Checks and BalancesTypically, Americans think of governmental checks and balances as the interplay among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. But when all three branches lean toward the same political party and have the ideological cohesion to override minority views (as has been the ca

Among the great spirituals created by the African-American churches in the South is one that compares death to a train. The same train, it says, that called for my father and my mother and my brother is whistling at the station for me. This train makes only one-way trips, for it is traveling to the

Justice in the Rift ValleyThose with long memories, as well as admirers of Isak Dinesen’s writings, may recall the Honorable Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron Delamere, who was one of the original white settlers of British East Africa in the 1900’s. Lord Delamere, and later his family,

Witness of MercyNickel Mines, a small farming town in Lancaster County, Pa., has been a place of both human grief and divine grace this month. The horrific killings of five young Amish girls, who were captured, bound and then shot by a deranged man who burst into the town’s one-room schoolhous

As we approach the November midterm Congressional elections, most of official Washington has gone into recess. In the final weeks of campaigning, both the White House and the Congress have turned their attention from policy to politics. Those who take an idealistic view of the democratic process mig

Nigerias Potent CocktailNigeria is the 10th largest oil producer in the world, and its delta region provides much of America’s oil needs. But because the nation is plagued by violence, corruption and environmental degradation, the resulting wealth benefits few of its poorest inhabitants. The I

November’s midterm elections are approaching, but over five million Americans, in nearly all 50 states, will be denied the right to cast ballots. Why? Because they are current or prior felony offenders who cannot exercise a right guaranteed them in the Constitution. Two million of them have co

Those who take an apocalyptic view of the campaign against international terrorism like to cite the historian Samuel Huntington’s prediction of a "clash of civilizations." Commentators sympathetic to this view applauded Pope Benedict XVI’s address at the University of Regensbur

As Others See UsInequities in the U.S. criminal justice system were among the subjects of concern that drew criticism from the United Nations Human Rights Committee last July in Geneva. Maximum security prisons came under fire for virtually 24-hour confinement of prisoners to their cells. Also of co

In the minds of many Muslims, because the Catholic Church is the oldest and was for centuries the leading institution in the West, the church and the pope as its head are identified as representatives of the West. Though Pope Benedict XVI’s address in Regensburg, Germany, on Sept. 12 was devot