When Clarence Thomas, our newest Supreme Court Justice, asked to be sworn in a week before the official ceremony, so he could go on the payroll early, it summed up the whole affair for me. Why are conservatives cheering his ascent to the judicial oligarchy? Yes, it’s fun to beat liberal senators, but not with...
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The Lost Tribes of Israel
As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she ...
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Is There Hope for the Federal Courts?
In a radio address last year, President Clinton railed against congressional Republicans who were stalling on his nominees to the federal bench and had even threatened some sitting judges with impeachment. Their actions, he claimed, had endangered our tradition of judicial independence, and were an attack on the rule of law itself. The truth, of...
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“Empathy” And The Court
The President wants an empathetic jurist to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He will likely get such a one. What the country will get in that event is one more senator or cabinet member—as straw boss, head knocker, high and mighty arbiter of high and mighty matters. A sort of modern Roman...
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Trump Keeps It Real at ABC’s Rigged Debate
Harris got under Trump’s skin, but she did nothing to alter the perception that she belongs to the status quo. She did not articulate a vision for the future, lay out an economic plan, or clarify how her hard-left views have changed.
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Bookshelves
COMMENDABLES Nightfall for Liberalism? by Richard John Neuhaus George Parkin Grant: English Speaking Justice; Notre Dame; $4.95 paper. “Liberalism in its generic form is surely something that all decent men accept as good-‘conservatives’ included. Insofar as the word ‘liberalism’ is used to describe the belief that political liberty is a central human...
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Abortion’s Triple Crown
For four decades now, pro-life voters have been wedded to the national Republican Party by the vows of politicians whose actions, upon election, have proved that they had no intention ever of fulfilling them. Every two or four or six years, they would swear to defend the lives of the unborn, and then, after taking...
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Books in Brief: May 2023
Short reviews of Dollars for Life, by Mary Ziegler, and The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals, by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
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Marriage and the Law
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 4-3 ruling, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, that the Massachusetts constitution—if not the federal Constitution—requires the state to allow same-sex marriages has thrown nearly everyone into a good old-fashioned tizzy. The Massachusetts court somehow discovered that it was “arbitrary” and “capricious” and therefore legally impermissible to limit the...
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A Generation in Need of Editing
Many years ago, as the luncheon speaker at a meeting of the John Randolph Club in Rockford, Illinois, Tom Sheeley gave a thought-provoking lecture interspersed with a splendid performance of classical guitar. His main theme was the need for form in art; and all these years later, one line stands out in my memory: “What...
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Abortion’s Other Victims
The ideology of feminism makes otherwise good and decent people support the murderous practice of abortion.
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Abortion: Fetus Liberation Fronts
It is hard to see that much good has ever come from any of the various declarations of the rights of man. Such a declaration did not save the French from either Robespierre or Napoleon, and the constitution of the defunct USSR practically glows with liberal enthusiasm for human rights. For some strange reason, though,...
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Is the Red Wave Back?
The red wave appears to be coming back. It is probable that toss-up races will break Republican. Republicans consistently lead Democrats on the generic congressional ballot.
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Protestantism, America, and Divine Law
Since the time of the Founding Fathers, Protestantism appeared to be the default religion in the United States. At the end of World War II, when the United States began to enjoy superpower status, Mainline Protestantism (comprising the older denominations that sprang from the Reformation) began to drift away from its moorings. Then, in the...
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Angels to Govern Us
“If men were angels,” James Madison wrote, “no government would be necessary.” Or, “if angels were to govern men, no controls on government would be necessary.” Madison believed that men are about as good as they can ever be, and since no angels are available to rule, we need checks and balances. Thomas Jefferson added...
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Restore the Constitution!
In recent years, American politics has been preoccupied with moral questions, or what are now called “social issues”: sexual immorality, sodomy, abortion, pornography, and recreational drugs. Some conservatives want the federal government to play a role in opposing these evils. Many libertarians, on the other hand, want the government, state and federal alike, to treat...
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The Fourth Choice
If you are looking for a reason to vote for Ralph Nader, the way both parties are handling the “gay marriage” issue should give you lots of data. John Kerry, when asked his opinion of “gay marriage,” looks like a dog getting a bath, as Chris Hitchens puts it. Kerry says he personally opposes “gay...
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USA Today’s Shoddy Statistical Analysis and Even Shoddier Morality
In reporting an infant mortality increase in Texas in the wake of the Dobbs decision, the newspaper suggests it would have been better had these children never been born.
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Rediscovering Philadelphia
“There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” —Montesquieu The theme that unites the short, somewhat disparate eight chapters of this book is the use by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights—that is, rights beyond those specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights—to invalidate state...
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Considering Judge Barrett
In one of the most important acts of his Presidency, on Sept. 26, 2020, Donald J. Trump announced his pick to fill the United States Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Amy Coney Barrett. The Supreme Court has recently been divided 4-4 in terms of judicial philosophy, with Justices Ginsburg, Stephen...
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Rediscovering Philadelphia
“There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” —Montesquieu The theme that unites the short, somewhat disparate eight chapters of this book is the use by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights—that is, rights beyond those specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights—to invalidate state...
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The Left Has Been Doing ‘Oppo Research’ on Conservative Justices for Years
Leftist “opposition researchers” are relentlessly concocting ethics complaints about the Supreme Court’s conservative justices to try to get them to resign or recuse themselves.
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Last Best Chance to Capture Supreme Court
President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are on the cusp of making history. With Trump having named two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, they have an opening to elevate a third justice to fill the seat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thereby securing the constitutionalism of the...
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Biden Pins His Hopes on Abortion
Democrats are desperate to make the election a referendum on Dobbs. Trump is right to refuse to resist that.
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Will Bishops Deny Biden Communion?
Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 168-55, more than 3-1, to provide new guidance for receiving Holy Communion. Behind the decision? Bishops’ alarm that the public religious practice of President Joe Biden is conveying a heretical message to the faithful and the nation. At Sunday Mass, Biden regularly receives Communion. Yet he...
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Roll Up Your Sleeves, Deplorables
Trump has triumphed. Now what? A theme is reverberating on this, the Day After, and it goes like this: The media are buffoons who so obviously got everything wrong. How could anyone trust them ever again? All of the Network Gurus (save FOX’s) staved off the Trumpocalypse for as long as they could on Tuesday...
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Abortion on the Rise
Abortion is on the rise in the United States—and has been since George W. Bush was first inaugurated President in January 2001. Current estimates of the number of abortions performed annually in America hover just above 1.3 million. What may astonish many of the “moral values” voters who reelected President Bush last November is that,...
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Our Constitutional Covenant With Death
“The compact which exists between the North and the South,” proclaimed William Lloyd Garrison in an abolitionist declaration of 1843, “is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” When the Southern states concluded that they were no longer bound by what their enemies regarded as a compact with the devil. Garrison and his...
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Botox Blasey Ford
Christine Blasey Ford is out with a memoir no one asked for about her experience testifying against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Her unconvincing story remains the same, but her face appears to be the beneficiary of her substantial cash windfalls.
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Cajuns Uncaged
While many modern historians, liberal politicians, and media elites would like to think that the very concept of “state sovereignty” died when Robert E. Lee offered his sword to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, the people of one state recently gave state sovereignty a ringing endorsement at the ballot box....
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Leftists Bury Another Norm: Protesters Target Homes of SCOTUS Justices
Threatening protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices are the latest example of the left deciding to attack rather than persuade those who disagree.
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Burke on our Crisis of Character
Abandoning our tradition-based constitutional republic, whether for a mythical medieval shire, an idyll of Lockean abstractions, or even a Church militant, is neither necessary nor prudent.
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More on Roberts
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...
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National Lawyers Association
Three years ago, the American Bar Association voted to abandon its neutral position on legalized abortion and to endorse Roe v. Wade. In response to this action, some 14,000 members of the ABA resigned in protest. Many attorneys felt it was impossible for them to remain a member of, let alone contribute money to, an...
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Public Enemy Number One
Every year, on or near the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of Americans go to Washington, D. C., to join the March for Life and protest that infamous decision. The March for Life is peaceful and orderly, and every year the major media outlets contrive to pretend it doesn’t exist. Until this...
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Throwing the Sheep to the Wolves
The boys from Covington Catholic did a good thing by going to the March for Life. If what the Catholic Church teaches is true, Roe v. Wade marks a death sentence for roughly 1,000,000 innocent human beings every year, year in, year out. As John T. Noonan wrote decades ago, “No plague, no war, has so...
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Come, Sweet Death
In the spring of 1975, C. Everett Koop, M.D., addressed a conference of Christian laymen in New Orleans on the topic of abortion—more specifically, on the implications of Roe V. Wade. Among the changes he foresaw were a growing acceptance of infanticide as the “treatment of choice” for defective newborns and an increasing resort to...
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Ounces of Flesh
On the same day last year that the Supreme Court sliced a few ounces of flesh out of its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, it also carved up an American tradition governing the public observance of Christmas. In the case of Allegheny v. ACLU, the Court held that Allegheny County in Pennsylvania could...
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Blowing Up the Base: An Abortion Strategy Revealed
The new Republican Congress already looks like a bunch of incompetent boobs. The legislatively meaningless vote for the perennial “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), which would prohibit abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, was scheduled for a vote today, on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (I...
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How Thomas Rent the Seamless Garment
“Nor will this Earth serve him; he sinkes the deepe where harmless fish monastique silence keepe, who (were death dead) by roes of living sand might spunge that element and make it land.” —John Donne, “Elegie on Mistris Bulstrode” John Donne reminds us of a natural fact that most of us would rather forget: the...
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Kennedy v. Kennedy
On the last day of August, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found for March for Life in its suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, among other agencies. March for Life is a secular, nonprofit organization, founded after Roe v. Wade, that opposes abortion...
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Growing a Counterculture of Community, Tradition, and Joy
As America’s birthrate declines, there is some hope that we may yet avoid civilizational suicide.
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Do We Really Want a Cold War II?
“There have been times when they slip back into Cold War thinking,” said President Obama in his tutorial with Jay Leno. And to show the Russians that such Cold War thinking is antiquated, Obama canceled his September summit with Vladimir Putin. The reason: Putin’s grant of asylum to Edward Snowden, who showed up at...
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What I Would Have Asked: A Tale of Two Cities
1. Fargo, North Dakota—Not long ago, in a city far, far away from almost everything, there was founded an abortion clinic called the Fargo Women’s Health Organization. A little later came an antiabortion counseling center, which its supporters named the Fargo-Moorhead Women’s Help and Caring Connection, Inc. The abortion clinic obtained a temporary injunction and...
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The Bubble Economy
“Why,” Sheila Ramus asked, “if there are so many pro-lifers here, does Rockford have an abortion clinic?” Sheila, my wife and I, and our pastor, Fr. Brian Bovee, were waiting to check in at Rockford’s annual Pro-Life Banquet. An hour before the dinner was scheduled to begin, the Holy Family Room (yes, that is its...
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On Life and Law
Aaron D. Wolf’s condemnation of civil disobedience by pro-life activists (Cultural Revolutions, October) strikes me as a classic case of sloppy thinking, characterized by what Hannah Arendt called the inability to grasp elementary distinctions. Wolf’s sweeping denial that one may break the law even for a good cause is not good law. There exists in...
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High Times for Democracy
When George McGovern died, aged 90, two weeks before the last general election, the obituaries rightly praised his long and fitfully distinguished record as a U.S. representative and senator, his years of military service, his plucky presidential campaign against Richard Nixon, and his principled opposition to the Vietnam War, among other such causes. Unlike the...
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Fighting for Orthodoxy Among the Methodists
The Episcopal Church, with two million members, drove off the cliff in 2003 by electing its first openly homosexual bishop. In 2005, the United Church of Christ (1.1 million members) officially endorsed same-sex “marriage,” though the UCC had already long been ordaining active homosexuals. This year, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (4.9 million members),...
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Looking Backwards
Gil Santana had it all: He was the model conservative for the new millennium. Gil was born and reared in Southern California, naturally, and his given name evoked the rich diversity of the state that had once symbolized the American dream: Kim Kwame Kaplan Santana, each part representing one fourth of his Korean, African, Jewish,...
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Our Judicial Dictatorship
Do the states have the right to outlaw same-sex marriage? Not long ago the question would have been seen as absurd. For every state regarded homosexual acts as crimes. Moreover, the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage had all been enacted democratically, by statewide referenda, like Proposition 8 in California, or by Congress or elected state legislatures....