Among conservatives, just about everyone hopes to see Brett Kavanaugh join Neil Gorsuch on the United States Supreme Court. And we all have our little lists of activist precedents that never would be missed, should they ever come up for review before a thoroughly originalist court. Some think big: Nothing less than Roe
Every day of the week, marriage counselors work with unhappy couples whose relationships have been soured by unresolved grievances. In such cases, the counselor’s job usually involves more than simply getting one spouse to own up to his or her offenses. The aggrieved one may also have to come to terms with her
Did you hear about how Facebook censored a passage from the Declaration of Independence as “hate speech”? The Vindicator, a small daily newspaper in Liberty, Texas, had been posting passages from the Declaration on its Facebook page in the days leading up to July 4th. The project went smoothly until it reached the
A young man is thrown into a jail cell full of haggard prisoners. They are sitting on benches around a central bucket that serves as their latrine. Silently, they indicate to him the rules of the house: Everyone sits still with his mouth shut, looking toward the cell door. Every now and then,
Queens, New York, 1964: Barmaid Kitty Genovese was walking home from work on the night shift when Winston Moseley, who had gone prowling for a woman to kill, attacked her with a knife. “Oh God! I’ve been stabbed!” she cried, and a man leaned out his upper-story window and shouted, “Leave that girl
Guess who spoke these words: I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Saviour have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. … Whether we look to the first Charter of Virginia … or to the Charter of New
In 1824, a retired James Madison was corresponding with the writer Henry Lee IV, half-brother of Robert E. Lee and son of the Revolutionary War hero “Light Horse Harry” Lee. The former president is known to history as “the Father of the Constitution” and the man who helped shepherd the Bill of Rights through
When choreographer Agnes DeMille was interviewed for a documentary about her famous uncle Cecil B., she had a wonderful story to tell about the “Hays Office,” the body charged with enforcing Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code. She had been hired by her uncle to provide a bit of pagan titillation for DeMille’s production
A young woman buttonholes a musician with whom she’s recently had a one-night stand—“a stupid experiment,” as she later calls it. She has to remind the young man who she is, because he can’t even remember her name. Then she tells him: “I’m going to have a baby.” As she stares into his eyes,
I know an elderly gentleman in San Antonio who, though he has spent decades working in America as a surveyor and cartographer, has never lost his Russian accent. In 1941, his chances of living a long and happy life were very slim, but here he is, an American paterfamilias. His is a war
