Ross Douthat thinks they might be a thing of the past. For all the talk of Republican intransigence, I think that Paul Ryan and Alice Rivlin could get together to craft a left/right compromise - even one that includes higher taxes than anything Ryan has proposed. The problem is that . . . . Continue Reading »
Ramesh Ponnuru makes the case for a GOP debt limit fight about as well as it is going to be made by anyone. One way of looking at it is that refusing to unconditionally raise the debt ceiling in order to pay for already authorized spending is irresponsible. As Ponnuru points out, this assumes that . . . . Continue Reading »
So here’s a condensed version of maganimous—or FRIDAY NIGHTS LIGHTS—conservatism in one place. . . . . Continue Reading »
Elad Nehorai, a young Jewish writer, describes how he lost his faith in gay rights : It was the summer of 2008 in Chicago. The month before I went to yeshiva for the first time. I was excited. My friends and I had talked about doing this for a while now. We were going to the gay pride parade. . . . . Continue Reading »
Rod Dreher reflects on the confession of the sad and pitiable Elizabeth Wurtzel, who described her One-Night Stand of a Life in the January 14th issue of New York magazine. She begins, as Rod notes, writing what seems to be a confession but ends with (unless she’s being very subtly . . . . Continue Reading »
Funnier to those of us who do this kind of work than to the rest of you, but still worth commending: 4 Copy Editors Killed In Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence . . . . . Continue Reading »
Elizabeth Scalia on the Republicans’ atomic stupidity : The GOP, even if they could figure out exactly what they want and then rouse themselves to something resembling tenacity, has no equivalent support, and would therefore be unable to successfully bring about their policy ideas by using . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s an interesting report from NPR on two recent prosecutions for the crime of blasphemy in Greece. In the first, the government brought a blasphemy charge against the poster of a Facebook page that mocks a famous Orthodox monk; the government has since dropped the blasphemy . . . . Continue Reading »
Archaeologists in Turkey are uncovering well-preserved remains of Myra, home of the beloved St. Nicholas in the third and fourth centuries. From the New York Times : Archaeologists first detected the ancient city in 2009 using ground-penetrating radar that revealed anomalies whose shape and size . . . . Continue Reading »
The Passive Voice is abused when the agent of the verb is not general and is indeed of consequence, but the writer wishes to obfuscate. Bureaucrats and politicians abuse the passive all the time, to hide responsibility. Consider the following sentences: The . . . . Continue Reading »
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