Kasper’s Bad Excuse

Last updated on: October 21, 2014 at 1:52 pm By David Mills

A friend sends his translation of the most important paragraph from the German Kath.net’s report on Cardinal Kasper and his remarks on African Catholics: Late Thursday afternoon in response to Kath.net, [Kasper] stated the following: “I have never spoken about Africans in this manner and moreover would never speak in this way.” Later, however, the Zenit journalist published the audio recording and explained that there were even two other journalists with him as witnesses. Kasper’s voice is clearly audible on... Read more

Socialist Pay

Last updated on: October 17, 2014 at 12:17 pm By David Mills

Gotcha arguments can be cheapshots, of the sort favored by conceited adolescent males, but sometimes they’re to the point. Seattle’s Freedom Socialist Party demands a $15 an hour minimum wage for every worker. In June, they denounced the mayor of Seattle for not going far enough in his support: In May, new Mayor Ed Murray, Democrat, announced his proposal for $15/hour — for some workers, after several years. Healthcare, tips, and other ‘compensation’ would be calculated into their ‘income.’ In short,... Read more

We Have, We Thought, Someone On the Job Curing Ebola

Last updated on: October 16, 2014 at 7:01 pm By David Mills

As Ebola begins to look like it might be a major problem in this country as well as in west Africa, the major media and the heads of government agencies offer the almost inevitable line: We have to give the federal government more money. Even those of us who are not libertarians will want to question this. In this case, for particularly good reason, as the indispensable Mollie Hemingway has argued on The Federalist. [T]he federal government not ten years ago... Read more

Why Cats Hate Each Other

Last updated on: October 17, 2014 at 1:37 pm By David Mills

The simple answer is because they’re evil — one of the products of the Fall like cancer, ticks, earthquakes, and lite beer — but this article gives a scientific explanation. Read more

R. H. Benson On Writing

Last updated on: October 16, 2014 at 2:36 pm By David Mills

R. H. Benson’s Spiritual Letters to One of His Converts appeared in a bookseller’s list when I was searching for another book and when it arrived I was pleased to find in it a section titled “To one beginning a literary career.” Benson, the son of an archbishop of Canterbury and an extraordinarily eccentric mother (see this review), left the Anglican ministry to become a Catholic and then a priest. He wrote some very good apologetic works — as good as Knox’s or... Read more

Limbaugh is Killing Conservative Talk Radio

Last updated on: October 16, 2014 at 4:23 pm By David Mills

Conservative talk radio is dying, Paul Kengor argues, and it’s the hosts’ fault. A professor of political science at Grove City College and author of several conservative bestsellers, Kengor argues that Conservative talk-radio is in peril because of conservative greed — and not because of the greed of the millions of conservative faithful who’ve lent their hearts and minds and ears. It’s no secret what’s happening. There’s simply too much advertising on conservative talk-radio. Year after year, it gets worse.... Read more

The Inhumanist John Gray

Last updated on: October 14, 2014 at 7:47 pm By David Mills

The Spiked! review begins promisingly with a favorite quote from G. K. Chesterton and goes on to take apart the “inhumanism” of philosopher John Gray’s The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths. Anthony McCarthy writes, after quoting Gray’s “When truth is at odds with meaning, it is meaning that wins,” a sentence he points out is meaningless: This assertion comes after an excursus into the nature of myth and is followed by several pages of praise for Sigmund Freud... Read more

Brave New Apple & Facebook

Last updated on: October 16, 2014 at 2:36 pm By David Mills

The way the Brave New World is working out: Apple And Facebook Are Paying Employees To Freeze Their Eggs. Apple and Facebook will pay female employees up to $20,000 to help cover the cost of freezing their eggs. The idea is to enable women who want to continue focusing on their careers without sacrificing their chance to have children later on. A small investment to let their women employees “continue focusing on their careers,” which is to say, make money for... Read more

Doctrine & Discipline

Last updated on: October 14, 2014 at 7:48 pm By David Mills

Writing on the Catholic World Report site in response to the eminent and irreplaceable canonist Edward Peters, I make some remarks about the intimate if sometimes distant relation between discipline and doctrine, which it seemed to me Dr. Peters had slightly disconnected. The third paragraph, which gives the basic point: One hesitates to argue with the learned doctor of canon law, especially as he is the canon lawyer to whom almost everyone I trust turns to, but I don’t think... Read more

The Politician’s Character

Last updated on: October 14, 2014 at 7:47 pm By David Mills

The mayor of London and Tory star Boris Johnson, said to aiming at becoming prime minister, believes voters don’t care about his adulteries — or “extra-marital affairs,” as the press antiseptically puts it — “What they want to know is what your agenda is, and whether you’re going to any good in the job.” On the whole, I think that all that kind of thing is, or certainly should be, irrelevant to the job that you’re trying to do. And my... Read more