amazing stuff. It looks to me that the majority of people claiming to be Hillary supporters in those comments are actually Limbaugh's Operation Chaos crowd. Many use similar names (female first name plus random number), many end up saying GO HILLARY!, and they all put in as many GOP talking points as they can. Some of them go out of their way to claim that Parker is a sincere Hillary supporter too, not a GOPster. Quite a lot of the Obama defenders don't seem to realise this, and respond as if these characters were genuine disillusioned Hillary fans.

Bucky : these people that Rosenblum mentions seem to me to correspond to Presbyterians in British terms : Northern Irish and lowland Scots with a penchant for Freemasonry, Zionism, and Unionism (i.e. the continued union of as much of Ireland as possible with England and Scotland). Over a couple of hundred years in the USA, they naturally fragmented into all kinds of things, and are probably not too keen on Britain, but it would be interesting to know how many of them would say that Britain's mistake was in not fighting harder to keep the whole of Ireland, and so on.

This is very complciated stuff and I don't claim to be an expert, I don't even have a degree. I do have one interesting book about the subject, by Ian Lustick, but it's hard going, and I haven't got far with it. It's called "Unsettled States, Disputed Lands" and it's a comparative history of the irish, Algerian, and Palestinian disputes over the last few centuries - quite a big topic!

Now I think about it, I realise that the chronology of when they migrated over the atlantic has to be matched to the chronology of when the various protestant sects split off from each other here in britain, which is totally beyond me, and not too much the sort of thing I want to study! I seem to recall that baptists split off from presbyterians here in britain, so some migrants would already have been baptists before migrating, this being -- uh -- early to mid nineteenth century, maybe? I could chase it all through wikipedia ... thank heavens for wikipedia, it is excellent on this sort of relatively uncontroversial stuff.

Does anyone remember this? here's the wikipedia page:

http://tinyurl.com/5mxlm2

But the endorsement I recall is oddly elusive web-wise. The context is fairly easy to re-assemble:

(1) there was her deal to pardon the New Court hassids.

(2) there was getting over the Suha Arafat kiss

(3) there was a bizarre, sticky, emotional Jewish campaign of sympathy for her as a humiliated but faithful wife (honestly)

any details on the last (which I recall from the radio) would be esspecially welcome.

no text necessary i hope

I hold no brief for Matt Hale or his views, but you should have learned to be cautious of prosecutions built on provocateur testimony. I can't find anything with a quick search except this claim by Edgar Steele (of "Defensive Racism" fame"):

"An FBI plant, Anthony Evola, wormed his way into Hale's confidence and was named head of WCOTC's security force. Evola secretly recorded conversations with Hale that were, at worst, noncommittal concerning Evola's offer to "exterminate...the Jew rat" (a male Jew rat, as transcripts made clear). At one point, Hale was recorded as saying, "I'm going to fight within the law." Also, note that, while Judge Lefkow is married to a Jew, she herself is not Jewish, a fact known at the time to both Hale and the FBI. Hale's trial was a sham. The FBI plant, Evola, testified that, during a conversation wherein he asked if Hale wanted him to "get the rat," Hale nodded affirmatively. Never was any evidence presented other than that single bit of testimony concerning Hale's alleged approval of the FBI scheme..."

I thought I was pretty blasé about english prose, but every time I open "The Origins of Totalitarianism" she blows me away all over again, with sentences like "As long as defamed peoples and classes exist, parvenu- and pariah-qualities will be produced anew by each generation with incomparable monotony, in Jewish society and everywhere else."

nor do I know why Glenn is being accused of defending him - for all I know, that accusation is itself completely spurious.

I think that Bob Dylan was being sardonic when he wrote "and others say, don't hate nothing at all except hatred," though, don't you agree? One so easily allows oneself to hate the haters, it becomes a mutually reinforcing cycle.

So I shall persevere with Hannah Arendt, who is only just beginning to get into her stride at the point I quoted her. A few pages later she manages to bring out the good side of Benjamin Disraeli, who it never before occurred to me even HAD a good side:

"Here was one who started out to sell his soul to the devil, but the devil did not want the soul and the gods gave him all the happiness of this earth."

I shall let you know if she ever begins to sound mawkish, because that is clearly the danger with this kind of writing.

i have discovered at least one of the secrets of hannah arendt's art - she is definitely a fan of g.k. chesterton. she mentions him twice in twenty pages. she certainly doesn't mention any other mere mortals.