truenorthnewsandcommentary.com

On Christmas Eve we share the words from my very favorite Christmas carol, “What Sweeter Music,” by Robert Herrick (1591-1674). The most famous musical composition using these words is by John Rutter.

The lyric rewards effort and bears reading and re-reading, both silently and aloud:

 What Sweeter Music

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.

Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?

We wish a blessed Christmas to all.

I am cross-posting much of this entry with Article VI Blog, where I also hang out.  As I said there, I am offering just a few quick hits:

Mike Huckabee, Convicts, and Religion

Anyone not living in a cave for the last 48 hours knows that Maurice Clemmons, the murderer of four police officers in Seattle, was once in state prison in Arkansas – until Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence. Huck has been running away from that decision and attempting to spread the blame to others involved in processing Clemmons through the legal system. It’s been suggested that Huckabee’s faith played a huge role in his clemency decisions as governor. The man himself has not yet addressed that question, probably because he doesn’t want to touch it.

That’s understandable.

Consider: While Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee issued 1,033 pardons, twice as many as the prior three Arkansas governors combined. Just as a point of comparision, Mitt Romney did not issue a single pardon while Governor of Massachusetts. I have a hunch that Huckabee, as a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is now . . . toast.

David Frum Thinks The Whole GOP Religion Situation Is Terrible

At least that’s what he seems to be saying here. Frum, who’s unhappy with religious conservatives generally, sees the Manhattan Declaration’s failure to include Mormons as yet another example of Evangelical bias against that faith. Well, the Declaration was authored not just by Evangelicals but also Catholics and Orthodox Christians, something Frum doesn’t seem to grasp. Also, as I noted here, the Declaration is a doctrinal trinitarian document. Mormons and other heterodox Christian faiths could not have signed it (to say nothing of Orthodox Jews), so the document’s drafters didn’t even invite them to sign. There are political reasons to quibble with the Declaration’s narrowness, but to this Latter-day Saint it doesn’t look like a slap at Romney or Mormonism.

Every now and then I see news stories that remind me of what was once called “Yankee ingenuity.”  Yankees are pretty rare these days outside that baseball stadium in the Bronx, but I do think humankind’s technological capacities are something we’re not thinking enough about.

For example, amid all the discussion about how to reduce our dependency on carbon-based fuels, stories like this one come out and remind me that we really could solve the problem if we made it more of a priority to do so.

We don’t do a of of sports blogging here, but it’s Saturday and there’s a big game today:  The 4th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs vs. the 16th-ranked Utah Utes.  (Who chooses the horned frog as a mascot, anyway?)  TCU is a 20-point favorite but they are going up against a Utah program that has been very successful lately:

As a Ute fan of the first order my hopes will be high but I’m trying to stay realistic.  It should be fun to watch anyway.  The game is on CBS College Sports at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time today.  <a href=”http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705344334/Utes-excited-for-dream-game.html”>Here’s a short pregame write-up</a>.

It seems that in the old legacy media, whether or not political behavior is objectionable depends not on the behavior itself, but on whose behavior it is.

For example, maybe you missed this report from Byron York over the weekend.  In a commentary – a commentary! – about the Obama administration’s attacks on Fox News, Ken Rudin, NPR’s political director, first said this:

“It’s not only aggressive, it’s almost Nixonesque,” Rudin said. “I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media; certainly Vice President Agnew’s constant denunciation of the media. Of course, then it was a conservative president denouncing a liberal media, and of course, a lot of good liberals said, ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous. That’s an infringement on the freedom of press.’ And now you see a lot of liberals almost kind of applauding what the White House is doing to Fox News, which I think is distressing.”

Thanks to Instapundit, I saw this graph from Don Suber’s site:

Glenn Reynolds‘ comment:  “Not living up to the promises they made, is it? But don’t worry, health care will be totally different.“