See if you can find a clip of Senator Ted Cruz taking apart Chuck Hagel today. Hagel came off incredibly shifty and dishonest, while Cruz showed that being rhetorically tough doesn’t mean being bombastic or rude. Something about Cruz’s calm, unforced courtesy made the . . . . Continue Reading »
Consider yourself warned, 1. It turns out we had slow economic growth last quarter. Actually worse than that. It appears that the economy actually shrank a bit - though the GDP estimates are approximations so we might actually have merely had very slow growth. I’ve read somewhere that a sharp . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s certainly possible that I’m wildly optimistic (it would not be the first time), but I am inclined to disagree with the recent suggestions of Joseph Knippenberg and Matthew Franck , based on recent (possible) changes in policy on sexual orientation, that the Boy Scouts of America . . . . Continue Reading »
So someone just send me this . It portrays me as the southern Stoic gentleman opposed to the Snopesy (or the money-grubbing populist) governor. But the opposition is overdrawn, of course. I don’t think anyone should major in gender studies or most stuff ending in studies either. Still, . . . . Continue Reading »
Your teenage “kids” are probably a lot more competent than they seem, according to psychologist Robert Epstein. But a raft of laws and regulations (compulsory education, labor restrictions, a separate juvenile justice system) and an ever-growing consumer sector have needlessly delayed . . . . Continue Reading »
My friend Anne Barbeau Gardiner writes in the last issue of the New Oxford Review about an article by Richard Dawkins, published in the English newspaper The Guardian in 2009, on the ramifications of creating a human-chimpanzee hybrid. It offers the usual anti-humanist dream. In the article , . . . . Continue Reading »
In a story that seems equal parts Father Ted * and The Boondock Saints , three young men robbed an Irish monsignor and his housekeeper on Monday evening in a flurry of hammer-waving, cross-signing, and warm Gaelic hospitality: One of the raiders, who spoke with a Traveller and Dublin . . . . Continue Reading »
David and Rusty , I think you’re exactly right about the new IAV manifesto. Because of what you point outthe manifesto says good things but will nonetheless have negative rather than positive consequences for marriagethis could be a fruitful dialogue opportunity. The . . . . Continue Reading »
“Could it be then that the muse isnt Greek after all? That Mt. Parnassus is really St. Peters?” asks Bruce Guernsey in the most recent issue of Dappled Things . Guernsey, a practicing poet who is former editor of the Spoon River Poetry Review and has taught creative . . . . Continue Reading »
Russell E. Saltzman on finding his inner gun owner : I am getting in touch with my inner gun owner, that primal part of my reptilian brain that says I must weaponize. Blame it on the Obama administration, I say. The presidents proposals of firearm abatement got me thinking: If I . . . . Continue Reading »