Tom Piatak

The primary purpose of a grand jury is to vote on indictments. The Pennsylvania grand jury that examined the Church issued two indictments. Forty-four percent of the priests mentioned in the report are dead; the average age of the remainder is 71.

Globalism has exacerbated the divisions among Americans, both by widening the gap between haves and have nots and also by sending a clear signal that those who run our country see no difference between Americans and foreigners or even prefer foreigners over their fellow citizens.

[F]or large swaths of elite opinion, it is now perfectly acceptable to hate people who think like me or look like me. And the people who approve of this hatred also claim for themselves the mantle of righteousness and moral superiority.

Donald Trump is crude, vulgar, egotistical, even narcissistic. He is, at best, verbally maladroit, and his attempts to backtrack from statements that cause outrage are often embarrassing, even cringeworthy.

Emerald Robinson recently wrote a witty piece for The American Spectator puncturing the pomposity of the Never Trump wing of the conservative movement. At least one member of that wing, the thin-skinned Jonah Goldberg, was not amused, and he let his readers know, branding Robinson's piece "lazy" and "delusional."

The entire controversy over the border is the logical culmination of a decades long, bipartisan refusal to defend the border and thereby devalue American citizenship.

For years, the purveyors of respectable opinion assured us that there was no need to worry about the economic dislocations caused by free trade, because such dislocations would be comparatively minor and temporary.

President Trump's announcement that he intends to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum produced what can only be described as hysteria across the admittedly narrow spectrum of establishment opinion.

For years, National Review has been relentless in its criticism of conservatives who questioned the benefits of free trade, even though the conservative tradition in America has historically been skeptical of free trade.

President Trump's decision to impose tariffs of up to 50% on Asian washing machines being dumped into the United States in response to a trade case brought by Whirlpool prompted howls of outrage among Trump opponents everywhere, especially among Trump opponents who used to masquerade as conservatives.

As I write this, the federal government remains "shut down" because congressional Democrats have committed themselves en masse to open borders. The Democrats know that they can secure congressional approval of President Obama's unilateral DACA amnesty if they give President Trump funding for a wall on our southern border.

Last week I saw an article about a proposal, currently part of the tax bill, to levy a 1.4% tax on investment income earned by private colleges with endowments of more than $500,000 per student.

[W]hat the upholders of the establishment consensus have not fully reckoned with is that the only reason Americans began listening to Donald Trump is because the globalism that leaders of both parties have offered voters for so long has been a disaster for much of America and many Americans.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of Poles gathered on their country's borders to pray the rosary. The event was too large for the media to ignore, but most news reports made clear how offensive this combination of Christian faith and patriotic sentiment was to those who write the news.

I have attended many professional sporting events, and I have no memory of any of my fellow spectators failing to stand for the National Anthem. Standing for "The Star-Spangled Banner" is widely recognized as a matter of common courtesy.

The period following Charlottesville has also been marred by many attempts to score political points. . . . On Friday, Rod Dreher used his perch at The American Conservative to attack one of the men who founded that magazine, Pat Buchanan.

I have no idea what is the best way to deal with North Korea. But I do know this: North Korea is the worst governed place on the planet.

For years, the media and Hollywood have sent the message that anyone who wants to be fashionable should eschew American products and buy foreign ones. Recently, Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs, put a different message on Facebook: “If you want to live in a country that builds things, you have to buy things your country builds.”

Prudence isn't fear. It is now clear that Islamic immigration carries with it the cost of murder and mayhem. Of course, most Muslims who come to Europe are peaceful, but some irreducible fraction are not.

[A]t least some in the Trump White House are beginning to lose sight of the issues that brought about perhaps the most astonishing win in American presidential history.

Osborne created a welcome refuge for those of us who prefer movies that are not drenched in profanity, sex, and violence, and that sought to appeal to audiences through storytelling, not titillation. Thank you, Robert Osborne, RIP.

Trump won the presidency despite the unremitting hostility of all the pundits outraged by his inaugural address. But being a successful president is a far more daunting task than being a successful candidate, and the odds are still stacked against Trump

Christmas leads to the heart of our culture; the War on Christmas leads nowhere.

If Trump is to succeed in his goal of ending the outsourcing of American jobs and of bringing back jobs that have already gone overseas, Trump will need to do more than threaten and cajole CEOs, as welcome as that is.

The Washington Post, which spent the election doing all it could to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, is now reporting something that happened only because Donald Trump became president: the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead.

There is, of course, much to be said about the election, but here are a few quick thoughts.

In March of 1916, a group of brave American pilots banded together to fight for the Allied cause as part of the French Air Force, over a year before America entered the war.

Since Trump's boorishness is not the basis for his support among Christians, the question is whether there are reasons that would justify Christians deciding to vote for Trump. The answer to that question is an emphatic yes.

It is hard to see how the return of the Clintons to the White House could ever be characterized as a vindication of sexual morality.

Monday brought the sad news that Phyllis Schlafly had died, at the age of 92. Schlafly was a tireless advocate for conservative causes for over half a century.

If a clear contrast on the substance of immigration policy between Trump and Clinton emerges in the minds of voters, that contrast will almost certainly work to Trump's benefit.

Yesterday brought the sad news that John McLaughlin, the host of the McLaughlin Group for 34 years, had died at the age of 89. McLaughlin managed to create a show that was informative, lively, and friendly to conservatives.

One of the reasons for the media's frenzy [on Donald Trump], of course, is that a belief in "multiculturalism" and "diversity" has become a religion for many in our elite. Belief in this new religion is shown in the media's coverage of Trump's economic team, the Khan controversy, and many other stories.

There are some simple rules governing modern American political conventions. If you speak at the convention, you endorse the nominee. If you can't endorse the nominee, you don't go.

There has been much media-generated doom and gloom about the 2016 GOP Convention, but the negative expectations generated by a hostile press were not confirmed by what I saw.

The ascendancy of Barack Obama is just one of many signs that white racism is no longer a potent force in America. Yet race relations are more tense than they were when Obama was elected. The reason for this is power.

The founders sought more than political independence from Europe. They also sought to secure America's economic independence. To that end, the second bill enacted by the first Congress was the Tariff Act of 1789, the stated purpose of which was "the encouragement and protection of manufactures."

I suspect that everyone in this area will remember where he was and who was with when the Cavaliers finally ended a championship drought that seemed poised to last forever, and that everyone who attended the parade will also long remember that amazing day of celebration.

What all of these die-hard opponents of Trump are arguing is that the voters should not be allowed to determine the direction of the Republican Party. It is easy to see why these Trump opponents have come to the this conclusion: a Trump victory would threaten their influence, their reputations, and even their livelihoods.

It's hard to see what Fioriana adds to Cruz's campaign. Her attempt to become a U. S. Senator from California was no more successful than her campaign for president.

One doubts that the respectable voices of the left and the right now uniting to denounce Trump would be doing so if Trump's political message were more to their liking.

Trump is an American businessman who feels about America the way American businessmen used to feel about America before globalism taught some of them that their countrymen could, and even should, be replaced by foreigners.

Government needs a source of revenue to operate. For much of American history, the principal source of revenue for the federal government was the tariff.

So far, the presidential campaign has not gone as the experts had predicted. One of the reasons for this is that many Americans are anxious about the economy, an anxiety that those ensconced in the recession-free DC bubble have a hard time understanding.

If it proves nothing else, this year’s campaign does vindicate Samuel Francis’s dim view of organized conservatism. The grandees “of all that remains of the famous ‘Conservative Movement’” have issued numerous ineffectual fusillades against Donald Trump.

Since the migrant influx is both young and overwhelmingly male, it threatens to bring about a dramatic, and swift, demographic transition in Germany.

Like many Americans, I spent Sunday evening watching the beginning of the final season of Downton Abbey. The show has become a huge hit, at least by PBS standards, with some 25,000,000 or so American viewers. At first glance, this success is surprising.

Anno Domini (soon to be abolished?) 2015 followed the same pattern we have seen recently: trench warfare. Amazingly, we now have a GOP presidential contender who explicitly acknowledges the need for Americans to say “Merry Christmas.”

Christmas is the preeminent musical holiday. As the conductor remarked at a Cleveland Orchestra Christmas concert I attended some years ago, more music has been written for Christmas than any other holiday.

Other than burbling about optimism and inclusion, it’s not clear that Ryan has much to offer such voters today. In fact, before becoming Speaker, Ryan was a reliable supporter of both transnational trade agreements and mass immigration.

What the furor over Scalia’s remarks shows, yet again, is that “diversity” has become a religion to many in our elite, and that those who question any tenet of this new religion will be treated as heretics.

For much of American history, it was understood that no one had a right to immigrate to America, that Americans had the unfettered right to decide who should come to America, and that immigration should be judged on whether it benefited America, not on whether it was good for immigrants.

President Obama, who was in Paris yesterday, when 14 people were murdered in San Bernardino, cited the shooting as illustrating the need for stricter gun control.

I have seen news reports stating that French authorities are concerned about the hundreds of French Islamists who have gone to Syria to fight for ISIS and have returned to France. This is misleading.

If drugs are legalized, there is a danger that, at some point, all the resources than now go into persuading Americans to purchase all sorts of useless and even dangerous, though legal, baubles will eventually be used to persuade them to consume drugs.

It is no secret that the recent Synod of Bishops was the cause of trepidation, even anxiety, among some Catholics. Their concern was over the coherence of doctrine. This is not a trivial concern.

For years, establishment politicians have sought to mask the economic decline of the middle class by repeating platitudes about “opportunity" and “growth,” platitudes made empty by the elite consensus favoring trade and immigration positions that make economic life harder for most Americans.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, there is an Islamic militia that has proclaimed an Islamic state. It controls territory in several countries, has kidnapped and murdered many innocent people, including Christians, and openly professes its disdain for Western learning.

Last week, the European Union voted to require members to accept a portion of the migrants who have been coming into Europe over the Mediterranean and through the Balkans.

Voters rightly want to hear how candidates will solve the problems of today, not how much they admire someone who solved problems a generation ago. It’s no longer morning in America; it’s far closer to midnight.

One of the clearest signs of how ideological American society has become is the push to put women in combat. No one argues that our armed forces will fight better if women are put in combat roles.

The latest CNN poll can only be read as a vote of no confidence in the Republican political establishment and the entire political class.

Hungary was roundly condemned in the international press for seeking to enforce EU rules, which require that those seeking asylum register in the first EU state they reach. But the migrants didn’t want to stay in Hungary, even to register for asylum.

Srdja Trifkovic’s contact within the Dutch Ministry of Immigration isn’t the only one who has noticed that the current flood of “migrants” now heading to Europe resembles an invasion.

Trump’s rise in the polls is also the result of the specific issues he has been talking about, primarily immigration and trade.

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm, the US led effort to remove the Iraqi military from Kuwait. Although the US military had no problem kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, removing ourselves from that troubled region has proven far more difficult.

The demand to tighten up immigration comes entirely from below, not above. But that demand is a strong one, as the unexpected popularity of Trump has shown.

A substantial number of Americans have become convinced that no risk is ever worth taking, and that no infringement on freedom or privacy is too great, as long as it can somehow be justified by a concern for safety.

The only reason Pollard has not been released before now is that numerous former Secretaries of Defense and Directors of Central Intelligence and Naval Intelligence have publicly opposed his release.

It appears that voters are in fact interested in what Trump has to say, particularly on immigration.

It is a little hard to tell exactly what “The Benedict Option” is, but it does seem to involve at least some withdrawal from public life by conservative Christians.

For our elites, mass immigration and multiculturalism are unquestionably good, and no evidence to the contrary will be allowed to reach ordinary Americans.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s name will forever be linked to his rigorous denunciation of the evils of Communism.

“Rust Belt revivalists.”—Republicans who have noticed that “the GOP has been dominated by corporate interests and needs to identify more directly with the economic frustrations of working-class voters.”

John Adams famously wanted a “government of laws and not of men.” Today’s decision is yet the latest illustration of how far we are from that ideal.

Last week, Dylann Roof walked into the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and slaughtered nine of the innocent people he found there. Roof’s act of slaughter has rightly been greeted with universal revulsion.

A recent New Hampshire poll showed Jeb Bush in first place, at 14%. In second place was Donald Trump, with 11%. Bush, of course, represents the Republican Establishment.

Part two of the interview with Ann Coulter and the continued discussion of immigration.

An interview with Ann Coulter discussing her new book, Adiós, America!.

Seventy years ago today, Chapman & Hall published Brideshead Revisited, written by Evelyn Waugh while he was on leave from the British Army during World War II.

It is hard to see how a country that hates its past can have much of a future. If that is so, the gay marriage referendum in Ireland last week suggests that Ireland has no future.

One of the basic political problems of today is the increasing tendency of political leaders to ignore the views of those who elected them.

One of the more absurd, not to mention offensive, aspects of political correctness is the increasing tendency to treat the Confederacy as the equivalent of Nazi Germany.

Today brings the news that 15 Moslem migrants seeking to enter Europe illegally are under arrest by Italian police for throwing 12 Christian migrants to their deaths in the Mediterranean.

Late last week, I saw a small piece from AFP reporting that, on a visit to South Africa, Zimbabwe's de facto dictator Robert Mugabe said, "I don't want to see a white man." Of course, if a European leader had commented, "I don't want to see a black man," the international outcry would still be going on.

Last week's furor over the version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act approved in Indiana and awaiting only the governor's signature in Arkansas was illuminating. Once again, the contemporary left demonstrated that it values conformity, not tolerance.

One of the many unfortunate trends in today's American politics is that being wrong on significant matters seems to carry little penalty, while being right on significant matters seems to carry little reward.

Earlier this week, Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio wrote an opinion piece in the Akron Beacon Journal announcing that, after much soul-searching, he no longer considered himself pro-life.

Twenty-five Republican members of the House of Representatives did not vote to re-elect John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Most of those voting against Boehner were conservatives.

Over the weekend, Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered New York City policemen Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, after leaving messages stating he was going to take revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by killing "pigs."

Last night, John Boehner convinced 162 House Republicans to vote for a bill funding the federal government, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, through September.

Last week, Brett Arends of MarketWatch reported that, for the first time since Ulysses S. Grant sat in the White House, the United States no longer has the world's largest economy. That honor now belongs to China.

Yesterday, Senator Sessions issued a powerful statement urging congressional Republicans to defund President Obama’s amnesty for illegal immigrants, an act that even Yale Law School Professor Peter Schuck, writing in The New York Times, admitted constituted an impeachable offense.

There is much to be said about Barack Obama’s announcement last night of an executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, and other Chronicles writers have already addressed several important aspects.

Yesterday there was supposed to have been a debate at Christ Church College in Oxford between two British writers whose work I have enjoyed, Tim Stanley and Brendan O’Neill. The topic was to have been whether the abortion culture harms Britain.

Back in 2004, I was part of the 62% of Ohio voters who supported a referendum to amend the Ohio Constitution to define marriage as “a union between one man and one woman.”

Last night’s midterm elections marked a decisive repudiation of Barack Obama.

Today I received an email I knew would be coming, telling me that one of my high school theology teachers, Jim Skerl, had died of pancreatic cancer. So ended a thoroughly Christian life, one that deserves to be better known.

Much of the financial support for the sort of “immigration reform” favored by Barack Obama has come from Silicon Valley.

The focus of most media coverage has been on the the supposed need of the Catholic Church to give its blessing to contemporary culture, particularly those ways in which modern men and women ignore or even defy Christian moral precepts.

The Center for Immigration Studies reports this morning that the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the United States is now 41.3 million, the highest it has ever been.

Today, Barack Obama is singing a different tune. Over the weekend, Obama told Chuck Todd of NBC that he wants “a system where the millions who are here…have a path to get legal.”

The defeat in June of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the GOP primary by a conservative challenger with little money was one of the most encouraging developments in American politics in a long time.

Over the weekend, I caught some of Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Paul Bremer, George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq after our invasion.

According to economists, the US economy began recovering from the recession back in 2009. However, last week brought further confirmation that there has been no economic recovery for many Americans.

My old compatriot from law school Ann Coulter has a habit of writing columns not designed to advance her interests as a columnist.

Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks generated outrage among the usual suspects this week by telling Laura Ingraham that the Obama Adminstration's push for amnesty for illegal immigrants is "a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party.

The most important borders for Americans to worry about are our own. But the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 has certainly shifted media attention from the crisis on our southern border to the borders of Ukraine.

Just as critics of the immigration amnesty bill touted by Obama have noted, any attempt to legalize illegal immigrants will only lead to more illegal immigration.

One hundred years ago today, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were visiting Sarajevo when they were assassinated.

My short piece on the anti-Catholic hysteria in the media surrounding the St. Mary Home for unwed mothers and their children in Tuam, Ireland—which closed its doors 53 years ago—has generated a lengthy response from Rod Dreher entitled "Trust Diarmuid Martin, Not Tom Piatak."

The defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in tonight's Virginia Republican primary is a victory for America.

"Eight Hundred Dead Irish Children thrown into the sewer by Catholic nuns." So charged Rod Dreher last week at The American Conservative.

In recent years, there has been much media attention given to "bullying" in schools, with the lion's share of attention given to a particular type of bullying, that directed at youngsters identified as "gay."

Before we went into Iraq, Chronicles predicted that American intervention would be calamitous for both for the United States and for Iraq's ancient Christian communities. And so it proved to be.

"Un pere, une mere, c'est elementary." This is the batte cry of La Manif Pour Tous, the French group that mobilized in opposition to gay marriage in France.

On Sunday, 522 Catholics killed for the Faith during the Spanish Civil War were beatified in Spain.

While the political spotlight has been on the government shutdown, the Democrats have not forgotten that America's political future will be shaped by the immigration bill passed by the Senate but stalled in the House.

Ten years ago, Chronicles was one of the few American publications pointing out that the American invasion of Iraq would be a disaster for Iraqi Christians.

This Labor Day, elite opinion is pushing a piece of legislation that poses a clear threat to the interests of working Americans, the immigration bill supported by President Obama and passed by the Senate. By massively increasing legal immigration and regularizing illegal immigration, this bill promises to further depress wages and to throw more Americans out of work

Last Friday, Commonweal published an essay by former First Things editor Jody Bottum entitled "The Things We Share: A Catholic's Case for Same-Sex Marriage." The reaction of National Review's Michael Potemra was to pronounce Bottum's piece "fascinating and brave." A less apt description is hard to imagine.

Earlier this week, Chris Lane, an Australian baseball player, was brutally killed in Duncan, Oklahoma. Police have charged James Edwards and Chancey Luna with first degree murder for killing Lane. Lane was white; Edwards and Luna are black, though an accomplice, Michael Jones, charged with being an accessory after the fact, is white.

John McCain is back in the news. The media is exulting that "The Straight Talk Express Is Back" because McCain has taken to denouncing members of his own party as "wacko birds" and to carrying water for Obama in the Senate.

It's as if The Nation admitted Alger Hiss's guilt, The New Republic discovered the virtues of evangelical Christianity, or National Review concluded that Barack Obama has been an outstanding president.

Much of the discussion over the immigration bill that just passed the Senate focuses on how it will deal with illegal immigration. But much of the financial backing for the bill comes from Silicon Valley, which wants to vastly increase legal immigration, particularly the H1B visa program, which allows American employers to import technical workers from abroad.

Last week, Fr. Francois Mourad, a Syrian Catholic priest, was brutally murdered by Islamist rebels in Syria.

Today, the Senate passed an immigration bill that promises amnesty to illegal immigrants and a massive increase in legal immigration.

Tonight media reports are hyping a deal to add a border fence to the Amnesty Bill currently being considered in the Senate.

A bill that the media is touting as providing "comprehensive immigration reform" is currently making its way through the Senate.

Whenever it is polically expedient, Barack Obama criticizes free trade. He did it in 2008, when he told Ohio primary voters that he would renegotiate NAFTA.

Last weekend, Paris saw the third march of roughly one million people against gay marriage.

Every Christmas, we are instructed that there is no War on Christmas. But the hostility to Christianity and Western culture that motivates the War on Christmas is in fact widespread.

Google often gets grief over the events and people it chooses to honor.

Several commenters have decried the lack of media coverage of the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia. Gosnell is charged with the deaths of one pregnant woman and seven children who were born after botched abortions; those children were killed by having their spinal cords severed.

The American Conservative has had dozens of articles and posts on gay marriage. The general tenor has ranged from arguing that gay marriage is inevitable to criticizing opponents of gay marriage to arguing that support for gay marriage is the conservative position. What has largely been absent is any opposition to gay marriage.

In recent decades, the public profile of Easter in the United States has diminished. Americans now spend more on Halloween than on Easter, and the public attention Easter receives is largely negative.

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon was largely eliminating restrictions on women serving in combat units. This is perfectly consistent with the egalitarian ideology to which the Obama Administration is committed.

Peter Brimelow has written a discussion of the War on Christmas for VDARE.com that is well worth reading. In it, Peter puts me in the unusual role of optimist. There are still many people in this country who want to suppress the public celebration of Christmas, and the situation in the schools, where culture is formed and transmitted, remains terrible.

Today brings the sad news that Robert Bork has passed away.

The desire to efface Christmas that lies behind the elevation of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and all the rest is illustrated by the New York City schools, which ban Nativity scenes but regularly display menorahs and Moslem crescents.

The power of Christmas (and Christianity) shows through even in unexpected places, such as Saturday Night Live.

Last night, my wife and I attended the vigil Mass for the Immaculate Conception at our parish. We sat immediately behind a family I had often seen but never sat by before, a woman in her forties with Down syndrome and her father. I could not help being moved by what I saw.

Slovakia's plan to issue a two Euro coin commemorating the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia, of which Slovakia was a part, has run afoul of Christophobic Eurocrats.

After the election, Al Cardnenas, head of the American Conservative Union, complained that the Republican Party was "too old and too white and too male." One wonders what Mr. Cardnenas would say about the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention.

Four years ago I wrote, "if Republicans want the joke to be on them, they can listen to [Rich]Lowry [of National Review], line up to damn the American auto industry, and look forward to losing the Great Lakes states year after year after year."

The Minnesota Timberwolves will be fielding a team this year that is only one third black. That means that the Timberwolves will have a much higher percentage of blacks than the general population, though a far lower percentage of blacks than any other team in the NBA.

Recently, Dan McCarthy of the American Conservative had a piece asking, "How Does A Traditionalist Vote?"

Today, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Mother Marianne Cope, the second canonized saint who worked at the leper settlement on the island of Molokai.

This morning the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an important opinion piece by Alan Tonelson of the redoubtable United States Business and Industry Council on manufacturing and the presidential election.

Yesterday's Washington Post reported that, according to a recent Pew Center study, 19.6% of Americans now describe themselves as having no religious affiliation.

If Romney cannot even talk about these issues, why would anyone expect him to do anything about them? Indeed, Romney is already beginning to retreat on immigration, even though his relative hard line on illegal immigration helped him win the Republican nomination.

Today brings news of the death of Andy Williams at the age of 84.

In other words, only the United States clings to the ideology of free trade, while other countries take the manufacturing jobs that used to be ours.

Yesterday brought the shocking news of the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Yesterday the AP had a very interesting story on newly declassified documents that support the view that FDR and Churchill knew that the Soviets were responsible for the massacre of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war at the same time they were publicly following Stalin's lead and blaming the massacre on the Nazis.

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has an interesting post arguing that globalization is the single most important factor in the decline of the American middle class.

Venues in which a person's fidelity to Catholic teaching is generally viewed as a negative are suddenly voicing concern about Paul Ryan's adherence to Catholic social teaching.

Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer has an article analyzing a revealing ad the Obama campaign is running here in Ohio.

This morning, Mitt Romney chose the backdrop of the USS Wisconsin, one of four members of the mighty Iowa class and a magnificent symbol of American power, to introduce Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate.

This month the Census Bureau reported that the inflation adjusted median income for male workers was $32,127 in 2010, less than the $32,844 such workers earned in 1968.

Yesterday brought the news of Andy Griffith's death at 86. Unfortunately, the type of television exemplified by The Andy Griffiith Show died long before its star did.

Putting together the Court's two most notable recent decisions, the Arizona immigration decision and the Obamacare decision, leads to this unsettling conclusion: there is virtually nothing the states can do on their own, and there is virtually nothing the federal government cannot do. If that is what the Founders intended, I'm a unicorn.

I hate to disagree with Rick Oliver, but I think he is too optimistic about John Roberts.

Barack Obama's recent concern over sending American jobs overseas is as phony as his broken promise, made during the Ohio Democratic primary in 2008, to renegotiate NAFTA, but there is little doubt that his attack on Mitt Romney's record of outsourcing American jobs during Romney's tenure at Bain Capital is politically potent.

President Obama's announcement of a de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants by administrative fiat offered a chance for Mitt Romney to appeal to the majority of Americans who consistently tell pollsters that they want to see immigration reduced.

I recently had the chance to visit the village of Annascaul on the stunningly beautiful Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. The attraction in Annascaul was the South Pole Inn, opened by Annascaul native Tom Crean after his retirement from the Royal Navy.

It turns out that Barack Obama had managed to insult Poland before he ever talked about a "Polish death camp."

One of the sillier stories told to garner support for Barack Obama in 2008 was that he would help bring Americans together by peacefully ending the culture war, a culture war most Americans found tiresome.

American presidents seem to have a habit of insulting Poland. Gerald Ford probably lost the 1976 election when he maintained in a presidential debate that Poland was not dominated by the Soviets and never would be under a Ford Administration. (The Poles, who were in fact dominated by the Soviets, weren't able to register a protest).

Review of For Greater Glory

Just three days after Georgetown University had Kathleen Sebelius on campus to address an awards ceremony during commencement week, another prominent Catholic university found a better way of dealing with Sebelius.

Today brings news that Georgetown alumnus and author of The Exorcist William Peter Blatty intends to pursue a canon law lawsuit against his alma mater that may possibly result in Georgetown's not being able to call itself a Catholic university any longer.

The funeral of the Marquess of Marchmain was marred by the refusal of the parish priest, Father Mackay, to give Communion to two of the mourners, Lady Julia Mottram, the Marquess' daughter, and her partner, the artist Charles Ryder.

There are many reasons to criticize the the Republicans as the Stupid Party, and I have often done so. But we need to remember that, in Sam Francis' dichotomy, the other major party is the Evil Party. And some of what the leader of the Evil Party is doing has no real precedent in American history.

Why are there bilingual ballots?

Pat Buchanan's new book, Suicide of a Superpower, continues to raise many of the issues he has long stressed and shows where we are likely to end up, if we do not change course.

Wednesday, at a meeting with Hispanic activists, President Obama vowed to keep pushing for what he calls "comprehensive immigration reform."

Mike Dorning of Bloomberg has an interesting article on "The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man."

It used to be that plutocrats felt they were part of the society in which they lived, or at least felt the need to act as if they were part of that society.

This morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer carried a sad headline: Borders, the nation's second largest bookstore, was liquidating, and its 10700 employees will be unemployed by the end of September.

Unless you live in a cave, you know that New York's legislature recently passed a bill recognizing homosexual marriage, a bill that was quickly and enthusiastically signed into law by the latest loathsome member of the Cuomo clan to govern the Empire State.

History contains many tragedies, and one of these is the early death of Mozart.

Farsighted conservatives have warned for decades that globalization was leading to wage stagnation in the United States. This was, for example, a major theme in Pat Buchanan's The Great Betrayal, published in 1997.

It pains me to disagree with a writer I like and admire, but Srdja Trifkovic’s piece on Cardinal Stepinac makes no attempt to explain, much less understand, why Catholics respect and admire this brave Croatian martyr.

Forbes has a list out this morning of America's five richest counties.

When I turned on my computer this morning, I got reminders from both Yahoo and Google that today was...Earth Day.

Lucy just pulled the football away from Charlie Brown again.

This morning brought the surprising news that, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is running second among GOP presidential hopefuls, at 17%, behind Mitt Romney's 21%.

As our country plunges into yet another foolish war in the Moslem world and teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, it is easy to be focused on the negative.

Recently, the European Union published a calendar for school children that noted Moslem and Jewish holidays but made no mention of any Christian holiday, including Christmas. The same principle operates here, in the countless public school "winter concerts" that highlight music for Kwanzaa and Hanukkah but feature no Christmas carols.

Last week, President Obama named William Daley as White House Chief of Staff and Gene Sperling as the chief White House economic adviser. Last fall, he named Austan Goolsbee as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Sixty-six years ago, a small plane took off from southern England for Paris. It never made it.

I recently came across an item in the Catholic press describing a Mass of Reparation offered in Britain for the 12,000 Slovenian Catholics handed over by the British to be murdered by Yugoslav Communists in May 1945.

Last night, on the recommendation of friends, my wife and I went to see Secretariat. We both thoroughly enjoyed this wholesome, well-made movie, that manages to be suspenseful even though most moviegoers already know that Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973.

On October 2, 2010, the Wall Street Journal ran an article detailing the results of the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

An invasive foreign species is among us.

On March 23, the Associated Press published a story dealing with sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church to little fanfare. It noted that allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church in the United States dropped in 2009, and that most of the alleged offenders “are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from ministry, or missing.”