Politics

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Covering Obama's spiritual guide

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I was wondering what it would take to get some more mainstream media coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s United Church of Christ pastor. Wright has been mentioned in quite a few opinion columns and tabloid publications recently for his race-based preaching and teaching. But mainstream media coverage has been lacking. So it was nice to see an article by the Baltimore Sun‘s Michael Hill about Wright and the attention he’s been receiving:


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Dead leaders walking?

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When I was growing up, two of my favorite books were In Cold Blood and Dead Man Walking. Both exposed the desolation, inhumanity, and cruelty of capital punishment — and both were hugely popular. But did either of them make the death penalty less popular? The data is not encouraging.


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Muslim athletes and their clothing

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For being on page A1 in The Washington Post, the article earlier this week on a high school athlete disqualified from a track meet for wearing clothing intended to be modest for religious reasons is missing a few things. Fortunately, we have the Internet, and the captions on the online photo gallery fill in a few details that were lacking from the story.


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Don't follow leaders

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In 1960, Catholic Democratic leaders were fractured over the presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy. On the one hand, governors David L. Lawrence of Pennsylvania and Pat Brown of California had not thrown their mighty support behind the young Catholic senator. On the other hand, Connecticut state party chairman John M. Bailey and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley had come out for Kennedy. The rift seems to expose the decline of Catholic voters in the United States.


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When the standard narrative fails

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If you are interested in Huckabee’s efforts to woo evangelicals, you could do worse than read the latest from the Washington Post‘s Perry Bacon and Juliet Eilperin. In a straightforward account, they explain how Huckabee isn’t just an economic populist, but a religious one, too:


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School prayer and a young atheist

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Chicago Tribune staff reporter Nara Schoenberg had a fairly solid profile last week of an Illinois teenage atheist who is, with her father, legally attacking the state’s “Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act” as a violation of her rights. The teenager, Dawn Sherman, is the focus of the story, and the reporter uses Sherman’s personal story to explain one side of the separation of church and state debate.


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Combine 'vertical' and 'horizontal' and ...

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Attention, leaders of the Mike Huckabee paranoia team: Have you noticed that if you take a “vertical” metaphor and combine it with a “horizontal” metaphor, you would get something worse than a “vertical” metaphor alone. You would get — a cross!


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