As readers in this space may have noticed, I have had a thing or two (or three) to say about the Bush/Cheney program of torture and the incredible lengths of sophistry to which spokesoids for the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism have gone on its behalf. My concerns have basically come down to this: … Read more
Two days after the Stupak-Pitts Amendment passed, President Barack Obama made a statement that appeared to accept a ban on abortion funding in health care reform. “I laid out a very simple principle, which is, this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill, and we’re not looking to change what is the principle … Read more
Last Friday night, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to allow a vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, she may have unwittingly altered the direction of the Obama presidency and the Democratic Party. For the first time in a long time, the pro-life issue is setting the agenda for the national debate on a major … Read more
Crusading ideals in the West were an answer to the greater threat of jihad. They were spurred by fear and necessity in a desperate competition with Islam that, for many centuries, Christians lost — and were aware that they were losing. The extent of Islam’s victories can be seen in the all-but-complete disappearance of the … Read more
On October 30, Brian Rooney, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center, filed his papers to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional Seat. Rooney had initially put aside his political plans when his son Blaise was born with a congenital heart defect in February, but the fight to save his son’s life in the midst … Read more
The election results of November 2 were not merely the spontaneous reaction of Republicans to the bad economy and liberal excesses of the Obama administration. The four pro-life, conservative GOP candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were elected in a groundswell of religious and social conservatives, many of them independent voters who had … Read more
Berlanty (Betty) Azzam was two months away from receiving her business degree at Bethlehem University. Anticipating life beyond college, she made the two-hour trip to Ramallah for a job interview, but on the way back she was asked for her papers at the “container” checkpoint. Azzam was detained by the Israeli military for five hours, … Read more
In an important article for the American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord describes the effort of “So We Might See” — “a national inter-faith coalition for media justice,” according to its Web site — to force a Federal Communications Commission investigation of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. The organization’s petition to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and … Read more
A special election will be held on November 3 in upstate New York that may send a much-needed message to the GOP. New York Congressional District 23 was put up for grabs when nine-term Rep. John McHugh, a Republican, resigned to become Secretary of the Army. The eleven Republican chairs of the district nominated Dede … Read more
President Barack Obama has nominated a Georgetown University law professor, Chai R. Feldblum, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Council. Feldblum, a lesbian activist lawyer, formerly worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, and in the mid-1980s clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. Feldblum faces … Read more
Last Saturday night, President Barack Obama spoke to the nation’s leading homosexual-rights lobbying group, the Human Rights Campaign, in Washington, D.C. Among the several promises Obama made were “to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act” and “to pass an inclusive hate crimes bill.” As I reported a few days ago, the USCCB has … Read more
This week, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on the health-care bill. If it passes, the Finance bill will be reconciled with the bill already passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Then health-care reform will go to the Senate floor for a vote. The Finance Committee version does … Read more
Most law professors who have had the opportunity to teach criminal law agree that it is a fun course. There is much discussion of morality, intentionality, deterrence, and other intellectually stimulating topics. On the other hand, you also have to deal with rape, which is both difficult and uncomfortable. One rape case that we … Read more
When public school began earlier this month, some parents were wary of the idea of President Barack Obama’s likeness appearing on Orwellian viewscreens in their children’s classrooms. While the presidential address might have captured the banality of Big Brother’s compulsory public health announcements, the speech itself contained little that was politically alarming. Of greater … Read more
At age 37 and married only a month, Kevin Calvey volunteered for deployment in Iraq. When he returned to his wife, Toni, in Oklahoma City a year later — 2008 — he restarted his private law practice but was soon alarmed by the “dire situation” of our nation. It was then that Calvey decided to … Read more
The great national controversy about health care is, I submit, about something more than health care. Man-in-the-street conservatives (as opposed to conservative intellectuals) feel — and feel very correctly — that they are viewed with great disdain and contempt by upper-middle-class liberals who, thanks to the elections of 2006 and 2008, happen to be … Read more
Knowing that I had spent the summer in England, a fellow law professor recently asked me whether “the Republicans” had hired me to advertise against the president’s health-care plan. My response was, “No, but they could have.” I would have done it for free. Watching the health-care debate from the other side of the Atlantic … Read more
With his popularity ratings plummeting and public resistance to his health-care reform proposals increasing, President Barack Obama spoke to Congress and a national television audience for 48 minutes last night. Though touted as his “health-care speech,” the more important subtext was the future of Obama’s presidency itself. He has let it be known that his … Read more
Those of us who have argued for alternatives to individualistic capitalism and the bureaucratic welfare state are often told that we are good at pointing out problems but come up short on solutions — it’s a charge distributists hear often. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate,challenges us to overcome the “market-plus-State” model, … Read more
As the White House backs away from the so-called public option in health-care reform, Catholic experts are hopeful that the proposed government control of the nation’s medical care will be put aside. They argue that rejecting the public option will better serve a culture of life, maintain the present high quality of health care, serve … Read more