The Philadelphia Society’s New Orleans meeting has concluded. This was my first time to be invited. I have some impressions to report about both the society and the town. For this post, I’ll focus on New Orleans.

Read more on Philadelphia Society and New Orleans, Part I…

Iowa and New Hampshire represent less than 1.5% of the U.S. population, but the way many pundits talk, these two small states apparently possess some obscure Constitutional right to choose the short list of presidential candidates for the rest of us.

Read more on Do Iowa and New Hampshire Choose the Short List?…

After the jump is the (hyperlinked) text of a column I filed last week from GodblogCon. Here are some related items worth exploring:

• “Evangelicals and Evil Empires: Religious voters have long had an interest in foreign policy,” OpinionJournal (HT: CT Liveblog).
• “Rudy’s Gamble: Giuliani’s audacious strategy for the nomination,” OpinionJournal.
• “Evangelical flocks on their own at the polls,” LA Times (HT: J-Walking).
• “On second thought, conservatives give Huckabee an amen,” LA Times.
• “Clarifying Media Distortions,” Focus on the Family.
• “Robertson for Rudy,” God’s Politics.
• “The Robertson Effect?” Townhall.com.
• A 1992 letter from Ron Weddington, co-counsel on Roe v. Wade, to then president-elect Bill Clinton, arguing for government provision of “vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions…RU 486 and conventional abortions” (PDF) among the poor (HT: Judicial Watch). Compare this with Giuliani’s position as outlined in his 1989 speech.

I’ll also add that I discussed this topic with Hunter Baker, a columnist for ChristianityToday.com and contributor to Redstate and the AmSpec blog. Here’s what he said,

My own feeling is that Mayor Giuliani is probably the most thoroughly tested and proven politician in the United States today and that he is well-equipped for the job. However, I do not support his bid, despite his clear competency. I feel a Giuliani nomination would be a major setback for pro-lifers in the sense that neither of the major parties would have a pro-life candidate at the top of the ticket, something that hasn’t happened for over a quarter of a century. In a time when we are considering something that seems to me to be a unique form of cannibalism (embryonic stem-cell research), I don’t want to see the Republican party back off on the life issue. Rather, I’m looking forward to a time when pro-life is a given stance among candidates just as racial equality is today.

Read more on Giuliani and the Godbloggers…