Civil commitment is a sanitized term for statutes that keep sex offenders behind bars long after they have served their prison sentences. Indefinite commitment laws of this kind have been rapidly increasing around the country, and thousands of people are being held far beyond their actual terms. As

The Court RulesThe latest U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the prohibition on partial-birth abortion is a healthy correction of an earlier court’s overreach in establishing a legal right to abortion. In his opinion for the majority in Gonzales v. Carhart, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued th

Unrepentant MediaWith the announcement by North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy A. Cooper, that he was dropping all charges against three Duke University lacrosse players wrongly charged with rape, a lengthy travesty of justice has been undone. Errors in the case were so egregious, exoneratio

The promise of a new era of peace in Northern Ireland will be realized on May 8, when the 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly meet and elect a 12-member administration. It is to be led by Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest Protestant party in Northern Irel

Sin of the WorldSlavery, it is said, was America’s original sin. In recent theological writing, it can also be described as a prime example of the sin of the world, a sin that runs through time and space infecting both persons and institutions. As a new exhibit at the New-York Historical Socie

Might peace finally be possible in Northern Uganda? Over the course of two decades, the conflict between the Ugandan government and Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has caused the displacement of almost two million people, with many thousands killed or raped. An estimated 30,000 chil

A Star PhilosopherWith the announcement that the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor will be soon be honored for his investigations in human spirituality, another star has been added to the firmament of Templeton Prize winners. Taylor is an exceptional philosopher, a practicing Catholic much influen

The reaction of Robert Gates, the new secretary of defense, to the failure to provide appropriate medical care to wounded veterans offers a striking contrast to the reaction of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to reports that eight United States attorneys had been fired for partisan political reaso

As presidents, neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln spent time worrying about schools. Since the Constitution did not assign care for education to the federal government, that became the states’ concern. Until after the Civil War, however, the states pretty much left it to families an

Double StandardsZimbabwe is a failed state. Its strongman, Robert Mugagbe, has ruled since 1980; and his Big Man style of governance has turned a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa into a hungry wasteland. He drove off white settler-farmers, allegedly to redistribute the land t