A person’s faith should in no way be a disqualifier for the presidency or any other public office. That certainly was true of John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism in 1960 and that is true of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism in 2012, but there the similarities end because there are aspects of Romney’s relationship with the Church of Latter Day Saints that do not necessarily disqualify him but do raise...

WASHINGTON — Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny their very humanity. It’s often not enough to defeat a foe. Satisfaction only comes from an adversary’s humiliation. One other thing about culture wars: One side typically has absolutely no understanding of what...

I have thought all along that the recent birth control flap had little to do with birth control.  The Republicans and tea party crows are opposed to it because it comes from Obama.  The Catholic hierarchy is opposed to it because it is a threat to their power – the power to control women and sex.  Over at Balloon Juice recovering Catholic Dennis G. has some great insight. The Bishops are demanding an...

A new poll finds that Catholic voters support President Barack Obama’s new — and controversial — contraceptive policy compromise: Catholic voters largely approve of President Obama’s new policy on contraception, according to a poll released Saturday by groups that support the policy. Supporters say the poll shows that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and congressional Republicans,...

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Is it possible that American citizens, now under arrest in Cairo, were involved with a plot to partition Egypt into four smaller states? According to columnist Muhammad Dunia of Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram, maps that were discovered during a raid on the Cairo offices of the U.S.-based International Republican Institute prove that at least some of the foreign NGOs operating in Egypt are actively involved...

Would the United States, utilizing what is known as a ‘false flag’ strategy, sacrifice a nuclear aircraft carrier to persuade the world that a war against Iran must be waged? According to columnist Anna Pinderak of Poland’s Wprost24, a theory is making the rounds that the Pentagon has sent the famed USS Enterprise to the Persian Gulf – to sink it – and then to blame Tehran...

BISHOP DOLAN IS GROUCHY In for a dime in for a dollar seems to be the modus operandi in the latest round of culture warfare and even when reasonable compromise is within reach it remains elusive. And so we have the sight of Catholic bishops locking horns with the Obama administration over its principled view that all women need affordable access to contraceptive services and products, including the morning-after...

Faced with the threat that a slowly improving economy may buoy the President’s reelection chances, Republican campaign strategy is tilting toward the Religious Right. After winning a tiny sliver of voters in three states, Rick Santorum is in Texas talking to pastors: “There’s not a management problem in Washington, all right. There’s a more foundational problem there that goes to the basic concepts...

How should we characterize the impending end of Western military operations in Afghanistan? Was it a painful defeat, a hard-won success, or something in between? Columnist Danièle Fonck of Luxembourg’s Le Jeudi writes that nothing worthwhile has been gained by the Afghanistan invasion, and the soldiers who died – whether Westerners want to admit it to themselves or not – did so in vain. For...

Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons For a women’s magazine editor of half a century ago, the Planned Parenthood-Komen Foundation ugly furor recalls the time from introduction of the Pill when women, no matter what their circumstances, were without safe, reliable birth control and, before Roe v. Wade, had the choice of bearing unwanted children or being butchered by back-alley abortions. From the start, those new alternatives,...

In Washington, the President affirms his humility at a National Prayer Breakfast to be followed by ego gone amok in Las Vegas as Donald Trump, after hinting for days he will endorse Gingrich, bestows his grace on Romney. Here is a contrast in current American culture between the place of the Cross and the Double-Cross as Barack Obama underscores “Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto to whom much is given, much...

After listening to Newt Gingrich’s tasteless and graceless concession speech where he invoked the almost sacred words of both President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address and of the signers of our Declaration of Independence in an absurd attempt to link himself to our Founding Fathers, I posted the comment: Many feel that Gingrich — albeit he is the big loser in Florida — gave a pretty...

NATO’s campaign to overthrow Libya’s strongman Gadhafi had 2 terrorist groups rejoicing. A recent UN’s report confirmed what many suspected – NATO’s operation unintentionally provided stocks of heavy weapons to terrorist groups in Northern Africa. Among the groups benefiting from the arms are al-Qaeda and the deadly Islamic terror organization Boko Haram, which is currently on a killing...

No GOP slugfests for the next three weeks—-how will we get through the month? Sunday Gingrich gave us some venom to go, in the parking lot of a Florida mega-church with a Starbucks in the lobby, tagging Mitt as a “pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-tax-increase moderate from Massachusetts” with “money from Wall Street” to spread lies about him, “as big an outrage as I’ve...

WASHINGTON — One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law. His administration mishandled this decision not once but...

On the night of his triumph in the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich declared that “The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” That reference and subsequent references to Alinsky surely puzzled viewers of a certain age and probably many viewers of all ages. This is because Alinsky, a legendary community organizer, died in...

Back in September of 2009, I started one of my several articles on the Afghanistan War as follows: As the fighting in Afghanistan intensifies; as that war claims more and more casualties; and as critical decisions loom on national objectives, strategy and corresponding troop levels and deployments there, the debate also intensifies. As the war has continued unabated and has indeed claimed more and more young...

My blood is still boiling. My outrage is not your usual Internet-induced or Internet-encouraged outrage. My outrage was so great I could not write about it. But I’ll let THIS LETTER speak for me. And I’ll say: “Ditto.” Ditto to what the column says. Ditto to his reccomendation to the newspaper publisher. I worked for several newspapers over the years as a contributor and as a full-time...

A Sikh ready for the holy bath at Golden Temple in Amritsar in northern India. Ever heard of a place where you can enjoy live Western classical music round-the-clock? Perhaps there is none. However, if you are interested in attending a non-stop Indian classical music concert round the year, then the place to visit is the Golden Temple (or Harmandir Sahib) at Amritsar in northern India. This place is the rallying...

Not exactly the best news coming out of Cairo as they announce election results. The only quasi good news is that the super hard liners won 25% of the vote while the ‘moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood got 47%. We shall see how ‘moderate’ they are.

Israeli Ambassador to the USA Dr. Michael Oren (a native of New Jersey) spoke this evening at Cincinnati’s Mayerson JCC. It is still rather icy out and over 700 people came to hear him. These are not his exact words, just my notes on some things he said: Someone asked how we live with uncertainty – we do it every day and have done so since 1948. Keeping in mind what Iran has done without...

The Washington Post: Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in 1999 asked his second wife for an “open marriage” or a divorce at the same time he was giving speeches around the country on family and religious values, his former wife, Marianne, told The Washington Post on Thursday. Marianne Gingrich said she first heard from the former speaker about the divorce request as she was waiting in the home of her...

There is no question as to how utterly uniformed Rick Perry’s remarks about Turkey were Monday night in South Carolina. Calling one of our staunchest NATO partners a country that is being ruled by “Islamic terrorists” is not really the savviest thing one would expect from a presidential candidate. But perhaps we are being too rough on the Texas governor. Here’s the question posed specifically to Perry...

The same Republican presidential wannabe who would send U.S. troops back into Iraq and thus would most likely again need the use of Turkish land and air space to provide logistics support to our troops there, now labels that nation a country that is being ruled by Islamic terrorists — and worse. During Monday’s GOP presidential candidates debate in South Carolina, Texas governor Rick Perry also...