I spent nearly two years in the political weeds monitoring the blathering of professional lunatics, and the experience nearly drove me mad. I learned many things during this time, but one lesson stands out above all others: Partisanship makes you stupid. Partisanship demands total devotion to the … [Read more...]
Pew’s New Survey Gives Pro-Lifers Some Hope
Dan Smyth | September 5, 2013
Recently, the Pew Research Center released a report on a survey of US adults’ opinions on the morality of various issues relating to the unborn. As shown below, about half of the respondents believed abortion was morally wrong, but low percentages claimed embryonic stem cell research and the use of … [Read more...]
Errors Galore in Centro Tepeyac v. Montgomery County
Dan Smyth | August 12, 2013
Centro Tepeyac, a pro-life center in Montgomery County (Mo Co), Maryland, is officially a First Amendment martyr. On July 3, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in Centro Tepeyac v. Montgomery County that Mo Co can force Centro Tepeyac and other pro-life centers to post … [Read more...]
Health & Human Services: Religious Employers Still Ain’t “Religious”
Dan Smyth | July 15, 2013
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion.] The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently blew a chance to exempt any conscientious “religious employer,” such as Christian-owned Hobby Lobby, from HHS’ contraception/abortifacient … [Read more...]
PoliTwix: Are Left and Right Really Different?
Joseph S. Diedrich | July 11, 2013
The world is full of puzzling questions. Do ghosts exist? What is the meaning of life? Why are there two Twix bars in one wrapper? Finally, after years upon years of vexation, the Twix company has shared the details of its troubled past, shedding light on the question of candy bar bifurcation. … [Read more...]
Future Kennedy: “States Must Recognize Same-Sex Marriage”
Dan Smyth | July 10, 2013
We've all heard that, in the United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court just declared Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. In part, Section 3 stated that any mention of "marriage" in federal laws, rules, and regulations referred only to a union between one man and one … [Read more...]
Restraining “Judicial Activism of the Most Pernicious Sort”
Randy Quarles | July 2, 2013
As Mark Twain said of the weather, people grumble a lot about federal courts, but nothing is done about them. For instance, when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate as a tax in June 2012, Jim Huffman, dean emeritus of Lewis & Clark Law School, complained the ruling was … [Read more...]
A Renegade Student’s Spotlight on School Prayer
Paul Wilson | June 25, 2013
Roy Costner IV, the 2013 valedictorian at Liberty High School in South Carolina, recently made headlines for reciting the Lord's Prayer at his graduation. His prayer was effectively a finger in the eyes of atheist activists and highlighted the thorny issues of free speech and school prayer. Here’s … [Read more...]
NSA’s Digital Surveillance: Kiss Private Data Goodbye?
Tony Escobar | June 17, 2013
It’s no secret that the U.S. government watches its citizens. First came reports about daily collection by the National Security Agency (NSA) of Verizon customers’ phone records. Then word broke about the NSA surveillance program named PRISM, which extracted emails, photos, audio and video chats, … [Read more...]
Say What? Linguistic High Ground in Political Debates
Paul Wilson | June 11, 2013
The development of debating skills is vital for advocates of liberty, as political discussions are a primary method of influencing others’ opinions. However, debates have a nasty habit of getting bogged down in squabbles over the definitions of particular words. Fights over the definition of a … [Read more...]
