Why does he do that?

A few thoughts on President Obama's executive leadership style, from yours truly.

I'm hardly the first to think of Obama as "community organizer in chief." The essay linked above is original work, but Lee Cary had a similar insight last year, and Huffington Post blogger Nancy Cohen used the same label (although Cary and I think differently about it than she does).

I guess it really is Monday!

Martin Niemoller was right

And Albert Mohler was smart to follow Niemoller's insight as one of the original signers of the recent Manhattan Declaration.

Sadly, there are Christians who plead "conscience" in refusing to stand up for the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

What they call conscience looks to me like hardness of heart, so I'm glad Mohler didn't make the same argument.

A movie recommendation

"The Blind Side" is more than a feel-good movie based on a true story. With a director who takes his time, an excellent cast throughout, and Sandra Bullock leading the charge, it's an affecting and warm-hearted portrait of the modern American South.

Just because

An account of the first Thanksgiving

From the History channel web page:

The most detailed description of the "First Thanksgiving" comes from Edward Winslow from A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1621:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

A Modern American Thanksgiving

Scott Simon writes a heartwarming essay for the Wall Street Journal, "How to Say Thanksgiving in Mandarin"

A snippet:

When my parents—a Jewish man and an Irish woman—married in the 1950s, they were warned, as transracial adoption families often are, that their children would face bigotry and hostility. But today, our 6-year-old niece Juliette, a California blond, slips her arm around the shoulders of our daughters and says, "We're cousins for life, right?"

Our Chinese children sit at the Passover table and scrounge for Easter eggs. They wear "South Side Irish" green scarves around their necks on St. Patrick's Day. It's all in the family.

My wife came home one day from our daughters' Chinese culture class to announce there would be no class next week. "Because of the Jewish holidays," she explained, straight-faced. Only in America. Our girls speak French, like their mother. My wife and I join our girls to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in Mandarin. We've learned that families mixed by marriage or adoption don't shrink or starve a heritage. They nourish it with newcomers.

Midnight at the "Oasis"

Robin of Berkeley on the wilding of Sarah Palin.

Save the Medieval Warm Period

Jonathan Overpeck and scientists of his ilk are embarrassed by that medieval warm period, because it undercuts the preferred (and, for Al Gore and his Church of Warmery, lucrative) narrative about how industrialization is to blame for fluctuations in planetary temperature.

But the cat's out of the bag, the damaging emails are making their rounds, and the polar bears are using ice floes as diving platforms. As James Taranto and others have said, "what's this about 'settled science'?"

UPDATE: James Taranto has more.

Russ with the book review

Fair and balanced.

Russ doesn't write for the Washington Post, the New York Times, or any wire service. But that's a point in his favor. Remember the old slogan about how we should "question authority"?

UPDATE: John Mark Reynolds pans the Palin book. The Reynolds critique is good and possibly even devastating, but I am more sanguine about Palin than he is. Unlike Dan Riehl, for example, Reynolds doesn't think the book gives us a look at Sarah Palin's governing philosophy, assuming that she has one (I think she does have one, but has not spent much time articulating it).

Many people have noted that Sarah Palin is a lot like George W. Bush in relying more on her instincts than on her intellect when faced with anything that requires a decision. That's a potentially hazardous shortcoming that she shares even with politicians who think differently, up to and including President Barack "split the difference" Obama.

But if you read the Reynolds piece, you'll find that his main gripe is that Sarah Palin (and her co-author, Lynn Vincent) just aren't as good with words as Ronald Reagan was, or as Bill Ayers is.

We didn't need a 400-page memoir to find that out, right? The Democrat who once characterized Reagan as "an amiable dunce" (to knowing applause from the Left) lost any credibility as a judge of intellect that he ever had when Reagan's handwritten notes about various political questions were released.