The desirability of open borders has become such a given in polite conversation that even some supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul have criticized him for suggesting greater restrictions.  That makes this statement by a government official today seem all the more surprising: “It is the responsibility of [the other country] to ensure that the border operates properly, according to … [Read More]

At a campaign event in Florida the other day, Rudy Giuliani was confronted with a gaggle of anti-abortion protesters, who shouted: “You need to go to confession!” Poor Rudy: he’s abstained from actually campaigning for so long that he doesn’t have time to go to confession: aside from which, he’d be in the confessional for so long that by the time … [Read More]

The Center for Public Integrity does a public service by documenting how they lied us into war in Iraq: “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the … [Read More]

When I read that a conspiracy of leftist students and secular professors who claim that they are still traumatized by the Galileo trial—what a pack of flaccids, no wonder they’ve got such a low birth-rate—had successfully censored a talk by Pope Benedict XVI at their university in Rome, I contemplated creative acts of vandalism. I’ll be removing to Rome at the … [Read More]

The newest book by Robert J. Stove, who has written for this website, A Student’s Guide to Music History, is a compact study of great composers prepared for ISI Press. For those who are looking for bulky surveys of Rob’s subjects or else detailed biographies of individual composers, such as Ernest Newman’s four-volume The Life of Richard Wagner, it may … [Read More]

According to The New Republic, and the Reason/Cato crowd, Ron Paul is a racist whose makes explicit appeals to white supremacist and anti-Semitic audiences through the use of “code words,” and, if he isn’t a racist neo-Nazi himself, he most certainly is representing that slice of the electorate. According to the real Nazis, though, “Ron Paul is a Jew Puppet.” The … [Read More]

Sensitized students on my campus have been complaining about Mike Huckabee’s recent remarks on the topics of gay marriage and the Christian character of the Constitution. By way of overtures to populist evangelicals whose votes he sorely needed in South Carolina, Huckabee has affirmed his support of a marriage amendment and vaguely suggested that the Constitution out to be amended to … [Read More]

Just minutes from now (10:50 A.M. CST, January 22, 2008, as I write this), Norma McCorvey, better known by the name “Jane Roe,” is expected to endorse the only fully pro-life candidate in the race for the presidency in 2008: Ron Paul. Most readers of this website probably know that McCorvey never actually had an abortion, but instead put the child … [Read More]

It is commonplace these days for politicians to run political campaigns against politics itself.  This bit of propaganda fits well with the disdain most Americans have for politics. And so we find candidates for office trying to persuade us that the policies they will advance will somehow proceed devoid of politics.  It is if a chef announced that henceforth he would … [Read More]

Today is the worst day of the year. And so it is, every year. Other grim occasions pass me by with much less collateral damage—the death-days of each of my parents, the anniversaries of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Armistice Day, Kristallnacht, Bastille Day. Even Good Friday (a moveable fast), which I try to spend focused on the Passion of Our Lord, doesn’t … [Read More]