Great speech by Bush last night. The general consensus seems to be that Republicans loved it and Democrats hated it. In many ways it was the most progressive speech from a Republican in years. He wants to fight AIDS in Africa, expand child tax credits, and help drug addicts and children of inmates. His case against Iraq was superb because he did several things:

The Democrats came off pretty weak last night. They have no clear leader or message. Ted Kennedy was barely conscious last night. John Kerry hardly looked presidential. Hillary and Lieberman were whispering sweet nothings to each other all night. Tom Daschle faded into the background like so much white noise. Dick Gephardt and Nancy Pelosi were barely even visible. Not to mention the debacle that was Gov. Locke’s response to Bush’s speech. He looked like a cheap city politician reading the traffic code in a garage. Again, this is the best they could do?

Bush needs to maintain the momentum he gained in November and roll right through the UN and into Iraq. Maybe after we liberate the Iraqi people they’ll want to join the Union and Bush can count on their electoral votes in 2004.

On this State of the Union 2003, how about a look back at the first President George W.’s State o’ da Union, circa 1790:

In reforming your consultations for the general good, you cannot but derive encouragement from the reflection, the measures of the last session have been as satisfactory to your constituents as the novelty and difficulty of the work allowed you to hope.– Still further to realize their expectations, and to secure the blessings which a gracious Providence has placed within our reach, will in the course of the present important session, call for the cool and deliberate exertion of your patriotism, firmness and wisdom.

And I bet he wasn’t interrupted every five minutes by a round of applause. But how did anyone watch the SotU before C-SPAN?

How about a little Franklin Roosevelt?

This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the world’s greatest war against human slavery.

We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule.

But I do not think that any of us Americans can be content with mere survival. Sacrifices that we and our allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.

We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster- that we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism—that we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash.

So here we are in January of 2003, over six months since the renewed talk of war with Iraq began. In that time, we’ve gone from no one taking the idea of disarming Saddam seriously to UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq running into brick walls. From the report of Hans Blix to the UN:

The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said, the agent was never weaponised.

UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilisation and that more had been achieved than has been declared.

What amazes me is that a year ago in the State of the Union, Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the Axis of Evil. Well, a year later, he’s 2 for 3. And don’t think that Iran won’t fall once Iraq does. The seeds of democracy are firmly planted in Tehran.

The idiocy from the left continues: Helen Thomas, the wicked witch of the White House briefing room, has called Bush the worst president ever. Ever? Helen, that’s a bold statement. There have been some real loser presidents in the least 10 years.

When Mel Gibson first announced that he was planning a film of the last day of Christ’s life and was going to shoot it in Latin and Aramaic — without subtitles — I thought it was a great idea. It totally flouts everything in Hollywood today. To seriously deal with the issue of faith in a traditional and respectful way must infuriate so many of Hollywood’s elitists. I can’t wait … The film is due out by Easter of 2004.

Having used the DC Metro quite a but when I lived in Baltimore and worked in Northern Virginia, I find stories like this one from Metafilter pretty interesting.

Is Something afoot at the DC Metro’s Crystal City station? First its the mysterious derailment on Tuesday, still unexplained. Now a strange man is spotted with vials of a unknown liquid in the station before the system is even open! What’s up at Crystal City?

My favorite weird DC Metro experience were the occasions when I’d be on the same car as the singing Korean. He is this Korean guy who rides the DC Metro during the morning rush, gets on a subway car, sings a single verse of a hymn until the car arrives at the next station, exits the car, and gets back onto the next car and repeats the whole scenario. He rules! He’s been blogged here.

A film production company in Virginia has produced a documentary on the life of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They submitted it to the Sundance Film Festival but were rejected, so they went a different route. They arranged screenings at local churches in Park City, Utah where the annual festival is held. Apparently, many films that don’t make the cut use a similar strategy, renting out local venues or showing their films at coffeeshops to attract some attention from festival-goers. The organizers hope the film will attract an estimated 1000 people.

Bonhoeffer’s opposition to the Nazi regime in World War II Germany — to the point that he supported a plan to assasinate Hitler — landed him in a concerntration camp where he was eventually hanged in 1945.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade — a decision that effectively rendered any anti-abortion laws unenforcable. After three decades, not much has been changed, even after several conservative presidents have done their best to appoint conservative justices to the high court. President Bush has shown sympathy for the pro-life cause, appointing Ashcroft and nominating conservative judges for the federal bench, but it’s become clear that short of a reversal in the high court, Roe will remain the law.

It’s interesting to note that ALL of the Democratic candidates that have thrown their names into the race are pro-choide. And this is the party of diversity and free thought? Is there no room in the Democratic Party for a pro-life candidate?

Both sides do their best to use the issue to raise money for their respective causes, but nothing much has been done to address the problem of unwanted pregnancy. I’ve always asserted that neither pro-life or pro-choice groups want the abortion rate to increase, so rather than trying to outlaw or protect abortion laws, why don’t we find ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies and render abortion extinct? The abortion rate continues to drop in this country, due in large part to sex education programs that have taught women about contraception and abstinence as a real choice.

I can’t imagine that there is anyone who feels comfortable with 15 or 16 year-old girls having sex, much less choosing to have an abortion after they get pregnant. Further, it is rather unsettling that most women who have abortions do so as a means of birth control, and increasingly, the average age of women getting abortions rises steadily each year.

The other issue is the business of abortion clinics. Those who lobby so hard to keep abortion legal tend to suggest that they are doing so out of some sincere conviction of women’s rights. But we should be discerning enough to ask questions about the economics of the abortion industry as a motivating factor that keeps abortion legal. I think we are long past due for some cooperation among pro-life and pro-choice groups on this issue.

I’ve always wondered why someone would become a Unitarian Universalist. I mean, do you really need a church to tell you that you can believe in whatever you feel like and that everyone is going to heaven? Seems to me you can do that pretty well on your own. But they do claim to have a quarter of a million members, and now they going to try to restore God to their statement of principles. Maybe if you hadn’t taken Him out originally …

Mel Gibson has this idea to make a movie about the last hours of Christ’s life, and he wants to shoot it in Latin and Aramaic to be as truthful to the original events as possible. Kind of whacky but kind of cool. Anyway, he is now claiming that as he’s begun filming the project, the media are trying to dig up dirt on him and his family.

Gibson: “Since I’ve been in Rome here, for example, I know that there are people sent from reputable publications—they go about, while you’re busy over here, they start digging into your private life and sort of getting into your banking affairs and any charities you might be involved in. And then they start bothering your friends and your business associates and harassing your family, including my 85-year-old father. I find it a little spooky.”

All the anti-war-in-Iraq people came out this weekend to affirm each other’s pacifism. While the numbers weren’t spectacular (less than 50,000 in either DC or San Francisco), it continues to show that the anti-war-in-Iraq movement won’t roll over, regardless of the case made by the Bush administration. That’s the hypocrisy of it all — they claim that Bush is determined to go to war, no matter what, while they seem determined to ignore the evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. In addition, these kind of protests also serve to illustrate another problem with this movement. The honest-to-goodness pacifists are overshadowed by the nutcases who want to rally support for all kinds of other causes, everything from legalizing pot to freeing Mumia.

If Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond, and their ilk represent what’s wrong about the extreme right in America, then these anti-war nuts represent the failings of the extreme left. I mean, it’s one thing to be against war (and no one is more against war than the U.S. military) and it’s something entirely different to support a dictator like Hussein. By the way, these people over at A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) who organize all this nonsense are socialists from the Workers World Party.

Somewhere, Pat Robertson has smoke coming out of his ears. The cable network that was once the Family Channel — the crown jewel of Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network — which later became the Fox Family Channel and is now ABC Family, is working to broaden the idea of family with its programming. The “family” at ABC Family is inclusive enough to account for co-workers or roomates, according to ABC Family President Angela Shapiro. I had noticed that a lot of ABC network programming was being recyled on the cable channel, but I didn’t realize this was part of a deeper strategy. It’s odd to see “The Bachelor” and “Celebrity Mole Hawaii” running alongside “The 700 Club.”

“They call themselves ‘emerging churches,’ dedicated to finding alternative ways of presenting the message of Christ — ways that they say are more in line with current culture. Many are being formed by, and attracting those, in their 20s and 30s.”

It’s interesting to note that the mainstream media has begun to notice that the evangeical models of church that have dominated America since its founding have become meaningless to young adults. The trend has become obvious to anyone who has studied the cultural and theological landscape, but the media is much more likely to tout the latest Willow Creek wisdom than to observe the advances of post-modern churches.