Canadians are so nice I positively detest having to cite them as the most recent example of the bizarre phenomena by which the Olympic Games celebrate their opening and closing Ceremony and ritual are the kind of things to which a Catholic imagination is naturally drawn I suppose Was anyone else

Here at America magazine various colleagues have already called attention to the rightwing attacks on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development the anti-poverty effort of the U S Catholic Bishops Conference and most recently the attacks on Mr John Carr who has served as the USCCB pointman on

From all reports it sounds like both parties are planning their best impersonation of Madonna the singer not the Blessed Virgin at the health care summit at Blair House on Thursday Her 1990 song Vogue was all about striking the right pose My sympathies are of course more with the President

The health care plan President Obama released yesterday is not the plan I would have written Nor is it clear to me that releasing a plan in advance of the bipartisan health care summit on Thursday was the way to go Better to have held the summit and then announced a plan that included significant

At the CPAC convention last week Congressman Ron Paul won the straw poll in a presidential preference contest Paul was a candidate for president last time round but he failed tow in a single primary although the popularity of his views with some young people created a veneer of enthusiasm that ea

My colleague and friend Father Jim Martin S J posted below on the subject of EWTN s Cafeteria Catholicism regarding torture He included a clip of a recent interview in which Raymond Arroyo discusses the use of torture with Marc Thiessen who just wrote a book of agitprop defending the use of

It has been quite a long time since we have been able to write about good things happening in Pakistan Yet the recent arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar the Afghan Taliban rsquo s 2 and two Taliban governors of Afghan provinces is more than a stroke of good luck It shows an increasing degr

One of my favorite on-air moments came during last Sunday rsquo s edition of Meet the Press when Rachel Maddow confronted Congressman Aaron Schock R-IL The congressman who was voted cutest member of Congress not the smartest member of Congress was busy attacking the Stimulus Bill passed a

I have been meaning to call attention to a special investigative report done by CNN on the on-going scandal in Vieques a small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico You can watch the report here It is heartbreaking Vieques was a proving ground for munitions run by the U S Navy for many ye

Former Vice President Richard Dick Cheney rsquo s interview on ABC over the weekend was fascinating Cheney has become one of the most vocal critics of the Obama administration unlike former President George W Bush who understands that such attacks are a task usually assigned to those who have n