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    The most astonishing fact about contemporary American politics—that there is not a single Protestant on the Supreme Court, while there are six Catholics—goes largely unremarked, even though on the surface it seems to fulfill the most dire predictions made at…

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    May 20, 2013

    IRS Targets Catholic Critics of Obama Regime

    by Stephen M. Krason

    The revelations of the scandals within the Obama administration in the past couple of weeks make those of us who are old enough recall 1973, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigative reporting and then the hearings of a special…

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    May 17, 2013

    Saving the Uncommon Core of Catholic Education

    by Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins

    As Catholic institutions have come under unprecedented pressure from government to trim their religious and social mission, it seems incredible that Catholic educators would consider voluntarily placing their schools under an onerous federal yoke.  But that incongruous prospect may be…

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    May 15, 2013

    Cultural Imperialism on the March: Obama Promotes Gay Pride Worldwide

    by Robert R. Reilly

    As June approaches, get ready for the official celebration of “Gay Pride Month” by US embassies abroad. If sodomy and same-sex marriage are constitutional rights, what is their relationship to American foreign policy? Despite the tremendous controversy regarding these issues…

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    May 14, 2013

    When Politicians Allow the Murder of Infants

    by Anne Hendershott

    Now that the verdict is in on Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist convicted of delivering live babies—most of them African American—and killing them, perhaps President Obama might finally be willing to respond to the horrific crime.  Silent on the facts…

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    May 9, 2013

    Onward, De-Christianized Soldiers

    by George Neumayr

    The liberationist philosophy underpinning Obama’s co-ed, gay-friendly military holds, on the one hand, that sexuality is inherently fixed and thus beyond the control of individuals, and on the other that sexuality is subject to re-shaping “through changes in culture.” The…

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    May 2, 2013

    President Obama and the Primitivism of Planned Parenthood

    by George Neumayr

    Speaking at a Planned Parenthood conference last week, President Obama celebrated the abortion provider as an icon of progress. Mocking the legislative efforts of pro-lifers within such states as North Dakota and Mississippi to curb abortion, Obama said to his…

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    May 1, 2013

    On Our Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System

    by Stephen M. Krason

    Criminal law and criminal justice in the United States may reasonably be said to be in a state of crisis in many different aspects: the increasing amount of criminal law, the kinds of things it tries to address, its enforcement,…

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    April 30, 2013

    What is This Thing Called Virtue?

    by Bruce Frohnen

    Believe it or not, in at least one specific area public discourse in the United States is a bit better than it was a few decades ago.  How so? Today we occasionally hear the word “virtue” used—and not always in…

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    April 26, 2013

    Something Rotten in the Boy Scouts

    by Austin Ruse

    There’s deception going on in the front office of the Boy Scouts. It includes deliberate misrepresentation of polling data, and threats to pack an upcoming meeting with anonymous and unqualified voters so that the Boy Scout policy on homosexuality gets…

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    April 25, 2013

    A Catholic Response to Utopian Modernity

    by James Kalb

    The world goes its own way without much regard for the Church, because it has very little regard for truth—that is to say, for reality. The problems go to the roots of current ways of thinking. The modern movement of…

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    April 23, 2013

    When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going

    by Bernadette O'Brien

    Just as Mr. Darcy’s aunt, the overbearing Lady Catherine De Bourgh, held that if she’d ever been taught music she would have been a great proficient, I’ve sometimes had the chumpaciousness to think that if I’d ever learned to draw…

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    April 18, 2013

    The Slide Toward State Control

    by Donald DeMarco

    During his Apostolic Visit to the United States, on April 16, 2008, which was also his birthday, Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed to the White House by President George W. Bush.  The Pope expressed the hope that his visit would…

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    April 17, 2013

    Using the Aphorism to Challenge Liberalism

    by James Kalb

    According to a recent survey, the average college student’s idea of Tyrannosaurus rex is modeled on Barney the purple dinosaur. Accurate portrayals in movies and textbooks make no difference: students continue to believe T. rex stood upright instead of pitched…

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    April 16, 2013

    Why We are Losing the Gay “Marriage” Debate (and How We Can Start Winning)

    by John Jalsevac

    Gay activists tell us that “gay marriage is inevitable.”  It’s a taunt devised to pick off the more faint-hearted clingers-on of traditional marriage by exploiting the human instinct to be on the winning side. And all too often, it works….

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    April 12, 2013

    With 80% Friends Like These…

    by Austin Ruse

    In these dirty dishonest days you expect your political enemies deliberately to misstate your positions. How positively Medieval to restate your opponent’s position better than he can before demolishing it. Now is the day of the straw man, and the…

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    April 11, 2013

    The “Private Idea” of Parental Rights

    by George Neumayr

    The Left has always held a dim view of parental rights, seeing them as an obstacle to centralized planning. But usually the Left’s spokesmen are a little more circumspect in their pronouncements than MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who blurted out in…

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    April 10, 2013

    Has Marriage Already Been “Redefined”?

    by Kenneth D. Whitehead

    Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the two cases concerning so-called same-sex “marriage,” the California Proposition 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, on which the high court recently heard two days of…

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    April 9, 2013

    “Full of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing”

    by Sean Fitzpatrick

    Dictator Kim Jong Un has been rattling his saber in North Korea with enough warmongering threats to go around. Though U.S. national defense and U.N. security officials recognize that the situation brewing in Pyongyang is serious, they also recognize it…

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    April 8, 2013

    The Well-Being of Children

    by Dale O'Leary

    An article in the March issue of Pediatrics entitled “Marriage and the Well-Being of Children” tacitly admits that there may be empirical evidence that “children reared by same-sex couples fare worse than children in other arrangements.” However, the authors, Jeremy…

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    April 5, 2013

    What a Constitution Can, and Can’t, Do

    by Bruce Frohnen

    I was at a conference recently on the relationship between constitutionalism and liberty.  There were quite a few very smart and learned people there.  Two things struck me in particular from the conversations we had over several days:  first, how…

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