Justin Katz
Such letters aren’t usually (or now, to be honest with you) worthy of comment, but for some reason, this evening, I can’t resist. To quote John Leistritz of Pawtucket: President Bush’s so-called new strategy for the war in Iraq is actually more of the same — only it commits more U.S. troops to a region…
Supporters of minimum wage increases (used here as an example issue) don’t appear willing to discuss whether their policies would work, would achieve an increase in living standard for working families. Instead, they offer insults about heartlessness and declarations about what the working poor deserve. Their presumption, I guess, is that anybody so cold as…
Ramesh Ponnuru has been offering up clear-headed argumentation on the social conservative side of the stem-cell debate. Readers can follow the latest spat backwards from here, but I think this is a key paragraph: President Clinton’s bioethics commission concluded that “the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if…
The Providence Journal steals some bases in its stem-cell–related editorial today: But amniotic stem cells, though plentiful, may not be able to develop into the full range of cell types that embryonic stem cells provide. Because they are only a few days old, embryonic cells are extremely flexible in terms of what they might become.…
I don’t know whether it was something that he’d recently read or a memory sparked by something that I said, but during a telephone conversation with my Jersey Boy father last night, he said (paraphrasing), “Rhode Island is essentially a playground for the rich, and the rich don’t need a middle class.” The point being,…
Although I can’t recall any particular instances of his using it, except when helping me with my homework, I associate the phrase “think it through” with my father. It has always seemed, I suppose, to summarize a particular approach to the world — almost a philosophy — that he emphasizes. Not to leap too quickly…
An unsigned editorial on thephoenix.com (from which I’ve borrowed that picture) takes the oh-so-tolerant position that disagreement with its opposition to allowing Massachusetts’ citizens to vote on same-sex marriage is simply ugly bigotry: Bigot is, to be sure, a nasty name. But what would you call someone who denied women or blacks the right to…
Via (“beautifully put”) Andrew Stuttaford, from the Pub Philosopher (emphasis added): Having a history degree, she also knows that the world could not have been made in 4004 BC and she has studied enough science to know that much of what is written in the Bible cannot possibly be true. … We are drawn to…
You’ve likely come across the notion that a society that rejects a governing morality will require laws to fill the void. Well, have you noticed that those whose societal aspirations run against the grain of traditional morality are often quick to treat all objections — even mere expressions of concern — as if they are…
So Rhode Island is hemoraging its young and ambitious citizens. That’s not really news, but its mention gives us an excuse to consider our state in broad terms. Any state-sized entity will have a broad middle for which life simply goes on — with more or less difficulty — whatever the trends along the all-important…
