Michael Sean Winters

It is difficult not to feel ambivalent about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama It turns out that the ldquo we rdquo in ldquo Yes We Can rdquo was even broader than the 53 percent of Americans who voted for him last November But while I count myself as a fan and

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Salazar v Bouno yesterday The case revolves around a cross erected as a war memorial in the Mojave Desert that sits on federal land although the cross was first put up by the Veterans of Foreign Wars a non-governmental organization This is the f

Writers like to be noticed by the mainstream media so perhaps I should be flattered that the Wall Street Journal took cognizance of my existence yesterday William McGurn who contributes to the venerable newspaper rsquo s Mainstreet blog wrote about how pro-life Democrats like Congressman Bart St

In writing about abortion and health care reform I have advocated that whatever legislation is finally approved should be abortion neutral Some of the more vociferous members of the pro-life community object to this phrase ndash and to what it represents ndash on the grounds that as Catholic

Is the President right to question the advice of his military advisers You wouldn rsquo t think so to hear some of the conservative and neo-con pundits excoriate President Obama for refusing to simply accept General Stanley McChrystal rsquo s war plan for Afghanistan Yesterday National Security A

An editorial in the current issue of America worries that the Obama administration is laying the groundwork to dismiss the Goldstone Report This is the UN-sponsored analysis of the War in Gaza that suggests war crimes and crimes against humanity were perpetrated by the Israeli military forces Th

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good CACG the progressive lay-run organization that has become a key conduit for Catholic concerns to the Obama administration and a principal advocate for Obama rsquo s health care reform effort in Catholic circles hosted a panel last night at the National P

The public option failed to clear the Senate Finance Committee yesterday which may or may not result in its exclusion from the final bill The health care reform effort is still a work in progress Once out of the Finance Committee the bill will go to the floor of the Senate where it will be in c

Suddenly for the first time in President Obama rsquo s presidency foreign affairs have leap-frogged over a host of domestic issues that had dominated news coverage and national attention since he took office in January The economic meltdown and health care reform have been front and center with

Last Friday I called attention to the very fine article by Professor David Nirenberg in the current issue of The New Republic in which he reviews Pope Benedict rsquo s encyclical Caritas in Veritate And I posted a link to my initial response to Nirenberg which has itself garnered some interesting