"Quality time"

My wife read to me an excerpt, purportedly true, of a man who'd been keeping a daily journal. Apparently his son was keeping a journal at the same time. Somehow it came to the point that someone was reading both journals side by side, years later.

One day the father had taken his son fishing. The fish weren't biting, they didn't catch anything, not much was said between them. The father wrote in his journal that it was a pretty dull day.

The son wrote in glowing terms how it was the best day of his life.

I'm noting a small but growing trend among my liberal friends of the wives feeling confident enough in themselves to take a break from the career and be at home for the kids. They are confident enough that they no longer have to prove anything to anyone that they could re-enter the workforce any time and make a killing. But the kids thrive when they're home, they know it, and they go for the dream of staying home.

And with mom's example, Dad follows not far behind in cutting short the "surge" hours at work.

But there is still a narrow-minded portion of our liberal friends who still see things in such black-and-white terms about putting kids in daycare so that Mom can succeed, and if someone needs to stay home, Dad should consider it.

We have to have the confidence to accept the possibility that there are inborn differences between the sexes. This is not a limiting reality, but a liberating one.

Why Christian?

Within the diverse crowd that calls itself liberal are a good number of those who don't believe in God. I was once such a person. I thought that when I died, I would cease to exist. And, you know, I really didn't worry about it, because it seemed so long away.

But I still sought the truth. I was restless about finding the truth. Especially about the big questions: Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? I had a strong instinct that the answers to these questions had to be very simple.

And so I think the questions and answers are still very simple. Jesus of Nazareth did walk the earth. Either he was God, as he said he was, or he wasn't. And he started a church. Either it became what was later called the Catholic Church, as the Church claims, or it became something else. Either the Church gives us the best answers we have this side of death to those questions -- why am I here, where did I come from, where am I going -- or no one really has those answers.

I say Jesus was God, his church was and is the Catholic Church, and the Church calls us to give all of ourselves every moment of the day to God and neighbor. This is love -- a total self donation. It is the origin and destiny of every human being who says "yes".

1%

That's what the economy grew in the last quarter, revised UPWARD from 0.9%. Defying all the journalists, Buffet, and Greenspan himself.

Yet Wall Street tanked today. What's going on? What's the real story?

The conservative big tent

In the middle of confession yesterday with my good pastor friend, a conservative, I realized something. Either he thinks I'm on his side, because I'm pro-life, or, like another Christ, he truly doesn't care. Anyhow, I don't detect any distance or walking on egg shells like you normally detect around political opposites trying to be polite around each other.

I just wish he would be harder on me in confession. He's practically liberal.

Liberal themes on Broadway

When I was sitting in the audience of a show on Broadway yesterday, I couldn't help but wonder what the conservatives in the audience must be thinking. The show in front of us, Mamma Mia, had plenty of references and undercurrents that downplayed marriage, upplayed sex, and took some wisecracks at Catholic upbringing. I even had to wince a little. It was a great show, great singing, but it left a taste in my mouth.

Is being liberal really about doing whatever you want, with whomever, with no one to judge you? Is that what we're really about?

Color Purple - dinner scene

Color Purple scene - God is trying to tell you something

Deliverance dueling banjo scene

Don't know how many of my liberal friends have seen this movie. Dems won't retake the South until they start going to NASCAR again.

Dems = Love; Reps = Fear?

My liberal friends have been too polite to name this so starkly. But I think this presumption underlies our whole view about the superiority of our approach to life: that we are the party of love, and conservatives are the party of fear.

And, since mercy, not justice, is the predominant theme of the gospel, we believe our wing of Catholicism will prevail in the end.

The only thing keeping us back from winning is our deal with the devil on abortion rights. I can see why we empathize with the poor women in trouble, but I honestly can't explain, after spending so much time among the liberal family, why we fail to humanize the unborn among us.

It would be quite natural for us to champion their cause, too. And then we would have quite a lasting political majority.

Time to drill in Alaska? Time for nuclear?

We progressives I believe share two main ideals about energy policy: that we should personally stop doing the things that use too much energy (like driving SUVs), and we should look for friendly energy sources such as sun, wind, and water.

Our approach admittedly has weaknesses. On the former matter, we tend to want to impose our restrictions on others, such as the bone-headed zero-population notion, and in so doing, violate our own love of freedom. We also lose our appeal to moderates that way.

On the latter point, we just haven't found efficient ways to provide all of our remaining needs for energy. It makes us cringe to think of interrupting the pristine Alaskan wilderness, especially after the Valdez, or of creating new nuclear waste sites. But I think McCain has us cornered on this one. We really don't have better alternatives at $4 a gallon.

Should married Catholic men wear cologne?

I was just wondering this in Mass this morning. I usually wear cologne as a professional thing to do in a business setting. But I'd mistakenly doused it on this morning. And I was sure the women near me could smell it. Which got me thinking, why I am doing this, anyway? I don't need to attract the attention of a woman. And, the pit stick is to fight the BO. So why do we do this?

I don't really have a good answer, other than as a backup for the pit stick.

Maybe just put it on for special occasions to make me feel more on top of my game.

UK high school girls' pact to get pregnant

A sad tale of 17 girls who felt no love in their families, and sought this love from babies they agreed to all raise together.

http://wbztv.com/local/gloucester.high.school.2.751873.html

The problems here are bigger than the typical liberal/conservative debate over contraception distribution in schools. In this case, no amount of birth control education or supplies would have made a difference.

Bush gives Merkel backrub

Why people gloomier than the economy?

So says a news analysis today:
"The last time consumers were this miserable, in May 1980, the jobless rate was 7.5 percent and inflation was 14.4 percent. Now those numbers are 5.5 percent and 4.2 percent respectively."

Why is this so? People disproportionately let the price of gas and food, and the value of their homes, affect their economic outlook. Plus, they're worried about all the press on the financial crisis, and they've simply had it too good for two decades and don't remember what a real recession is like.

So this was probably a good thing to happen to us.

Yves St. Laurent and my wife's jeans

The death of this fashionista reminded us of this man's great influence: it was he who brought us pants worn by women, and later women's jeans. A radically liberal idea at the time, it's kind of funny to see the most conservative women embracing this change. One of my wife's conservative girl friends confirmed that pants are much more comfortable than skirts and dresses. (I personally think they both look degrees of magnitude more beautiful and captivating in dresses.)

This huge change only serves to embolden us liberals that conservatives will eventually get used to all of our new changes through the passage of time. The revolution of Yves St Laurent spurs us on to propose the liberal world without boundaries.

And yet, even the liberal Catholic has his boundaries, which are sometimes hard to reconcile with everything liberal.

European Union is neither

So, the Irish have rejected the new EU constitution, which France and Germany sought to use to counter US influence in the world by creating the United State of Europe that they controlled. Not to mention that the constitution made no mention of Europe's Christian heritage. Not to mention the prospect of admitting Turkey, a decidedly non-European state that oppresses Christianity.

Bravo for Ireland.

Tim Russert a good liberal

A number of my conservative friends did not know Russert was an old-style liberal -- because he spared neither conservative nor liberal on his show. He got to the core of an issue and stuck with the facts, scarcely revealing his own liberal soul. This is the mark of a true journalist -- and peacemaker.

Someone should make a hall of fame of "good" liberals both we and conservatives could agree on. Russert would be on that list.

Gay marriage in California no gain for progressives

I don't know if I have one progressive friend who understands my reluctance to embrace this slowly accelerating movement to recognize gay civil unions and marriages. Either my own liberal credentials are questioned, or my comments are met with silence or simply ignored.

I think we are progressive Catholics have to seriously ask ourselves what does it mean to be Catholic. What does it mean to be another Christ. During his encounter with the Magdaline, he did not say to her your lifestyle is OK, let alone granting her a certificate sanctioning it. He said go and sin no more.

Sin is a hard thing for my liberal friends to deal with, because it means there are sinners in need. It feels condescending, so we don't like it.

But conservative Catholics will rightly question our commitment to our shared faith if we go willy nilly over the cliff of hyberbole surrounding these latest developments. This is not a good development for us.

Rights for Guantanamo prisoners

The recent landmark Supreme Court ruling extending rights to the terrorists at Guantanamo will be a challenge for conservative Catholics to swallow. On the one hand, most of these men at Gitmo are in fact enemies of the United States and the freedoms it just extended to them.

On the other hand, we as Catholics believe all men are created in the image and likeness of God and are worthy of dignity, even if they are murderers and child molesters of the worst kind.

We progressives are accused of being soft on criminals in the sometimes naive hope of their redemption and rehabilitation. But now the challenge has been put to conservatives to explain why there should be a place in the world where the US can treat people without the protection of our Constitution, even if they mean us harm.

I doubt we will see much in the National Catholic Register about this one.

Weather God's wrath?

Every time we have a series of major disasters -- this year being the flood in Burma, earthquake in China, and the extended winter in the US followed by lots of tornados -- it spawns commentary on these things being punishments on the world.

It's a good question. God is in charge of the universe, no doubt. And we're doing a lot to displease him these days. And he wiped people out in the Bible who were not shaking out well.

But what would it take for the Father of mercy to impose such widespread pain upon people by intervening in the natural order he set up? For these massive losses of life and property to end up in the win column.

Oldest Christian church discovered in Jordan

One more piece to the puzzle...

***************
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed what they claim is the world's first church, dating back almost 2,000 years, The Jordan Times reported on Tuesday.
"We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," the head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said.

He said it was uncovered under Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab in northern Jordan near the Syrian border.

"We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians -- the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," Husan said.

These Christians, who are described in a mosaic as "the 70 beloved by God and Divine," are said to have fled persecution in Jerusalem and founded churches in northern Jordan, Husan added.

He cited historical sources which suggest they both lived and practised religious rituals in the underground church and only left it after Christianity was embraced by Roman rulers.

The bishop deputy of the Greek Orthodox archdiocese, Archimandrite Nektarious, described the discovery as an "important milestone for Christians all around the world."

Researchers recovered pottery dating back to between the 3rd and 7th centuries, which they say suggests these first Christians and their followers lived in the area until late Roman rule.

Inside the cave there are several stone seats which are believed to have been for the clergy and a circular shaped area, thought to be the apse.

There is also a deep tunnel which is believed to have led to a water source, the archaeologist added.

Rihab is home to a total of 30 churches and Jesus and the Virgin Mary are believed to have passed through the area, Husan said.

No heterosexual AIDS pandemic after all

The head of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDs section, Kevin de Cock, bravely admitted today what some politicians did not want to do.

*******
Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

A 25-year health campaign was misplaced outside the continent of Africa. But the disease still kills more than all wars and conflicts

By Jeremy Laurance
Sunday, 8 June 2008

...Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."

In 2006, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which provides 20 per cent of all funding for Aids, warned that Russia was on the cusp of a catastrophe. An estimated 1 per cent of the population was infected, mainly through injecting drug use, the same level of infection as in South Africa in 1991 where the prevalence of the infection has since risen to 25 per cent.

Dr De Cock said: "I think it is unlikely there will be extensive heterosexual spread in Russia. But clearly there will be some spread."

Aids still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined, and is vastly bigger than current efforts to address it. A joint WHO/UN Aids report published this month showed that nearly three million people are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world, but this is less than a third of the estimated 9.7 million people who need them. In all there were 33 million people living with HIV in 2007, 2.5 million people became newly infected and 2.1 million died of Aids.

Aids organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria, spending it on the wrong measures such as abstinence programmes rather than condoms, and failing to build up health systems.

Dr De Cock labelled these the "four malignant arguments" undermining support for the global campaign against Aids, which still faced formidable challenges, despite the receding threat of a generalised epidemic beyond Africa.

Any revision of the threat was liable to be seized on by those who rejected HIV as the cause of the disease, or who used the disease as a weapon to stigmatise high risk groups, he said.

"Aids still remains the leading infectious disease challenge in public health. It is an acute infection but a chronic disease. It is for the very, very long haul. People are backing off, saying it is taking care of itself. It is not."

Critics of the global Aids strategy complain that vast sums are being spent educating people about the disease who are not at risk, when a far bigger impact could be achieved by targeting high-risk groups and focusing on interventions known to work, such as circumcision, which cuts the risk of infection by 60 per cent, and reducing the number of sexual partners.

There were "elements of truth" in the criticism, Dr De Cock said. "You will not do much about Aids in London by spending the funds in schools. You need to go where transmission is occurring. It is true that countries have not always been good at that."

But he rejected an argument put in The New York Times that only $30m (£15m) had been spent on safe water projects, far less than on Aids, despite knowledge of the risks that contaminated water pose.

"It sounds a good argument. But where is the scandal? That less than a third of Aids patients are being treated – or that we have never resolved the safe water scandal?"

One of the danger areas for the Aids strategy was among men who had sex with men. He said: " We face a bit of a crisis [in this area]. In the industrialised world transmission of HIV among men who have sex with men is not declining and in some places has increased.

"In the developing world, it has been neglected. We have only recently started looking for it and when we look, we find it. And when we examine HIV rates we find they are high.

"It is astonishing how badly we have done with men who have sex with men. It is something that is going to have to be discussed much more rigorously."

The biggest puzzle was what had caused heterosexual spread of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa – with infection rates exceeding 40 per cent of adults in Swaziland, the worst-affected country – but nowhere else.

"It is the question we are asked most often – why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships."

"Sexual behaviour is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships creating sexual networks that, from an epidemiological point of view, are more efficient at spreading infection."

Low rates of circumcision, which is protective, and high rates of genital herpes, which causes ulcers on the genitals through which the virus can enter the body, also contributed to Africa's heterosexual epidemic.

But the factors driving HIV were still not fully understood, he said.

"The impact of HIV is so heterogeneous. In the US , the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate. That is in one country. How do you explain such differences?"

English baby survives abortion, mother glad

When will our liberal brothers see the light?

Baby Miraculously Survives Abortion, Expected to Live 'Normal' Life
Thursday, June 05, 2008

A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.

Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.

Percival's first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys — which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby — and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported.

Click here for a photo of baby Finley.

"I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant," Percival, 25, said. "Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby."

A short time after the abortion, Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach. She went to the doctor for a scan and discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant.

"I couldn't believe it,' Percival said. "This was the baby I thought I'd terminated. At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed. I wrote to the hospital, I couldn't believe that they had let me down like this.

"They wrote back and apologized and said it was very rare," she added.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing health editor for FOXNews.com, said Percival's situation is actually quite common.

"Women that have early terminations in weeks six, seven and eight, many times the pregnancy is so small that doctors miss removing the baby," Alvarez said. "The danger is that the failed attempt can damage the baby. That is why these patients who get early terminations need follow-ups."

Another scan a week later confirmed the baby also had kidney problems, but doctors told the couple the baby was likely to survive, so they decided he deserved another chance at life.

In November, Finley was born three weeks premature. He had minor kidney damage but is expected to lead a normal life.

Click here for more on this story

Lesbian PDAs

Interesting run-down of crack-downs on gay public displays of affection:

"It all depends on the degree," Mark Ackerman said as he waited for a hot dog outside Safeco Field before Wednesday's game. "Even for heterosexual couples."

Since the incident, Guerrero's job and her past have come under scrutiny. She works at a bar known for scantily clad women and was a contestant on the MTV reality show "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila," in which women and men compete for the affection of a bisexual Internet celebrity.

"People are saying it's 15 more minutes for my career," Guerrero said of the ballpark furor, "but this is not making me look very good."

In 2007, an Oregon transit agency chief apologized after a lesbian teenager was kicked off a bus when a passenger complained about her kissing another girl.

Also in 2007, a gay rights group protested a Kansas City, Mo., restaurant they said ejected four women because two of them kissed, and a Texas state trooper was placed on probation in 2004 for telling two gay men who were kissing at the state Capitol that homosexual conduct was illegal in Texas.

Two-year recession?

This, from the pessimists on Wall Street who are human and need to justify their recent mistakes by saying things are going to be really bad for everyone, because things are really bad for them.

Subprime debacle may spark 2-year credit recession
By Walden Siew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A "credit recession" sparked by the U.S. housing market downturn and excesses in structured finance may last more than two years, and the financial sector will undergo "massive consolidation," leading Wall Street strategists said on Wednesday.

The fallout from deteriorating subprime mortgages and the broader housing and credit crisis will eventually lead to a healthier market, but not until after a prolonged purging process, Jack Malvey, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's (LEH.N) chief global fixed-income strategist, said in New York.

"We're going through a tough spell with regard to credit," Malvey said at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference.

The "subprime debacle" due to years of excess and easy credit will be followed by years of tight credit, Malvey said

Economic power shifting from US to Asia

We should dust up on our Cantonese and Hindi.

Amid economic slowdown, signs of new world order
By Mark Trumbull
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080602/ts_csm/ameristuck

The world economy is cooling this year thanks to a slowdown in the United States, but something new is playing out: This slowdown is serving to amplify a shift in financial power toward Asia and developing nations.

Countries such as China and India are now big enough to help guide the global economy. In the past, a sharp downshift in the US and Europe would decisively slow the rate of global growth.

This time, emerging markets appear poised to grow collectively by 6.7 percent this year, according to recent forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. As a result, the IMF sees world gross domestic product (GDP) growing 3.7 percent, even though the US might experience a recession.

Billionaire universities

If mammon is our goal, send the kids to the Ivies. This in from Forbes Magazine:

For every one opening at Harvard's undergraduate college, there were 14 hopeful high school applicants. Despite the daunting odds, there's good reason to try to win one of those coveted acceptance letters.

Harvard is consistently ranked as one of the top schools in the country. Its $35 billion endowment makes it the best-funded college in the United States.

Oh, and there's this: Harvard students are more likely to become billionaires than graduates of any other college.

Of the 469 Americans on Forbes' most recent list of the world's billionaires, 50 received at least one degree from Harvard. The school has produced 20 more current American billionaires than No. 2 on our list, Stanford University.

More from Forbes.com:

• In Pictures: The Billionaire Universities

• In Pictures: Meet the Fashion Billionaires

• In Pictures: The Top 10 Cities for Billionaires

Harvard's billionaire alumni are an accomplished group. They include Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and media tycoon Sumner Redstone.

Stanford University trails Harvard, but still boasts 30 billionaire alumni. These include Nike co-founder Philip Knight and discount brokerage mogul Charles Schwab.

Fittingly, the California university, which has produced so many ultra-wealthy businesspeople, was founded by one. The grieving railroad tycoon Leland Stanford decided to found a university after his only son died of typhoid fever. With considerable land and money donations from the Californian, the school opened its doors in 1891.

Following Stanford is the University of Pennsylvania, with 27 graduates. Notable members of the group include real estate king Donald Trump and SAC Capital founder Steven Cohen.

Rounding out the top five are Yale, with 19 billionaire graduates, and Columbia University, with 15. The top school from the Midwest is the University of Chicago, ranked seventh, with 10 grads. No. 1 from the south is Duke, with eight.

Cage fighting

OK, I admit I stooped down into the red world and watched a cage fight, dubbed Mixed Martial Arts. You know, you have to occasionally monitor the "other side." Here is part of a commentary from one writer on the four things wrong with the MMA championship:

"The Ear. What, you’ve seen an ear like that before? When everyone predicted this would be a freak show, no one thought the Colossus would take it to heart. His cauliflower ear was massive, this huge ball of blood and puss hanging off his head.

Ah, didn’t anyone think to mention he might want to drain that thing before Kimbo whacks him upside the head and makes it explode? Which, of course, happened.

Pre-fight, as the cameras zoomed in on that monstrosity everyone watching was horrified, fascinated or laughing uncontrollably. It was something out of a summer comedy; I kept expecting Verne Troyer to appear in the scene. CBS’s Gus Johnson declared it an “alien life form.”

This was the stuff that pained longtime fans. For the average person just looking for something to watch, though, this train wreck was wildly entertaining. At the very least, it was memorable. Not everyone is concerned about the integrity of cage fighting."

Comment: It really was a big ear.

Conservatives more honest than liberals?

Them's fightin words. This just in:

Conservatives more honest than liberals?
Charlotte Examiner | Peter Schweizer

Posted on Monday, June 02, 2008 12:20:14 PM by Dawnsblood

The headline may seem like a trick question — even a dangerous one — to ask during an election year. And notice, please, that I didn’t ask whether certain politicians are more honest than others. (Politicians are a different species altogether.) Yet there is a striking gap between the manner in which liberals and conservatives address the issue of honesty.

Consider these results:

Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are “very conservative.” When Pew Research asked whether it was “morally wrong” to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.

Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?”

Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.

When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.

The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.

Another survey by Barna Research found that political liberals were two and a half times more likely to say that they illegally download or trade music for free on the Internet.

A study by professors published in the American Taxation Association’s Journal of Legal Tax Research found conservative students took the issue of accounting scandals and tax evasion more seriously than their fellow liberal students. Those with a “liberal outlook” who “reject the idea of absolute truth” were more accepting of cheating at school, according to another study, involving 291 students and published in the Journal of Education for Business.

A study in the Journal of Business Ethics involving 392 college students found that stronger beliefs toward “conservatism” translated into “higher levels of ethical values.” And academics concluded in the Journal of Psychology that there was a link between “political liberalism” and “lying in your own self-interest,” based on a study involving 156 adults.

Liberals were more willing to “let others take the blame” for their own ethical lapses, “copy a published article” and pass it off as their own, and were more accepting of “cheating on an exam,” according to still another study in the Journal of Business Ethics.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all conservatives are honest and all liberals are untrustworthy. But clearly a gap exists in the data. Why? The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.

However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.

The honesty gap is also not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.

Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate “doesn’t have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”

During this political season, honesty is often in short supply. But at least we can improve things by accepting the idea that truth and honesty exist. As the late scholar Sidney Hook put it, “the easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.”

New 100 meter record

My liberal friends are reluctant to acknowledge the results of a study by Track & Field magazine some time ago... that the top 3 finishers in the Olympic 100 meter dash for the past several decades have been men of West African descent - whether they be wearing the flag of the US, Canada, Britain, or Jamaica. I say more power to them.

And yesterday, the world record fell again, to the unbelievable time of 9.72. It takes me that long to roll out of bed.

Doubts Rise as 100-Meter Record Falls

...The 6-foot-5 Bolt, 21, who was aided by an allowable tailwind, is undeniably a prodigious talent. As a 15-year-old, he won the world junior championship at 200 meters. He later became the first junior sprinter to break 20 seconds for the 200. He holds the Jamaican record of 19.75 seconds and finished second to Gay in the 200 at the 2007 world championships.

Wariness about Bolt stems from the fact that he has run the 100 only five times professionally, yet he has posted two of the three fastest performances ever.

If Bolt is clean — and at this point there is no evidence that he is not — he already finds himself a victim of the most corrosive aspect of pervasive doping: the innocent can no longer prove their innocence.

“People are suspicious,” said Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners and race director of the New York City Marathon. “It’s going to take another generation of athletes before we can get over it, probably.”