Even if, like me, you’re against a military confrontation with Iran, it’s still good to be reminded of the brutality of the regime. To wit. (via Tapped). I think it’s important for people who favor a more restrained military policy to think about alternative ways of engaging with human rights abuses. For instance, I remember…

(This post had its origins in some comments at the Crunchy Con blog.) John Derbyshire, National Review‘s paleo-leaning curmudgeon and resident pessimist, has penned a mea culpa of sorts for his support of the war in Iraq. The problem, he thinks, is that the Bush administration has turned what should have been an exercise in…

Eric Miller, a historian and contributor to the New Pantagruel, reviews Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons in Books and Culture. While sympathetic to many of Dreher’s conerns, Miller thinks that both liberalism and conservatism have reached their limits and that we need a politics that can speak the language of sacrifice. He looks to the tradition…

Mock me if you must, but I still enjoy the occasional George Will column a great deal. Case in point: this very good piece from last month on the rhetoric of “values voters.” Via.

Interesting article in Sunday’s Boston Globe about the relationship between the Bush administration’s view of executive power during wartime and an “originalist” approach to interpreting the Constitution. Some legal scholars, including the conservative-libertarian Richard Epstein, say that in making its case the administration is neglecting Federalist 69, a crucial document for understanding the framers’ intentions…

Coca-Cola BlaK (the inexplicable spelling and capitalization are apparently on purpose) – that is, Coke “infused” with coffee extract – is about as gross as it sounds.

Partly in order to see a little bit of historic Boston we decided to make our first church visit in the Beacon Hill area yesterday. Specifically, we attended a 9:00 service at The Church of the Advent (Episcopal), a venerable Anglo-Catholic parish. We figured our Protestant sensibilities would take to the 9 o’clock Sung Mass…

With all the fear-mongering on the Left about an imminent “Christo-nationialist” takeover, it’s nice to read an article like this at The American Prospect. Evangelicalism, much less Christianity as a whole, is not nearly as monolithic as some liberals fear (and conservatives might like!). Not that I’m necessarily on board with the whole “progressive” evangelical/Jim…

One of Ireland’s three patron saints, Columba (c. 521-597) preached the Gospel among the Irish and Picts, had some dust-ups with the local Druids, and was one of the architects of the Irish monasticism which helped preserve reading and culture during the early Middle Ages. (See here for more.)

Next Tuesday the National Religious Coalition against Torture will run an ad in the New York Times calling for “the elimination of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as part of U.S. policy.” The ad is endorsed by folks like former President Jimmy Carter, Stanley Hauerwas, Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches,…