Do as I say, not as I do...

The Week, NRO [Dec 15 Edition] - The Obamas announced that they will send their daughters, Malia and Sasha, to Sidwell Friends, the 125-year-old Quaker-run school. It was an inclusive, egalitarian gesture — so many offspring of the elite go or have gone there: Joe Biden’s granddaughters, Mark Penn’s children, Chelsea Clinton, Albert Gore III, Tricia Nixon. Presidents must be concerned for their children’s security and privacy, and Sidwell Friends is used to ad¬dressing these concerns. Yet Amy Carter managed to go to pub¬lic schools when she lived in the White House. Is it too much to ask that Democrats, beholden to teachers’ unions, show some confidence in the handiwork of their supporters? Or do they know something they will not admit?

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No person or institution should enter into a public controversy expecting to escape criticism — even unfair and dishonest criticism. But the jihad currently being waged against Mormons is unconscionable. In a Denver suburb, a Book of Mormon was set on fire and dropped on the doorstep of a Mormon temple, presumably as a statement about the church’s support of Proposition 8 in California, an initiative that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Envelopes full of suspicious white powder were sent to church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Blacklists of pro-8 Mormon donors have been compiled. Mor¬mons are routinely being denounced as hateful and bigoted. None of this is even remotely justifiable. The Mormon church has not been particularly strident in its opposition to same-sex marriage, nor is it alone among churches whose leaders supported the ballot measure and encouraged followers to do likewise. Through¬out, Mormons acted within their rights, in honest pursuit of what they believe to be good. Gay-rights activists have every right to criticize this. But they hurt their cause by fantasizing Mormon conspiracies roughly equivalent to the tales Saudi clerics tell about Jews. The vitriol has been tolerated in polite society only because anti-Mormon bigotry is pervasive — and it is this, not the church’s role in the Prop 8 debate, that is truly shameful.

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