Next January, the Supreme Court will review two lower federal court rulings granting constitutional protection to physician-assisted suicide. In the first case, the question to be decided is whether the Due Process Clause guarantees the right of a terminally ill patient to commit suicide and, if so, whether that includes the right to be assisted … Read more
Coming out of their San Diego convention, the Republicans had a shot at regaining the White House—a long shot, to be sure, but by no means impossible. Two months later, on the eve of the election, their hopes of capturing the presidency are nil; they will be lucky to retain control of Congress. True, it … Read more
A Sex-Ed Movie for the Whole Family God may have made a lovelier creature than Maureen O’Hara but, if so, His handiwork is hard to find. Hers was a face to launch ten thousand ships, or more. Many a fair lass from Erin has graced the silver screen, but even in black and white, O’Hara … Read more
Seldom has the nation seen a more desultory presidential campaign. With scarcely two months to go, the Republicans have yet to articulate a theme capable of firing the moral imagination of the electorate. Tax-cut talk, which was supposed to do the trick, has produced only yawns of indifference or skepticism, and on virtually every other … Read more
Coming into their San Diego Convention, the mood of the Republican Party was despondent, almost funereal. Now the GOP acts like a man who just received a death-row reprieve. With a single stroke, the Dole campaign transformed itself from bumbling confusion into a plausible contender. Desperation may have mothered Jack Kemp’s selection as vice-presidential nominee, … Read more
All of a sudden, Catholics are in. As reported in these pages last month, the Clinton White House is knocking itself silly trying to look “Catholic”—frequent allusions to John F. Kennedy, a presidential visit to Ireland, a Hillary photo op with Mother Teresa, private briefings designed to flatter selected Catholic journalists, invocation of the pope … Read more
What a difference a day makes. Just before September 11, the news media gorged themselves on the petty preoccupations of the welfare state, which is to say the politics of who gets what, when, and how. Congress had just returned from its summer recess, its leaders posturing according to party on what to do about … Read more
Mickey Mantle, who played baseball for the Yankees, and Jerry Garcia, who played guitar for the Grateful Dead, died within a few days of one another last August. Both had become certified cultural icons, and in death each was washed with the kind of bathos usually spoken by party hacks at the funerals of fallen … Read more
The Supreme Court relieved itself of another opinion on the subject of affirmative action last month, Adarand Constructors V. Pena. While this effort was marginally better that its predecessors, if only because it vectored in the right direction, it did little to clarify the legal or moral principles on which remedial racial policies might be … Read more