Michael B. Duff

The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.

NEW YORK—At a press conference Tuesday, the NBC television network unveiled its new fall lineup of programs that will be canceled almost immediately after airing. "We could not be more excited for this season of soon-to-be-absent shows," said NBC chairman Jeff Gaspin, standing beneath an oversized "Must-Miss TV" banner. "Joining our Thursday night comedy lineup is the can't-win Father Shane in the 9:30 slot, followed by the never-going-to-be-given-a-chance news magazine Insight. And if you like drama, you're going to be crushed when we unfairly yank our critically acclaimed supernatural thriller Dark Riders after only four episodes." Gaspin added that fans would also be surprised by changes in store for some of their old favorites, specifically that all of them would be canceled.

Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe. Amid their angst, however, they are ignoring a more likely, and significantly larger, debt catastrophe that is about to hit the nation with the second-largest economy in the world — Japan. Two decades of stimulative, low-interest-rate fiscal policy have made Japan the most indebted nation in the developed world, and as new Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently said, in his first address to Parliament, that situation is not sustainable. Japan has little choice but to raise interest rates substantially, with dire consequences far beyond its shores.

This makes me grin every time.

"We're not sure what the ultimate result will be, but it's clear that with new information through the full speech, a longer look needed to be taken," a White House official told CNN Wednesday. "The White House contacted the department last night about the case and agreed, based on her evidence, that it should be reviewed."

This is the kind of perfectly obvious thing that gets ignored in discussions of education policy.

Shirley Sherrod is not, by this accounting, a person out of touch with the racial history of America. Listen to her speech and it's clear this history is something she remembers vividly; her message to the NAACP audience seemed to be that if she can move past it, so can anyone else.