truenorthnewsandcommentary.com

First, from Howard Kurtz:

If Polanski was an ordinary Roman, and not an award-winning film director, we wouldn’t be having this debate. There is sympathy for him because he’s considered a great artiste. The Hollywood elite wouldn’t give Polanski the plumber the time of day if he had sexually assaulted an underage girl. And that suggests to me a stunning double standard.

As Glenn Reynolds asks, “Suggests?”

Then there’s this from Megan McArdle:

You would think we’d busted him for unpaid parking tickets. The guy drugged a thirteen year old girl in order to rape her. Perhaps the French have some sophisticated, European point of view on these things that I, with my puritan ancestry, simply cannot rise to.

And here’s my personal favorite:

If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:   A paragraph from scathing post by Kate Harding at Salon:

Switzerland

During the healthcare reform debate (which is really an insurance reform debate) we’ve heard a lot about the British National Health System (almost totally socialized and roundly criticized) and a little about the French system (less socialized, less criticized).   I recently heard a suggestion that the Swiss system might be a model that would work in the USA.  Here’s a summary and analysis of how that little alpine country approaches health insurance:

What’s that, you say?   Yes, it is an interesting collection of names.   Here’s how they fit together today.

Fox Commentator Glenn Beck

First, I have met Glenn Beck in person, and he exudes kindness, class, and warmth.  You can’t help but like that man.

But the man I see on television is not that Glenn Beck.  That man’s an entertainer, playing to an audience – not always a perceptive political analyst.  I find myself agreeing with Beck on substance most of the time, but wincing at his style.  Can’t we do a better job of talking about important issues — without all that yelling?

While on business in Washington, D.C. today, I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and peered into the White House.  How is President Obama going to posture his sure defeat of his health care agenda?     As a health care attorney I spend a lot of time with hospital leaders and health care policy makers.   In private conversations I am not hearing any of them say they see any real solutions to America’s  health care crisis in Obamacare.  (Of course, no one knows exactly what Obamacare really is – apparently it’s whatever Congress passes on health care insurance reform that the president will sign.)

My friend Hugh Hewitt writes today about Obama’s desperate attempt to rally the nation by rallying his loyalists in the media.  (Note in particular Hugh’s photo montage of the interviews – not something you’ll ever see in the New York or Los Angeles Times.)  An excerpt:

The reason behind President Obama’s frantic retail television yesterday has to be that every debate over Obamacare everywhere in the country has to be going just as mine did.  Proponents of Obamacare from the president down to Obamacare advocate in a two person discussion on a park bench are not just losing the argument.  They have lost it.  Decisively.  And no series of interviews, no matter how gentle the questions or advantageous the setting, are going to persuade anything close to a majority of Americans that it makes sense to trade in their health care for whatever it is that the president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have behind Door Number 3.

Syndicated Radio Commentator Hugh Hewitt

Never before has a President of the United States so obviously tried to “work the media” as President Obama has on health care.  He began with an “Evening at the White House,” when Charlie Gibson was allowed to actually broadcast the ABC Evening News live from within the White House in exchange for an exclusive ABC “town hall” on health care that same evening.   This weekend, each major Sunday news program gladly welcomed the President — simultaneously!   His message was the same to each:  He was stumping to raise the deficit another trillion dollars to fund his vision of health care in America.

Hugh also sees through this broadcast blitz, and focuses on the growing urgency of Afghanistan in today’s post.  Take a look.

232 years ago today, 39 men signed the United States Constitution.  The National Constitution Center (photo at left) has a nice page commemorating the day.

In the Nineteenth Century the British Prime Minister Gladstone said, “The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”  I think he was right.

Here’s a photo of the statuary exhibit at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

This video is about a man who survived the attacks. He happens to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “Mormons”) but his perspective is quite universal. It’s worth watching: