The Week

• Bad news for the Democrats: It turns out some of those people who cling bitterly to their religion are Orthodox Jews in Queens.

• The great strength of the conservative is to prepare for the worst; the great temptation is to expect it. There was worry, ahead of time, that the 9/11 commemorations in Shanksville, Washington, Virginia, and New York might be too austere — no clergy, no firemen: the naked public square incarnate. In the event those worries blew away in the early-autumn breezes. At the climactic ceremony at Ground Zero, President Obama read Psalm 46 (“Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed”). Former president George W. Bush read Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the bereaved Mrs. Bixby (“the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom”). If the musical program was not perfect, it included “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the pipers of the Bravest and the Finest skirling “The Minstrel Boy.” Thy songs were made for the pure and free / They shall never sound in slavery.