The Anchoress

It is easy to miss interesting stuff over a long holiday weekend, especially when Thanksgiving found you wrenching your back and not liking your most comfortable chairs for a few days (have you ever tried knitting while lying down? Doesn’t really work…)

Anywho…I missed all this while I wasn’t blogging, and perhaps you did, too, so here goes - a post-Thanksgiving-wha’d-I-miss-roundup!

While we were munching, the LA Times once again used some very questionable sources to bring us miserable news. Patterico asks and then answers this question: Is the L.A. Times Repeating Enemy Propaganda? Or Is There Another Reason The Paper Is Getting Basic Facts Wrong and Failing to Report the Military’s Side?. It is a powerful piece that will make you very angry. The fakery is breathtaking. And sadly, Patterico’s example is not the only one…read on….

Curt takes aim at the press and wonders about their sources as he looks into the all-hell-is-breaking-loose stories of Iraq. Well, when you are a politician looking for (and trying to justify) abandonment-with-honor, you need those stories and the press is all-too-happy to satisfy your need…if you’re the right sort of politician. Read Jules Crittenden’s piece on it.

While we’re talking fakery: Ed Driscoll has a thoughtful and good post up in response to this post on authenticity and fakery. He discusses Orson Welles. You’ll enjoy it.

On the religion front, as we prepare to watch Benedict XVI launch himself into Turkey, Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia tells us of the history of two popes and Turkey. Writes Rocco:

Forty-four years after his death, the man who became Papa Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) remains beloved the world over, but especially in Turkey, so much so that the postulator of the “Good Pope’s” cause for canonization, Franciscan Fr Luca DeRosa, was given an extensive space in Wednesday’s L’Osservatore Romano to speak to it.

(Psst — don’t tell anybody, but if you’re looking for a theme for B16’s trip, look no further than the latter line.)

Ann Althouse is giving Andrew Sullivan a a dressing down and she’s staying on the subject with a second post. I think this is very interesting and bears watching. Ann Althouse is demonstrating for all the world to see, what a classical liberal looks like. She reads Sullivan’s disappointing thrust on Mitt Romney’s religion, and she notes the unsurprising secondary parries in the press, and she is properly angry that a man’s religion is clearly being used to cast suspicion and doubt upon both his motives and his morals.

Once upon a time, the people who identified themselves as liberals would get upset to see someone attacked for their religion. Now, the people who call themselves liberal (or who staunchly identify themselves as conservatives, although with a clear leftist bent) seem to be embracing a very different mindset. It’s time to either take back the world “liberal” or find a way to distinguish “classical liberals” from the pack. I like Althouse’s righteous anger here - and her warnings about the very dangerous game that is being played with religion by people who should know better - and urge you to read what she is saying, even though I am not yet on board with Mitt Romney.

And btw, Betsy Newmark predicted all this, (and so did I) a long while back. We predicted this behavior from the press, and others. Mitt’s going to have a long row to hoe if he is serious about a bid for the WH. Meanwhile read the link to Betsy, who wrote smart about Mitt’s future trials and tribulations back in 2005.

Instapundit notes - quite rightly - that Mormon Harry Reid does not have to endure all this scrutiny…basically because he is a Democrat and therefore must be above reproach, with no dubious ambitions at his core.

So, is Europe becoming Eurasia, or what? Blue Crab Boulevard points to this Ralph Peters piece and wonders who is right, Peters or Mark Steyn? Or this fellow who is also writing about the declining birthrates of Europeans in Europe.

Paris, meanwhile is still burning with anti-semitism and bigotry. And apparently if you’re groped in the UK you’d better just shut up about it. Progressive! Enlightened! Non-Reactionary Europe!

A few good-but-quick reads:
The Dems need a convincing line to badmouth a program that works. As Gaius points out, there is a difference between opposing everything and actually governing.

Hillary in a Burka? No, not really.

There is an incredibly heavy turnout demonstrating against Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela, as per Gateway Pundit.

This comes thanks to angry reader Sally, an interesting piece on entreprenuership and new businesses begun by immigrants in the WSJ.

Steyn on Theocon hysteria

Who voted for the Kyoto protocols? I didn’t, did you? Pretty funny, considering neither Al Gore nor the senate voted for it back in the day…

Carnival of the Insanities is up. And Bainbridge is back.

And fyi, no, I was NOT the woman screaming “come over here!”.