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WHAT a lost opportunity! When Harriet Miers withdrew as a nominee for the US supreme court, her Christian critics missed out on a chance to show that it is possible to combine integrity and rationality with religious belief. It’s an opportunity that these days presents itself all too rarely. Now President Bush has chosen a nominee to please the conservative Christians who operate under the bizarre assumption that faith gives believers special authority on moral issues.

Bush spent weeks under sustained attack for not putting up a hard-line conservative candidate for the supreme court, a siege that eventually broke the…

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