OBAMA'S FAITH. I want to second Garance's important and well-documented post explaining that "a religious faith is something only an individual can attest to, and is very different from the polite behavior of child living in a Muslim nation and looking to make friends by joining the other children in neighbohood activities, including faith-based ones." When I was young, I spent two years at an Orthodox Hebrew School. I benched, I prayed, I wore a yarmulke, I learned that God sprinkled dinosaur bones across the Earth to fool us, and, in general, acted Orthodox. When I was at school. And then, sometimes, on the weekends, I visited my Orthodox friends, and, again, at their houses, I kept kosher, and wore a yarmulke, and acted orthodox. I have never been, nor am I now, an Orthodox Jew. Attempts to use the fact that Obama spent some of his early childhood years in a Muslim nation against him are unspeakably vile. They're not only absurd -- he was six! -- they're bigoted. Indeed, to have to defend Obama's actions as the instinctive conformity of youth is to grant these smear artists too much. The suggestion that there's something intrinsically corrupting about exposure to and participation in Muslim religious practices is repulsive, and they should have to answer for their intolerance, Obama shouldn't be questioned for his ecumenicism. --Ezra Klein
