In the department that things that probably are unconstitutional but we no longer notice is this item from today’s L.A. Times:

"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson modestly lowered limits on ozone pollution Wednesday, angering both industry groups who lobbied against changes and medical, scientific and environmental groups who pushed for tougher limits."

Whatever happened to the non-delegation doctrine? Can the executive, or an executive agency, unilaterally change law or make law?

Rod Dreher asks the right questions about the Jeremiah Wright clip embedded in his post. Wright says he loves his enemies but what’s clearer than anything else from this bit is who his enemies are. And, as Dreher says, it’s hard for Obama to distance himself from the man whose altar call he answered.

For more, see Hugh Hewitt and Michael Gerson, Power Line, and Dean Barnett (who connects Wright with Michelle Obama in an interesting way). Contrast that with the silence here and here.

The indispensable Daily Show takes on Berkeley’s crusade against the U.S. Marines. Code Pink looks black and blue after this pasting. I’m starting to think the Daily Show and the Colbert Report can pull me through four years of an Obama Administration.

The Wall Street Journal�s Washington Wire is a good place to find all the opinions (left and right) on the Geraldine Ferraro issue, and the issue she brought up. This isn�t as complicated as it seems. The Democratic Party has put itself into this box. It has, over the years, wanted to emphasize issues of race and ethnic politics--always focusing on collective diversity, rather than on what we have in common--and that led to a weird feminism and race-based reverse discrimination, etc. So now they no longer know how to talk about how race should be only minimally significant in public matters. It is possible that the world does, after all, move on merit. That�s one reason Hillary Clinton isn�t beating Barack Obama. This will be a hard box for them to get out of, and, because they refuse to listen to say Clarence Thomas, for example, they will have to rely on Senator Obama�s capacity with words to explain what justice is and how the content of one�s character is more important than the color of one�s skin, and then maybe what charity has to do with any of this. So far, Senator Obama has not been able to oblige. There are just a lot of accusations. Now, I know that this is bad for the Democratic Party, and therefore I should be happy with their predicament. While this is true, it is not good for the country. This is an opportunity for these two Democrats to explain how we ordinary citizens should be thinking about these important things. Maybe I�m expecting too much. Maybe Senator Obama should first explain why his long-time pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." You would think this would be rhetorically easy for Senator Obama to do. Then he can tackle the more difficult problem.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. declares the culture war over. Our various crises, he argues, are leading to a deemphasis of culture war issues, perhaps inaugurating a new version of what he calls the secular period from 1932 (FDR) to 1980 (RWR).

The crunchy con and the orthopaleo--or is it paleo-ortho?--con disagree.

So do I. My own peculiar reasoning has to do with Dionne’s chracterization of the secular period. He concedes that, for example, FDR used religious language. I’d add: quite confidently because American culture at that time was still watered-down mainline Protestant culture. But that was changing, especially among the elites, and it led to a judicial effort to purge the public square of the remnants of our past "religious" culture. By the time JFK is elected, it’s de rigeur for political figures to speak the language of separationism. In other words, what secularized American politics was not the press of "real" economic and foreign policy issues, but the efforts of elites (mostly under people’s radars) to drain what life was left out of our national vaguely religious, vaguely Protestant cultural consensus.

I’ll concede this much to Dionne: the cultural issues of the last two decades have receded a bit. Most of the states that want to affirm traditional marriage have done so, which means that issue, for the moment, doesn’t have much energy behind it. And, yes, kids don’t seem to care about it as much as do their elders. But abortion is still right there and, as MOJ’s Greg Sisk points out in this most excellent post, the oil Barack Obama wants to pour on our troubled cultural waters is highly flammable.

The stealth offensive that produced the reaction that we call our culture war started in the judiciary. Many social conservatives entered politics in response to judicial provocations. Does anyone think that a President Obama or a President Clinton won’t nominate Supreme Court justices whose opinions will constitute a new cultural casus belli?

Reihan Salam points to this Barone post on the loss of Denny Hastert’s erstwhile seat.

The issue is one that deserves some attention. In 2000 and 2004, Republicans prospered as the party of the suburbs and especially the exurbs. Not so in 2006.

1. The NATIONAL REVIEW seems to be saying that the Republican convention should be prepared to reject McCain’s VP choice should it be too strange or un-Republican. It might be the case that McCain manfully resisting the Republican establishment once again on national TV might help him in November. So it might be good to set up such a "pro wrestling" showndown to make the convention worth watching.

2. To Julie: Two-touchdown underdogs sometimes win, and Obama’s hyper-liberalism, inexperience, and naive views on foreign policy might do him in. Mac has a chance. But realistically speaking, the best case scenario is McCain squeaking by while the Democrats make significant gains in both the House and the Senate. The worst case scenario is a Democratic landslide everyhere, and that won’t happen because American has re-embraced ideological liberalism. People think the Republicans are screw-ups, and (to coin a phrase) it’s time for change. The Democratic Congress hasn’t been in power long enough for it really to be blamed for our discntents.

3. The national media has sort of flipped back to Obama by highlighting the alleged latent (and in the case of Ferraro overt) racism in Hillary’s and her supporters’ condescending and maternalistic comments about Barack. And his rejoinders have been very good and very featured.

4. Hillary’s claim that she’d be the better national security president has weight objectively but not in Democratic primaries or among superdelegates.

I know that the resignation of a combatant commander who has publicly challenged the policies of his commander-in-chief is not nearly as riveting as the resignation of an arrogant, self-righteous, nanny-state Democratic governor who seeks out sex with prostitutes, but in the greater scheme of things, the former story is more consequential.

Yesterday, Admiral William Fallon, commander of US Central Command, stepped down after an article in Esquire made it very clear that he was actively undermining the Bush adminstration policy in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iran.

This breathless NYT article describes this speech, in which President Bush once again indicates the universalistic basis for his approach to world affairs. He says again what he’s said many times before--"Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to all humanity." He proceeds to lay out what might be called the anthropological evidence for the proposition that freedom has a transformative power. Of course, there’s room to argue with him, on anthropological and historical grounds (which is where he chooses to make his stand).

Stated another way, despite the efforts of the NYT reporter to make it seem as if Bush’s foreign policy is altogether faith-based, it just ain’t so. His argument surely could be much more nuanced than it is, but a number of propositions are clear. First, freedom doesn’t require Christianity. The God who created us in His image gave freedom as a gift to everyone; it’s a matter--in Reformed parlance--of common grace, accessible to the Shinto Japanese, the Muslim Afghans, and Americans of all faiths and no faith.

Second, freedom is hard. People with little or no experience of it appreciate it, but don’t immediately know how to protect it and use it well. They also have determined and unscrupulous enemies who don’t wish them to learn these things.

Third, the spread of freedom ultimately [I’d add--perhaps not in every instance immediately] serves America’s security interests.

So the demands of justice and (long-term) interest come together:

People of all faiths and all backgrounds deserve the chance at a future of their own choosing. That’s what America believes. After all, those were the ideals that helped create our nation. Those ideals were an honorable achievement of our forefathers, and now it’s the urgent requirement of this generation.

Congratulations to this month’s winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Sam Patterson
Jim Branch
Evanthia Campione
Mona Gallagher
Julia Rybicki

Spitzer, as quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal:

"I believe in an evolving Constitution. . . A flexible Constitution allows us to consider not merely how the world was, but how it ought to be."

Studies show there asre more full-time administrators than instructors in higher education. You can download the full report from this site.

A word, first of all, about my relative silence--welcome, I’m sure, to some: I’ve been working on a couple of papers with tight deadlines and, in my spare time, writing a piece on the California homeschooling kerfluffle. The latter should appear soon on the First Things website. It’s a more or less formal version of the arguments you’ve seen here in various posts. The short of it is that California has a bad law and the best way to deal with that fact is to change it, not to rely on judges or administrators to offer creative interpretations.

But if you want news of what’s going on now, there’s this from the LAT: the state Superintendent of Public Instruction will uphold the status quo ante, which ought to reassure no one. Just think of how easy it would be for an estranged spouse to make life miserable for a homeschooling single parent by seeking a court order. And think of what might happen when there’s a new Governor and SPI in California. As I said, this is a golden opportunity to change the law, not heave a sigh of relief.

First the death of WFB left me with a monumental case of writer’s block. I just couldn’t come up with anything to express my thoughts about the man and his importance adequately. Now the Spitzer business has left me near speechless. I recall Malcom Muggeridge saying that he gave up doing satire in Punch magazine because real life had become so absurd that it was no longer possible to do satire.

So I’ll leave commentary on this to my better half and her sprightly blog SkepticsEye:

In other news, Dawn Wells, the actress who played feisty farm girl Mary Ann Summers (bet you didn’t know her last name, did you?) on the classic TV series Gilligan’s Island, is serving six months’ probation for possession of marijuana.

I’ve gotta say it--she looks pretty darn good for being 69.

Well, after eloquent statements by Julie and Peter, let me say: Hillary would very likely be a much better and certainly less dangerous president than Barack. I have that opinion, in part, because I think Bill was actually a good president in a number of ways. And in those areas where he was rather trashy, he’s certainly learned his lesson. Hillary wouldn’t be as good, but she’d certainly be competent on foreign policy. Compare her with the very inexperienced most liberal member of the Senate, about whom we have very little real to admire or trust.

ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND POLITICAL LIFE will be on March 26th and 27th (Wednesday and Thursday) in the beautiful SCIENCE AUDITORIUM on America’s largest campus (in terms of acres)--Berry College in Mount Berry. GA.

It isn’t the latest bioethics volume, which looks marvelously good, but Houston Baptist University is offering an interesting new publication, The City, to which you can subscribe here.