Below The Beltway

As he continues his visit to Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI is continuing his predecessor’s efforts to heal the 1,000 year old rift between the Eastern and Western halves of Christianity:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pope Benedict and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians held a solemn prayer service together on Thursday and re-committed their Churches to the […]

Al Qaeda is taking on Pope Benedict XVI over his visit to Turkey:
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Al Qaeda in Iraq on Wednesday denounced Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey, calling it part of a “crusader campaign” against Islam. The Vatican said the comments showed the need to fight “violence in the name of God.”
The […]

George Will sums up nicely what Senator-elect Jim Webb’s recent behavior says about him:
Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb’s more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being — one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the […]

Let’s just say, its no Immaculate Conception:
HOLLYWOOD director Catherine Hardwicke says she was among the most surprised to hear teenage New Zealand actor Keisha Castle-Hughes was pregnant.
Hardwicke had cast the 16-year-old as the Virgin Mary in her latest film, The Nativity Story, about the birth of Jesus.
News broke of Australian-born Castle-Hughes’ pregnancy weeks before the […]

The Washington Post reports today on what may well be the worst part of Christmas….unwrapping and opening the presents:
There’s a part of Christmas morning that Tiffany Seay dreads: getting everything out of its packaging. The twisties. The tape. The hard plastic ties, like handcuffs for dolls. The itty-bitty screwdrivers.
“It takes at least 40 minutes to […]

I’ll never forget the first time I heard Diana Krall sing. It was on a Saturday morning sometime early in 2000. Her then-new CD When I Look In Your Eyes had just been released. And, she was appearing on CBS’s Saturday Morning show. I wasn’t entirely paying attention to the show, but when she started […]

Victor Davis Hanson asks whether Europe and the U.S. have lost the will to fight for their civilization:
Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our […]

It’s been barely a month since the November elections, and the Democratic majority is already breaking campaign promises:
It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. […]

No, we’re not talking about a Radio Shack TRS-80, but something a little bit older than that:
A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.
But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast […]

The Telegraph has a report today about the rising influence of sharia law among the Muslim population of England:

Islamic sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain, a report claims.
Sharia, derived from several sources including the Koran, is applied to varying degrees in predominantly Muslim countries but it has no binding status […]