Archives for August 2023

Trump is out on bail. What does that mean?

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Now that Donald Trump is the first ex-president to be let out of prison on bail, many Americans may be wondering what it all means. Megan Stevenson, a law professor at the University of Virginia, explains in her recent piece […]

Benjamin Rush’s “Travels Through Life”

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The American Philosophical Society has digitized eight handwritten volumes of Declaration of Independence signer Dr. Benjamin’s Rush‘s “Travels Through Life.” J.L. Bell has the story at Boston 1775. A taste: Here’s another source on the Revolution recently digitized: eight handwritten volumes of Dr. […]

The Author’s Corner with Scott Douglas Gerber

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Scott Douglas Gerber is Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University and Associated Scholar at Brown University’s Political Theory Project. This interview is based on his new book, Law and Religion in Colonial America: The Dissenting Colonies (Cambridge University Press, […]

Evangelical roundup for August 28, 2023

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What is happening in Evangelical land? Do evangelicals need a new ecclesiology? Why evangelicals support the Afghan Adjustment Act. Julie Roys and Karen Swallow Prior on the “evangelical imagination.” Prayer cards on trees: Tony Evans has a podcast. Shane Claiborne […]

Barbenheimer

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More Barbenheimer, please. As the summer approached, people who look forward to movies noticed something: Barbie and Oppenheimer were opening on the same day. It seemed incongruous. This led to jokes. Then to memes. Then it became an event—Barbenheimer. People […]

Sunday night odds and ends

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A few things online that caught my attention this week: Simone Weil: “decreationist“ An New York Times editor on what she learned about slavery in her 1960s history class. It’s not what you might expect. Female war correspondentes in the […]

Cornel West vs. Bernie Sanders

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Democratic socialists disagree over Joe Biden in 2024: I am a West fan, but I lean toward Sanders here. There are certain times in one’s life–hopefully only a few times–when doctrinal purity must be set aside for the greater good […]

“‘Keep off the Grass’ is not a sexist remark”

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I recently saw some tweets from folks who suggested that men are sexist and probably misogynistic if they criticize the ideas of a woman. Yes–sometimes this happens. But sometimes the person being criticized just has bad ideas. And sometimes these […]

Post-Roe abortion debate is coming to Pennsylvania

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Prior to the Dobbs decision no one really cared about state Supreme Court races. They do now. Here is Holly Otterbein at Politico: Less than a month after their double-digit victory on abortion rights in Ohio, Democrats are preparing to […]

A blessing of unicorns: a weekly roundup

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This roundup concept was dubbed a unicorn at first, because it seemed to be a mythical beast, to be seen in the wild just once and never again. But here’s roundup #4, so perhaps it’s here to stay, at least […]

Can one oppose abortion and still be a democratic socialist?

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Check out Matt McManus‘s review of Sohrab Ahmari’s Tryanny , Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–and What to Do About It at Jacobin. As I noted in an earlier post, socialists really like this book despite Ahmari’s social conservatism. […]

Could Vivek Ramaswamy pass his own citizenship test?

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I think the upstart GOP presidential candidate would get at least one question wrong. Here is College of the Holy Cross historian Ed O’Donnell: Here is the full context: See our take on Ramaswamy’s recent GOP debate performance here. George […]