Editorials

When the annual March for Life was held in Washington, D.C., last month to protest the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, (Jan. 22, 1973), the marchers were adamant and upbeat. Americans are still sharply divided over abortion; but the debate is less raucous than it once was, partly beca

Rampant mental illness in jails and prisons combines two forms of suffering for offenders: the illness itself and having to endure it behind bars. The sheer magnitude of the problem is shocking. Jails and prisons hold three times as many mentally ill people as mental health hospitals. This is partly

The publication of the first annual report on the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was a first step in the long and demanding journey necessary to restore confidence in the bishops’ moral authority, after the searing revelations of the way in which

The founding fathers took international law very seriously. In the U.S. Constitution, treaties, along with federal laws, are declared to be “the supreme Law of the Land.” In addition, the Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that foreigners could bring suit in U.S. district courts for torts co

George Santayana (1863-1952) lived in Boston for 40 years and taught philosophy at Harvard for 23 of those years. He had, however, been born in Spain, never gave up his Spanish citizenship and spent the last four decades of his life in Oxford and Rome. No surprise, therefore, that his comments on th

Presidential election campaigns in the United States have become trials for the long-distance runner, increasingly extended and increasingly expensive. For some months now, the nine declared candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination have been appearing at various panels around the

Several legislative measures under consideration in Congress could either harm or help undocumented immigrants in the United States. One that would harm them in this post-9/11 period of anti-immigrant sentiment is the CLEAR Act, introduced by Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia. It

The Senate is in a row over the leak of a memo written by a staffer for the Democratic minority members of the Committee on Intelligence. It urges the Democrats, led by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, to break with the Republican majority and conduct its own inquiry into events lead

As U.S. casualties mount and stories of military funerals compete for front-page attention with positive Pentagon assessments, the future of U.S. military action in Iraq threatens to become an issue in the presidential politics of the 2004 election year. Democratic candidates have already suggested