With Al Franken taking Norm Coleman’s seat in the Senate, the 111th Congress is down to a single Republican, Virginia’s Eric Cantor, among its 44 Jewish members. I wonder if this is something about which to worry, not because I am a Republican (I am a member of no political party), but because being so…

Writing in the Washington Post, Former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton suggests that an Israeli attack aimed at the eradication of Iran’s emergent nuclear capacity is a reasonable proposition. And just yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden told George Stephanopoulos that such a strike was within Israel’s sovereign power even if it was not entirely in…

Newly released tapes from the Nixon Library certainly make these fair questions, and not for the first time. Particularly disturbing, especially for those who have limited familiarity with the New Testament, was their conversation about those who are part of the “synagogue of Satan”. But perhaps even more importantly, since Graham is an old man…

Politicians invoke God and the Bible both because it works, and in cases like that of Governor Sanford who compared himself to King David, because it nourishes their outsized egos — situating their personal dramas within a cosmically significant narrative. It works, because whether the politicians themselves are truly religious or not, we Americans are…

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