Column

WASHINGTON — Many years ago, in the early 1980s, I was drawn ever so transiently into the bureaucratic intricacies of the Roman Catholic Church in America. There was a saintly priest at Indiana University, Rev. James Higgins, who was driven from the university's Newman Center to a parish some 20 miles away from campus. The archbishop of Indianapolis replaced him with two utter lightweights.

Sexual scandals and inappropriate behavior are as old as the Bible. I give you (1 Corinthians 5:1) in which Paul writes: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father's wife.” In more modern times, there have been sex scandals involving TV evangelists from Aimee Semple McPherson in the '20s to…

In the competition of ideas, you can't win the game if you're not on the playing field. That's why Silicon Valley bigwigs' stubborn refusal to put business above their own personal partisan biases doesn't just rankle. It reeks. Equal access to social media is not just about sharing food pics, pet videos, makeup tutorials and travelogues. It's about ensuring the ability to disseminate and…

The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that all immigrants and refugees undergo a medical screening examination to determine whether they have an inadmissible health condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has technical instructions for medical examination of prospective immigrants in their home countries before they are permitted to enter the U.S. They are screened for…

Finding someone in Washington who is nonpartisan and puts the nation’s interests ahead of their own is so rare these days that he or she, if found, might well qualify as an endangered species. But once in a while — call it the law of averages — someone speaks the truth. It happened last week when Mark Penn, former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, wrote a column for The Hill newspaper in which…

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Here is the headline from NewsBusters' Brad Wilmouth. “CNN's Cuomo: Trump, Fox Concerned With Tibbetts Because She's White.” Aside from the astonishing, if typical, liberal line of obsessively playing the race card (as I pointed out a time or three on CNN the Democrats still have not gotten around to apologizing for their support of slavery - their original obsession…

The pastor in First Reformed  may work in a church, but his true god isn’t the Lord above. It’s Al Gore. Writer/director Paul Schrader’s film, available now on Blu-ray and other home video outlets, shares the story of a broken man’s quest for redemption. What emerges is the usual array of global warming talking points, the kind Hollywood can’t help inserting into its product ad nauseam.

If you are frustrated by wait times to see your doctor, the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs, just wait until there may be no doctor to see. NBC News recently broadcast a story about how fewer young people are entering the medical profession. The network cited a report from the Association of American Medical Colleges that “projected a shortage of 42,600 to 121,300 physicians by…

WASHINGTON — On Aug. 8, one of the great historians of his generation and — for a certitude — one of the great teachers of any generation, passed away: Robert H. Ferrell. He was 97. Some thought he was too old to die, but nonetheless he worked to the end. When he retired from Indiana University, we thought he would quietly subside. He did not. He continued to write. Even after pulling up stakes…

At this unique moment in American history, liberals and conservatives have something in common: an abhorrence of government prosecutors run amok. Republicans are livid at the federal fishing expedition known as the Mueller investigation. Bit players have been dragooned into an endlessly politicized probe. The media has taken sides; nonstop leaks have tainted the process.

With the continuing hysteria about Donald Trump's presidency, a few questions come to mind. The first: Can a bad man become a good president? The second: Does one's being a good man guarantee he'll be a good president? Third: Does having a good president require a good man? Is there any evidence of Lord Acton's argument that “great men are almost always bad men?”

What does a white boy from the white suburbs of Washington, D.C., have to say about the passing of soul singer Aretha Franklin? At 16, I was a DJ on a local radio station, playing the rock ‘n’ roll and doo-wop recordings of the day. Many of the artists were black. Richard Penniman (aka “Little Richard”) tells a funny story about white kids back then. In “Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the 1987…

Does Donald Trump secretly own the Boston Globe? The question comes as the Globe’s call for newspapers to publish anti-Trump editorials was followed by some 350 newspapers around the country.  Fox headlined the inevitable and forseeable this way: “Trump accuses The Boston Globe of ‘COLLUSION’ with other papers as hundreds run editorials against him.”

WASHINGTON -- A fellow Spectatorian is under enemy fire, and we all must rally around him, particularly because he has done nothing wrong and because if those attacking him triumph, we shall all suffer. The cause is free speech. The free speech that is endangered is in Great Britain, but if the forces of censorship win in London, it is only a matter of time before the forces of censorship will be…