×

Columns

The president and the pope

Call him the "antisocial" media president. When a president attacks the Pope, he telegraphs: "There's nothing I won't do or say." That is a profoundly troubling message. There are no lines I won't cross, no rules I won't break, President Donald Trump is telling the whole wide world. ...

Trump vs. the Pope

As far as showdowns between popes and secular leaders go, President Trump versus Pope LEO hardly rates. LEO hasn't forced Trump to come see him and stand for three days in the snow, the way Pope Gregory VII did to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1077. Nor has he issued an interdict, a ...

The pope, three cardinals and the Iran war

"War is Hell," said Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1879. Pope Leo and three cardinals of the Catholic Church who appeared last Sunday on "60 Minutes," agree. The problem for these theologians is that for them it appears war is only Hell when it is engaged in by the United States and ...

Little kids, big government

Child care got expensive — more than $13,000 per child, per year. So many people want government to pay for it. My state just agreed. New York will fund free child care. Yay! But wait ... what government does isn't free. Taxpayers pay. And taxpayers pay more because "government rules ...

What the end of Viktor Orban means for the New Right

Viktor Orban, the proudly "illiberal" prime minister of Hungary, beloved by various New Right nationalists and MAGA American intellectuals, was crushed at the polls this (past) weekend. Over the last decade or so, Hungary became for the New Right what Sweden or Cuba were to the Old Left. For ...

Why Democrats should shun Hasan Piker

Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer, is having a bit of a moment. Democrats are quarreling over whether he should be kept at arm's length. What kind of opinionator is Piker? He said in 2019 that the United States "deserved 9/11." When someone challenged him online about his anti-Israel rants, ...