The Washington Times reports a visit by Bob Novak to the Heritage Foundation, where he regaled conservative bloggers with his take on current events and gave a little spiel about his new book, Prince of Darkness: “When asked to rate the current field of Republican presidential candidates, Novak didn’t have any kind words for the current top-tier field of Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and John McCain. But when pressed as to who he thinks will be the eventual nominee, Novak said he expects Thompson to get the nod. However, Novak offered his own personal endorsement of Texas congressman Ron … 
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Writing a check or coming up with cash is a vital liturgical deed in the root meaning of liturgy, a work done by people on behalf of the larger community. Roger Cardinal Mahony Gather Faithfully Together, September 4, 1997   As all the world knows, in a last-ditch-albeit-successful effort to avoid the presence of my father-in-God, Roger Cardinal Mahony, on the witness stand, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $660,000,000 to more than 500 victims of clerical pedophilia. This is quite a princely sum—enough to build three of His Eminence’s cathedrals, or, for those primitive enough to prefer … 
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On Friday, July 20, President Bush issued an executive order that seems designed mainly to protect members of his administration from prosecution once he leaves office.  At least, that’s the most charitable interpretation I can put on it.  The order interprets Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in such a way that torture by the CIA during interrogation of suspected terrorists is, by definition, not torture.  Under the order, “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse” are considered torture only if they are “done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any … 
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Blogging on Reason’s “Hit and Run,” Brian “Radicals for Capitalism” Doherty chronicles the objections of “some libertarians” to Ron Paul and his presidential campaign. Ostensibly a “defense” of Paul against the very few authentic libertarians who oppose him, Doherty’s piece winds up reiterating every kvetch and cavil against the Good Doctor while neatly distancing the author from Paul’s critics: “Paul’s concern with immigration is of a piece with his right-populist strains, an obsession with “sovereignty” that feeds his fevered opposition to international trade pacts and the UN. Combined with his strong emphasis on trash-talking the Federal Reserve and advocating a return … 
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Bob Novak spills the beans this morning: “The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.” It was always a fantasy that the Americans could contain the Iraq war within the borders of their newly-conquered province, and critics of the invasion raised this issue before the war was launched—alas, to no … 
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Reading Paul Weyrich’s article today on Hugo Chavez’s crackdown on the Venezuelan media, and our “free” media’s reaction to it, brought to mind an event from my first term at Michigan State.  Our campus parish, like most Catholic parishes around colleges and universities, was unabashedly leftist; still, I was going there for the Eucharist, not the politics, so I tried to shut out all of the nonessentials. This particular Sunday, however, I couldn’t do so.  The pastor announced that ten percent of the Sunday collection would, as always, be donated to a “worthy charity”; this week, that “worthy charity” was the … 
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Latin America is well-known for its volatile political history of caudillos, corruption, economic instability and popular uprisings.  Since the late 1990s some stability has descended on the region but the authoritarian tendency has never disappeared entirely. Fidel Castro, the most notorious authoritarian in the region, has maintained firm control of the Cuban populace for the last forty-eight years. Now many men who apparently wish to follow Castro’s example are coming (or returning) to power, including Evo Morales in Bolivia, Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the former Sandinista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.  Because of … 
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I have a piece in the (British) Guardian on Ron Paul, which I dashed off a bit too quickly, but it reads pretty well in spite of that. What’s interesting is the comments section, which—due to a notice in the noted hate-site “Little Green Footballs,” world headquarters of the more-Likudist-than-thou’ers—is infested with the craziest remarks. Speaking of infested, not to mention craziness, one of the little lord poppinjays of the pro-war British Left—the Euston Manifesto crowd—by the name of Oliver Kamm has commented on my piece, on his little blog, wherein he accuses me of being .... an agent of the … 
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Pat Tillman was shamelessly used by this administration in order to shore up support for a futile, increasingly unpopular war. When he enlisted, disdaining a multi-million dollar contract with the Cardinals, he was touted by none other than the President and Donald Rumsfeld as a patriot and a model for America’s youth: when he was killed, they said he was felled by “friendly fire”—after initially lying and claiming that he was killed by hostile fire. Now, it’s coming out that he may have been murdered, and not by the Taliban: “Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the … 
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About two weeks ago Justin Raimondo mentioned on a blog that Ron Paul’s enemies had begun to smear him as an anti-Semite and racist. From the references I assumed that the sources of the attack were the neoconservatives, an assumption that made perfectly good sense given the diametrically opposed views of the two camps. While the neocons favor an extended welfare state and perpetual war for the sake of a “democratic peace,” Ron is a traditional, limited government Taft Republican. I could not imagine two sides that would be more antithetical in their thinking and political views. But in the last … 
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