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The death of common sense is inevitable in a society in which “deeply rooted social stereotype” is a term of abuse, and it takes many forms. Here’s one: Playground squabbles, the total control of children’s play to ensure total safety. When you walk by New York playgrounds today it’s hard to miss how stupid … More ...

In the first favorable sign recently in the continuing scandal involving homosexual predators among the Roman Catholic clergy, eight American bishops have called on their brethren to convene a plenary council to discuss the “root causes” of the current crisis.

This would be the first American plenary council in more than 100 years. According to … More ...

Canada continues to push the frontiers of PC forward: An Ontario judge has given a man a lighter sentence than even his own lawyer asked for in recognition of the man’s aboriginal heritage. The Supreme Court of Canada, abandoning even the pretence of doing justice as traditionally conceived, has said that sentences for aboriginal offenders … More ...

Boys who are abused are much more likely to become violent criminals if they have one version of a gene associated with chemical balances in the brain than another: Bad behaviour linked to gene. In principle, the finding is not particularly startling. Common sense has always told us that background and temperament account for … More ...

Rights grow ever more equal: a man pulled a knife on his wife, their pit bull attacked him, and he stabbed the dog to death. Result: 90 days for the attack on the woman, 2 years for the attack on the dog. The sentences run concurrently, so the assault on his wife was a … More ...

For those interested, First Things has published a useful rebuttal of the factual basis of Daniel Goldhagen’s notorious essay in The New Republic, “What Would Jesus Have Done?” [The Goldhagen essay is not available on-line.] The author’s final point seems well founded: “The New Republic owed its readers, and more importantly the Catholic … More ...

In the course of a somewhat rambling discussion of the ways of bureaucrats Gary Aldrich tosses off an interesting observation: “TIPS is what the federal government does when it knows what to do, but cannot do it out of fear of being accused of racial profiling.” I think there’s something to that. The Feds can’t … More ...

Those eager for one more essay, comment or whatever on what liberalism is may want to know that my note Liberalism: Ideal and Reality, from the Winter 2002 Telos, is now online. It was published with a reply from Paul Gottfried, to which I’ll reply in some forum in due course.

What else can you expect under the current regime? A UK government White Paper on criminal justice proposes to limit jury trial, keep dangerous and sexual offenders in prison indefinitely if judged a risk to the public, abolish the “double jeopardy” rule for serious cases, and allow “hearsay” evidence in court.

As the author points … More ...

To those who have experienced other denominations, it seems unlikely that democratization of the Roman Catholic Church would make it more satisfactory to ordinary parishioners. Case in point from the ever-so-sensitive-and-aware Episcopal Church, New York Diocese: Two Who Queried Pastor’s Past Are Forced Off Parish Board. The guy had done jail time on child … More ...