David Mills

“Although the practical effect will be negligible, the [new] .XXX domain is a potent symbol and cultural marker for our present condition,” writes Joe Carter in today’s “On the Square” article, Virtue in Virtual Gomorrah . He doesn’t stop with the usual lament, . . . . Continue Reading »

“Remember,” declared the Catholic bishop of Wheeling-Charleston (i.e., all of West Virginia), ”that Senator Byrd is now at peace with the Risen Lord and, with his late wife Erma Ora Byrd, is experiencing Perfect Joy.” The friend who sent this commented: What WONDERFUL . . . . Continue Reading »

Today is another bonus day “On the Square.” In Kagan’s Fraud Upon the Courts , Joseph Bottum reflects upon the discovery that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan rewrote the central claim of the infamous American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists report on partial birth . . . . Continue Reading »

Sometimes good ideas take off. The Washington Examiner announces that New evidence points to porn’s destructiveness , echoing Mary Eberstadt’s popular The Weight of Smut from the June/July issue. Reporting on a press conference held by the Coalition for the War Against Illegal . . . . Continue Reading »

A friend alerted me to a report in Science , “A WEIRD View of Human Nature Skews Psychologists’ Studies.” Neither the report nor the original article being reported, which was published in  Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is available online, but Science ‘s  free . . . . Continue Reading »

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, in one of today’s “On the Square” articles (today’s a bonus day), our senior editor R. R. Reno explains the ways in which a sense of history can humanize our lives. He writes, in Memory Redeemed , that while “A living past . . . . Continue Reading »

Today’s First Things Life Lesson: Do not, assuming that the tasty-looking bar sticking out of its wrapper, sitting on a table you’re walking past, is a granola bar opened by one of your children who did not finish it, take a big bite of a gerbil treat. . . . . Continue Reading »

In The Realm of Religious Freedom , today’s “On the Square” article, editor Joseph Bottum examines the very worrisome implications of “the administration’s favored formula for speaking about religious liberty.” He notes that the president speaks of the relatively . . . . Continue Reading »

Sandro Magister reports that Ukraine Plays Referee Between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow . He writes that the relationships between the Church of Rome and the larger part of the Orthodoxy, that is the Church of Russia, have definitely improved. Both agree in addressing together the major . . . . Continue Reading »

Former Sexually Free Woman Discovers Chastity continues to be a popular entry in the man-bites-dog genre, the latest example being Salon.com’s “Chastened”: The Joy of No Sex , an interview with the author of a book about not having sex for a year. The interviewer is quick to . . . . Continue Reading »