U2 rock star and humanitarian Bono has come in for some recent criticism. According to Advertising Age (registration required), his (RED) campaign has spent upward of $100 million on advertising to produce a mere $18 million for the Global Fund to support African AIDS programs.A little more than a . . . . Continue Reading »
Talk about "criminalizing political differences" is again rife in the wake of the conviction of Scooter Libby. I very much wish it were not so, but the phrase is all too accurate. Prosecutors bring one set of charges and, when they don’t hold up, then actually prosecute . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent essay in the Times Literary Supplement , Steven Weinberg suggested that the reason the West has so far outstripped the Islamic world in scientific knowledge is "religious certitude." In the West, the decline of religion has freed science to move forward at an astonishing pace. . . . . Continue Reading »
I got a letter, a signed letter, from Senator Barack Obama the other day¯me and several million other Americans. He’s running for president, you see, and he wants my support in helping him change the political landscape. What concerns people, it seems, is not the "magnitude of our . . . . Continue Reading »
The audience was shocked. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize¯winning reporter, delivered a Princeton University lecture on the religious right so appalling that even his supporters were embarrassed. One university administrator apologized that Hedges was "so reductionist and offensive," . . . . Continue Reading »
In the next few days (March 19), Harvard theologian Harvey Cox will be celebrating his seventy-eighth birthday. Since I’m pressing right behind him, this seemed like a good time to express my gratitude for many kindnesses of his so many years ago—for so many stimulating conversations and . . . . Continue Reading »
I see that Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made it to the bestseller lists. Hirsi Ali, it will be recalled, is the Muslim from Somalia who sought refuge in the Netherlands and took up the cudgels against Jihadism, and indeed against Islam, which she believes is inseparable from Jihadism. As a . . . . Continue Reading »
David Brooks once offered an explanation for an editorial job he held¯one of those jobs where you arrive in the morning to find twenty faxes, fifty phone messages, and a hundred emails already waiting for you. It was, he said, like camping beside a raging river. Every morning you pack up your . . . . Continue Reading »
"Choice" my foot: If the new bill to legalize assisted suicide in California (A.B. 374) becomes law, Catholic nursing homes will be legally required to permit assisted suicide to be committed within their premises, even though doing so would be a profound violation of Catholic moral . . . . Continue Reading »
In October of 2006, William & Mary’s new college president, Gene R. Nichol, ordered the altar cross removed from the university’s colonial-era Wren Chapel. His goal was to make the chapel "less of a faith-specific space, and to make it more welcoming to . . . visitors of all . . . . Continue Reading »
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