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The Global War Against Baby Girls

If you were asked to name the technologies whose proliferation inadvertently threatens the human race, what would you include? Landmines? Assault rifles? Nuclear warheads? Add this one to your list: the sonogram machine. The widespread use of sonogram technology”coupled with liberal abortion laws”has made it easier than ever for women to identify the sex of their child so that those without a Y chromosome can be killed before they’re even born. … Continue Reading »

Cardinal Baum: A New Record-Holder

Something quite remarkable happened recently: Cardinal William Wakefield Baum”emeritus Archbishop of Washington, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, emeritus Major Penitentiary of the Catholic Church”passed the late Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore (who died in 1921) to become the longest-serving American cardinal in history. … Continue Reading »

James Frey’s Mediocre Messiah

In 2006, James Frey rocked the literary world with A Million Little Pieces, the supposedly autobiographical chronicle of a substance-abusing criminal life so fraught with emotion-grabbing high drama that it earned the Oprah Book Club Imprimatur and became a publishing phenomenon, right up until the moment people began to question just how autobiographical the story was, and Oprah publicly took Frey to task for “duping” her and a million little readers… . Continue Reading »

God, the Devil, and The King's Speech

Just after my wife and I watched the new hit movie, “The King’s Speech,” a friend asked me if I enjoyed it. “No, I suffered through it. But it was a great movie.” I have been a stutterer since the age of six. Every time King George VI puffed his cheeks helplessly as he tried to get out a word, I felt the frustration and pain. … Continue Reading »

Late to the Debt Party

Though it was launched just eleven days ago, no one, judging from a google search of the title, is still talking about A Call for Intergenerational Justice, a new statement by the Evangelical Left, who are suddenly and for the first time worried about governmental debt. The statement, subtitled “A Christian Response for the American Debt Crisis,” has just 397 signatures as I write, and has added just two in the twelve hours since I first checked… . Continue Reading »

A Modest Proposal

To me, the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of the Westboro Baptist Church barbarians was merely an illustration of a number of obvious facts about modern culture, and further evidence that between a regime of abstract liberties and a culture of real freedoms there is not only a distinction, but often an inevitable antagonism… . Continue Reading »

The Pastoral Street Light Dilemma

The best thing I ever did in politics”but I can’t recommend it as regular work for pastors”was get a street light up for some folks. This was when I was appointed to fill an unexpired term on a small town city council. The mayor made me the south ward alderman”sounds pleasantly Chicagoish, doesn’t it”and that put me in charge of streets, snow removal, and other interesting duties. … Continue Reading »

Justice Alito and Eight Dissenters: The Court Backs Into Relativism

Our friends at the Wall Street Journal have just celebrated the decision of the Supreme Court this past week for vindicating “Free speech for Jerks”: The Rev. Fred Phelps and his merry band have drawn the attention of the media as they have gone about staging demonstrations at funerals, and using those occasions as platforms for denouncing, in raw terms, homosexuals, the Catholic Church, the military, and American interventions abroad… . Continue Reading »

Rome and Moscow

Russian Federation president Dmitri Medvedev’s recent visit to the Vatican, which included an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, is being trumpeted in some quarters as further evidence of a dramatic breakthrough in relations between the Holy See and Russia, and between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. … Continue Reading »

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