by Steve Smith and I were thinking along the same lines about the conundrum of whether to wish folks a Merry Christmas. My dilemma was in sorting my holiday/Christmas cards into the right piles, since some new folks have come onto the list, by marriage or otherwise. The debate over whether Christans have an obligation always to tell [...]
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by I have to admit I just don’t “get” the argument that the mandatory insurance provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional because the Commerce Clauses only empowers Congress to regulate “activity,” not “inactivity.” (For yesterday’s federal district opinion endorsing that argument, see here. For more detailed critiques, see, for example, the [...]
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by At this time of year we hear arguments about how to greet people, in person or on cards and such. Some people find the traditional greeting “Merry Christmas” to be offensive and uncivil– a few years ago, Step Feldman wrote an interesting book with the title Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas– but others [...]
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by In this essay, which appears in the Dec. 19 issue of Our Sunday Visitor, I argue in favor of the Dream Act.
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by The box office success of the education documentary Waiting for Superman, and the much-publicized resignations of the top education administrators in Washington, D.C. and New York City (Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein) have focused new attention on charter schools. Meanwhile, charter schools have become a new battleground in church/state fights, as dioceses convert inner city [...]
Read the full postThe annual battle over Christmas and the separation of Church and State is on. In Philadelphia, the city’s Managing Director ordered the word “Christmas” removed from sign at the entrance to the “German Christmas Village” at City Hall. The Mayor then countermanded him, and directed that “Christmas” be put back. See here. (For one response, [...]
Read the full postSome readers of this blog might be interested in two pieces I’ve posted recently on SSRN. The first is an upcoming book chapter on “The Natural Law Challenge to Choice of Law.” In addition to a discussion of the relation of natural law (if it exists) to positive law and sovereign political deliberation, it also [...]
Read the full postAttorney and commentator Jennifer Braceras has an op-ed in today’s Boston Herald responding to Time Magizine’s recent cover story entitled “Who Needs Marriage” and a recent Pew Study on the state of marriage and out of wedlock births in the United States. If she is correct in her assessment, as I think she is, what can be [...]
Read the full postA couple of months ago, I read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a post-apocalyptic story that manages to celebrate the possibility of goodness and the hope of redemption even in the midst of unremitting destruction and human depravity. The religious subtext in the novel is implicit but clear. One particular passage jumped out at me, though, [...]
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by John Shimkus, a member of Congress from Illinois, has received international attention recently for a statement that he made at a congressional hearing on climate change in March 2009. Shimkus said, “The earth will end only when God declares that it is time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth.” He cited Genesis [...]
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