The Witherspoon Institute is hopeful: The international press was shocked on November 17, 2012, when hundreds of thousands of French citizens took to the streets to fight against a parliamentary bill redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships and legalizing same-sex adoption. Less than a decade ago, France symbolized all that American conservatives despised and all …
When a Little Darwinian Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
Every now and then an article on a supposedly "obscure" subject leaps at you. One of those was "Children Who Disappeared in Britain" by Deborah Cohen of Northwestern University. It chronicles the history of the Normansfield Training Institution near London, from its opening to its ignominious end in 1997. It's significant because it follows the …
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The Core Issue Isn't Gun Control, But Government Distrust
That's Scott Rasmussen's idea, and he asks a lot of nosey questions: If people trusted the government, there would be no reason to be concerned about background checks, but only one-in-five voters believe the government currently has the consent of the governed. Half the nation views the federal government as a threat to individual liberties …
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The Bad Taste of Princeton Alumna Susan Patton
Was to state the obvious: Her betrayal consists of being gauche enough to acknowledge publicly a truth that everyone who’s come up through Ivy League culture knows intuitively — that elite universities are about connecting more than learning, that the social world matters far more than the classroom to undergraduates, and that rather than an …
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They Used to Know Christians By Their Love. But Now…
...even the Federal government boots the likes of Michael Pfleger off the program: Michael Pfleger, the controversial Catholic priest who made racial remarks about Hillary Clinton and defended Louis Farrakhan, has been removed as a keynote speaker at a diversity day event sponsored by a federal government agency. A spokesperson for the Broadcasting Board of …
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Some Thoughts on Same Sex Civil Marriage–from 2004
I've taken something of a "Lenten Break" since Ash Wednesday. I find it more and more frustrating to opine on social and political matters to either a)liberals, who like my old cat only hear the sound of their own voice, or b)conservatives, who can't get themselves to think outside the box at a time when …
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Millions of Dead Fish, Part II
Well, we may not be quite up to 106, but... A federal mandate to remove old, abandoned oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico is blowing up a lot more than just the rigs. Undercover video obtained by Local 15 shows thousands of pounds of dead fish, mostly red snapper, floating to the …
The Class Struggle Finally Comes to America
With a vengeance: The striking similarities between what happened to black Americans at an earlier stage in our history and what is happening now to white working-class Americans may shed new light on old debates about cultural versus structural explanations of poverty. What’s clear is that economic opportunity, while not the only factor affecting marriage, …
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The Republicans Finally Figure it Out on the Sequester
It took long enough: In November 2011, President Obama lamented that “some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts” that were part of that August’s deal to raise the debt limit. “My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to …
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Old Hickory Falls Out of Favour in his own Party
All glory is fleeting, I suppose: Andrew Jackson, the president whose divisive political instincts would shape the Democratic Party for generations, was born less than 20 miles from here, in the Waxhaw region between the Carolinas. Until the 1980s, “Old Hickory” was considered a near-great president, just a few notches below Washington, Lincoln and Franklin …
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Positive Infinity 