Joseph Knippenberg

Today’s New York Times website is hosting a debate on whether there should be a federal tax credit for parents who homeschool. Many of the official commentators think that regulation should accompany the money, if indeed a tax credit should be given at all. I have news for them. In many . . . . Continue Reading »

Much has been made, from all quarters, of the Republicans’ plans to begin the new session of Congress with a reading of the Constitution. Some have derided it as a kind of theater, implying that it therefore can’t be serious and meaningful. (Tell that to my wife, by profession an actor . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t often agree with Susan Jacoby, but I come pretty close to agreeing with this column , where she argues that we shouldn’t ask public schools to redress the lack of religious knowledge documented in this survey . My first thought as I was reading her piece was “of course, . . . . Continue Reading »

While I’m willing to agree with Michael Barone that at least some of the heat in the culture wars has been turned down a bit (but see this post for a qualification), a lot of interesting things have been said recently about marriage, some of which I noted here . In the first place, I want to . . . . Continue Reading »

I apologize for my long silence.  Between traveling to a family wedding in southern Maryland (along with some sightseeing in D.C. and a visit to the Naval Academy—my fifteen-year-old son’s current collegiate aspiration), furiously grading all the papers and exams that didn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Slate ‘s William Saletan finds a rational basis for the incest taboo: it tends to destroy the family by upsetting the roles people play and the relationships they (are supposed to) have within it. So—he heaves a huge sigh of relief—there’s no slippery slope from approval or . . . . Continue Reading »

The estimable, not to say legendary, Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. reflects on what he calls “the fear of Christmas.” His conclusion: The fear of Christmas is something even more basic, or perhaps more sinister. Why is that? It is one thing simply not to know something because we have never . . . . Continue Reading »

Apropos of Joe Carter’s post last week, we now have this story of a Danish professor conducting an orgy on his university’s campus. An Aalborg University professor and at least three other men and one woman have been caught on tape holding a steamy orgy on campus. According to TV2, the . . . . Continue Reading »

A federal judge in Kentucky has denied the University of Kentucky’s motion for summary judgment, paving the way for a jury trial on the merits of astronomer C. Martin Gaskell’s claim that the University engaged in religious discrimination when it did not offer him the postion of . . . . Continue Reading »

It turns out that culturally conservative Protestants in Brazil (mostly Pentecostals, I suspect, though the author of this article calls them evangelicals) have forced the newly elected president, Catholic (and former Marxist guerilla) Dilma Rousseff, to move sharply rightward in her positions on . . . . Continue Reading »