Recently some friends of mine were discussing the misapplication of the word “heroic” to denote efforts which people ought to make simply as a matter of course. Staying married, for example, is not an act of heroism, at least in most cases, yet you read in the tabloids — that is, . . . . Continue Reading »
Much, too much perhaps, is being made of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s move from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party. There is a lot to be said of it, of course, but it is probably best to let Specter speak for himself. A month ago he told the Philadelphia Inquirer , “To . . . . Continue Reading »
Justin Cardinal Rigali shoots straight from the hip. When Doug Kmiec published a column entitled “New ethically sensitive stem-cell guidance from the Obama administration,” the Cardinal replied with a column of his own . It began: On April 17 the National Institutes of Health released . . . . Continue Reading »
Fetching, no? That’s how Bill Murchison describes much of mainline Protestantism today: The present presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, when asked by Time magazine a few years back to specify her focus as head of the church, replied, “Our focus needs to . . . . Continue Reading »
I can’t remember an issue in which there was so much intellectual dishonesty or malpractice in media reporting than the embryonic stem cell/cloning debates—and that’s saying a lot! For example, when the Stowers Crowd began using the junk biological term “early stem . . . . Continue Reading »
Laura Miller reviews Winifred Gallagher’s latest book on—Wait, what was it on again? Oh, yeah.—our culture’s inability to concentrate and what we can do about it: You don’t have to agree that “we” are getting stupider, or that today’s youth are going to . . . . Continue Reading »
In the Canadian magazine Macleans , Mark Steyn reminds us that some slopes really are slippery : What’s my line on legalized polygamy? Oh, I pretty much said it all back in 2004, in a column for Ezra Levant’s Western Standard. Headline: “It’s Closer Than They Think.” Well, . . . . Continue Reading »
In today’s daily article for the On the Square blog I review the good news and bad news about Israel on the 61st anniversary of its independence. I also offer an unashamed plug for one of my favorite publications in the world, the quarterly review Azure from whose next issue I . . . . Continue Reading »
Law professor Thaddeus Pope runs the Medical Futility Blog, the best such site dedicated to medical futility of which I am aware. He swings from the futilitarian side of the plate, but is always fair and even handed.Today he has posted “Seven Reasons For Supporting the Unilateral . . . . Continue Reading »
Some of our most formerly venerable medical journals are becoming increasingly radical. Critical Care Medicine, the journal for intensive care doctors, is a case in point. In the past, the Ethics Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine supported futile care theory, and quite notably, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
