People

Ghosts in the Armenian genocide

On Friday, President Barack Obama broke a campaign promise to Armenian voters to declare the 1915 massacre of Armenians an act of “genocide.” As Glenn Kessler noted in a March Washington Post story anticipating that this might happen, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden for years have not minced words about labeling as “genocide” the deaths of Armenians. They regularly lambasted President George W. Bush for not using the word “genocide.” And Obama’s promise that he would use the word — compared with Sen. John McCain’s position — got him enthusiastic support among the Armenian community.


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Breaking: Fundamentalists are people too

Several years ago, when I submitted an interview article in the Evangelical Press Association’s Higher Goals Awards competition, my grim (and non-evangelical) judge dismissed the piece because it was a Q&A. Never mind that it was a friendly Q&A with Andrew Sullivan, soon after he wrote Virtually Normal, and appeared in the newspaper of the evangelical ministry Episcopalians United — not exactly Sullivan-worshipping territory.


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Distinctions with a difference

One of the more interesting stories regarding stem cell research is one that has been woefully under-reported. Even though scientists have been performing embryo-destructive stem cell research for a decade, there are no clinically available treatments that have resulted from the research. In the past two years, however, scientists have discovered ways of inducing pluripotent stem cells that many see as more promising.


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Christopher Buckley's wistful nonbelief

I’ve posted before in this space about the tensions between Catholic faith and glamour that existed in the household of William F. Buckley Jr. and his beloved wife, Pat. Now comes a tantalizing excerpt, through The New York Times Magazine, from Christopher Buckley’s memoir, Losing Mum and Pup.


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