Politics

Wall Street Opinion Journal BRIDGET JOHNSON Wednesday, January 18, 2006

“This man might be innocent; this man is due to die,” blared the May 18, 1992, cover of Time magazine. “Roger Keith Coleman was convicted of killing his sister-in-law in 1982. The courts have refused to hear the evidence that could save him.” Accompanying the text was a full-cover photo of a shackled Coleman, looking morose in prison garb.

Before Coleman was sent to the electric chair two days later for the rape, stabbing and near-beheading of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his protestations of innocence had put an anti-death-penalty PR machine firmly in his corner. This man with a previous history of attempted rape became a cause célèbre telling his woeful tale of justice gone awry. “An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight,” he declared before his electrocution.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal Monday, January 16, 2006

‘He’s Throwing Away My Dream’
Today it’s liberal Democrats who stand in the schoolhouse door.

Milwaukee’s innovative school choice program has become a beacon of hope for reformers everywhere. But the educational establishment has never accepted its success and is now striking back. A cap on the number of students that can attend the city’s private choice schools has been reached, and starting Feb. 1, education officials will implement a rationing plan to allocate the program’s available seats. That could disrupt up to 4,000 families and create such chaos among the participating schools that several could be threatened with closure.

In 1995, then-Gov. Tommy Thompson joined with state legislators to expand choice in Milwaukee to include religious schools, but a compromise set a limit on the number of participating students at 15% of the enrollment in Milwaukee Public Schools. Today that means some 14,500 students, and demand is now higher than that for the slots which give $6,351 annual scholarships to students opting for choice schools (The public schools’ per pupil spending is about 80% higher).

To make matters worse, the state’s Department of Public Instruction has decreed that it will apply the cap not only to the program as a whole but to each participating school. That is, if the cap is enough to meet only 85% of the demand for vouchers, then each choice school would be allowed to fill only 85% of its available seats. The highly regarded Messmer Catholic Schools would lose 248 seats and the acclaimed Urban Day School would be down 225 seats.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal

It’s a sign of how little Democrats have on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito that on Day Three of his confirmation hearings they were still pounding away on his membership in an obscure Princeton alumni group that flowered briefly at the judge’s alma mater. They can’t touch him on credentials or his mastery of jurisprudence, so they’re trying to get him on guilt by ancient association.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal ARCH PUDDINGTON Thursday, January 5, 2006

John McWhorter ponders how to resolve black America’s crisis.

In the wake of last year’s rioting in France–centered in Muslim neighborhoods near Paris–we Americans may feel tempted, understandably, to congratulate ourselves, noting our superior capacity to bring into the mainstream people of different nationalities, cultures and skin colors. But the self-congratulation should go only so far. Yes, various nonwhite immigrant groups continue to find a place in American society and to do well, but there remains, in more than a few instances, a wide gap–in income and cultural identity–between America’s white and black citizens. Indeed, the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy to have a large, racially distinct underclass where unemployment, criminality and fatherless families are too often the norm.

Why this is so and what we are to do about it is the principal theme of John McWhorter’s splendid “Winning the Race.” In particular, Mr. McWhorter examines why the optimism that defined the years of the civil-rights movement has been replaced by defeatism and alienation in the black community–even as America’s racial attitudes and policies have changed so dramatically for the better.

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The Rev. Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo is the international director of the Barnabas Fund based in England. The Fund is a ministry which assists Christian minorities in the Islamic world and in other areas where Christians undergo persecution. Dr. Sookhdeo was recently in the United States where he spoke with David W. Virtue of VirtueOnline. Dr. Sookhdeo is a leading world authority on Islam, author of several books on Islam including “Understanding Islamic Terrorism” and “A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Islam”. Born in Pakistan of Islamic parentage he converted to Christianity while a student in London in the early 60s.

VirtueOnline: What does the Barnabas Fund (BF) do?

Sookhdeo: It calls attention to the plight of Christian minorities particularly within the Islamic world. It looks at the persecution they are experiencing and seeks to make this known to the wider world. It calls upon the church to pray for, to identify with, and to be advocate for and support practically their suffering brothers and sisters.

VirtueOnline: I gather you are the leading organization in the world involved in this kind of work, and that you inform a number of worldwide government institutions of the difficulties and challenges which Islam poses.

…
VirtueOnline: The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to hold the view that Islam can coexist peacefully with Christianity.

Sookhdeo: I would suggest that he listen to the voices of Christians within the Muslim world and in particular the voices coming from southern Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Pakistan and other countries. In these situations Christians experience discrimination, outright persecution and increasingly violence, being directed against them. If Islam is going to be a religion of peace and to coexist alongside Christianity then it must relinquish its theology of violence based on the revelations in the Koran. It must change its Shari’a Law and allow for full equality of Christians. It must allow Muslims the freedom to choose that is, to reject Islam if they so choose or embrace another religion if they so desire. It must give full freedom to women. Unless it can do these things how can there be co-existence? While the intention of the archbishop in seeking co-existence is good, whether Islam the religion will ever embrace his vision of society is another matter.

VirtueOnline: Are there any other difficulties?

Sookhdeo: There is a further difficulty. Many Christians in the Islamic world believe that some Christians in the West have betrayed them, that they have been sacrificed on the altar of interfaith, race and community relations. In their desire to make peace with Islam at any cost, they have sacrificed their brothers and sisters in this process. They also feel that it is patronizing and racist for white people to dialogue with Muslims on their behalf, as if non-Westerners were not capable of doing dialogue should they so desire.
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Ed: From NYT – can’t find online copy.

New York Times JOSEPH LOCONTE January 2, 2006

WASHINGTON

NANCY PELOSI, the Democratic leader in the House, sounded like an Old Testament prophet recently when she denounced the Republican budget for its “injustice and immorality” and urged her colleagues to cast their no votes “as an act of worship” during this religious season.

This, apparently, is what the Democrats had in mind when they vowed after President Bush’s re-election to reclaim religious voters for their party. In the House, they set up a Democratic Faith Working Group. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, created a Web site called Word to the Faithful. And Democratic officials began holding conferences with religious progressives. All of this was with the intention of learning how to link faith with public policy. An event for liberal politicians and advocates at the University of California at Berkeley in July even offered a seminar titled “I Don’t Believe in God, but I Know America Needs a Spiritual Left.”

A look at the tactics and theology of the religious left, however, suggests that this is exactly what American politics does not need. If Democrats give religious progressives a stronger voice, they’ll only replicate the misdeeds of the religious right.

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