So Hillary gets to have it both ways.  She has finally found a use for her husband.  She sends him out on his attack missions while she maintains plausible deniability.  Obama has to deny her her deniability.  The next time he has a chance and every time he needs to after that, he needs to convey the following message:

My colleague, the junior senator from New York has to make a choice:  Either she takes responsibility for everything her husband says, or she admits to the country that she cannot control him and that electing her means that we will be selecting Bill Clinton to run our country for another eight years.

Though I intend to blog mainly on political issues, I reserve the right to blog on anything.  So here:

Months ago, I was looking for a quote by an Israeli official that was too anti-American to be believed.  I think it was something Jimmy Carter had reported.  In any case, I stumbled on a website which claimed to show what a horrible book the Talmud is.  It listed a number of horrible quotes from the Talmud to make its case.  I am not Talmudic scholar, but one of the portions that they quoted was something that I had read.  I went to my bookshelf and took down the large volume.  I looked up the portion in question and realized what the problem was.  Of course the website itself had no attribution.  It was anonymous, and it listed no way to contact, comment or reply to the writer.

Now that I have created a blog, I can finally post what would have been my reply to that misconception.  I went back to google to try to find it and I could not.  Strangely enough, I found many sites that repeat that misconception.  You can check some yourself here,  here and here.

Interestingly enough, all of these sites seem to be making the exact same points.  I don't pretend that any author of those websites will read this and be persuaded.  Nor do I believe that anyone reading this (is there anyone?) would believe any of these sites are true.  But I think it is an interesting lesson on how things can get distorted and how distortions can be propagated throughout cyberspace.  To save you from looking at those sites, here is the morsel of anti-semitism that these people attribute to the Talmud:

Jews May Steal from Non-Jews
- Baba Mezia 24a

The Talmud, of course, is Judaism's "Oral Law."  A collection of commentaries and discussions that collectively make up what is now Jewish tradition.  It is an inexact description, but I said I was not a Talmudic scholar.

This portion spends a great deal of time discussing when one must search for the owner of a lost article (to return it) and when it is permissible to not return it.  Many factors are considered such as whether it is identifiable (a twenty dollar bill would not be, but a twenty dollar bill wrapped in a red ribbon might), how easy it would be to pick up and carry (a bag of rice would be easy, the contents of the bag, if it had spilt on the ground would not), and so forth.

It is important to note that the issue is not whether it should be returned, but rather how much effort are you required to expend in order to find its owner.  Go around asking people if they lost a twenty dollar bill and you might get a number of positive responses.  Ask them to identify how it was wrapped and you may be able to find the right owner.

So where do these people get the idea that it is fine to steal from non-Jews?  If one of the premises of the discussion is that you do not know who the owner is, how can the Talmud tell you not to return it if you know it belongs to a non-Jew.  You don't know who the owner is.  How could you know that he is not Jewish?  One of the criteria discussed to determine whether or not to try to find the owner is whether or not the owner will be looking for whatever he lost.  Certainly, it will be easier to return the article if the owner himself is actually looking for it.  And one of the factors that may determine whether or not the owner is looking for it is whether or not it was found in a place frequented by Jews.

So the Rabbis were under the impression that anything lost in a place frequented by non-Jews would be found by non-Jews, figure the finder would not be Jewish and be on his way.  On the other hand, if it was frequented by Jews, it would be found by Jews and Jews are subject to this "oral law" that requires the finder to try to find out who the owner is, greatly increasing the chances that the lost object would be returned.

The issue, then, is not whether the OWNER is Jewish or not, but whether the owner thinks the FINDER would be Jewish or not.  Presumably, an owner who is not Jewish who knows about this part of Jewish law would still benefit from it if he ever lost something in a place frequented by Jews.

You might think this still reflects a bit of anti-gentile sentiment from the Rabbis.  After all, they think people will figure that an object is more likely to be returned if it is found by a Jew than a non-Jew.  This bit of prejudice is benign pride at best, and at worst, an overly important view of their marvelous little book.

But we are all subject to this little bit of prejudice today, if in a slightly different form.  How many of us are more likely to think a lost object will be returned if we lost it in a Church than if we lost it in, say, a train station?

Isn't it amazing how this nice little lesson gets twisted and distorted and how the distortion travels far and wide.  The moral of this story is to not blindly repeat things we read or hear without doing at least some fact-checking. 

This is a message to Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin and all of the conservative politicians and everyone else who writes and talks about immigration from a conservative viewpoint.

This is not a substantial mistake.  It does not really alter anyone's preferred policy.  But in a world where the word is crucial, where the soundbyte is the message, the damage this mistake makes can be devastating.

When discussing immigration issues we often contrast illegal immigrants with citizens.  We suggest that, before we offer them services, we should inquire as to whether or not they are citizens.  Whenever we say that, we put another nail on the coffin of establishing an effective immigration enforcement policy.

Except for voting and serving on a jury, we should never say that we want to limit this or that to CITIZENS.  Of course for establishing eligibility to vote, the question is always whether a person is a citizen or not.  For other benefits and privileges (especially driver's licenses) the issue should be whether or not they are citizens or legal residents, or whether they are here illegally.  And for my money, legal residents would include citizens, so we ought to be able to leave it at that.  I am aware, however that as a legal term, legal resident may not actually include citizens.

When the issue is brought up, conservatives will say they are for legal immigration--that they would never take away benefits from people who are here legally. But unless the issue is brought to our attention, that is not what we say.

The impact of this minor issue is that the more we say immigrant vs. citizen the more we are open to charges of racism and nativism.  We don't think this way.  We don't believe this.  Romney's response to Guiliani's charge of "Sanctuary Mansion" was right on target.  We presume people are here legally and we certainly don't question someone's legality because of their appearance or their accent.  We internalize that the contrast is between people that are here legally and people that are not here legally.  And yet we say we want to make sure that only citizens can get driver's licenses.

Change the way we phrase the issue.  Always talk about legal resident vs. illegal immigrant.  NEVER use the word citizen unless you are talking about voting rights.  Take way the open border's advocates' ammunition about being nativist or racist.  They may never give up their mantra, but the more we focus the debate on legal vs. illegal and away from immigrant vs. citizen, the less their mantra will ring true among those who are truly grappling with the issue.

OK.  I'll deal with this now.

At the risk of providing clues to who I am, I was a speech coach at an inner city high school.  As part of our work, my students and I would often discuss political issues and we would deal with both sides.  This happened mostly when we were preparing for student congresses, but it occurred at other times, as well.  I remember I was discussing an issue with a student one time and I happened to be presenting the conservative viewpoint. She expressed surprise because, apparently, I was presenting ideas she had never encountered in her classes.  I happened to mention that she did need to know that whatever she was being taught in her classes, there always was another side (an "Other Side"?).  Her reply stunned me.  She said she didn't know there was another side.

Soon after this incident, I would email a list of current and former speech students articles that I had encountered that  either showed the distinction between conservatives and liberals, or which would demonstrate a liberal bias either in the media or education. I am not sure if they were read, and I am not sure if I ever made a difference.  Teachers rarely know whether they make a difference or not.  It didn't matter.  I think this is an important issue not because I want to turn out class after class of conservative graduates, but just so that they know there is another side.  Perhaps some of the more intelligent ones by turn more conservative, but I just wanted them to be aware of the other side.  I wanted their political view to be a product of their intelligence, not their teacher's biases.

I did notice something about at least one of the students, a budding young journalist who would often be published in the local papers.  The last few of her articles that she sent me had acquired more of a red tint than they had had in the past.  It may have been my imagination. It may have been her maturing.  Or it may have been The Other Side.

I no longer coach speech, and it is a shame.  I don't mind having the Saturdays off, however.  In one sense it is just as well.  I used to take pride in being able to present both sides when discussing congress bills and not having the students be aware which side I personally believed.  It is important to be able to argue both sides.  This is true of advocates as well as speech coaches--if you can't argue your opponent's position, you'll have a hard time defending your own.  More recently, I began to have difficulty credibly expressing the liberal view point.  I could still mouth the arguments, but it was apparent I didn't really believe them.  I may have moved somewhat to the right, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that was not it.  The reason for my newly acquired inability to convincingly express the liberal viewpoint probably had more to do with the basic untenability of many of their positions.

Why The Other Side?  That is for later.  I wanted to start with an easy post.

Article VI Blog and Hugh Hewitt have both covered the Brian Williams-Mormon question, first attacking Williams for apparently creating a question based on a faulty interpretation of poll data, and then retracting or amending the attack.

When was the last time any liberal blogger/talk show host EVER posted a correction as prominently as they posted the original erroneous entry?