Jacob Heilbrunn, writing at "The National Interest," published by the Center Previously Known As Nixon. Pretty ironic, since in today's Iowa caucuses 37 would be supporting the candidate most susceptible to his favorite post-presidential talking point: If the U.S. won't lead in the world, who will? It's a good guess it would be someone proclaiming a world view somewhere between Rick Santorum's reckless militancy and Paul's whole-scale retreatancy. Anyway, Heilbrunn writes:

[T]he dominant foreign-policy wing of the Republican party...is focusing on a new war with Iran--as though any attempt to stop Iran short of bombing constitutes a new Munich. Sen. Rick Santorum, for example, has flatly said he would bomb Iran. Paul, by contrast, says that's nuts. The result is that the Republican debates have, at least when it comes to foreign affairs, actually seen the candidates debating with each other, or, to put it more precisely, with Ron Paul. It's Paul who blows the raspberry at everyone else in the debates. Say what you will about the man, the Iowa caucus would have been a lot more boring if he weren't around to enliven it.

More fundamentally, Paul, in all his crankiness, represents a budding debate inside the GOP that the party pooh-bahs will not be able to defer much longer. The truth is that the GOP has been peddling a schizophrenic approach to the federal government. On the one hand we are told that the growing size of the federal government is a very bad thing; on the other hand we are told that the very part of the government that is growing most quickly—the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, Homeland Security—cannot be touched at all when it comes to budget cutting. Indeed, they are to be pampered and showered with even greater funding.

Big Boys Don't Whine

When in power, Newt Gingrich did whatever was necessary to achieve his ambitions. In 1988 he spearheaded ethics charges against House Speaker Jim Wright, who'd made a questionable book deal, as Gingrich did, twice. After ending Wright's career, he pivoted right, criticizing his own caucus leader, longtime GOP leader Bob Michel, for being too cozy with Democrats, contributing to Michel's decision to retire. That meant Gingrich, not Michel, would be speaker after the GOP took back the House in 1994.

Which is why a Facebook friend mentioned karma in a Gingrich-related post today. In Iowa, Mitt Romney has used all legal means to blunt Gingrich's December surge. His super-PAC has, according to Gingrich, spent $3.5 million on sinister-looking ads about his 747-full of baggage, including, ironically enough, the book deal he made as speaker.

That's not the only irony. When the Supreme Court authorized unlimited super-PAC spending in its January 2010 Citizens United vs. FEC decision, reformers were outraged. President Obama called out justices to their faces at the SOTU. But Gingrich took the opposite view. Patrick Caldwell writes:

Before the recent wave of attacks [by Romney, Gingrich] had expressly favored loosening campaign finance restrictions. "I actually think that the Citizens United case is one of the best examples of a genuine strategy that I've seen in the years that I've been in Washington," Gingrich said in a video celebrating the one-year anniversary of the decision. "It's really one of the most sophisticated, methodical and serious strategies I've seen in my years looking at government. I think Dave [ Bossie, director of Citizens United] believed passionately that the heart of American liberty is the right of every citizen—whether you agree or disagree—to get up and be heard."

That's exactly what those running and funding Romney's super-PAC are doing -- getting up in Gingrich's face and being heard. Everybody knows Romney's people are calling the shots. Everybody knows that the beauty of the anti-Gingrich ads is that Romney's campaign didn't have to pay for them nor be explicitly associated with them. That's the whole idea of super-PACs. It's why reformers didn't like Citizens United and Gingrich did.

Ruthlessly and cunningly, Romney used the system as he found it to tear down an opponent, just as Gingrich did to get power. The former speaker's been complaining all weekend. Big boys don't whine.

Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Discouraged by the lack of progress for human rights as the optimism of the Arab spring recedes? Let's hear it for the Saudi labor ministry:

Saudi women, tired of having to deal with men when buying undergarments, have boycotted lingerie stores to pressure them to employ women. The government's decision to enforce the law requiring that goes into effect Thursday.

Both Child And Crucified

"The Conversion of St. Paul" by Italian renaissance master Caravaggio is well known to those who have attended St. John's continuing Christian education (and seventh grade New Testament) classes. Here's how it was described by Caravaggio biographer Andrew Graham-Dixon in a Dec. 1 podcast interview with one of the most cogent interviewers in the country, Sam Tanenhaus:

He's just painted St. Paul by his horse, lying on the ground. But the horse makes the scene feel like a manger, so St. Paul at the moment of his conversion is Christ the child, Christ the infant, and yet his pose, with his arms outspread, is that of the Crucifixion. What Caravaggio has brilliantly telescoped into this image is the idea that at the moment of conversion Paul experiences...mystically the entire life of Christ in his mind's eye as he's blinded by the divine light of revelation. He's both Christ the child and Christ the crucified.

From A Cantor To A Gallop

Steve Benen hammers House minority leader Eric Cantor for his and and an aide's bizarre assertion that Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes more than any predecessor, didn't raise taxes:

Why do Cantor, his press secretary, and Republicans everywhere deny what is plainly true? Because reality is terribly inconvenient: the GOP demi-god rejected the right-wing line on always opposing tax increases; he willingly compromised with Democrats on revenue; and the economy soared after Reagan raised taxes, disproving the Republican assumption that tax increases always push the nation towards recessions.

In other words, Reagan’s legacy makes the contemporary Republican Party look ridiculous. No wonder Cantor’s press secretary started yelling: [Leslie] Stahl [who was interviewing Cantor on CBS] was bringing up facts that are never supposed to be repeated out loud.

Reagan was guilty of other acts of apostasy against 21st century hyper-conservatism as well. Cantor looks silly saying otherwise. Could it be this is the first time he ever got the question, at least in a setting where a camera was boring in so tight that you could see the pores under his makeup? If so, good for Stahl.

Here's what he should've said: "President Reagan was the first to stand in the path of the prevailing policy juggernaut of his time and say, quoting Bill Buckley the only time he used a one-syllable word, 'Stop!' Of course he didn't accomplish all he hoped when it comes to diminishing the size and scope of a coercive federal establishment. Of course he sometimes had to compromise. His courage inspires us not to."

Or some such. I don't really want Cantor to sound smarter, because he's been wrong about the budget.