President Barack Obama will be interrupting a day filled with closed-to-the-press meetings to receive an award for his “deep commitment to an open and transparent government.” Matt Negrin of Politico wonders what the president will say when he accepts: [H]e probably won’t mention that his administration acted on fewer requests for information last year even … Read more
Read the first few paragraphs of this AP story on Catholic bloggers, and see if anything in particular strikes you: Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it’s not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the … Read more
Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis made headlines recently when he distributed a DVD to his 800,000-member diocese reiterating the Church’s teaching on marriage. In an interview with AP about the project, reported by USA Today, he defended the Church’s involvement in what some see as a purely political issue — encouraging other Catholics to … Read more
The “Mosque at Ground Zero” controversy has been simmering (even boiling) for some time now, and a number of excellent (if a trifle vehement) points have been made in recent weeks, culminating in today’s decision to allow the project to move forward. This editorial from The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn relates an interesting story about … Read more
Today is the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death and Sotheby’s auction house is marking the occassion by previewing some of the writer’s unpublished work (to be sold off in June). The AP reports that the “gem of the collection” is a 64 page tribute entitled, A Family Sketch. Twain wrote it for his daughter … Read more
I’ve picked on Ohio numerous times in the past, and I’m about to do it again. A new report by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission (formed last year by Ohio Attorney General Richard Condray) found that Ohio is not only a destination place for foreign-born victims of human trafficking, but also a place of recruitment. In … Read more
Remember all that talk about how the Bush and Obama stimulus packages were going to create jobs with new public works projects? Well, it hasn’t quite turned out that way. The infrastructure projects are lined up, sure — along with their sizable price tags — but the new jobs are nowhere to be found. Â … Read more
In 1917, Wallace Stevens published “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a poem now firmly ensconced in every anthology of American poetry. Generations of students have read it as a lesson in perspectivism — how the imagination can see the same thing under a variety of guises. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is not the subject … Read more
Dear Representative Stupak, Your statement on Saturday following the decision of Sen. Ben Nelson to support the Senate health-care bill was a great relief to millions of Catholics in this country. Your comment that “the Senate abortion language is not acceptable” provided moral and religious clarity at a crucial moment in the history of our … Read more
Secularism is naturally coercive. That stands to reason: As the worldview of secularism has it, human fulfillment must happen in this life, or it won’t happen at all –since, practically speaking, it’s the only life there is. An advertising slogan of a few years back neatly captured the spirit: “You only go round once.” Â … Read more