Category Archives: Civil Liberty

Lessons From the Playground

6/21/2007 – 12:05 pm

Sunday was Father’s Day and a dad dropped by my front porch for a chat. He’s got a couple kids and like a good dad, he coaches some of their sports teams and shows up at games for the other sports. (It seems there are few single-sport athletes among the 8 and 10-year-old set in […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Oil | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Abolitionists

4/7/2005 – 3:02 pm

Around the time the pope died Saturday, I was sorting through various letters of charitable solicitation. A word in the epistle from Citizens United Against the Death Penalty stopped my eye: abolition. Anti-death penalty advocates are, by definition, abolitionists – they’re trying to abolish the death penalty. The word “abolitionist” in America, however, connotes pre-Civil […]

By floegel | Also posted in Catholicism, Commentary | Comments (0)

Cloth Can Be Very Important

7/1/2004 – 9:41 am

When I was in high school, Mr. Chadwick the gym teacher once sentenced me to 50 push-ups saying, “I never heard President Ford use that word.” I don’t know if Mr. Chadwick is still teaching, but if he is, he’ll have to look beyond the highest level of the executive branch for examples oratory decorum. […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

Vatican Roulette

5/1/2003 – 2:52 pm

Now that hostilities have subsided in the Iraq war, we’re all hoping for an outpouring of democratic spirit. At the same time, we fear the nation may be falling into the hands of fundamentalist demagogues. I’m not talking about Iraq; I mean the United States of America. Three weeks ago, Rick Santorum, the Republican junior […]

By floegel | Also posted in Catholicism, Commentary | Comments (0)

Keep the Faith

9/12/2002 – 3:16 pm

It’s been a terrible year. We have all found renewed purpose and patriotism, we’ve all regained a badly needed sense of perspective, but few of us have fond memories of the past 12 months. It’s not just about terrorism and international politics. The last year has seen 300 Roman Catholic priests removed from their positions […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion, September 11th | Comments (0)

Lucid Intervals

7/11/2002 – 4:36 pm

Schizophrenia is a disease characterized by visual and auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. It frequently manifests itself in late adolescence or early adulthood. People who suffer from schizophrenia live in a world where some of what they perceive is real and some is illusion, but they cannot differentiate between the two. Researchers have announced the […]

By floegel | Also posted in Catholicism, Commentary, Iraq Invasion, September 11th | Comments (0)

American Taliban

6/6/2002 – 4:24 pm

Can John Walker Lindh get a fair trial? Should we care if he doesn’t? Known in the media as the “American Taliban,” Mr. Lindh left his Islamic studies in Pakistan last year to join the Taliban in Afghanistan. He stayed with them after the events of September 11th and was captured by Northern Alliance troops. […]

By floegel | Also posted in Commentary, September 11th | Comments (0)