In 2008, we rescued the banks. It 2009, we pledged $900 billion to rescue the rest of the economy. Last month, we extended jobless benefits to 99 weeks to rescue the unemployed. Call it bailouts. Call it stimulus. Call it emergency aid. America seems to be losing its stomach for failure, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Suppose the Catholic Church proposed to build a 13-story, 50,000 square-foot showpiece at Ground Zero? Or the 92nd St. Young Men’s Hebrew Association proposed to relocate its facility to the site of the attack on the Twin Towers? Or the Billy Graham Evangelical Association offered to . . . . Continue Reading »
As Wesley J. Smith said this past Thursday in a post on Secondhand Smoke, the fact that the government of Catalonia has voted to ban bullfighting in that region of Spain starting in 2012 is a good thing. As Smith pointed out, bullfighting “is like dog fighting . . . . It is cruelty for sport . . . . . Continue Reading »
Whenever I doubt my own powers of naivete and rationalization, I remind myself that I once considered Ayn Rand to be an admirable and important philosopher. Somehow I was able to justify her atheistic nihilism with my views of Christianity by telling myself that she really didn’t mean what she . . . . Continue Reading »
I think Obamacare has a significant constitutional defect—by requiring people to purchase a private service, e.g. health insurance, the law stretches the commerce clause beyond the breaking point. Consider: This isn’t merely regulating interstate commerce—it is forcing . . . . Continue Reading »
There has probably never been a time when the cry for renewal of the church has not been in the air. Although the periods of genuine reformation have been few, the church has never lacked her Luthers and Calvins, even when few people were willing to listen to them. What of the present? We seem to . . . . Continue Reading »
For anyone interested, you can access my Saturday interview on The John Batchelor Show—Jeff Bliss guest hosting—by hitting this link. The subjects are Final Exit Network in specific and the dangers of euthanasia/assisted suicide in . . . . Continue Reading »
Vatican preparing new document on effects of abortion on women The new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, announced that his dicastery is preparing a document on the effects of abortion on women, often called post-abortion syndrome. The document . . . . Continue Reading »
When I heard immortality researcher Aubrey de Gray make the hubristic claim that funding his work to end human death was more important than funding health care for destitute Africa, and indeed, that failing to do so was equivalent to terrorism (about which I wrote here), he lost me as someone to . . . . Continue Reading »
In “The Last Gasp” , Scott Christianson, the author of a new book on the history of the gas chamber, reflects on that subject and capital punishment in general, though not with as much detail as one would like. This claim surprised me: the gas chamber was invented in the twenties, . . . . Continue Reading »
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