There are two high-profile labor disputes in the news these days. One involves Wisconsin’s public-school teachers; the other, the National Football League’s players. I mentioned this to a friend, who responded that the NFL dispute was more troublesome. The very idea of people making such high salaries possibly striking for more irked her. While I […]
“You can sit here and talk about jihad from here to doomsday, what will it do? Suppose you prove beyond any shadow of doubt that Islam is constitutionally violent, where do you go from there?” Such was Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi’s response to my assertion that Islamists seek to resurrect the caliphate and wage offensive […]
It was 65 years ago, March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. It was a speech that rocked the world and changed history. By then, Churchill was no longer British prime minister. He and his conservatives had been replaced by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party, which busily nationalized […]
As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so, is far from reciprocated to churches in the Muslim world. I speak not of Islamist attacks against churches—such as the New Year attack […]
Free speech has always been one of our most cherished rights. It has come under attack repeatedly by those who find it to be an inconvenient and unwanted obstacle to the attainment of their political goals. Sometimes, those in positions of power ignore the First Amendment and issue laws and regulations to silence their opponents. […]
During his campaign, Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly cited his opposition to same sex marriage. On the Human Rights Campaign’s 2008 Presidential Survey, he stated, “I do not support gay marriage. Marriage has religious and social connotations, and I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman.” Despite his formerly firm convictions, the President […]
Last summer, a Chinese telecommunications giant founded by a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) engineer was rebuffed in its effort to sell vast quantities of equipment to Sprint Nextel – an American company that provides communication services to the U.S. Defense Department and other government agencies. An interagency group known as the Committee on Foreign […]
The Becket Fund grieves the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities Affairs, today. Mr. Bhatti was gunned down leaving his home on Wednesday morning in Islamabad. He was an outspoken critic of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law, which prescribes death for offending Islam. “The last time that Mr. Bhatti was in the offices of […]
Driving up to Madison, Wisconsin, on Interstate 90, from Chicago’s O’Hare airport on business last week, a colleague pointed out the Clock Tower Resort as we passed through Rockford, Illinois. This establishment was recently elevated to the status of a historic landmark by the Wisconsin Democratic senators who decamped there with the aim of blocking […]
Once again it’s time to talk about raising the statutory limit on the U.S. government’s debt—the so-called “debt ceiling.” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has estimated that Uncle Sam will reach the debt ceiling before Tax Day, possibly even before the end of March. Even earlier, on March 4 to be precise, the current appropriations resolution […]
Writing recently about Rick Santorum’s quest to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, George Will remarked that Santorum’s chances depend on social conservatives who currently feel ignored and would be naturally sympathetic to someone like the former GOP senator from Pennsylvania. I venture no opinion on Santorum’s prospects. But about the present condition of […]
The violent demise of the Middle East’s longest-ruling leader – who came to office in September 1969, just a few months after Richard Nixon – stands well outside the mainstream of the region’s politics, but then Moammer Gaddafi always did. Gaddafi (for the record, the correct spelling of his name is Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhfi) began his […]
The term “useful idiot” is believed to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin. It originally described liberal Communist sympathizers in Western nations who, as the Soviet leader explained, would “sell us (Soviet Russia) the rope with which we will hang them (the West).” Today’s useful idiots are a swath from that same politically correct cloth. […]
Within days, the Obama Pentagon is expected to decide which supplier to rely upon for what is, arguably, the cornerstone of America’s ability to project power for the next forty years: the next generation aerial refueling tanker known as the KC-X. The choice for this role – which is worth conservatively $40 billion – would […]
The Thomas More Law Center announced today that the City of Dearborn, its Mayor, John B. O’Reilly, its Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad, 17 City police officers, and two executives of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce were named as defendants in a ninety-six page federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court […]
It is hard to overstate what is at stake in the dramatic showdown between Wisconsin’s teachers and their Republican governor and legislature. The political and economic course of our country hinges on how the issue of public-sector unions is resolved, in Wisconsin and elsewhere. For the sake of our country’s political and economic future, Gov. […]
Inside the beltway, discussion of President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 has provoked the “Sturm und Drang” that we have come to expect in the polarized partisan atmosphere that predominates in Washington. The President maintains that his $3.7 trillion proposal – which would produce a $1.6 trillion deficit this year (the largest since […]
If developments in Egypt have gone as well as one could hope for, future prospects remain unclear. The exciting part is over, now come the worries. Let’s start with three pieces of good news: Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s strongman who appeared on the brink of fomenting disaster, fortunately resigned. The Islamists, who would push Egypt in […]
Bobby Kennedy often noted the inscription chiseled by a conscripted worker into one of the building blocks of the Great Pyramid, “none had the courage to stand up and speak out.” Recently, it seems, a salutary change has taken place in the Egyptian character. No longer are they afraid to defy unjust decrees and egocentric, […]
The Thomas More Law Center, [Tuesday] afternoon, filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking that it reverse a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which upheld San Francisco’s virulent anti-Catholic resolution. San Francisco’s resolution, adopted March 21, 2006, refers to the Vatican as a “foreign country” meddling in the affairs of the City and […]
As the effects of the Great Recession continue to ripple outward, many churches are having a difficult time meeting their budgets. There has been an uptick in foreclosures of church properties across America, and this is in addition to the budgetary belt-tightening that congregations are performing in order to stay solvent. And as local governments […]
If necessity is the mother of invention, then there is nothing worse than quenching the entrepreneurial spirit of people seeking to improve their situation by imposing arbitrary third-party constraints. America’s unemployment problems linger because hustlers cannot hustle. For many, “hustling” connotes business activity that is shady, or even illegal. But in the black community it is […]
Not too many years ago, 800,000 Rwandans perished when their country descended into a bloody civil war. Now their government, with the encouragement of groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, appears poised to launch a nationwide sterilization campaign that may have equally disastrous demographic consequences. The plan calls for 700,000 men to […]
If we promote the family and the related idea of generosity with life, we have to be concerned with the ability of young couples to form and raise their families. In order to raise children, a family needs a degree of economic stability; and even more it needs a real non-inflationary economic growth that steadily […]
