“The Deep State”–what is it? Is it real? Is it fiction? If it is real, is it dangerous? To what extent is it harmful? This is a fascinating subject, perhaps partly because we all love a conspiracy theory, true or not. I will suggest that this one has a basis in reality. But I also […]
Archives
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The Deep State: How Deep Is It?
10 Mar 2017
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Democracy: Is It Over-hyped? Or Overdone?
09 Mar 2017
I noticed a poll taken the other day in connection with Fox News (unfortunately I did not catch the purveyor of that poll, perhaps Fox itself). Whether the methodology was right or not, I don’t know but it found that 50% of people polled opposed the elimination of the Obamacare insurance mandate, while 48% supported […]
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A New Beginning or Obamacare Lite?
08 Mar 2017
The House of Representatives has now publicly rolled out its “Repeal and Replace” bill for the elimination of Obamacare and a new health care law. President Trump seems to like it, while Democrats, predictably, hate it, though I cannot see how they have had time to read it, and some Republicans, such as Rand Paul, […]
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President Trump’s new immigration Executive Order (EO) was issued. You can read it at the New York Times of March 6, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/trump-executive-order-immigration-text.html The order is a variation on his earlier January 27 order which was stopped from taking effect by a Federal court and the Federal Ninth Circuit. How is this one different? First, […]
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What is Going On in the Surveillance World?
07 Mar 2017
What a morass we have now with regard to the allegations, refutations, and counter-allegations concerning the possibility of intelligence community “wiretapping” of Donald Trump or his associates before the election and after it. At this point, we have an allegation by President Trump that Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower. Now before people go off on […]
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The Work of Two Intellectual Giants
26 Feb 2017
I come to praise the dead, or perhaps, to recognize their importance at the least. Actually a little of both. Last week the intellectual world lost two more giants. Perhaps I am getting old, but this seems to be happening with greater frequency. Michael Novak and Kenneth Arrow both died. Novak (1933-2017) and Arrow (1921-2017) […]
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The Examined Life–With Some Help
17 Feb 2017
Why do people still read Plato? Aristotle? The Bible? Augustine? Thomas Aquinas? John Locke? Immanuel Kant (well, maybe not so much)? What unifies them? It isn’t religion. Plato and Aristotle were most certainly not Christians. Augustine and Aquinas would have disagreed on the extent of man’s capacity to know and to will the good. The […]
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Immigration: A Partial Response
14 Feb 2017
My colleague Bert Wheeler wrote a recent piece on Bereans addressing more than one issue related to President Trump. The one that caught my attention was immigration policy. Bert expressed his concern (rightly) about Trump’s policies on that front. I assume from his use of the word “concerns” meant that he might or did have […]
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Some News to Ponder: In No Particular Order
14 Feb 2017
The news keeps coming in and things keep boiling in and around Washington, DC, that bastion of all things good and decent. Let’s just list a few: General Flynn resigns, ostensibly for some security missteps. Another part of this story however is the revealed extreme politicization of the Intelligence agencies and the Justice Department. For […]
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Executive Order in the Court
04 Feb 2017
A Federal judge in Washington State today issued an injunction preventing the enforcement of President Trump’s Executive Order (EO)halting immigration and entry programs from seven nations for 90 and 120 days respectively. I have already written about my own response to the EO as a policy matter and also said something about a Christian response […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach