Moonrise Kingdom is a tasty escape into an ordinary-magical world of a quirky bunch of pre-teens and their families in 1965. The film is highly-stylized, deeply amusing, and incredibly well-cast. The always unexpected writer-director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox) gives us a more-deadpan-than-“Napoleon Dynamite” romantic comedy. Involving twelve year olds. Set […]
Dear “Pro-Choice” NYer, You wanted to do whatever you wanted to do with your body, and then claim you had a right to kill your own children when you conceived them because it was just so unfair for anyone to expect you to let a child ever use you against your will. You said you […]
Some months back, my sister came to visit, and we had an interesting chat. Chris lives in New York and is a vice president at a very large and internationally-known corporation. She’s at the top of the corporate world, and at the forefront of women making their way in a “man’s world.” We were talking about the need […]
(Editor’s Note: The following inspiring essay resides on the popular UK blog, eChurch Blog and is written by the site’s webmaster, Stuart James. It is reprinted below with his permission.) Many of us dream of a world filled with justice, peace, equality, harmony, beauty, tranquility, security, permanence, plenty and sometimes we may glimpse for a moment, […]
Memorial O dragon, dragon, what tower do you build? A tower built in Babylon at which the worm is skilled, Skulls are of the walls of it, mortar made of bone, Who can know the plan of it? Only I alone War and hunger are my slaves, fire is my heart With which to melt […]
I have another reason to count my blessings these days: My sleep rhythms have settled down. I can consistently sleep 9 hours a night and arise refreshed in the morning. Sounds like a pretty small triumph, doesn’t it? But I remember the days not so long ago when I was sleeping twelve hours or more, […]
Elizabeth Crnkovich also contributed to this article. Social security is about to go belly up, financially speaking. And at the head of this crisis is a demographic disproportion: there are simply too few young people coming into the workforce to support the increasing numbers of elderly baby boomers who are retiring. In “What’s Really Behind […]
Remember “live and let live” — or, as the gay-rights variation goes, “live and let love?” Remember that heady time not so long ago when Americans concerned about the unintended consequences of same-sex marriage were told that we had nothing to fear because the redefinition of marriage to accommodate gays and lesbians would not affect […]
There has been a curious silence in the news and on the blogs about the preliminary injunction in Newland v. Sebelius. True, there are some unique issues involving the nature of the plaintiffs, but the case may indicate the direction that courts which get over the ripeness hump and do reach the Religious Freedom Restoration Act […]
I opened my mail and found a review copy of The Broken Path: How Catholic Bishops Got Lost in the Weeds of American Politics by Judie Brown. I decided I was probably too busy to even read it. Three chapters into it, I felt I had no choice but to write a review. When I […]
President Obama’s position on gay marriage has won some converts, from (perhaps) the entirety of the Democratic Party to (especially) young people. As to the latter, one of them emailed me recently. A good-hearted, thoughtful young man, who this fall will be a freshman at a very liberal college in the Northeast, I’ll leave him […]
It’s a common misconception that any form of natural family planning (NFP) doesn’t work very well for women over forty because, oddly like teenagers, the body doesn’t produce the hormones that affect ovulation consistently and, therefore, following the natural signs of fertility is unreliable. I’ve had people knit their brow at me plenty for being […]
Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) has taken another well-deserved hit. The Wisconsin Catholic bishops have issued a brilliant statement entitled “Upholding the Dignity of Human Life.” In this statement, the bishops make clear that the POLST form has serious problems, outlining them as follows: The POLST document raises concerns as to whether it accurately […]
As Kingfishers Catch Fire As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one […]
As the 2012 presidential election nears, Romney’s Mormon religion has, by necessity, been taken off the table as an issue for most Christians. Thanks to the actions of the Obama administration — with our freedom so imperiled and our nation’s fiscal house so shaky — the troubling aspects of Romney’s religious affiliation, have faded into the […]
With less than 100 days until the election, Governor Mitt Romney is in the launch position for a vigorous fall campaign with the stars aligning for success in November. Okay, okay. The London trip did start out a little rough, but consider the following: Gallup tracking poll shows the Governor in a dead heat with President Obama, tied […]
In my work as a social conservative, I have been puzzled by some of the rhetorical strategies of my opponents. Sometimes I feel my head spinning, as if I have been going around in circles, with no obvious conclusion in sight. I have been seeking the key to understanding them, a Rosetta Stone that will […]
Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals […]
A chicken, a big-city mayor and a duck walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “What is this, a joke?” Ba-da-bum. Unfortunately, last week’s brouhaha over remarks made by Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy is not a joke, nor is the bullying his company is experiencing at the hands of Boston Mayor Thomas […]
Finding the right balance for a refreshing summer vacation for your kids Summer with kids is like lemonade. It’s all about balance. Too much sugar? Not enough lemon? It’s ruined. But when properly balanced, it’s a lovely beverage of sweet and sour contrasts and it’s special. That’s how a kid’s summer should be, special. The […]
The results of a recent survey of parents of children with disabilities ran cross-grain to the mentality that characterizes our society’s culture of death. Published in the medical journal Pediatrics, the survey included parents of 272 children suffering from the extreme genetic conditions Trisomy 13 and Trisomy 18—conditions where a child is born with an extra 13 […]
