From what I’ve been told, Godfrey is right. The education system in Louisiana is really busted.

I’ve often wavered on the origins of Jindal’s support of ID: is it cynical opportunism designed to pick up the Protestant vote? Or the fact that he’s a Catholic convert from a very different tradition and doesn’t understand bits of his own religion?

His anti-abortion stance is properly consistent with Catholicism, but many conservative Catholics oppose the death penalty for the same reason as they oppose abortion: it’s part of what they see as the modern ‘culture of death’. What’s Louisiana like on the capital punishment front? Politics is full of compromises, I know, but many powerful and respected Catholics around the world have held (or hold) high office without downing their principles.

He’s outstandingly bright — I know people at Oxford who taught him — but as we all know cleverness doesn’t necessarily protect people from doing or believing very stupid things.