How to Care for Your Child, 1928
Childcare isn’t what it used to be, and good thing for that. Here’s a section from James Watson’s Psychological Care of Infant & Child, 1928. Â Â The chapter was entitled “Too Much Mother Love.”
Setting standards for immigration
In case you missed it, Deal did a brief interview Friday with the Dallas Morning News on the subject of Catholic teaching and immigration. It’s a short piece, but informative, and included this interesting exchange: [D]oes a government have a moral right to set limits on the kinds of people who enter? Kinds of people? … Read more
Rev. Euteneuer Steps Down From HLI
A press release from Human Life International: The board of directors of Human Life International (HLI) has announced that after nearly 10 years of meritorious service to HLI as president, Reverend Thomas J Euteneuer has stepped down from his position after being asked by his Bishop to return to his Diocese in West Palm Beach, … Read more
Bought and paid-for bloggers
According to the Daily Caller, some popular political bloggers are receiving more than news tips from their favored candidates: In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers. One … Read more
Judge blocks NIH from funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Good news yesterday in the fight against embryonic stem cell experimentation: U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration’s new guidelines, citing an appeals court’s ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing … Read more
Philadelphia residents must now pay $300 to run a blog
If you live in Philadelphia and operate a blog, your city government wants to charge you $300 for the privilege. For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to … Read more
Ann Coulter versus Joseph Farah… Where’s the popcorn?
When two mouthpieces of the feisty right come to verbal blows, you know it’s going to be entertaining. Yesterday, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily announced that his popular site is cancelling Ann Coulter’s appearance at their “Taking America Back National Conference” in September, because of her decision to speak before a prominent gay conservative organization. “Ultimately, as … Read more
Yet another adult stem cell breakthrough…
Family & Life, an independent pro-life organization in Ireland, reports on the latest medical innovation involving the use of adult stem cells: a boy in Northern Ireland became the first child to undergo a successful trachea transplant. The 11-year-old underwent the operation which involved the removal of his trachea and its replacement with a donor … Read more
When Islam Abandoned Reason: A Conversation with Robert R. Reilly
What happened to Islamic civilization? How did we get from Avicenna and Cordoba to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda? In his new book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, Robert R. Reilly traces the problem back to a thousand-year-old theological debate over reason and the nature of … Read more
The Social/Fiscal Conservatism debate is back…
Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of the excellent Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, has some advice for the GOP on the upcoming elections. Stop me if you’ve heard this before… Despite their repeated threats to stay home if Republicans deviated from a commitment … Read more
Why businesses can’t afford to create jobs these days
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an important op-ed by Michael Fleisher, president of Bogen Communications, entitled “Why I’m Not Hiring.” It makes for discouraging, but important, reading. Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base … Read more
UPDATE: Democratic dirty tricks in Kentucky
The race between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway for Jim Bunning’s old Kentucky Senate seat is getting slimy. In this latest episode, one of Conway’s supporters dressed up like a Rand Paul fan, slung a racist sign around his neck, and tried to circulate at a Paul rally. Happily, we live in the … Read more
Justice Anthony Kennedy and the Prop 8 ruling
According to Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8 will be difficult for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse. That is because Walker appears to have written his opinion with one specific Supreme Court justice in mind: I count — in his opinion today — seven citations to Justice … Read more
Was Plato a secret Pythagorean?
How did I miss this? Jay Kennedy, an historian and philosopher of science at the University of Manchester, claims to have made an unusual discovery in the works of Plato. In short, he argues that the philosopher was a closet Pythagorean, and that he left numerous textual clues to that effect. [Kennedy] used a computer … Read more
POLL: Democratic attempts to tie 2010 GOP to Bush aren’t working.
The Democrats don’t seem to have much of a strategy for winning the 2010 midterms, and the one approach they’ve been using isn’t working. The National Journal reports: Dems have tried repeatedly to tie the GOP to Bush’s economic policies, which remain highly unpopular. But so far, that hasn’t worked, according to officials at the … Read more
The Anchoress and the Shirley Sherrod story
Was Elizabeth Scalia — known to all as The Anchoress — the first writer to question the Shirley Sherrod story? Richard Hyfler of Forbes says yes, and adds that she’s the only one who emerged from the imbroglio looking good. When Andrew Breitbart released his heavily edited video — and most of us assumed it … Read more
The phony threat of “i-Dosing”
When it comes to the promotion of ridiculous ‘threats to our children,’ no-one beats the mainstream media. Take this latest civilization ender, the pastime known as i-Dosing. Here’s how it works, as described by Wired: i-dosing involves donning headphones and listening to “music” — largely a droning noise — which [Web sites] peddling the sounds … Read more
Burqas, Jaredites, and Kafka
First, Belgium banned the veiled burqa, then two months later, France followed. Spain is considering a ban as well, and while the British government has no interest in joining them, most of its citizens wish it would. But the most interesting development in the Great Burqa Debate came Sunday, when Syria’s Minister of Higher Education … Read more
Truck driver chokes on pork rinds, crashes. Pork rind law reform now!
This story… The driver of a FedEx tractor-trailer rig lost control of his truck on Interstate 5 after choking on some spicy pork rinds, jackknifed and came to a stop in a muddy ditch, says a Washington State Patrol trooper. Trooper Keith Leary says 42-year-old Edward Sutherland of Mount Vernon suffered minor injuries Monday. Leary … Read more
Is Vatican Radio causing cancer?
This has been a bad press week for the Vatican, and is now made worse: A new Italian court-ordered study has determined that Vatican Radio’s main broadcast tower outside Rome is increasing the neighbors’ risk of cancer. “There has been an important, coherent and meaningful correlation between exposure to Vatican Radio’s structures and the risk … Read more