Both This Is Spinal Tap and Repo Man are cult films that make fun of a rock youth culture, metal and punk respectively. Repo Man is the better of the two (again, my original listing of the best pop music films is chronological , not in terms of quality). One reason is that while This is Spinal Tap . . . . Continue Reading »
Somebody really doesn’t want you to read Secondhand Smoke. Last week, an attack of some sort made Google, Firefox, and other sites think coming here could hurt readers’ computers. Joe, the IT guy got rid of it. And now it is back. Don’t you love freedom lovers?I am . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s the excellent blog ARTERY BLOCKAGE . The author is clearly one of the 22 Americans who has read and understood my Modern and American Dignity . And he’s added quite thoughtfully and provocatively to what I wrote: As the family, the church, and the social state weaken, colleges . . . . Continue Reading »
Most readers of “First Thoughts” are likely, being mostly conservatives of some sort, to feel that things are always getting worse and that the contemporary world has fallen a few steps down the slope towards decadence from the position its predecessors held. In many ways things are . . . . Continue Reading »
George Weigel reflects on baseball’s All-Star game : For the past two decades I’ve taught in Cracow every July. I’d not trade the experience for anything, but it’s had one drawback: I haven’t seen baseball’s All-Star Game in a long time. The game itself is no big . . . . Continue Reading »
Is the “individual mandate” in the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) a penalty, or a tax? Over at NRO ‘s Bench Memos, I’ve been offering a defense of Chief Justice Roberts’ decision to read it as an exercise of the taxing power, not of the commerce . . . . Continue Reading »
About two weeks ago, I asked: if this is really a “culture war,” what does winning look like ? I was responding to Maggie Gallagher’s outstanding commentary on the recent unpleasantness. I wrote that I still supported the fight against the deinstitutionalization of marriage, but I . . . . Continue Reading »
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was sold to a gullible public on the promise of developing embryonic stem cell and therapeutic cloning CURES! CURES! CURES! that the eeeevilll Bush was thwarting. But, when that didn’t work out—and desperate to show some . . . . Continue Reading »
So here’s another fragment for my ISI lecture. Be assured this isn’t my view. And I’m getting around to the Declaration of Independence: Some conservatives say that what distinguishes America is that ours is the most modern and untraditional or unhinged country. Certainly there . . . . Continue Reading »
Yesterday, I received this sad email that I copy in below. I append my response below it. Kate - I served as a Lance Corporal in the Marines for over three years. During that time, I was raped twice and sexually assaulted twice more. It happened so often that I assumed it must be normal. . . . . Continue Reading »
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