The Bush presidency’s foreign policy has yet to take shape. Environmental and energy policy is solidifying, on the other hand, at too rapid a rate. The president reversed his campaign promise to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, and unilaterally withdrew from th

The execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, scheduled for the morning of May 16, will be the first federal execution in almost four decades. This fact alone should occasion some soul searching, because it underscores the fact that our government firmly maintains its commitment to capital punishment. We the

The increasing number of drug offenders in prisons around the country is a major reason why our incarcerated population has reached the two million mark. Passed in the 1970’s, New York State’s so-called Rockefeller laws call for a penalty of 15 years for the sale of two ounces of a contr

J. R. R. Tolkien, the Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon who became famous by inventing the Hobbits, once pointed out that the Gospel story begins and ends on a note of joy. It begins with the birth of Jesus under the stars in Bethlehem, a moment of purest joy, and it ends with his resurrection in the

The recent investigation and trial of the theologian Jacques Dupuis, S.J., alerted Catholics and others to the judicial methods of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Am., 3/12, Signs of the Times).

It is understandable that at first glance the idea of a national missile defense system is appealing. It promises perfect safety, rendering obsolete the madness of nuclear deterrence based on mutual assured destruction. If the system were to work, the threat of some enemy from across the ocean pulve