Category: Web

  I see by my mild defense of Roberts, I’ve made myself a friendly target and in bringing up the inevitable Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, I’ve distracted from the implications of the Obamacare ruling.   That was not my intent, but here we are.   To Mr. Kirkwood: I think your characterization of Roberts...

  Despite the slow news week, Chronicles Unbound, the best show on radio, will still air live today, 3-5 PM CDT.  Tune in online by clicking here, or download the podcast on Monday at this page.  If you are in Northern Illinois or Southern Wisconsin, tune in on your terrestrial radio device at 100.5 FM. Chronicles editors @Thomas Fleming...

  In 1948, Arthur Schlesinger Sr. wrote for Life magazine a controversial article on a subject that has been the cause of spirited and acrimonious debate ever since. He listed the consensus of our academic elite as to which American presidents had been Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average and Failures. Leading the list were Abraham Lincoln,...

Thank God for Republican presidents who appoint strict constructionists to the U.S. Supreme Court. Otherwise, the Court today might have upheld ObamaCare.

  Chief Justice John Roberts was initially nominated by President George W. Bush to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the country’s high court. So, in the wake of today’s ObamaCare decision, authored by Roberts, it’s no surprise that many who wanted to see the Court drive a stake through the heart of the most overreaching piece...

  In Earl Warren Rides Again, I wrote: Roberts portrays his decision as a check on federal power—if the Court had upheld the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause, it “would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority.” But it’s unclear whom he thinks he is fooling. Silly me. I should have known...

  In light of the Obamacare ruling today from the Supreme Court, in his post below Mr. Richert not only compares Chief Justice Roberts to Chief Justice Warren but compares Warren favorably to Roberts! I have no doubt Warren would have joined in Justice Ginsburg’s concurring/dissenting opinion and held that Obamacare passes Constitutional muster under any of...

  Putting together the Court’s two most notable recent decisions, the Arizona immigration decision and the Obamacare decision, leads to this unsettling conclusion:  there is virtually nothing the states can do on their own, and there is virtually nothing the federal government cannot do.  If that is what the Founders intended, I’m a unicorn. We also now have...

I hate to disagree with Rick Oliver, but I think he is too optimistic about John Roberts.  What Roberts’ decision today tells us is that he is unlikely to ever cast a decisive vote against the consensus of the Washington elite.  This means that the Roberts court will never overturn Roe v. Wade, because such a...

  I have nothing personal against Nora Ephron, but I do not understand why all the news outlets are pretending that her death is in any way significant.  A sometimes amusing satirist–though the frequent comparison with Dorothy Parker is ludicrous–and a writer of really terrible fiction and screenplays, Ephron may have been best known for...

  On Monday, the Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States struck down three of four challenged provisions of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, eliminating the law’s penalties and therefore leaving a shell of the former law in place. Not satisfied with this overwhelming victory, the Justice Department has helpfully set up a hotline for Arizona citizens who feel their “civil...

  Barack Obama’s recent concern over sending American jobs overseas is as phony as his broken promise, made during the Ohio Democratic primary in 2008, to renegotiate NAFTA, but there is little doubt that his attack on Mitt Romney’s record of outsourcing American jobs during Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is politically potent.   The elites who favor free trade...

Lackland Air Force Base is embroiled in a scandal.  At the Air Force’s one boot camp, male instructors have been preying on their female recruits.  The events are only a scandal to Americans who have not been observing the licentiousness of the American Armed Forces for decades.  As Brian Mitchell observed in Chronicles many years ago, the...

  Sixteen months after the United States abandoned its loyal satrap of 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak, to champion democracy in Egypt, the returns are in. Mohammed Morsi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, is president of Egypt, while the military has dissolved the elected parliament that was dominated by the Brotherhood, and curbed his powers....

  There are some real stunners in today’s convoluted ruling from the Supremes regarding Arizona v. United States.  Here are some of my favorites: “As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in the United States.” “Federal governance is extensive and complex.” “Removal is a civil matter, . . . ” . ....

  The intro to Justice Scalia’s partial dissent in Arizona v. United States is a perfect demonstration of today’s self-contradictory “conservatism.”  It takes with one hand, then pretends to give back with the other (emphasis mine): “The United States is an indivisible ‘Union of sovereign States.’ Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U. S. 92, 104 (1938). Today’s opinion,...

  He denounced both the Blair and Brown governments for not limiting immigration from new EU members after 2004, and stressed that those who criticized immigration could not be dismissed as “bigots” – a cutting criticism of his former boss Gordon Brown, notoriously recorded referring to a lifelong Labour voter in those endearing terms. He...

  President Obama’s announcement of a de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants by administrative fiat offered a chance for Mitt Romney to appeal to the majority of Americans who consistently tell pollsters that they want to see immigration reduced.  Instead,  Romney told a gathering of Hispanic politicians that he will increase immigration, by raising the caps for...

  I recently had the chance to visit the village of Annascaul on the stunningly beautiful Dingle Peninsula in Ireland.  The attraction in Annascaul was the South Pole Inn, opened by Annascaul native Tom Crean after his retirement from the Royal Navy.  Crean was, by all accounts, a modest man reluctant to draw attention to himself, but...

  Once some powerful people in Washington decide that they want a war, they do not give up until they get it. The proponents of an American-led NATO intervention in Syria were on the defensive in April, when government forces were winning on the ground and the political balance inside the Beltway seemed to be favoring...

  When Congress, split seven ways from Sunday on the question, squelched legislation granting resident status for those formerly called “illegal aliens,” President Obama said, in effect, so what?—we’ll do it anyway. And so he did it anyway, announcing last Friday the birth of a new immigration policy affecting an estimated 800,000 illegals. These illegals—according...

  “The entry into force of the U.S.-Korea trade agreement on March 15, 2012, means countless new opportunities for U.S. exporters to sell more made-in-America goods, services and agricultural products to Korean customers—and to support more good jobs here at home.” Thus did the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative rhapsodize about the potential of...

  You’da thought Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Barack Obama, the way Rockford’s local news media fawned over him on Sunday.  Yes, Captain Hijab made a super-secret stop in Chronicles‘ hometown early Sunday morning, on his way to the G20 Summit in Cabo.  Said Rockford Airport Director Mike Dunn, “The entire delegation were just very very friendly...

  A.E. Housman was one of the finest Latin scholars of the 20th century and one of the most distinguished classicists of the Anglo-American world.  He is better known, however, as a poet.  He had suffered disappointments in life, and his response was the melancholy stoicism that permeates so much of his work.  His poems...

  Last Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo that Egypt’s parliament was elected unconstitutionally and should be disbanded is a direct challenge to the Islamists who dominate the legislature. The scene is set for a new political crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation. It is obvious that the Supreme Council...

Check out Chris Check’s review of For Greater Glory, at the Crisis website.  Was the Cristeros War about religious liberty, or preserving the Catholic Faith?  Find out from someone who knows a thing or two about the conflict.

  I want to bring your attention to a new film, one that attempts to convey some genuine truths about religious faith and secular governance.  My full review won’t appear until Chronicles’ August issue and, by that time, For Greater Glory may have left the theaters.  As this is a film that should be seen—as they say—on the big...

  In 1919, after Boston police went on strike to protest the city’s refusal to recognize their new union, Gov. Calvin Coolidge ordered the National Guard into the streets. Sam Gompers, the legendary father of American labor, wrote the governor that the Boston police had been denied their rights. Coolidge’s terse reply put him in...

  America has lost one of her best novelists and writers of short stories, and perhaps the last chronicler of a world that can no longer be found: the early 20th-century Midwest, a world of small towns and small farms, of hot summer days and bitter winter nights, of swimming holes and traveling shows, of...

  An Epitaph Enough: and leave the rest to Fame. ‘Tis to commend her but to name. Courtship, which living she declin’d, When dead to offer were unkind… Where never any could speak ill, Who would officious Praises spill? Nor can the truest Wit or Friend, Without Detracting, her commend. To say she liv’d a Virgin chast,...

  When Hillary Rosen said that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life,” it was among the better days of the Romney campaign. For Rosen—present whereabouts unknown—both revealed the feminist mindset about women who choose to become wives and mothers and brought Ann Romney center stage. Before a Connecticut audience recently, Mrs....

  [The Hunger Games ? Produced and distributed by Lionsgate ? Directed by Gary Ross ? Written by Suzanne Collins and Gary Ross] Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games is the first volume of a trilogy set in a not-too-distant future.  An unspecified apocalyptic event has destroyed much of North America, and a new state named Panem has arisen to replace the...

  It turns out that Barack Obama had managed to insult Poland before he ever talked about a “Polish death camp.”  The Polish Government had asked that Lech Walesa be allowed to receive the posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom being bestowed on Jan Karski.  The Obama White House said no, claiming that Walesa was “too political.” ...

  One of the sillier stories told to garner support for Barack Obama in 2008 was that he would help bring Americans together by peacefully ending the culture war, a culture war most Americans found tiresome.   There was never any reason to believe that Obama would unite Americans, since Obama has always been far to the left...

  American presidents seem to have a habit of insulting Poland.  Gerald Ford probably lost the 1976 election when he maintained in a presidential debate that Poland was not dominated by the Soviets and never would be under a Ford Administration.  (The Poles, who were in fact dominated by the Soviets, weren’t able to register...

Scott, the only question about Facebook is not whether or not it is evil–it most certainly is–but whether or not it is an unmitigated evil like video poker and kiddie porn or a mitigated evil like the automobile.  Overall, the automobile does enormously more harm than good but it has become, for most Americans, an...

At last night’s gala ceremony, President Obama handed out the Presidential Medal of Freedom to what is inevitably described as a diverse group, though most of the winners run to a predictable type:  Toni Morrison, an incompetent and dirty writer of anti-American fictions, Madeline Albright an incompetent and brutally savage statesgirl, John Glenn the showboating...

  I learned of the death of my friend and schoolmate Ellen Middlebrook Herron the way I increasingly learn of all such milestones on life’s journey: through Facebook. The first notice I saw was posted by one of my oldest friends, Steve Miller; how he learned of Ellen’s death, I do not know, but it...

  Scott, I think you we are talking about two different things.  I admit the possibility, though I have not seen any proof, that Facebook might  be used as a helpful tool to survive in an increasingly inhuman world, despite the obvious reality that it is, by its very nature, diminishing the users’ grasp on...

  “All these things are a lot like TV.” Well, yes and no. The damage done by TV was rather total. The older neighborhoods of Rockford have many front porches; very few of them are ever used today, even on evenings that are as beautiful as today’s is likely to be. Instead of enjoying conversation...

  After taping John Stossel’s show on May 16 in New York, the Mrs. and I took the 10 a.m. Acela back to Washington. Once we had boarded the train, who should come waddling up the aisle but Bill Kristol. The Weekly Standard editor seemed cheerful, and we chatted about the surge in Mitt Romney’s popularity...

  Memorial Day has always been my favorite secular holiday, in part because it is the most Catholic of all U.S. holidays. It is the only day of the year in which significant numbers of Americans (of all religious backgrounds) visit cemeteries to honor the dead, though their numbers (the honorers, not the honorees) are dwindling...

  Derek, I have a silly but not irrelevant question.  Is the SNP and its allies seeking total independence or merely separation?  In other words, is one possibility that Scotland could revert to it status before the Act of Union?  In which case Sir Sean would have be entitled to a knighthood granted by Elizabeth...

  Before our prudent webmaster carried out our long ago agreed upon plan to disable comments on this section, I received an insightful message from W.C. Taquiya.  Old friends and some regular commenters are being invited to contribute to this section, and, in the future, if I wish to stimulate debate it will be in...

  Today a cinema in Edinburgh was the bathetic setting for the launch of the Scottish National Party’s bid for Scottish independence. The SNP desires a yes/no referendum (possibly with an increased devolution alternative) to be held in October 2014, 700 years after Bannockburn. Although the SNP is the main mover behind Yes Scotland it is nominally...

  Three months ago, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Handcuffed, taken in and interrogated, Zimmerman told police Trayvon had been acting suspiciously that dark and rainy night, that he had followed Trayvon, been knocked down and battered on the ground, and, fearing for his life, pulled...

  Allen Wilson writes in a comment that “We should give them a week’s worth of food and transportation to the orchards and farms of those states where there are complaints that new immigration laws are scaring off Mexican workers.” This really cuts to the heart of things.  The very existence of food-stamp programs and...

  Tom, I’m pretty optimistic about the lawsuit filed by Notre Dame and 42 other Catholic organizations. Filing essentially the same case in multiple federal district courts increases the possibility of getting the right result out of at least one, and getting mixed results will kick this issue up to the Supreme Court. So it seems likely...

  To add insult upon injury–and injury upon insult–the Feds are once again threatening to crack down on Foodstamp fraud. Wait a minute.  Foodstamps are by their very nature fraud, a way of stealing the wealth of working people and giving it to non-workers who use their stamps and cards and allowances to buy luxury...

  There is another way of applying Aaron’s argument that welfare is a job’s program.  Once, not long after we had moved to Rockford, I was taking my family to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.  We had to drive through some interesting neighborhoods.  We looked at block after block of neglected houses,...