Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests. Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after […]
Watching how Great Britain deals with the ethical issues surrounding health care is instructive for a few important reasons. First, we both have a Judeo-Christian foundation to our cultures; we have inherited much of our legal system from theirs; they introduced socialized medicine over sixty years ago, and finally, they legalized abortion six years before […]
By reason of ineligibility, I had to decline a friend’s well meaning invitation to vote. I cannot participate in the GOP caucus this weekend because I’m not a Republican. In 2007 I left the GOP over the issue of torture and have been an independent ever since. At the time, I made a public resignation […]
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to make a request of America’s political and media elites on behalf of America’s women: Stop lumping us together. To be more specific: Stop telling us “what women want” in the next president, which political stands are sure-fire winners (or losers) of “the women’s vote” and what […]
The U.S. Senate this morning voted down an amendment that would allow employers to opt out of paying for health care coverage of procedures that violate their religious beliefs. The amendment, offered by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO, rolled back Barack Obama’s invasive Health and Human Services mandate that employers insure contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs […]
My colleague, Paul Kengor, wrote a brilliant article this week saying that Team Obama will try to cast the presidential election either in terms of class warfare—if Romney is the Republican nominee—or a battle over social issues, if Santorum gets the nod. If it’s Romney, the president’s team will have home field advantage. If it’s […]
A quiet time in Rome, the end of February. A time of silence. This evening in a completely empty and silent Vatican, I had the rare experience of running into a little child inside the city. He was walking with his father near the back of the basilica. The child’s mother, a member of the […]
Recently, the Obama administration declared that all employers, including Catholic institutions, will be required to offer free insurance coverage for birth control to their employees. In the weeks since the declaration, the controversy that it stirred up caused the administration to revise its decision, putting in place “accommodations” by which it hopes to quell the […]
By now, most Catholics are aware of the impending HHS mandate the Obama Administration will be imposing upon faith-based organizations, requiring them to pay — through insurance companies — for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. If they choose to not pay, a fine will be imposed per employee, which could cost institutions like the Catholic Church millions […]
In case you didn’t notice…. With George W. Bush out of office and a Democrat in the White House, the secular media stopped its handwringing over the president mentioning God. With Rick Santorum’s surge, the hysteria has started again. Every religious utterance by Santorum will be a cause for apoplexy by the liberal press. It […]
In the Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Lent in the Ordinary Form of Holy Mass, Jesus proclaims, “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” but what does that mean? Is this Kingdom still to come such that we might participate in bringing it to fulfillment, or is the reign of Christ the King […]
Some thoughts on U.S. policy toward Syria on the occasion of the just-ended “Friends of Syria” meeting in Tunisia: Since the end of the cold war, many Americans have a sense of being so strong, they don’t need to think about their own security but can afford to focus on the immediate humanitarian concerns of […]
The great English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.” But if what Chesterton says is true, then Canada fails the test, because the Canadian family is no longer free. In the past […]
Three decades ago, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher implemented a policy called “privatization” to rejuvenate the moribund economy of the United Kingdom. Like the United States today, the cost of a too-large government was sapping the vitality of the U.K.’s economy. The private sector was staggering under the heavy tax burden needed to fund the public […]
Seven states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration today seeking to overturn the mandate that religious employers provide contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients to their employees as part of their health care plans. The state attorneys general of Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas filed suit today in U.S. District Court, arguing […]
After quitting my job as a school teacher in 2010 to become a full-time organic farmer, I was left with a dilemma. I was quite certain that I could grow high quality produce, but what was I going to do with it? I had heard about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs from various other small-scale […]
In 2007, while still a member of the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama said, “I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are just so ‘90s. Their days are growing dark.” Until recently, I’ve been inclined to agree with Mr. Obama. The culture wars are over. We lost. We’re no longer fighting to uphold traditional social values. […]
Today, religious liberty gained a resounding victory. A federal court in Tacoma, Washington, struck down a Washington law that requires pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill even when doing so would violate their religious beliefs. The court held that the law violates the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. “Today’s decision sends a […]
The secular world today trembles and shudders at the sight of Rick Santorum speaking on good and evil at Ave Maria University in Florida in 2008. Santorum’s statement came 25 years after another much-maligned social conservative, Ronald Reagan, delivered a similarly fiery speech in Florida in 1983. In both cases, the secular left recoiled in […]
It is not often that one sees Ernest Hemingway cited in an article on the federal budget and fiscal situation. But that is what GOP House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the Senate Committee, did in a recentWashington Post op-ed on President Obama’s last budget of his first term. […]
A very conscientious Catholic, Harold Baumeister, saw this cartoon in his hometown paper and had the conviction and gumption to do something about it! He wrote to the editor (letter follows) to let him know that he was deeply offended by this crass cartoon and that the pope and all Catholics will fight to defend our freedoms. […]
Need a little dose of humility? Try testifying before a legislative committee in Olympia, Washington chaired by condescending Senator, Karen Keiser. Want to be humbled? Get reprimanded by this same pro-abortion Senator calling herself a Lutheran Christian, who co-sponsored the redefinition of marriage bill, and who has been homesteading in the legislature for 16 […]
No attempt to defend the constitutionality of the mandate On Thursday, the Obama administration filed its first legal response to Belmont Abbey College’s lawsuit challenging the controversial contraception mandate. This was its first opportunity to explain to the court and the country why the mandate is not illegal and unconstitutional. So what did the administration […]
A fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives. Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a fight with the Catholic Church that Team Obama wants — and with the focus based narrowly on contraception, not […]
