A court has enjoined the federal government from funding embryonic stem cell research under the Obama policy, as it most likely violates the Dickey Amendment. The Dickey Amendment is a budgetary law passed each year that bars federal funding of destructive research on embryos. Bill . . . . Continue Reading »
Where is Mel Brooks when we need him? The creator of “Spaceballs” is the right person to deal with this item from the Jewish webzine The Tablet:This month, 12 students were initiated into a class of women studying to become kohanot, or Hebrew priestesses, at a retreat center in . . . . Continue Reading »
In the most popular movies from 1991 to 2009, the amount of smoking peaked in 2005 and is now going down, with fewer than half the scenes with someone smoking now than in 2005. Here is a way to visual Shakespeare’s plays . The city of Philadelphia is demanding some bloggers pay $300 for a . . . . Continue Reading »
So you’ve been wondering whether and when you’ll get to hear me at the political science convention in DC over the Labor Day Weekend. The great news is that I’m part of three excellent shows. The bad is that two of them are that the worst conceivable times—8 a.m. Thursday . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week, pastor Trevin Wax posted an interesting blog entry about the way serious preaching demands serious presentation. Specifically, Wax is watching a trend of churches “focusing on the centrality of the Word in worship,” and noting that it clashes with the contemporary . . . . Continue Reading »
“Unfortunately our recent study of the highly popular Earth-being religion Major League Baseball suggests that the planet’s dominant species—a semi-gelatinous, endoskeletal, sexually-reproducing biped—is not sufficiently evolved for consciousness absorption,” writes . . . . Continue Reading »
Last week Insider Higher Education offered a helpful summary of a new study that dug down a bit into the culture of higher education to see how conservative students survive and thrive . The study found that students at an elite liberal arts college tended to have positive experiences, even though . . . . Continue Reading »
Today in “On the Square,” Joseph Bottum reflects on the Bible’s hard sayings, which are “too many, too hard, to be entirely exegeted away in historical criticism, or eased with gentler passages in antidote, or shrugged off as the overstatement of prophetic rhetoric,” . . . . Continue Reading »
Daniel Luban argued last week in the Tablet webzine that the old anti-Semitism has transmogrified into Islamophobia:...many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious . . . . Continue Reading »
“This is your last chance, Wormwood, grab him before he gets to the chapel.” . . . . Continue Reading »
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