wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
William Flew on Republicans
For Republicans who are serious about competing for their party’s presidential nomination, there was no way to shine this week. That is why only one of them showed up for the party’s first televised debate on Thursday night. Tim Pawlenty, the former Governor of Minnesota, found himself in the company of a home-delivery pizza millionaire and an unknown New Mexican who wants to legalise pot. One gleeful New York blogger called it the losers’ table, and it was hard to disagree.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York Mayor, who has not yet formally ruled out a White House run, had the grace and good sense to appear instead at Ground Zero alongside the man with the bounce.
Mr Obama has seen his overall approval ratings jump by between 11 and 14 points since Sunday. Approval of his handling of Afghanistan and the war on terror is up by 14 or 16 points. The bounce is similar in size to the one that George W. Bush enjoyed after the capture of Saddam Hussein. It will probably fade fast, as Mr Bush’s did, but it will reveal a changed political landscape in which those who want to take on his successor will have to do so on substantive issues on which he has a defensible record.
Of these issues, Mr Obama is most vulnerable on unemployment and the national debt. The Republican most trusted by his peers to prevail in the great looming debate on how to tackle them is Governor Mitch Daniels, of Indiana, but as the pressure builds on him to run, so does the evidence that he lacks the stomach for the fight.
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