meagerly Catholic Charities in Illinois has closed down all its foster-care operations rather than comply with new regulations allowing same-sex couples to adopt. The bishops’ lawyers are out, contesting that they have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion, and hence do not have to abide by state regulations; which sounds mildly plausible, until you […]
Category Archives: Political Comments
Catholic Charities on the Dole.
30-Dec-11The editor of the University Bookman sent out a list of the most-read pieces on the site in 2011, and the interview I gave there was one of them. The top five pieces are all excellent and I recommend them all: “Tyranny of the Herd.” By Paul Beston. http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/tyranny-of-the-herd/ “Live Where We Are.” By John […]
Christopher Hitchens, Flagellum Dei.
19-Dec-11I see no particular reason to call Christopher Hitchens a good person – anyone, as I have said, who leaves his wife when she is pregnant with their second child is safely distancing himself from all the more benign forms of respectability – but I must confess that despite the obvious – despite Greenwald’s pointing […]
Logic.
15-Dec-11I think it must be true that we do not have a democracy if we are unable to (legally) discomfort a small minority (let’s call them the 1%) by means of an incredibly popular and fiscally and morally wise law. It was a key Democratic demand but party leaders abandoned a surtax on millionaires to […]
An Interesting Princetonian in the News…
15-Dec-11Vladimir Teichberg: We want to change the principles under which we operate as a society. This is a revolution against hierarchy.
No More Habeas Corpus.
02-Dec-11Not good news. This easily passed the Senate.
88% of the Wealth, 86% of the Taxes.
22-Nov-11This is painfully obvious, but I see and hear the Republican talking points in many places in our society about how high a percentage of the taxes the rich have to pay. The car mechanic in my town has a sign about how unfair it is that the top 20% pay more than 80% of […]
Greenwald on OWS.
22-Nov-11The grievance aired by Occupy Wall Street – that we should be upset at the current economic and political system and the consistent trends of the past decade – is great Greenwald territory in general, and no one sums it up and puts in all the links quite like he does.
The more time passes…
19-Nov-11… the more astonishingly inappropriate it seems that this is the place I went to school: The conflagration began after Princeton student Whitney Blodgett started to yell at the marchers as they passed by the bar. “We’re the 1 percent!” Blodgett yelled at them, laughing and making a thumbs up sign. “Get a job!” his […]
Private Prisons. Great.
07-Jan-12Luninyets It’s fabulous riding from state to state and getting some of the local news. Ohio’s Republican governor has begun implementing a plan to privatize some of the state’s prisons. America’s prisons are a national disgrace, a waste of human life and an outrage against human dignity. But privatizing them sounds like a transparently terrible idea. […]