Vote to Give Free Wedding to Former Student of SWNID

Once again we enlist our gentle readers to push someone over the top in a media-promotional contest.

CCU alumna and respected former SWNID student Chastidy Hahn, with her betrothed Matthew Ronan, is a finalist in Cincinnati's Q102 contest to receive away a free wedding with all the trimmings. We urge all gentle readers to vote for her multiple times.

And this is no mere personal-connection deal. Chastidy has the most remarkable and tragic of circumstances. While Chastidy was still a college student, her mother was brutally murdered. I can't imagine someone for whom a gesture like this one, even if it comes from a commercial radio station, is more fitting.

Follow this link to the web site. Cast multiple votes by using multiple computers. As we blog, Chastidy and Matthew are in second place. You will make them first!

Update: Chastidy and Matthew have fallen into third place. Wake up, world! Get busy, gentle readers! All that is good and right is at stake in this election! Get out the vote! This is not a drill ... repeat ... this is not a drill!

Once Again: Hillary and Ds Are Toast, Rudy Is Least-Reported Candidate

A recent Cook Political Report poll shows once again that we are Seldom Wrong. To wit:

• John McCain and Rudy Giuliani poll evenly among Republicans, each with 30%.
• McCain trounces Hillary head-to-head with all polled, 47% to 37%. This does not take into account the "likely voter" versus "registered voter" effect that tends to overestimate Democrat support by as much as 10%. N.B. also that Republicans and conservatives indicated overwhelming support for McCain versus the Ice Queen: cons enthusiastically prefer a maverick moderate to to the Great She-Satan.
• While respondents indicated more inclination to vote for the D over the R for Congress, the vast majority indicated that they would vote for the best candidate for their locale, not the political party.

Salivating as they are over the prospect of taking Congress in '06 and the Big House in '08, the Ds had better get used to cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at Barbara Streisand's as their primary expression of prestige.

Likewise, salivating over the prospect of their anointed candidate John McCain taking the presidency, the MSM had better get used to the idea that Giuliani will overtake their boy in the primaries, beating McCain up with their comparative records on anti-terrorism.

Likewise, salivating over the retributive justice of forcing the former Philanderer-in-Chief to bake cookies and attend conferences boosting adult literacy as First Husband, Hillary should wake up to the reality that her much-expected but never tested campaigning ability will be powerless, if it exists, to overcome this enormous deficit . But will the person responsible for the following, as reported in the Guardian (motto: "Hoping for the resurrection of Neil Kinnock") actually listen to such reason?

Senator Hillary Clinton yesterday accused President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, of "obsessing" about her after the publication of a book quoting him as saying she would win the Democratic nomination but was too "brittle" to win the presidency in 2008.

We ask the Senator (D-Carpetbagging) who is obsessed with whom (hint: the answer involves a reflexive pronoun).

Update: We repent of the final observation above about political obsession. We are now convinced that it is quite odd that the leading Republican political strategist should give significant attention to the presumptive presidential candidate of the Democrat party. Clearly there must be another explanation: Karl Rove is in love!

Grown Up Christians? Two Views

Thirty years after self-styled evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter stormed out of Georgia in a metaphorical reverse of Sherman's march to the sea, where are evangelical Christians politically?

One voice says they've grown up. In USA Today Michael Medved (silenced on the Cincinnati airwaves by a sinister Democrat plot) suggests that evangelical calm in response to Brokeback Mountain and The Da Vinci Code are signs of strength and maturity in the movement. In other words, evangelicals are confident enough of their place in the world to let objectionable movies make their way in the world without the protests that met, say, The Last Temptation of Christ.

True enough, SWNID opines. Those with confidence in their position are much less likely to go postal when a challenge to their position emerges (this, for gentle readers of the Campbellite persuasion, is why Campbellites of my acquaintance, including myself, are much less strident in our rhetoric about baptism than some of our forebears: it's not that we believe it less, we just have enough confidence in the self-evident strength of the position that we don't think we need to beat people with it).

But over at TownHall.com, Jennifer Biddison has noted the recent appearance of the "Evangelical Climate Initiative," a call for action to stem global warming signed by a number of evangelical leaders (including the ubiquitous Rick Warren, the irrepressible Brian McLaren, the omni-opinioned Timothy George, and the presidents of the big three evangelical liberal arts colleges Wheaton, Calvin, and Gordon).

The problem with the ECI proposal, of course, is that the costs of "action" on global warming almost certainly outweigh the benefits. The immediately foreseeable coast of a crash program to reduce carbon emissions would be the further impoverishment of the poor; its benefit would be a marginal slowing of a process that has many inputs besides human actions.

In other words, the ECI represents a case where evangelicals have been taken in with an appeal to their purpose-driven commitment to the poor, only to find themselves in support of a position that is economically untenable.

So where are evangelicals? Maturing but not mature might be one assessment. All over the map would be another. Such is always the case with a large group of individuals, we suspect.

The larger problem, of course, is the failure of too many evangelicals to listen with blind devotion to this blogger, who is, by nature, Seldom Wrong. Link this site, gentle readers, so that we can correct this problem.

How Larry Summers's Demise Reflects the Death of the Democratic Party

After a week's vacation, the essential James Taranto is back selecting the "Best of the Web Today" for OpinionJournal.com. Today's installment links a SWNID interest--the resignation of Larry Summers as Harvard's president--with a SWNID topos--the marginalization of the Democratic Party at the national level.

How can this connection be made? In short, Summers represents the moderate wing of the Democratic Party (motto: "All the smarts, none of the dough"). The faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard represents the hard left of the party (motto: "If you disagree with us, you're stupid, immoral, or both, but even if you aren't, we're richer than you"). Summers would like to take a stand, but the hard left is to entrenched in academe and too important to the party's financing.

Follow the link above to get Taranto's links for more, but don't miss this personal note from Taranto, which we know will be of interest to some gentle readers:

Academia is the left's biggest remaining redoubt, but here too there may be alternatives. During our vacation we paid a call on Ken Starr, dean of the law school at Pepperdine University, and he told us with great enthusiasm of how undergraduates on campus were doing serious work--actually studying great books, no less.

This ought to be perfectly unremarkable. That a university administrator boasts about it tells you something about the state of higher education in America. But it may be that in the coming years schools like Pepperdine will benefit as those like Harvard squander their prestige on left-wing faculty politics.

So, gentle readers at Pepperdine, are they reading great books on the beach at Malibu?

24 Imitates Life, Art

Some real signs of script fatigue crept into tonight's episode of 24 (motto: "Our worst episodes are still the best thing on TV"). Specifically the show relied entirely on connections to other well known narratives. We enumerate:

1. In a dreadfully obvious reference to an episode recounted in Henry Kissinger's memoirs, President Logan-Nixon knelt timidly and asked Mike Novik to play Kissinger's role as reluctant co-supplicant. This, by the way, tends to confirm our hypothesis that the show's producers induced actor Gregory Itzin to have his nose surgically altered to resemble Nixon's famous ski jump.
2. In a dreadfully obvious but mildly twisted reference to the Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee became paranoid and power hungry from carrying the ring far too long and so was deposed as head of CTU.

One line of the show did provoke an outburst from SWNID. When the remark was made, "The treaty is supposed to make us safe from terrorists," we yelled, "The only treaty that makes you safe from terrorists is the Jack Bauer treaty." You'd think that the characters would know this by now.

So should we hope for better things to come (gentle readers should note that we are not complaining . . . yet) ? Perhaps. The previews of next week's double episode suggests lots of action (we did like the missile and the flamethrower this week) but also lots of reliance on the return of old characters like Tony/Lazarus and Kim/Resident-Blonde-Joke. We could do without the latter. Couldn't Jack find out that Kim is dead instead of Kim finding out that Jack is alive?

Bassists Ascendant!

Gentle readers who followed the SWINDish exhortation to listen to "Around Cincinnati" last night got a special treat when the CSO double bass quartet were interviewed and performed. The quartet played with energy, lyricism, and impressive ensemble. Clearly these guys have been listening to each other and working together for the sake of the music for a long time.

Even more impressive was their interview, which was characterized by wit, grace and self-depreciation. Friend of SWNID Wayne Anderson was the most outstanding in these conversational virtues, of course (Interviewer: Does this piece get performed often? Anderson: Not after people look at the music!), but the others were close behind.

And after listening to the rest of the program, what with an interview of a poet who versifies by cutting phrases out of magazines and reassembling them, this segment was an oasis in a desert of public radio cliches.

Who would think that an orchestra's bass section would be the source of so much coolness?

SWNID Prediction Coming True While MSM Prediction Coming False

The MSM continues to note that the MSM's prediction of civil war in Iraq was overblown, vindicating this blogger as Seldom Wrong.

The Financial Times (motto: "Our journalism is so good, we aren't ashamed to print it on pink paper") reports that daytime curfews have been lifted everywhere but Baghdad. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is reported to have summarized the situation tidily: "[Iraqi leaders have] stared into the abyss a bit and I think they’ve all concluded that further violence, further tension between the communities is not in their interest."

Indeed!

Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr continues to make nice with the Sunnis while blaming it all on the Americans, something for which all Americans can be grateful. Al-Sadr realizes that the Americans are withdrawing and sees that his best move to political power is to capitalize on shared anti-occupation feeling while serving to unite religious factions. Tomorrow al-Sadr will lead prayer services at damaged Sunni mosques in a show of that unity. Ironically enough, that's in the best interests of the United States. We want what al-Sadr wants: a reasonably unified Iraq that doesn't have 136,000 American troops in it.

The pacification is so clear that even Reuters, they who put quotation marks around the word "terrorist," are forced to write, "pleas for unity and a third day of curfew in the city seemed to dampen sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq toward civil war."

Iraq has not been restored to Edenic bliss by the American-British invasion. But on its worst day, it's a sight better than it was under that crazy guy who keeps shouting silly stuff at his trial.

Program Alert: Hear Friend of SWNID Interviewed

We are happy to announce that an interview with friend of SWNID Wayne Anderson, double bassist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, will be aired on FM 91.7 WVXU's "Around Cincinnati" program at 7 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 25. His appearance, with other bassists from the CSO, is in anticipation of their performance of Gunther Schuller's Quartet for Basses at next weekend's CSO Chamber Players concert.

Wayne is a great musician, an amazing father, an exemplary Christian gentleman, an extraordinary humorist, and a fine friend. We urge all gentle readers to listen, as the interview will be great fun for all the reasons noted in the previous sentence.

Don Knotts Dead at 81

SWNID offers his condolences to his many friends who are devoted to the Andy Griffith Show as a second religion, for Don Knotts, creator of the inimitable Barney Fife, has died.

We are not as rabid about Mayberry as some, but we will still insist that Knotts's Fife was the funniest character in the history of television.

Our favorite scene was one where Barney and Andy were sitting on the front porch one evening after dinner, and Barney mentions that he bought his parents a new septic tank for their anniversary. Television seldom allows its actors the subtlety of that comic miniature.

Three's Company, Knotts's later vehicle, had no such subtlety. While it paid Knotts's bills at the time, it is best forgotten now. We pledge not to mention it in this blog again.

All's Right with the World: Scotland Defeats England

In international football, be it soccer football or rugby football, our favorite teams, for obvious reasons, are Scotland and whoever is playing England.

So we are very pleased to note that the Scotland rugger squad today defeated the Auld Enemy 18-12 in the classic setting of Edinburgh's Murrayfield, under classic rainy conditions. The embarrassingly named Tom English, writing for Scotland on Sunday, summarizes:

THIS was a day to tell your grandchildren about, an 'I was there' moment if ever there was one.

Rugby, which when well played is undoubtedly the team sport most exciting for spectators, deserves better media attention in this country, especially when the Six Nations Tournament brings us the classic confrontation between Scottish Good and English Evil. But don't expect much. With continuous play through both halves, the game gives no opportunity for broadcasters to schedule revenue enhancement breaks.

Iraq Civil War: February 23-25, 2006

There are signs today (well, tomorrow, actually: this is reported by the Weekend Australian where it's Sunday already) that our tentative prediction will be correct that the bombing of the Golden Mosque would not lead to civil war in Iraq.

Overnight in Iraq Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has made peace with Sunni leaders, with whom he has issued joint statements condemning the bombing as the work of foreigners and calling on all Iraqis to unite, regardless of sect. He has condemned those wearing the uniform of his militia who have perpetrated crimes while calling for all groups that have seized places of worship to turn them back.

In other words, a sectarian leader has decided to boost his position by attempting statecraft. We can expect that this will not only boost al-Sadr but also force him generally to moderate his stance, all for the good.

So when everything is just back to the usual level of chaos in a few more days, will the MSM acknowledge its hysteria? Expect less of a confession than we got after the exaggerations of the chaos in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Update: The immortal William F. Buckley has now concluded that the bombing of the Golden Mosque signals the end of hope in Iraq. This will not be remembered the esteemed Mr. Buckley's finest column. It may be remembered as signaling that it's time for the aged Mr. Buckley to retire altogether from punditry.

Update: The Washington Post notes the following in its edition of Sunday, February 26:

When the Iraqi leaders came out of the meeting for a news conference broadcast on Iraqi television, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari solemnly removed his glasses and announced unequivocally that there would not be a civil war in Iraq. . . .

A U.S. military spokesman disputed the media's account of the crisis to date, saying that 22 mosques had been attacked since the Samarra bombing, a considerably smaller number than the 120 reported by al-Iraqiya television on Friday.

Note also Ramesh Ponnuru notes that Buckley was never a full-throated supporter of the war and is now not calling for immediate withdrawal. Says Ponnuru: "I myself think that Bill's conclusion is premature." N. B. that Ponnuru earns his bread by writing for Mr. Buckley's magazine.

"Inner Core of Awfulness" in Carter's Endangered Values

Gentle readers have no doubt noted SWNID's contempt for the sourly sanctimonious Jimmy Carter, forcibly retired President, inactive Habitat for Humanity volunteer, celebrity Sunday School teacher and national busybody. Today we note that such contempt is recently expressed in a rather late but rather delicious review of Carter's recent book Our Endangered Values (N.B. that the title apparently expresses the royal "we," as it is unclear whether anyone shares Carter's values) by National Review Online's John Derbyshire. Derbyshire's characterization of Carter is fair, as evinced by his concession that Carter governed in difficult times, and correct, evinced by his complete agreement with SWNID.

We urge gentle readers to follow the link, offering the following quotation as an appetizer:

Yet still, with all allowances made and all excuses listed, there is an inner core of awfulness to Jimmy Carter. Our Endangered Values--it is his 20th book--makes this clear.

Civil War in Iraq a Done Deal?

Today's news from Iraq was pretty grim, what with murderous reprisals for the bombing of the Golden Mosque numbering 130 dead. News outlets have been filled with pronouncements that these events represent the beginning of the civil war that will destroy the nascent Iraqi democracy.

Of course, predictions on such events are always worthless either way. But we'll offer some reasons to think that the civil war, for which some seem almost to hope to prove that the American-British invasion was wrong, is not inevitable.

First, the perpetrators of the bombing haven't yet been identified. If they can be identified, and if they represent a fringe or foreign element, then Sunnis and Shias may well unite in their opposition to them, much as Jordan united against Al Qaida after last year's bombings in Amman. Both sides may realize that their best interests are served in uniting against those who would divide them. Interestingly, in most parts of the world Shias and Sunnis live together peacefully.

Second, the enthusiasm of Iraq for self-determination and democracy, demonstrated in the last year's elections, can't be assumed to have evaporated. Faced with the prospect of supporting sectarian warlords or supporting national unity, many Iraqis may well choose the latter, and may prevail.

Third, we have yet to see whether the government's imposition of a strict curfew will quell the violence until the first two factors can play a role. If it's effective for the short term, then a long-term blood feud may not emerge.

Finally, the Golden Mosque can certainly be rebuilt. The Americans and British have already pledged money for just that. Will the construction of a new-and-improved holy site, financed by the nations that brought self-determination to Iraq, become a symbol of the power of democracy to overcome terror?

We're not confident about any of this. But neither are we ready to pronounce--with the 2400 current news stories with the words "Iraq," "mosque," "bombing" and "civil war--to say that it's all over.

Here's how James S. Robbins puts it at National Review Online:

Despite panicky headlines to the contrary, it is not in any group’s interest to wage full scale civil war in Iraq. The Shiites have power without it; the Sunnis could not win it; and the Kurds will sit it out either way and keep patiently building their homeland. So this senseless act of violence against the final resting place of two of the most respected figures of the Muslim religion only proves to the Islamic world that al Qaeda and its allies are true heretics who care nothing for the faith and are out for power by any means at their disposal. Cartoons about Mohammed pale in comparison to this atrocity. I look forward to the mass demonstrations against al Qaeda throughout the Muslim world — though somehow I doubt we’ll see many.

Celebrating the Return of Python

Gentle readers who joined SWNID in watching the PBS retrospectives on Eric Idle and Graham Chapman of Monty Python's Flying Circus are no doubt still as blissful as we are at this moment. In our bliss we offer the following Pythonesque observations:

• The interviews reveal that those guys are really old now. Except for Chapman, of course, who tragically drank and debauched his way to an early death.
• We nominate Eric Idle's best moment as the panel show/quiz show host asking the great figures of Communism questions about English football history.
• We nominate Graham Chapman's best moment as the exchange between Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion about the penguin on the telly.

And of course we invite further reflections from our gentle readers.

A Biblical Cardinal?

Pope Benedict today announced the appointment of fifteen new cardinals, and one is garnering some attention that captures SWNID's attention. Arthur Vanhoye, a well-known New Testament scholar specializing in the book of Hebrews, is among the red caps.

Blogger Michael Barber, a Roman Catholic completing a PhD in theology at Fuller Seminary (yes, gentle readers, it is a brave new world), offers this analysis:

Notice here Pope Benedict's clear interest in highlighting the importance of biblical studies. In fact, one of the distinctive elements of Cardinal Ratzinger's work is his
attempt to do BIBLICAL theology. Catholic theolgoy [sic] needs to be bibilcally [sic] based. I'll have more to say about this in the future. Suffice it to say, the appointment of Vanhoye reveals two things. First, it indicates that the Pope has great respect for this biblical scholar. Second, it underscores his interest in fulfilling the Second Vatican Council's call for making the study of the Bible ("the study of the sacred page") the "soul of theology" (Dei Verbum, 24).

We too affirm that Catholic theology needs to be biblically based. What we wonder is whether Benedict and others are willing to allow a biblical theology to critique other voices in the Roman Catholic magisterium.

Since Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church has produced an impressive array of biblical scholars. As a Neutestamentler up past his bedtime, I will name only a few American Neutestamentlers as examples: Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown, Luke Timothy Johnson. Without question, these giants of the academy have made enormous contributions to the understanding of Scripture, to the benefit of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians.

However, it is not at all clear that their scholarship can penetrate a theology that draws from other sources--tradition and the bishops--in significant measure. We recall a most remarkable turn in the impressive commentary on Mark's Gospel by German Roman Catholic scholar Rudolf Pesch. In an excursus on the "brothers" of Jesus in Mark 3:31ff, Pesch reviews in extensive detail the various views set forth historically on these figures. At his conclusion, he asserts that they are best understood as the natural sons of Mary and Joseph, born after Jesus. What then is to be done with the dogma of the Church that Mary was perpetually a virgin? Pesch simply remarks that the teaching of Scripture is one thing and the authoritative teaching of the Church is another.

Well, indeed it is. The question is what to do about it. While Catholicism has been in a state of off-and-on counter-reformation since the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers' justification for breaking free of Rome's control is as clear now as it was for Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. It's tough to see the good news clearly through all that tradition. So here we Protestants stand, critiquing the tradition with Scripture. We cannot do otherwise.

We are happy that these days in some quarters Catholic lay people are discovering the Bible and grounding their personal faith in it. We hope that the same can be true for the Vatican, and that Vanhoye's appointment might presage that. The letter that Vanhoye studies, Hebrews, if read with even a modicum of care, sets forth a christocentric theology that utterly destroys what the Reformers insisted is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church, namely, its promotion of other mediators.

Roman Catholic thinkers are contributing mightily to the intellectual life of our republic these days (N.B. that five Supreme Court justices are Catholic: Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts and Alito; also N.B. that the MSM still treated Alito's Catholicism as a novelty). Can they contribute to the life of their own church?

Constitutional Conundrum

OK, so Mrs. Logan is in the limo with the Russian president and his wife, the very limo the route of which President Logan has revealed to terrorists bent on killing the Russian president. Presumably she may blow up in the next episode.

This raises a constitutional question: if the office of First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) become vacant due to death or disability, does the Vice President's wife become the new FLOTUS?

Does the Mosaic law of levirate marriage apply constitutionally in this way? We need a Hebrew Bible scholar or a lawyer (at least one has read this blog) to weigh in on this question.

Larry Summers Takes a Hint

Having served for most of our adult life at the "Harvard of East Price Hill," SWNID has a passing interest in developments at the "Harvard of Cambridge, Massachusetts." That Harvard's embattled president, former Secretary of the US Treasury Larry Summers, has resigned.

Check out Alan Dershowitz's Boston Globe op-ed interpreting Summers's move. A noted Harvard law professor, Dershowitz is no conservative, but he is frank about Summers having been forced out by a plurality of one faculty of Harvard's many having cast a vote of no confidence in their president. Their reason, per Dershowitz and most other external observers, was their objection to Summers's expression of opinions at odds with the hard left.

Whenever we feel sorry for ourselves for the difficulties of teaching and administration at Cincinnati Christian University (motto: "100% of faculty, staff and students are certified sinners"), we think of this lesser-known institution near Boston and thank God that we have our little set of problems and not theirs.

We quote Professor Dershowitz's conclusion, offering a prognostication and a challenge about his university:

Now that this plurality of one faculty has succeeded in ousting the president, the most radical elements of Harvard will be emboldened to seek to mold all of Harvard in its image. If they succeed, Harvard will become a less diverse and less interesting institution of learning governed by political-correctness cops of the hard left. This is what happened in many European universities after the violent student protests of the late 1960s. It should not be allowed to happen at Harvard in the wake of the coup d'etat engineered by some in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Crunchy Cons: Next Buzz Book?

Over at OpinionJournal, George H. Nash reviews Crunchy Cons, a statement of conservative dissent by Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher. To SWNID, this looks like an interesting read.

What does it mean to be a "crunchy conservative," a la Dreher? It means eschewing the libertine tendencies of liberalism, but also embracing environmentalism, organic farming, the New Urbanism (the movement to fight sprawl and develop communities where people walk places and talk to their neighbors), and other communitarian notions. It is a kind of conservatism that is more committed to humanity than to commercial activity.

Or more precisely, it is a book that takes a strong stand on one side of the conservative movement, the Tory side, as opposed to the dominant one, the libertarian side. As Nash puts it:

It is a reminder of the enduring tension on the right between those for whom the highest social good is freedom--the emancipation of the self from statist restraint and oppressive custom--and those for whom the highest social good is virtue: the formation of character, the cultivation of the soul.

Dreher sees such conservatism as entirely theo-centric. It is a conservatism that is grounded and focused on religious orthodoxy. Nothing else can direct the path to common virtue.

We are intrigued and hope to read said book. We confess skepticism on some points, e.g.:

We have an intuition that organic farming, if carried out on a wide scale, is bad for the environment, as it necessitates more acreage in agriculture, leading to the destruction of habitat and the polluting of waters with organic agricultural runoff.

We have an intuition that environmentalism is often bad for the environment, as the best protectors of the environment tend to be those with a commercial interest in its preservation.

However, the book still looks worthwhile.

And it illustrates what we have said repeatedly on this blog: these days, ideas are coming from conservatives.

Most Definitive Sign of 2nd-Term Fatigue So Far

History tells us that US Presidents and their underlings get tired in the second term. And here's how we know that history is happening right now:

The Bush Administration has agreed to lease operations of six major ports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates.

The Republican governors of New York and Maryland are threatening legal action to block the move. Thank goodness for that.

SWNID insists that demanding perfection from leaders is an uninformed path to constant frustration. So we forgive our President this mistake. But we urge him to correct it faster than he did Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court.

To Be Checked Out Before Tonight's Episode, Or After

We thank Son of SWNID for directing us to the immortal (and currently on sabbatical) Dave Barry's blog on 24. Dave has been reacting to each episode, including updates on actions moment by moment.

One snippet: he refers to President Logan as "President Manilow." We apologize to Mrs. SWNID for finding this amusing.

Can there be a more sublime combination of disparate pop cultural elements than Dave Barry blogging 24?