Gore Vidal has died. Almost unknown to young adults, years ago he was considered the clever old man of belles lettres — a shocking rake with a bracing wit. The wit, though, distilled through the decades, comes down to us more as vinegar than aged claret, more snark than savvy. Mores the pity. We’d love […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In Eco-Tyranny, author Brian Sussman sounds a timely and important warning: The radical “greens” are not in retreat. With the defeat of cap-and-trade legislation in 2010 and the increasingly discredited alarmist theory of anthropogenic global warming, the greens may have lowered their public profile; however, with the full cooperation of the Obama administration, they are […]
On Friday, a federal judge in Colorado granted a preliminary injunction barring the HHS mandate from taking effect against a small, family-run business that holds strong beliefs that abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization violate their religious faith. The Newland family owns and operates Hercules Industries, a private, for-profit HVAC equipment manufacturer. Their 265 full-time employees […]
Last month, President Barack Obama declared that “the private sector is doing fine.” Last week, he claimed that his main first-term mistake was a mere failure to “tell a story to the American people.” But Obama’s biggest blunder of the summer may be the bizarre claim he made at a campaign rally in Virginia last […]
Many conservatives are reacting strongly to a recent speech given by President Obama in which he seems to denigrate the entrepreneurial spirit of American enterprise. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” said the president at a campaign event [the other] week in Virginia.”You didn’t get there on your own,” he reiterated. […]
In recent years social critics like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and Charles Murray (Coming Apart) have documented and deplored a decline of community among Americans. It’s a development that affects churches along with other institutions of civil society. But “decline of community” is an abstraction and hardly self-explanatory. A story told by a man I […]
The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, today announced it has filed an emergency motion asking that Federal District Judge Robert H. Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan stop the HHS Mandate which goes into effect on August 1, 2012. The motion was filed late […]
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 The air of centuries ago is healthful to inhale, especially when it blows balmy and pristine. Wafting from the past, the great Christian revolution of the 4th century has the capacity to ennoble modern hearts and uplift minds that have sunk like stones into what is seen […]
Most Catholics are familiar with the three vows taken by most religious of poverty, chastity and obedience. To these three, St. Benedict (whose feast we celebrated July 11), added a fourth for the Benedictine order, the vow of stability. Our summer seminarian who had considered joining the Benedictines at one time spoke to us today […]
In December 1828, South Carolina had 5,000 copies of John C. Calhoun’s “Exposition and Protest” printed and distributed throughout the state. A defiant document, Calhoun’s “Exposition” outlined a theory of constitutional interpretation first adumbrated in the infamous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which asseverated the right of states to declare “null and void” acts of the […]
Pro-life protesters at the Family Planning Summit in London last week signaled that opposition to the multi-billion dollar campaign is not going away. Held on the 100th anniversary of the first eugenics conference in London, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation harnessed the seats of power – governments, […]
Clearly, what our nation needs is more “separation of church and state.” If those obnoxious, right-wing Bible thumpers would simply quit bellowing about the need for revival – a return to the deeply held Judeo-Christian principles embraced by our Founding Fathers – America would be a much better place. Secular-humanism – that’s the ticket! We […]
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” -Acts 20:35 (NIV) Government provision of food stamps has become the second-largest welfare program in the country and is […]
What is being dubbed as Egypt’s “first sex-slave marriage” took place mere days after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi was made president. Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi began the program by airing a video-clip of a man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, “marrying” his “slave.” Before making the […]
Wade Horn, Ph.D., President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, had an intriguing article entitled “Of Elephants and Men” in a recent issue of Fatherhood Today magazine. I found Dr. Horn’s story about young elephants to be simply fascinating, and you will too. Some years ago, officials at the Kruger National Park and game reserve in South Africa […]
Experts claim that Planned Parenthood has such a serious foothold on government policy and finances that it would literally take a jackhammer to pull them apart. In fact, some historians have even suggested that Planned Parenthood softened many of its early positions from the hard-line culture of death posture in order to garner respectability among […]
