Matthew Schmitz

Michael J. New highlights a methodological limitation in a recent abortion study promoted by Amanda Marcotte and others: A medical student contacted the authors of the study to ask how they obtained pregnancy and abortion data from study participants. As it turns out, the researchers used telephone . . . . Continue Reading »

Losing power last night in lower Manhattan made it necessary to light all my candles, which gave me occasion to reflect on the wonderful work done by bees. For while paraffin is now more common in making candles, beeswax is still preferred by some, including the Roman church, in which it is . . . . Continue Reading »

Kate Pitrone at Postmodern Conservative criticizes the Obama for America campaign’s creepy “Future Children Project” ad in a post provocatively titled ” Child Abuse .” Jonah Goldberg makes a similar  judgment , writing that the ad constitutes “soft . . . . Continue Reading »

Frank Schubert meets Francois Truffaut. Citizens in seventy-five French cities formed “flash mobs” with a distinctively new-wave aesthetic sensibility to protest prime minister Francois Hollande’s plan to redefine marriage : In every case groups of men dressed in black and . . . . Continue Reading »

Jacques Barzun, who died yesterday in San Antonio at 104, had an intellect that was recognized as widely as it ranged. Yet evident as his erudition was, as powerful his judgment, it was never apparent just what he   believed. He had surveyed the world, but where did he stand? Did his criticism . . . . Continue Reading »

Congratulations to my friend ( and fellow opponent of anti-Sharia laws ) Robert K. Vischer on his appointment as dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Robert’s writing—-at Mirror of Justice and elsewhere—-always rewards attention. . . . . Continue Reading »

“That the reactionary protests against progressive society, judges it, and condemns it, and yet is resigned to its current monopoly of history, seems an eccentric position. The radical progressive, on the one hand, does not comprehend how the reactionary condemns an action that he . . . . Continue Reading »

Looks like we’ll have to update our house bio: Alan Jacobs, Clyde S. Kilby professor of English at Wheaton College, has accepted a new post as Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Baylor University’s Honors College. A coup indeed for Baylor! . . . . Continue Reading »

Yes, says the head of the Hebrew Studies Department at Tanta University in Egypt, Muhammad Galaa Idris. In an interview on Egypt’s Al-Rahma TV, he  informs us that Pope Benedict XVI is either Jewish or has been “Judaized”: The Egyptian academic said this in . . . . Continue Reading »

Richard Williamson has been removed from the traditionalist Catholic splinter group Society of St. Pius X, according to the traditionalist blog  Rorate Caeli : Bishop Richard Williamson, one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio de . . . . Continue Reading »