Another good reason to homeschool your kids was offered by the high school of Arlington, Massachusetts: they aren’t offering to let students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom – even voluntarily. 17-year old Arlington high student Sean Harrington has been leading a crusade to allow the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited in … Read more
Tony Woodlief responds to the recent report that parents are actually less happy than non-parents by wondering if “happiness” is really the metric we want to use to measure a full and satisfying life: . . . I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there’s possibly … Read more
As my eldest son’s Little League season draws to a close here in town, this (somewhat tardy) story seems eerily relevant: In “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s character builds a baseball diamond out of a corn field after a voice tells him: “If you build it, he will come.” Well, now he can buy it and so … Read more
If you are one of the three million iPad owners, I would recommend a helpful guide for taking advantage of all its functionalities. iPad Made Simple, co-authored by Martin Trautschold and Gary Mazo, is easy to read and takes the reader step-by-step through all its various potencies. I thought I had a pretty good … Read more
Thanks to Mark Shea (you did read his column this morning, “Counsel the Doubtful,” didn’t you?) for sharing this hilarious read: What happens when an American anthropologist tells the story of Hamlet to some African tribesman? Laura Bohannan’s thesis that “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over” met its match in … Read more
Do we need a book telling us that monogamy isn’t natural, because our ancestors 8,000 years ago didn’t mate for life? Apparently so. A new book called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha has just been released in the U.S., and while I haven’t read it, … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
It’s not every day that the Supreme Court makes headlines because of the cases it chooses not to hear: The US Supreme Court has declined to hear the Vatican’s appeal of an Oregon judge’s decision allowing a sex-abuse victim to proceed with a lawsuit against the Vatican. The Supreme Court made no decision on the … Read more
Over at the St. Austin Review’s “Ink Desk” blog, Richard Aleman has written a fascinating post on two areas about which I know nearly nothing yet which I find endlessly fascinating: the great Russian writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and the economic/social/geopolitical philosophy most widely known as distributism: …Solzhenitsyn, once crushed under the boot of massive centralized government, … Read more
Father Rob Spaulding, a new priest in the diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a seminarian when his life was changed forever. After having a few drinks with three fellow seminarians, Rob was nominated to drive the group home — but he lost control of the car and crashed, ultimately killing two of the passengers, Jared … Read more
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
Our son Chippy enters 7th grade this year. In fact, at this very moment he is attending summer band camp at the Frost Middle School in Fairfax, VA where he will start his classes in September. He tells me that he “needs” a cell phone because “all his friends” have one. I say, “Forget it, … Read more
Emma Silvers, an editorial fellow at Salon, has finally seen the light on popular hipster store American Apparel. Now the largest clothing manufacturer in the U.S., American Apparel opened in 2003 in Los Angeles after a short stint as a wholesale T-shirt supplier. Within two years, it had 53 retails stores in five countries. Its … Read more
It’s tempting to romanticize the ancients, but stories like this remind us why we should not. Archaeologists in central England have been reviewing a mass burial site of 97 infants on the property of a Roman villa, and have come to an awful conclusion: Archaeologist Dr Jill Eyers said: “The only explanation you keep coming … Read more