Free Republic

I WAS BORN A CHOSEN PERSON, though this state of affairs was not of my choosing. My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were staunch Seventh Day Adventists—a Saturday-worshiping fundamentalist sect that arose in the mid-19th century. Our faith's founder prophesied Jesus' Second Coming and "the Rapture" in 1850. When both failed to occur, he instead started the church into which the matriarchs of my family were later born. These strong women gave their offspring no choice but to attend the same churches and share their faith, so attend and share we did. My father and grandfather, however, did not attend church,...

ONE of the reasons so many people admire Richard Armitage, the outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, is his well-earned reputation for fierce honesty. He is George Orwell-like in his ability to face hard facts straight up, and deal with them. Although he always manages to do this with a smile, he'll tell you the things you don't like to hear as well as the things you do. With his best friend and boss Colin Powell, Armitage, according to Bob Woodward's account of the period leading up to the war in Iraq, was the member of the Bush administration who urged...