**SPOILER FREE PORTION** As I walked into Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I resolved to throw popcorn at the screen if: There was no famous word “crawl” at the beginning. Chewbacca died. Either Jar-Jar Binks, “Force Ghost” Anakin, or an Ewok appeared. Beyond that, my expectations were low, but as John Williams’ […]

It’s easy in an image-filled world of instant news for conservative Christians to see Christmas as under attack.  And indeed it is…anything that points to a sovereign, saving God is something that humanist religion seeks to destroy.  But….this is nothing new in Christian history, nor is it indicative that God is losing control, as He […]

There are many attributes of Mr. Trump to praise and condemn.  His willingness to take on the crazy political correctness of the left today is both.  In some ways, he’s like Ross Perot of 20+ years ago; about half of what Mr. Perot said was so dead right on that it was incredible.  Unfortunately, the remaining […]

Is there a “poverty industry”?  Is the way we attempt to alleviate poverty wrong, outdated, even harmful?  These are two questions the new documentary Poverty, Inc.  attempts to address.  I had the opportunity to host a screening this video documentary at Cedarville University, sponsored by the Department of History and Government and the Institute for […]

I regret I cannot compete with my colleague Mark Smith for sheer humor.  In fact, talking about Federal regulations can be really boring.  But what they lack in pizzaz, they make up for in importance–unfortunately in a negative way. I read a very illuminating study by Clyde Crews, entitled “Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness: A Preliminary Inventory […]

The following comes from eyewitness accounts from that historic day, November 19, 1863. The occasion, as is well known, was to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the turning points of the United States Civil War. President Donald Trump, the Great Emancipator, spoke to a crowd sprinkled in the blood of the battle. Parents of […]

  To set up today’s discussion about Mr. Trump and the latest terrorist violence, we need to review the concept of profiling.  In my mind, the history of racial profiling is rightly condemned in the U.S.   Like most, my own opinions on this are colored by what I’ve seen. My first experience with racial […]

If you don’t have much to do at the moment perhaps you want to read about the proposed mens rea reform.  Perhaps that topic might sound just a bit esoteric if not downright boring, but I venture to say that it may prove to be one of the more important measures discussed among legal scholars […]

I just finished reading another interesting book, at least to me it was interesting.  And I think I can convince you that you should consider reading it too.  The book, authored by Thomas Albert Howard, is entitled God and the Atlantic: America, Europe and the Religious Divide (Oxford, 2011).  It runs to 256 pages, including […]

Once again, there is so much out there that I am somewhat at a loss to focus on a single issue.  If you haven’t been hibernating early, the newsworthy items include the refugee problem, the Paris and Mali attacks, the VA travesty regarding its treatment of veterans, the Missouri-inspired (or was it Yale) episode of […]