While the battle over the 2011 budget and serial CRs (continuing resolutions) has been noisy, the amount of real money actually cut and to be cut from the federal budget is modest relative to its engorgement since 2008. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, a Nobel Prize winner, a former Secretary of State, and a […]
A Michigan Federal Judge yesterday ordered a Detroit-area transportation authority to display an anti-Jihad advertisement on its buses. Judge Denise Page Hood granted an injunction request filed by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) to reverse the bus authority’s refusal to display the ads, which state, “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community […]
“As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” On election day, November 2009, the Pine Tree State harkened back to its old bellwether status — at least on the issue of same sex marriage. Defying the governor, the legislature, and the other powers-that-be (except the churches), stalwart citizens upheld the historical definition of marriage. By a […]
[Yesterday] the Supreme Court said it would decide a groundbreaking First Amendment case concerning the right of churches and other religious employers to freely choose the people who will lead their congregations, instruct their faithful, and speak for the church. The lower courts agree that these employees cannot sue their employers when that would put […]
After decades of stasis, the Middle East is in uproar. With too much going on to focus on a single place, here’s a review of developments in four key countries. Libya: With most Americans not quite realizing it, their government haphazardly went to war on Mar. 19 versus Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya. Hostilities were barely acknowledged, […]
How curious. At the very moment that the threat posed to U.S. interests by the toxic Islamist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming ever more palpable, a top Senate Democrat seems determined to suppress Americans’ understanding of that menace. Even the New York Times is now acknowledging the obvious: the principal beneficiary of […]
In a 1972 decision widely hailed by the political classes, the Supreme Court opined in Eisenstadt v. Baird, “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusions into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”1 Imagining that […]
On March 2, the Supreme Court issued a decision in the case Snyder v. Phelps that illustrates the difficulty of balancing competing claims to rights and justice in our judicial system. The court overturned a lower court’s $5 million tort judgment against Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, for invasion […]
“More than 10,000 union members and supporters swarmed the State Capitol here,” began an ecstatic People’s World, describing the scene in Annapolis, Maryland. The masses assembled “to protest proposed changes to teacher’s pensions and to respond to the recent attack on unions in Wisconsin.” The CPUSA organ was there, reporting triumphantly, ready to storm the […]
Irony is defined as “the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.” The term doublespeak means “evasive, ambiguous language that is intended to deceive or confuse.” There is perhaps no greater example of ironic doublespeak than inclusion of the phrase “civil liberties” within the inapt designation: “American Civil Liberties […]
Atheist activist Dr. Michael Newdow announced on his website that after 6 years of litigation in federal courts, his constitutional challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance in California public schools is “over.” Newdow indicated for “reasons that are best not divulged” that he would not appeal the case to the Supreme Court. That leaves intact […]
Another round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released (click here and here). Fittingly, in Kennedy’s case, they once again raise all sorts of questions, from the moral to the political to issues of national security. First, however, allow me to pause with a sympathetic note. Among the documents within Kennedy’s […]
The Democrats in the Senate have been fighting a rear guard action, trying to obstruct the House Republicans in their drive for budget reform through a series of continuing resolutions (CRs) which are necessary to keep the federal government in operation during the current fiscal year. Some $10 billion has been cut from that budget […]
[Friday] the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Italy has not violated human rights by requiring crucifixes to be displayed in Italian state-school classrooms. Voting 15-2, the Grand Chamber reversed the earlier decision of a lower chamber of the Court finding the crucifix displays to violate European […]
“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members” Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds. In an economy that is increasingly calibrated for a two-person income, millions […]
In January 1907, a German-born official in the British Foreign Office wrote a memorandum that since has been indelibly linked to his name for its incisive analysis and uncanny prescience. Eyre Crowe had good reason to scrutinize Germany’s foreign-policy initiatives. The Kaiser’s imperialist impulses had managed to alienate Russia, terrify France, antagonize Great Britain, and […]
As with Egypt, American sympathies instinctively side with Libya’s oppositional forces as they seek to overthrow the tyrant Qaddafi—and rightfully so. But where U.S. foreign policy is concerned, prudence is in order. This is especially the case considering that the Obama administration has evinced inconsistency, if not incoherence, regarding the Middle East: vowing not to […]
The official hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps famously begins with “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” The reference to Tripoli alludes to the Battle of Derna of 1805, the first overseas land combat fought by U.S. troops and […]
Some may remember the scene from the film Moonstruck in which Cher slaps Nicholas Cage upside the head and yells “Snap out of it.” Somebody better slap the conservative community upside its collective head before the federal government spends all its time cooing at homosexuality. Recently, the lovestruck Department of Justice, White House, and Congress […]
Pennsylvania’s new governor, Tom Corbett, has submitted his first annual budget to the state legislature. It includes proposals for spending cuts and no new taxes. In some ways, the budget is a model of what must be done nationwide. Gov. Corbett also claims that it cuts spending, but that depends on how the numbers are […]
From Congressman Keith Ellison’s emotional breakdown to Congresswoman Jackie Speier’s accusations of “racism,” last week’s hearings on Muslim radicalization have made it clear that those who oppose the hearings have little of substance to offer. Still, the tactics used by such apologists—namely, appeals to emotionalism and accusations of racism—are influential enough that they need to […]
In America, it’s easy to take freedom speech for granted. After all, for citizens of the United States, free speech is a birthright, an ideal deeply woven into the fabric of society and culture. Sometimes, however, our ideals come into conflict with reality, and our convictions are put to the test. When a cherished liberty […]
Following the murder of Pakistan Minister of Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti on March 2nd, Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC), co-chairs of the Congressional International Religious Freedom Caucus, introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to take a definitive stance in protecting religious freedom and condemning the intolerance that sanctioned these murders […]
Attorney General Eric Holder explained the Obama administration’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) against court challenges by claiming that “a growing consensus accepts that sexual orientation is a characteristic that is immutable.” Gay activists have for years forwarded the notion that same sex attraction (SSA) is immutable — people are […]
