Joe Carter

Confused about all of these newfangled legislative process terms like reconciliation and deem-and-pass? Here’s a video that explains it in less that two minutes. The presentation isn’t exactly unbiased (what is when it comes to health care?) but it’s certainly informative. (Via: . . . . Continue Reading »

[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host a discussion about some aspect of pop culture. Today’s theme is influential books. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com ] Earlier this week economist Tyler Cowen started a meme by asking bloggers to list the top . . . . Continue Reading »

Has a new work by William Shakespeare been discovered? Professor Brean Hammond of Nottingham University will publish compelling new evidence next week that the play, a romantic tragi-comedy by Lewis Theobald is – as the author always maintained it was – substantially based on a real . . . . Continue Reading »

At Tablet , Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly, makes the Quranic argument for Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel : Over the past 15 years, the political conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has been reframed as a religious war in which . . . . Continue Reading »

As someone who believes that bacon should be one of the four food groups, I am certainly sympathetic to your argument , David. However, I think the case you made has the unfortunate unintended effect of undercutting a key argument against abortion. The abortion debate often hinges on the question . . . . Continue Reading »

Mary O’Callaghan on seeing the image of God in children with Down Syndrome : [A]fter seeing the online ridicule of Down Syndrome children, I wonder whether the deepest sorrow that pierced Mary’s heart was not the physical suffering of her son, but the cruel taunts and mockery to which he . . . . Continue Reading »

A group of Muslim raiders with machetes attacked another Christian village in Nigeria on Wednesday morning. The attackers killed twelve villagers”seven women, four children, and one man”and cut their tongues out… . Continue Reading »

A group of Muslim raiders with machetes attacked another Christian village in Nigeria on Wednesday morning. The attackers killed twelve villagers—seven women, four children, and one man—and cut their tongues out. Attackers killed 12 people Wednesday morning in a small Christian village in . . . . Continue Reading »

Sorry, guys, it’s true: Women have science—evolutionary psychology!—on their side of the debate about which sex are better drivers. According to the Social Issues Research Centre , our Fred Flintstone-era brains cause us to drive erratically: The differences between the sexes in . . . . Continue Reading »

David Goldman says that Democrats should pay for their appeasement of Iran : It is easy for Republicans to chide the Administration for taking an inappropriately hostile tone for an American ally popular with the public [Israel]. But the real scandal in American foreign policy, and the . . . . Continue Reading »