In Ramah is heard the sound of moaning,
of bitter weeping!
Rachel mourns her children,
she refuses to be consoled
because her children are no more.
Jeremiah 31:15
St. Stephen, the first martyr, has his feast day on December 26th. Today, it's the feast of the Holy Innocents, the infants and toddlers killed by Herod in an effort to get at Jesus. The joy of Christmas combined with sadness. It'd never hit me until this year. The Church, indeed, is an institution of paradox. Which is fitting, of course, since all being is filled with paradox.
The Breck Girl has joined the '08 race: Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards jumped into the presidential race Wednesday a day earlier than he'd planned, prodded by an Internet glitch to launch a candidacy focused on health care, taxes and other domestic issues.
It looks like we need more public phones in the UK: "Nearly half of Brits regularly chat to friends and family on their home phone naked, a survey has revealed."
I'm vigorously opposed to drunk driving, but I tip my long neck to this guy: "Police say a man they pulled over for driving drunk continued to swig his beer during his arrest."
Joseph Epstein's latest is worth checking out. He draws a great distinction between two types of presidents: believers and non-believers. And he's not talking about religion. Excerpts:
Four or so years ago, I heard the comedian Jackie Mason mock George W. Bush's slender rhetorical powers. "He stumbles, he stutters, he mispronounces. He goes arghh, he goes ahhh; he twists himself up in words; it's hopeless. Unlike Bill Clinton, who speaks with never a pause, never a miscue, never a hitch of any kind. You know, when you come to think of it, it's a hell of a lot easier to speak well when you don't believe a word you're saying."
More than merely amusing, this comic bit is provocatively suggestive. What it suggests is that American presidents can be divided into those who are true believers and those who are something else: managers, politicians, operators, men who just wanted the job. . . .
One of the worrisome things about Hillary Rodham Clinton is that it isn't entirely clear whether she is a true believer or just another standard politician, whose only question is how do I climb to the top of the greasy pole to the presidency. Since her election to the Senate, she has played artfully at being the standard pol. But is there, beneath the great senatorial platitudinarian, a woman who has deep beliefs about changing the country? Hillary the believer is much more frightening than Hillary the business-as-usual political hack.
