The State of Religious Freedom
The recent debate over contraception in the United States demonstrates just how far politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have strayed in their understanding of freedom of religion.
On the Newsstand:public sphere
Weighing In: America Is Rich, Continued
Paul doesn’t know what I’m talking about: I’m a little bit unclear what you mean by public-wealth. Are you defining private-wealth as rich people and public-wealth as everybody else? Or are you defining private-wealth as the wealth of citizens and corporations and public-wealth as that of the government? So let me clarify. I’ll start with definitions. Private wealth, to my ... Read More
Religion in America?
America has long had a complex, almost schizophrenic attitude towards religion.
The challenges of anonymity in public, political discourse
Obama and Democrats in Congress had a new proposal last week: require groups making public statement to show their face with their messages, reported the New York Times. For a country plagued with people using the veil of anonymity to mask unnecessary baseness, this can only be a positive change and a hopeful sign of a push for changes in ... Read More
Not Funny at All
I seriously wonder what the Republican Party and its operatives hope to gain by trying to defend and normalize torture as a policy tool. There are a number of possibilities, none of which are particularly heartening. The first is that torture was so widespread and so widely accepted by the Party during its time in power that investigation would result ... Read More
We, the Curators
I’m surpised that Sam hasn’t blogged about this yet, but I’m happy enough to steal it from him: last Wednesday, the Supreme Court released a unanimous opinion in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. For anyone who doesn’t recall, Summum is a small but gutsy religious faith that contributed a monument of its “Seven Aphorisms” to the Pleasant Grove city government, ... Read More
The Peculiar Summum Case
Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the Summum, a small, quirky Utah sect, have no constitutional right to demand that the city of Pleasant Grove display their “Seven Aphorisms” in a public park where the city has long maintained a Ten Commandments monument. The question before the Court was not whether the Establishment Clause forbade the display of the Ten ... Read More
