Oh, you sweet, sweet genius, you, EJ!

A few queries, James, about those 82 sharia courts already operating in Britain:  Are they doing so with some sort of official sanction?  That is to say, does the Home Office recognize them?  Or do they operate purely on their own, representing, as it were, a black market in the administration of justice?  Do you know--does anyone know--how many sharia courts are operating in France?  Or in Spain?  Or whether, for that matter, any are operating here in the United States?

You know what?  That's a beautiful definition of "courage."

The loveliest words I've read all day.  My thanks, tennis Mom.

P_T    S_J_K, 

B_CK    _T    L_ST!

HURR_H!

Ursula, I'm bursting with admiration--for the sheer gutsiness of doing this, and (yes, I know I've said this before) for the sheer beauty of your prose. 

Over at the Weekly Standard, nicely put:

The exchange offered a stark reminder of one inescapable set of facts:  President Obama spent the bulk of his first 15 months in office ramming his signature legislation down the throats of the American people. Yet, as his State of the Union Address made clear, he’d rather not bring it up. So if Republicans are going to have a mandate to repeal this unprecedented threat to liberty and fiscal solvency, they will have to bring it up — or, rather, their nominee will have to bring it up. And he will have to know why he opposes it — not merely that he does.

BT, with respect, you're being, simply, ridiculous.  I keep searching for reasons to support Romney.  And whenever I think I've found one or two, Mitt himself pulls the carpet from beneath me.

A personal disliking?  Again, I'm sorry to say, ridiculous.  Individual liberty is a matter, very obviously, of principle.

So Mitt clinched the nomination?  Or are we still in for a long, enervating fight--only between Mitt and Rick, not Mitt and Newt? 

Your graphics are works of genius, EJ.  Now I'd like to see a few of your predictions.

Pickett's Charge, meaning...that Newt got shot down in the end?  That it's over?

Newt shared the frustrations of many conservatives, including, from time to time, me, that the President permitted the bureaucracy to prove persistently feckless, undermining his program--as you'll recall if you're of a certain age, conservatives were always insisting that the President's staff should "let Reagan be Reagan."  If Newt mouthed off, giving vent to these frustrations, so be it.  He was in Congress.  That was, in a sense, his job.  And at one time or another, every conservative of any standing felt exasperated or worried--and urged the President not to go soft either on Communism or on our own bureaucracy.  Newt's comments here place him in the company of William F. Buckley, Jr.--WFB vented his frustrations more artfully, but he vented them--and I'd have thought that for our friends at NR that would be quite good enough.

Mitch insists on writing all his material himself.  (One of the reasons his contributions to Ricochet tailed off was that, not altogether surprisingly, he found it hard to spare the time--and refused, just refused, to permit anyone on on his staff to so much as compose first drafts for him.)

Perfectly astonishing.  Thanks for linking to this, EJ.

Muchisimas gracias!

I missed Charles Murray's comments, Pseud.  Could you provide a link?

Exactly!  Politics is so rough, and so tricky, that only the best can really enjoy themselves.  Ann Coulter will throw a dishwasher at me for saying so, but in this clip Newt places himself in the rhetorical tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.  When Newt's good, he's that good.