In Defense of Bloomberg
With no clergy officiating, New York City’s 9/11 anniversary ceremony is going to leave many people feeling deeply dissatisfied. And those people will have a point. When mourning the dead, it’s natural...
View ArticleWas Al-Jazeera Reporter Treated Ugly?
Really, I have no longstanding grudge against Texas, the soil that yielded Buddy Holly, Larry McMurtry and (I assume) Texas toast, and which received Pee Wee Herman so hospitably during his big...
View ArticleCity of Veronicas
Of all the Church’s dubious pious traditions, my favorite is the story of the Veronica Veil. According to the Acts of Pilate, while Jesus was being goaded and driven to Calvary, under the weight of His...
View Article9/11 and Bleacher Bum’s Envy
Several weeks after 9/11, my friend and I went skydiving for the first and only time in our lives. As it happened, the airstrip was about 30 miles southeast of Phoenix, on a brown, scrubby patch of...
View ArticleAl Qaeda to Iran: Darn Tootin’ We Done It!
Remember that scene in A Few Good Men, where Colonel Jessup, his pride having conquerd his instinct for self-preservation, screams, “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I ORDERED A CODE RED ON [WHATEVER THAT KID'S NAME...
View ArticleCan A Mass Murder Mean A Church-World Truce?
Only something unthinkably bad could make Slate and National Catholic Register cover the same story in the same tone, featuring the very same image. It may be time to start thinking, ’cause that thing...
View ArticleFun with Muslims
Mr. D. was choking. Clutching his throat and gagging, he mananged to spit out a single word in his native Urdu: Pani. I don’t speak Urdu — not even “Up yours.” But that one word was enough to trigger a...
View Article9/11 and Conversion
I’ve tried to tell this story before but I’ve gotten it wrong. So I’ll try again. It’s that important. In August of 2001, more or less on a whim, I visited San Francisco for the first time. My mother...
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