Word: blood
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...notion of an ordinary, frustrated young person who discovers special powers in strange surroundings is as old as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and, before that, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - not to mention every fable about a commoner revealed as having royal blood and reserves of derring-do. It's the essential wish-fulfillment template: start in drab, constricting reality; hyper-drive into heroism...
...majority opinions was significantly lower this time around (approximately 17% of the cases compared to 33% last term). "What is striking is how many cases were not decided by 5-4 votes," says Richard Pildes, professor of constitutional law at New York University School of Law. "With its new blood the court is still developing new patterns of communication and cooperation." (Until Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito came along, the court had the longest-serving body of the same nine people in Supreme Court history.) Nevertheless, even with fewer nail-biting decisions handed down this term...
...many people, the meaning of patriotism is simple: love of country. But love of a country that is dedicated to a proposition, not a king or a religion--a nation that is based on ideas, not blood--has always created a different kind of citizen. American patriotism expresses itself most truly in actions, not words. Our patriotism shapes our responsibilities as citizens, how we navigate in the world and, ultimately, what it means to be an American...
...practically a national religion, conservative patriotism can seem anachronistic. To be Spanish or Russian or Japanese is to imagine that you share a common ancestry and common traditions that trace back into the mists of time. But in America, where most people hail from somewhere else, that kind of blood-and-soil patriotism makes no sense. There is something vaguely farcical about conservative panic over Mexican flags in Los Angeles when Irish flags have long festooned Boston's streets on St. Patrick's Day. Linking patriotism too closely to a reverence for inherited tradition contradicts one of America's most...
...surprise that the old lions of the Christian Right are suddenly sputtering. "This is raising my blood pressure," admitted the normally calm, Mr. Rogers-sounding Dobson at the end of his radio show on Tuesday. Just a few weeks earlier, the conservative columnist and former Moral Majority vice president Cal Thomas wrote an essay calling Obama a "false prophet." Placing Obama's "Christianity" in quotes, Thomas charged that the candidate's statements about religion - including his belief that non-Christians can get to heaven - prove that he does not understand what it means to be a Christian...