Joe Paterno

The Bashing of Joe Paterno

Last week the NCAA saddled Penn State with penalties that may mean the university's end as a leading football competitor. Paterno's name came up in the proceedings as someone who contributed to the outrage. Despite his recent death of lung cancer, his humiliation continues. His name has already ...

Chick-fil-A Eats Crow

Fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A, known for its juicy chicken sandwich, has come under attack. Franchise head Dan Cathy made public statements in support of traditional marriage and has philanthropic connections to such alleged hate groups as Focus on the Family and the Fellowship of Christian ...

Institutions of Higher Emoting

Recently I commented on a blunder by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, who suddenly wimped out after having proposed cutting 20 to 30 percent out of the state's allocation for "€œhigher education."€ Corbett had a chance to do good by making our state universities cough up more of their own ...

Mitt Romney

Romney: Reaching Out to Everyone and Pleasing Nobody

On July 11 Mitt Romney addressed an NAACP conference in Houston, and the GOP media oozed admiration for his presumed courage and outreach. Although Romney is not likely to get more than five percent of the black vote, our smiling warrior was still trying to court black leaders. Romney's presence ...

Perish the Euro

The latest bestseller by German economist Thilo Sarrazin, a former member of the Bundesbank executive board, is a rambling critique of the eurozone. His book Deutschland braucht den Euro nicht (Germany does not need the euro) tells you everything you might want to know about why the eurozone is ...

Let Them Drink Coke

New York Mayor Bloomberg has recommended that a 16-ounce limit be placed on the size of soft drinks sold at city restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, and arenas. This seemed necessary because of an epidemic of obesity in his municipality, where over 50% of the residents are now judged to be ...

The “€œF”€ Word

Although the adjective "€œfascist,"€ as George Orwell pointed out during and right after World War II, was a slur applied to "€œthose we don"€™t like,"€ the indiscriminate use of the "€œF"€ word seems more common now than it was in 1945. Political correctness drives this revival, ...

John McCain

Is Modern Conservatism a Mental Illness?

Jonah Goldberg in his new collection of meditations, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas and Andrew Ferguson in his latest Weekly Standard opinion piece "€œThe New Phrenology"€ complain how the other side gets nasty when depicting its well-meaning opponents. This ...

It’s Hard to Win When You”€™re Playing Against the Referee

The Italian political theorist and longtime socialist journalist Carlo Galli recently published a short volume called Perché ancora destra-sinistra (roughly translated, "€œWhy is there still right and left?"€). Galli's definitions show scant evidence of semantic evenhandedness. He seems to ...

Human Rights: The Useless Fiction

I watched a Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate bring an evangelical crowd to their feet three years ago by announcing that "€œOwning a gun is a human right."€ I mumbled to myself: "€œSo is protection from body odor."€ It's not that I"€™m against people owning guns, but there are ...