David Mills

Fordham’s  Natural Law Colloquium  will be offering a lecture on  The Natural Law Origins of the American Right to Privacy  by Anita L. Allen of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It will be held on Wednesday, March 28, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the McNally . . . . Continue Reading »

Atlantic Cities has an interesting history of The politics of Playgrounds . The first was created in San Francisco in 1887, with the first muncipal playground created in New York City in 1903. What the writer, Amanda Erickson, calls “the safety backlash,” began in 1912. She describes . . . . Continue Reading »

My friend Mark Barrett writes that some friends invited him to meet them at the casino in Pittsburgh, “and the entire time I’m there I’m thinking about Charles Murray and the state of working class America. Then of course I’m thinking how weird I am for thinking . . . . Continue Reading »

From Letters of Note , a clever idea for a website, a letter my son who pointed me to it called “Tolkien’s best letter.” In I have no ancestors of that gifted people , written in 1938, J. R. R. Tolkien responded to a German publisher who wanted to publish a translation of The . . . . Continue Reading »

The Biggest Beneficiary of the Contraception Mandate? Drug Companies , announces an article by Avik S. A. Roy on The Atlantic ‘s website, adding more evidence for a point I made yesterday in Big Pharma Is Not Your Friend , though he’s concerned that the Obama administration’s rule . . . . Continue Reading »

If you are a serious Catholic, or indeed anyone who believes in religious freedom and a pluralistic society, “Big Pharma” is not on your side. It is not too much to say that it is the enemy of much that you hold dear, because these corporations can make a great deal of money when the . . . . Continue Reading »

Our friend Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of Our Savior nearby, notes   in his March 4th column  for his parish website that Catholics must recognize that “elements of our own government have declared war on the Church, and persecution both subtle and . . . . Continue Reading »

A deeply painful essay to read,  The New Scar On My Soul begins: My soul carries a new scar.  The pain is fresh and keen, and I know that while time might see the pain fade, I will never fully recover from what I’ve seen, and done.  For I have failed, intentionally and . . . . Continue Reading »

Developing a theme the editor — sorry, the Editor — has written about in the magazine, Kathy Shaidle argues in Talk Sixties, Act Fifties: The Ice Storm  that “looking back on films made during the 1960s and 70s,  many of the most iconic ones are more like melodramatic . . . . Continue Reading »

Something else on Ash Wednesday, admittedly two weeks late: Lutheran pastor Gregory Alms’ essay on Ash Wednesday , originally published in the Concordia Theological Quarterly . It begins: Ash Wednesday is the story of a marriage. It is the account of an unlikely union.  Humanity and . . . . Continue Reading »