Worth Watching

By Karen Tumulty | December 4, 2007 | +

Why we love C-SPAN: As Mitt Romney prepares to give his much-anticipated speech on religion, it’s worth spending 46 minutes watching this clip of JFK’s famous September 1960 appearance before the Houston Ministerial Association. The speech itself is eloquent and powerful, but more remarkable is the brutal question-and-answer session that follows. The ministers were, to put it mildly, a tough crowd, and they hit JFK with everything from “authoritative quotations from Catholic sources” that would seem to condone lying to protect the secrets of the church to obscure teachings of Pope Leo IX. JFK stood his ground and never lost his composure or his conviction, and by the end of it, the ministers are shown giving him a standing ovation.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Trouble seeing video? Launch your RealPlayer program (it’s a free download) and select File > Open Location. Then paste this URL into the field:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/archive/c08/c08_110907_jkennedy2.rm

Related Topics: Uncategorized

@TIMEPolitics

Latest on Swampland

Rick Santorum February 14, 2012

Rick Santorum Wants to Fight ‘The Dangers Of Contraception’

Candidates often say things when polling in the single digits that come back to haunt them when they start leading the polls. Last October, Rick Santorum gave an interview with an Evangelical blog called Caffeinated Thoughts, in which he said contraception is “not okay,” and that this would be a public policy issue he would tackle as President. In particular, he said he would “get rid of any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage” as a government policy. Start watching the following video at 17:55.
From our Partners
Romney: I Was A 'Severely Conservative' GovernorHuffPost Politics

The Last, Best Hope for ConservativesSlate
Newt Claims GOP Just 'Managing The Decay'HuffPost Politics
Lobbying February 14, 2012

Occupy the Regulatory Open Comment Period!

There’s nothing “wrong” with protests built around placard-hoisting and park-squatting, but Occupy the SEC is definitely doing something right with its radically different tack. The OWS-offshoot has submitted a 325-page letter to federal financial regulatory agencies on the Volcker Rule, a controversial measure designed to prohibit banks from proprietary trading, or making investments with their own dollars rather than their customers’, that was passed as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.