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July 27, 2005

Seeing the trees, missing the forest

The United Nations has released a report on the ongoing upheavals in Zimbabwe, where tyrant Robert Mugabe has been punishing his political opponents under the guise of “cleaning up” the country’s cities. Continue Reading...
July 27, 2005

Labor unions and free association

The Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have broken away from the AFL-CIO, complaining that the federation has focused too much on political activism in the face of declining union membership and influence. Continue Reading...
July 27, 2005

CAFTA/Culture of Life: enemies?

John Paul II gave us all a tremendous gift by endorsing the terms Culture of Life and Culture of Death. But as with all great gifts, we must guard these terms carefully so as not to wear them out with misuse, robbing them of their relevance. Continue Reading...
July 27, 2005

Great debate

Foreign Policy hosts this exchange on environmental issues and economics. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, gets the first word and Bjørn Lomborg, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, gets the last word. Continue Reading...
July 27, 2005

Animal cruelty?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this local story: “Four people are charged for their alleged involvement in killing two bald eagles.” The details of the alleged crimes are as follows: “Prosecutors say two teenagers shot the eagles in the Muskegon State Game Area with a .22 caliber rifle in April 2004 and then chopped them up with a hatchet.” Continue Reading...
July 26, 2005

The hermeneutical spiral

Mr. Phelps takes issue with my characterization of Stanley Fish’s position as amounting “to a philosophical denial of realism.” Let me first digress a bit and place this comment within the larger context of my post. Continue Reading...
July 26, 2005

The school of fish

The recent blogpost by my colleague Jordan Ballor discusses an op-ed written by law professor Stanley Fish. I am more familiar with Stanley Fish from his days as a literary theorist, and perhaps a quick review of a younger Fish will contribute to the conversation. Continue Reading...
July 26, 2005

Textual interpretation

A week ago Stanley Fish, a law professor at Florida International University, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about the principles of constitutional interpretation, especially as represented by Justice Antonin Scalia. Continue Reading...
July 25, 2005

We must kill religion to save it

There are so many things wrong with this news item from Canada, I hardly know where to begin. But I’ll make perhaps the most obvious point of contradiction. This guy is “worried that the separation between church and state is under threat,” so he wants to initiate state control over religion, especially “given the inertia of the Catholic Church.” Continue Reading...