Monday Morning Bloggerback

Mandatory sentences in the eleventh circle of hell: Reading blogs. The more serious the offense, the more ideological the required blog reading. No need to name names here. Given the “trackback” features encrusted in these things, that would only encourage the name-callers, though most of us know who they are. There’s that fellow- but second-generational immigrant from one of Teddy Roosevelt’s colonial outposts who loves internment camps for liberals; there’s the tallish blond lawyer of the talk circuit (let’s call her the Coulture warrior), anorexic in compassion but a glutton for bigotry; and of course on the other side there are liberalism’s copycats by default who, as they play Godot and Estragon to the Democratic Party’s frigid ideas machine, have nothing more imaginative to do than stoop, snap and snarl as tiresomely as right’s crispies. But with what—six hundred and eighty four trillion blogs out there (at last count)? One is bound to find a few gems worthy of 47th Street’s craftsmen. Here are a few from the past week, covering a gamut’s eyelash: Thoughts on David Brooks, theocracy in Baghdad, the Pope’s Limbo, toots for Enlightenment, counter-toots for conservatism, and a couple of Vatican-friendly bits on gay marriage and sex. It's all here...