The New Republic

Gustavo Arellano has an interesting op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today on USC quarterback Mark Sanchez's decision to wear a mouthpiece decorated in the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag. Given that Sanchez is a third-generation Mexican-American from Mission Viejo, Arellano's take on this seems right on: READ MORE >>

After I slandered an entire "nation" of sports fans, it's only fair that I point to a positive counter-example: Mark Armour, who's written a lovely piece for the Baseball Analysts site about his own lifelong Red Sox fandom. The best bit: READ MORE >>

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Fred's explanation of his evolving abortion views at today's Value Voters summit strikes me as both tiresomely convenient and sinisterly shrewd. READ MORE >>

Early Exit: Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin, [Politico]: "Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) is bowing to realism and plans to drop out of the presidential race on Friday, Capitol Hill and campaign sources said. ... Brownback, who is expected to run for Kansas governor in 2010, has a following among Christian conservatives that will make his endorsement eagerly sought by the remaining GOP presidential candidates." READ MORE >>

Daniel Goldhagen provoked a second storm -- the first one was his bookHitler's Willing Executioners -- when he published A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty READ MORE >>

James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years By Wayne Franklin (Yale University Press, 705 pp., $40) Click here to purchase the book. READ MORE >>

Pomposity often goes with mediocrity, and so it is with Jimmy Carter. And, for that matter, with Bishop Tutu who accompanied Jimmy and other officially designated high-minded people on a visit to Sudan. To Darfur, in particular. The ex-president wanted to visit a refugee camp in South Darfur, according to the Associated Pres, "but the United Nations mission decided that such a visit would be too dangerous. Carter than flew READ MORE >>

Some journalists have obsessions. You know mine. And Jamie Kirchick's is Zimbabwe or, rather, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. He is more attentive to what happens (and what has happened) in Harare than anyone else writing for the American press. Maybe there's someone in Britain about whom one could say the same. But I'm not sure. Certainly, few are able to tell the truth in READ MORE >>

I pray at a wonderful synagogue on the Upper West Side of New York, a synagogue which my children appreciate. It is called B'nai Jeshurun and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur it has special venues: its own congregation, two welcoming churches, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Symphony Space. Wherever you go, you will find an assembly of people, young and old (plus the children's services which my grandson attends), who know the prayers, are at least somewhat at home with Hebrew (the language of prayer here), have READ MORE >>