Could the next pope be an Austrian? John Allen reports: Also Oct. 17, CNN conducted an interview with Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, who became a cardinal Oct. 21, and I was invited to tag along. Given that Venice produced three popes in the 20th century (Pius X, John XXIII and John Paul I),… Continue reading

A superb piece in this month’s First Things by Father Martin Rhonheimer, hardly a card-carrying member of the James Carroll branch of Catholicism, about the Church and Pius XII’s indifference to the fate of the Jews during the Hitler era: “…the astonishing fact that no Church statement about Nazism ever mentioned Jews explicitly or defended… Continue reading

James Lileks on the Democrats and the “fall-out” of Rumsfeld’s memo: “It’s not an “admission of failure, ” as Daschle put it—hell, the administration could put Osama’s head on a stick in the Rose Garden, and Daschle would call it an admission of failure that they hadn’t located the torso. I will never trust these… Continue reading

“It’s a wonderful game, maybe the greatest game in the world. Ninety feet between bases is a kind of perfect constant, like Pi.” Larry Miller on the greatness of the two championship series between the Red Sox and Yankees and between the Cubs and Marlins.

Good overview of Saddam’s connection to terrorism and Al Qaeda in NRO by Deroy Murdock. The Bush Administration needs to do a better job of reminding people of these facts, among them: “Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where… Continue reading