In the nineteenth century in California a housing bubble popped. Californians promised themselves that never again would they come to believe that could depend on housing prices would rise indefinitely.

In the nineteenth century scientists consistently and continued to deny the possibility that rocks (so-called meteorites) could fall from the sky (via Personal Knowledge), evidence be damned.

Today we too believe ourselves immune to this failing. We insist that our epistemic armor has no chinks. We think that our understanding of man, society, and our surroundings is improving and in the main correct.

Epistemic humility, to know that we do not know, is as was noted just a few (countable number of) weeks back by that Socrates fellow that knowing the actual extent of our expertise and knowledge is the first step to wisdom.

One of the consistent features of the political left and specifically our Administration today is a distinct lack of epistemic humility. They are the “smart” ones who have the answers. They will avoid the sins and faults of other side committed because they are far more clever, because their epistemic skin has been dipped in the Styx and is invulnerable to the slings and arrows and mortal failings unlike the clueless other guys. How long will it take then for Paris, aka reality, to slide the poisoned arrow into their ankle?

One thing that comes to mind when issues regarding increased influence by the government in healthcare. Today there are no public hayrides. Why? Because somewhere someone decided they could sue if some rambunctious teenage got hurt during the ride … which mean insurance was required … which meant no more hayrides. How much public interest in health care of this sort not give increased impetus to control risk or other behavior deemed not necessary if that activity has but the smallest negative impact on public health and subsequently public insurance rates. Hayrides are harmless romantic fun that were once common in the New England autumn. Now they are only a private affair hidden from any organized groups that might be subject to suit.

There is a notion among so many today, and my impression is that this idea is found more on the left than the right, that if someone is injured especially badly then there is necessarily another at fault. Actual accidents do not exist in their world. And that it is right to use legal proceedings after any substantial injury to redress the wrong and to locate (or invent) a guilty party and get them to pay. This is, I think, quite a childish impulse. I don’t understand how an adult can act on such an idea in the absence of evidence or any suggestion of malfeasance or malice.

Negligence is often cited as a cause for accidents and used as a proxy for fault. Tiger Woods occasionally misses a nominally routine putt. Jose Calderon has an 2008/9 NBA free shooting percentage of 98.052%. Why not 100%? After all free throws are routine. The point is that humans performing any routine activities will occasionally fail or introduce a mistake. Accidents can occur which are not intentional and are not actionable. All too often an error is cause for suit even when it is an “honest” mistake. An obvious rejoinder is that this is what courts are for, to distinguish between honest mistakes and ones which arise from malice, greed, or other intentional errors. And yes, that is the case. But the courts should not be the place where this issue is explored, but the place where evidence of error is tried.

Equality. Liberty. Virtue. These are all features which all citizens of almost every state will agree are good and required for a civil and stable union in some measure. I’ve claimed before that today’s progressive/liberals, libertarians and conservatives differ largely in that the different groups differ in the relative importance they place on these values. That is liberal/progressives value equality the most, libertarians liberty, and conservatives virtue. And it’s not that progressive/liberals find virtue or liberty bad, just that these things are less important than equality and so forth.

What does it mean that one values virtue in a civic sense? There are certainly things it should not mean but often does, that is often this is confused with the idea that particular virtues are required and preeminent. The Greek political thinkers thought that the primary purpose of the state was to create an environment in which the virtues of its citizens would and could be cultivated. Virtue for them was the road to happiness. In our day and age, so many confuse happiness with pleasure and therefore forget the importance of virtue. Now, the Greek city states were small enough that a much more pronounced uniformity of opinion about what constitutes virtue could be established in one community. This helped of course but is not essential.

C.S. Lewis in the The Abolition of Man suggests the notion of a universal sense of right and wrong within all people. Put in the context of virtue, there is a common core notion of what virtues are which all societies and people hold common. Different societies value different virtues with varying gradings and, again at the periphery, some virtues are thought vices and vice-versa, for example modern educators think self-esteem is a virtue and many Christian fathers taught self-esteem a vice. The existence of these differences is however often used mistakenly to suggest that the common notions of virtues in the main are held all cultures and societies.

From the standpoint of political thought and theory however the matter is that a multicultural society, of which most of us belong, can and should foster the development of virtues in its citizens and that this can be done without prejudicing which virtues its citizens value and are being in effect fostered and developed by the state. The primary purpose then of a state is to create an environment in which its citizens can cultivate virtue. So that we can be come better, happier as individuals. As a consequence this requires freedoms (liberty) and equality. But the goal of that liberty (and therefore also where it may and might be restricted) is to foster virtue. Again, where the purpose of equality between citizens is to allow each to cultivate his or her own virtues. Enforcement and encouragement of that equality is not for the purpose of granting equality qua equality to each but to allow each full opportunities to cultivate individual virtue.

You’ve may have heard by now some of the fallout from Miss California’s answer to a same-sex marriage question from one of the Miss USA judges, Perez Hilton.  If not, it’s probably because, like me, you didn’t watch the Miss USA pageant (or because, also like me, didn’t even know it was on).  What happened there has put on display for all to see what happens when you stand up for beliefs which are contrary to the liberal line.

Perez Hilton asked Carrie Prejean, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage," he said. "Do you think every state should follow suit, why or why not."  Prejean answered:

I think it’s great Americans are able to choose one or the other.  We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what in my country, in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be, between a man and a woman.

While starting out with a little fumbling for words, she ultimately comes to her honest answer.  And that, in what is now a pageant fully engulfed in liberal dogma, was her downfall. 

According to this ABC News article, the initial boos were ultimately overcome by applause.  However, Hilton was taken by surprise.

"I was floored," Hilton told ABCNews.com Monday. "I haven’t said this before, but to her credit, I applaud her for her honesty. However, she is not a politician, she’s a hopeful Miss USA. Miss USA should represent everyone. Her answer alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters."

Instead, I suppose, he wanted an answer that alienated tens of millions of those who do not support same-sex marriage.  If it’s about the numbers, Hilton is currently on the down-side of that.  If it’s about not alienating people, Prejean’s answer, no matter what it was, would alienate some, so she actually did well on that front, if that’s what you’re going to judge her by.

So what answer would Hilton have preferred; one that would be less political and represented everyone?

Hilton said Prejean could have chosen an answer that he believed would have been less political. When he asked Miley Cyrus the same question on Twitter after the show, he was surprised by her response: "I believe that EVERYONE deserves to be happy. That’s all I’m saying."

Comparing Cyrus and Prejean, Hilton said, "A 16-year-old gave a better answer. If she [Prejean] had said those two sentences, that would have been a better answer."

On his video blog, he offered another alternate answer. "I would have said, ‘Hmm, Perez, that’s a great question, that’s a very hot topic in our country right now. And I think that’s a question that each state should decide for themselves."

He was looking for politically correct (i.e. liberal) and / or one that is, in fact, more political.  Not to mention, what if you don’t actually believe that answer?  The truth, to these left-wing elites, means little.

It wasn’t just this gossip columnist that was irked by her answer.  This aversion to a truthful answer extends to the Miss California organization itself.

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, released a statement to the media in response to Prejean’s answer last night.

"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family."

Co-director Shanna Moakler, the 1995 Miss USA, told the media that she fully supported Lewis’ statement.

Apparently, the Miss California organization can’t handle an honest answer that diverges from the liberal line without issuing a statement and denigrating their own representative.  At least Hilton had the guts to give Prejean credit for honesty before he tore her up.

And that honest also cost her more than just national scorn from the Left.

"She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that," Hilton said, adding that he’s "very happy with whom the judges chose," Miss North Carolina’s Kristen Dalton.

He’s a judge.  He would know.  He didn’t want her to politicize her answer, but he politicized the who event. 

From the Nobel Prize committee, who made past Peace Prize choices to tweak George W. Bush, to the Miss USA Pageant, the Left is showing just how much they tolerate dissent.  They don’t.  Oh the irony.

Michael Graham, writing in the Boston Herald, lays it out for Homeland Security.

Janet Napolitano was right. There were hatemongers at the Tea Party rallies on Tax Day. They called themselves “reporters.”

The Department of Homeland Security released a pre-emptive “assessment report” on the dangers of “right-wing extremists” just a week before the tax protest rallies. According to DHS, these potentially include pro-lifers, supporters of border security and that notoriously unstable group – U.S. military veterans.

And I can report that there were, in fact, quite a few vets at our Tea Party at Long Wharf. But other than their crazy notion that spending our kids into an $11 trillion hole is wrong, they didn’t appear to be unhinged.

The same cannot be said for the reporters.

He hits the same highlights as many bloggers about CNN reporter Susan Roesgen who bad-mouthed and argued with protesters.  Unlike in this video, when a Bush mask with a Hitler mustache and devil horns was simply termed a "likeness" of the President.  No outrage then, but today she specifically calls them out.  Fair and balanced?

And in a case closer to (his) home, an example of willful blindness.

As hard as it is to believe, until yesterday The Boston Globe-Democrat had not run a story about the national Tea Party movement. As Howard Kurtz noted in The Washington Post, a newspaper in “the city famed for the original Tea Party” had ignored the story entirely.

Like President Barack Obama, who claimed on the morning of April 15 that he knew nothing about the Tea Party protests, the Globe-Democrat played dumb.

But once 1,500 local citizens and I re-enacted the original Tea Party at Boston Harbor, the Globies couldn’t avoid it any longer. They had to cover this breaking, local story, and so they did:

From Kentucky.

Yep. The Globe-Democrat’s only story about the national Boston Tea Party movement was an AP story datelined Frankfort, Ky.

That’s like covering the Kentucky Derby from Suffolk Downs. Yet the Globe-Democrat did cover a story on anti-bottled-water activists recently dumping bottled water into the harbor.

But as one Tea Partier quipped: “If Obama had been the king of England, the Globe wouldn’t have covered the American Revolution.”

In.  The.  Tank.  And drowning.

Peter Robinson, writing in Forbes, notes three guys who are shocked to find that Obama is such a liberal.

“To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell famously asserted, “needs a constant struggle.”

Congratulations this week to three journalists who have finally taken up that constant struggle: Christopher Buckley, David Gergen and David Brooks. All three used to insist that Obama was some species of centrist or moderate. Now that Obama has proposed the most massive expansion of government in the history of the republic, each has recognized that just conceivably he might have been mistaken.

I touched on Brooks last Friday, but read the article for details on Buckley and Gergen.  The wool over their eyes is slowly being pulled back up, and they don’t like what they see.

What’s interesting is to hear Robinson compare who got Obama wrong with who got him right.

Buckley, Gergen and Brooks all attended expensive private universities, then spent their careers moving among the wealthy and powerful who inhabit the seaboard corridor running from Washington to Boston. If any of the three strolled uninvited into a cocktail party in Georgetown, Cambridge or New Haven, the hostess would emit yelps of delight. Yet all three originally got Obama wrong.

Contrast Buckley, Gergen and Brooks with, let us say, Rush Limbaugh, whose appearance at any chic cocktail party would cause the hostess to faint dead away, or with Thomas Sowell, who occupies probably the most unfashionable position in the country, that of a black conservative.

Limbaugh and Sowell both got Obama right from the very get-go. “Just what evidence do you have,” Sowell replied when I asked, shortly before the election, whether he considered Obama a centrist, “that he’s anything but a hard-left ideologue?”

The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind.

Please?

David Brooks is shocked — SHOCKED — that Barack Obama tuned out to be liberal! 

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

And the real kicker:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Emphasis mine.  Well, actually, emphasis of this was made by Republicans long before election day.  One only had to look at his record, such as it was, to know this.  And yet these "Brooks Moderates" were so caught up in the words and the history of it all that they apparently turned off those parts of their brains responsible for critical thinking.

Looks like the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune did the same thing.

Whoa!

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate are blowing the lid off of spending restraint. But they’re finally meeting some resistance within their own party.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), in an essay published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, ripped a spending bill passed by the House last week as "a sprawling $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largesse."

He said he will vote against it, and he urged President Barack Obama to veto it if it passes the Senate. We second that motion.

(Hat tip: Don Surber)  The Tribune endorsed Obama, and now they’re thinking they can pull back the reigns.  They sound like they’re saying, "Obama’s a big spender?  Who knew?"

I will heartily agree that Republicans spent very irresponsibly during their tenure with control of the Legislative and Executive branches.  But Democrats, true to their ever-constant form (a form that moderates like Brooks should have look to history, even recent history, to confirm), have outspent Republicans by a huge, huge margin.  "Tax and spend" wasn’t a catchphrase made up by Ronald Reagan; it’s a description of their MO.

The Democrats who "rediscovered" fiscal responsibility during the Dubya years have shown that outrage to be mere window dressing than principle.  There are indeed Republicans who had the same problem during the Clinton years and while Democrats held Congress.  But there is simply no real equivalence here. 

While it is still true that Republicans will overspend less than Democrats, it pains me to have to put it that way.  Nonetheless, if you value fiscal responsibility, convincing Republicans to slow down on spending seems to me to have a far better chance of success than convincing Democrats of that.  Mr. Brooks, please take note.

John Hinderaker on PowerLine:

If the President is a Republican, it’s fine to call him a "chimp." In fact, it’s morally superior. But if the President is a Democrat, you can’t call a chimpanzee a chimp lest someone think you might have been referring to the President.

It all makes perfect sense.

Indeed, for 8 years calling the President a chimp was so prevalent that there are hundreds if not thousands of images of him specifically morphed into or compared to a chimpanzee

But today, here is the controversial chimp in question:

This was referring to, not just the awful "stimulus" bill (written by Congressmen, not the President), but the chimpanzee that went on a rampage in Stamford, CT that was shot and killed by police.  Just like in the cartoon. 

But Al Sharpton and all manner of bloggers have now confirmed what many of us thought might happen when Obama was elected.  Any criticism of the President (or in this case, the Congress) that can be linked to racism, will. 

Paging Mr. Holder.  Maybe your observation that we’re "essentially a nation of cowards" on racism is because of this sort of reaction from the Left whenever race comes up.  Or, as in this case, even when it doesn’t come up.

Al Mohler gives an introduction:

In contemporary America, pornography is both a public reality and big business.  Ambient pornography — sexually explicit advertising, entertainment, and merchandising — is all around us.  But pornography is also big business, producing sexually explicit materials in printed, video, and digital formats and making billions of dollars in the process.

The pornography industry has a big stake in defending itself against legal challenges and restrictive laws, and it has been stunningly successful in doing so.  One of the leading legal defenders of pornography has been David Ogden, a lawyer who can only be described as a First Amendment extremist, who has even argued against laws against child pornography.

President Barack Obama has nominated David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General of the United States.  This nomination is both ominous and dangerous.  Given David Ogden’s high visibility in defense of pornography, this nomination sends a clear and unmistakable message.  The pornography business will have a friend in high office in the Department of Justice.

Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation has some other concerns about the Ogden nomination.

In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, Ogden succeeded in convincing a narrowly divided Supreme Court to declare the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional and spare the life of his client, who killed a woman in cold-blood nine months before he turned 18.

Groves says Ogden argued that the high court should look to laws, legal opinions, and decisions of foreign countries and international organizations regarding the death penalty. He notes that in particular, Ogden cited the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) — a 1989 treaty that bars the execution of people who commit crimes while under the age of 18.

Ogden, says Groves, pointed out that the United States is one of only two countries in the world that has not signed onto that treaty.

"[He argued] that doesn’t mean that the U.S. doesn’t have to follow the treaty, [but that] it means the opposite — that the United States must follow the treaty that it has specifically decided not to join," says Groves. "Why? Because [Ogden argued] the rest of the world has joined it — and so therefore it’s some new customary, international norm and the United States must outlaw the juvenile death penalty."

So he wants the United States Supreme Court to use foreign laws for precedent, and to adhere to treaties we’ve never signed.  Regardless of your position on whether or not we should sign the CRC, Ogden wants our courts to decide cases based on laws we have no control over, and to unilaterally implement treaties that our legislature hasn’t agreed to or our President hasn’t signed.

Judicial activism, anyone?  Well, more like judicial usurpation.  And Obama wants this guy as our Deputy AG, fighting for the rights of pornographers to get their stuff in front of as many eyeballs as possible, never mind the age.  (He fought against porn filters in libraries, too.) 

Is this just your basic Democratic "family values" kinda’ guy?

…for weaker and weaker definitions of "hate", notes Eugene Volokh.

From a UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center study titled Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio:

Types of Hate Speech

We identified four types of speech that, through negative statements, create a climate of hate and prejudice: (1) false facts [including "simple falsehoods, exaggerated statements, or decontextualized facts [that] rendered the statements misleading"], (2) flawed argumentation, (3) divisive language, and (4) dehumanizing metaphors (table 1).

What a definition!

The example they give should give you pause.  If "exaggerated statements" will get you thrown in jail, we’ll all be either imprisoned or silenced. 

And note that this particular study only looked at "Commercial Talk Radio".  Obama may have come out against the "Fairness Doctrine", but if we get a back-door version of that, this may be how it happens.

Some good news from this administration:

President Obama opposes any move to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a spokesman told FOXNews.com Wednesday.

The statement is the first definitive stance the administration has taken since an aide told an industry publication last summer that Obama opposes the doctrine — a long-abolished policy that would require broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.

"As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

The "Fairness Doctrine" is really just targeted at radio, where conservative voices dominate.  You typically don’t hear those promoting it complaining that there’s too much liberal bias in this newspaper or that TV network; it’s always a complaint about conservative opinions and ideas.  So the idea that this is about "fairness" is just a smokescreen.

Blogger Dan Riehl is skeptical, though.

Instapundit posts word that Obama does not want the Fairness Doctrine back. Great.

That makes him look like quite the moderate. But the actual doctrine was always a stretch. Get back to me in 3-6 months after we see what his FCC does in terms of "localism."

That’s always been the play more likely to get done. Until I hear something from the FCC, the WH release is what I’m growing accustomed to with Obama: just words.

It is possible to have the effect of a "Fairness Doctrine" without the name, so indeed we’ll see.  But it is nice to get the word from the President.  We’ll hold you to that, sir.

Melanie Phillips in the London Daily Mail observes:

The story of 13-year-old Alfie, who reportedly has become a father by 15-year-old Chantelle, is a fable for our tragically degraded times.

Most of the attention has focused upon Alfie, who looks about eight and doesn’t even understand the word ‘financial’. But while Alfie’s youth is exceptional, this situation is not.

Whether or not Alfie is the father of baby Maisie or whether that honour goes to one of Chantelle’s reputed other boyfriends, the fact is that the length and breadth of this country there are many Chantelles, having sex and often getting pregnant while under age.

Phillips points out what has long been a refrain in societies where liberal programs have taken hold; the unintended consequences of government intervention.

There has been a profound loss of the very notions of self-restraint and boundaries of behaviour, promoted from the top by narcissistic liberals and funded at the bottom by welfare benefits which cushion people from the consequences of their actions.

The liberal intelligentsia pushed the idea that the worst things in the world were stigma and shame. Illegitimacy was accordingly abolished, lone mothers provided with welfare benefits and any talk about the advantages to children from marriage and sexual continence was to be banned as ‘judgmental’.

With all constraints on behaviour vilified as ‘moralising’, sex became treated merely as a pleasurable pastime devoid of any spiritual dimension.

As parents careered through serial sexual partnerships, putting their own short-term desires first and effectively behaving like children, they no longer wanted to be bothered with taking responsibility for their own offspring and so started treating them as if they were grown-up.

This was massively reinforced by the approach to sex education and contraception by schools and public health professionals, who treated children as quasi-adults capable of making their own life choices.

What they actually needed, as all children do, was firm and consistent boundaries which taught them that sex was properly an adult activity.

Instead, they were taught to treat sex a bit like bungee-jumping or paragliding – to have fun doing it, but to take precautions to avoid getting hurt.

And, she notes, the only definition of "hurt" was "getting pregnant".  Never mind the emotional or psychological harm that might be involved.

Read the whole thing.  Seems the more sex education we have and the earlier it starts, the more stories like this that we get.  Phillips’ article is a strong argument for the teaching of responsibility and its consequences rather than covering the world in bubble wrap. 

Chuck Colson explains that we disregard the past at our own peril.

One of the best exponents of [the role and importance of tradition] was G.K. Chesterton. In his book Orthodoxy, he wrote, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.” And he wrote that “tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

It’s not only respect for tradition that’s involved here—it’s prudence. These institutions and arrangements have helped to preserve the moral order, which is our first duty to maintain. They have been shaped by people who took into account the world as it is—filled with fallen human beings—instead of an imaginary utopia filled with perfectible people.

This respect is why true conservatism is a disposition, not an ideology. It doesn’t seek to reinvent man and his world—its concerns are about what T.S. Eliot called the “permanent things.”

In contrast, perverted modern liberalism, which includes many who call themselves “conservatives,” is about innovation, breaking from the past, upsetting the established order, and maximizing individual autonomy.

Colson is responding to the liberalism that is being taught in our universities, as exemplified in a quote from a Harvard faculty committee.  Read the whole thing.

I wasn’t a big fan of Dubya’s faith-based initiatives.  Well, I was at first, but I was later convinced that, since whoever pays the bills makes the rules, that having government pay the bills was a bad  idea for churches.  It opened them up to having to do things their faith told them not to in order to keep the money coming in.

Of course, there’s another more general reason to avoid new government programs; they expand to fill whatever void the government finds; real or perceived.  And President Obama is busy looking for voids.

President Barack Obama on Thursday signed an order establishing a White House office of faith-based initiatives with a broader mission than the one overseen by his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush.

Obama said the office would reach out to organizations that provide help "no matter their religious or political beliefs."

Obama is calling his program the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

(I would have put this in another ChangeWatch entry, more of the same alleged "theocracy" that Bush was supposedly foisting on us, yet continued and expanded under Obama, but thought it could use its own post.)

I wasn’t aware of a doctrinal test for Bush’s faith-based initiative, but Obama is claiming credit for expanding the reach.  Nifty sleight of hand there.

But the most notable expansion of the program is the addition of the word "Neighborhood".  The partnerships are "faith-based and neighborhood", not "faith-based neighborhood", meaning the neighborhood partnerships don’t have to be faith-based.  This turns the program into an untargeted channel for any and all grassroots groups.  As Warner Todd Hudson notes, sounds like yet another vector for funds to ACORN. 

Hudson also wondered (last Saturday, when he wrote his piece) whether the Left, and the Kos krowd in particular, will give Obama a pass on this, unlike the screams of "church and state!" they gave Bush when he created it.  Well, as of today, if you search Daily Kos back two weeks for the phrase "faith-based", you get exactly one hit, and that article still raps the GOP for it.  Yeah, still OK if their guy does it.  It’s still all about politics.  Such blind partisanship.

No, Bush did not ban embryonic stem cell research.  Never mind what left-wing talk radio host Ed Schultz keeps saying.  Like the House Republicans, perhaps you, too, should listen to Rush Limbaugh.  Perhaps Ed should, as well, to get his demagoguery straight.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.