Them's your choices at the polls today, at least as far as foreign policy is concerned, as I see it. The Iraq war is a tragic mess and it's hard to justify hope of a decent and stable government emerging there. But as in 2004 the Democrats don't have much to offer except Monday-morning quarterbacking…

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…some parents may get up to all kinds of wild stuff. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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Esolen is always good, and this short piece at the Touchstone blog is better than usual. There's an unforgettable image in the last sentence, which I'm resisting the impulse to include here–better to read the whole thing. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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Celebrate it!–24/7 With the Cliche Expert! (By the way, if you're using Firefox, you can get rid of that horrible yellow background: View/Page Style/No style.) Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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Eric Johnson: Live from Austin, Texas Anyone who has a taste for virtuoso rock guitar should own this album. Eric Johnson is one of the great players, and if my limited acquaintance with his studio albums is an accurate sample, he’s one of those atypical rock musicians whose live recordings are actually superior to his…

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…the secret of winning arguments on the Internet. Well, actually it's Ratbert. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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I'm kind of glad I don't live in Texas, because if I did I would be very, very tempted to vote for Kinky Friedman for governor. If you're going to celebrate the American tradition of quirkiness and eccentricity, as a certain sort of conservative is inclined these days to do, you can't leave this guy…

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As you can see there is now a list of recent comments in the sidebar. This is a script supplied by HaloScan, which provides the commenting function itself, and it doesn't do exactly what I'd like–it doesn't indicate what post the comment is attached to. I don't think I can change it and am not…

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I've been mostly off-line for the past four days, occupied almost exclusively with my daughter's wedding, which took place last night. I'll probably say more about it later—at the moment suffice to say that the occasion was a great success but most of those who were very much involved are exhausted. I owe emails to…

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Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas We all know about the alienation and inauthenticity of technological civilization, we all wonder if it’s sustainable, etc. But I couldn’t help feeling fortunate to live in this time and place a couple of weeks ago when I found myself driving east across the bay at twilight, with the…

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