Moldova’s Partition may be imminent. While the U.S. Embassy in Moscow denied that American spooks and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) intend to divide that tiny country, the denial itself was enough to convince most Russian and Moldovan/Rumanian patriots that the plan is probably already under way. The State Department was...

Pierre Trudeau’s death at the age of 80 unleashed an outpouring of public emotion and grief that has not been seen in Canada since the death of the country’s founder, Sir John A. MacDonald. Dignitaries from all over the world, including close friends Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro (who was greeted by a large crowd...

RU-486 is, by now, probably neatly stacked on pharmacy shelves across the fruited plain, right next to the Raid and Ritalin, ready for every woman who needs a quick “final solution,” with or without parental consent—or that of us knuckle-dragging sperm donors. It’s legal now, and, of course, that means it’s ethical, too. Not like...

Rockford doesn’t often make the national news, but when it does, you can be certain it’s not because of any good that’s happening here. Our latest brush with fame came on the last day of September, when a 32-year-old Catholic priest from a parish just south of Rockford rammed his car into the local abortuary....

The Serbs, after a decade of being treated as the designated demons of Europe, were, in the first week of October, transformed by Western media and politicians into a nation of Walesas and Havels. The ethnic cleansing and mass rape stories were gone, replaced by those of freedom, democracy, and gallantry. As Matthew Parris remarked...

On September 23, we lost one of the great jurisprudential fighters for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Berger, late Charles Warren Senior Fellow at Harvard University, former professor of law at the University of California’s Boalt Hall, one-time second concertmaster for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, died at the age of 99. Berger’s career as...

Al Gore, should he win the Oval Office in November, will owe his victory to the triumph of what G.K. Chesterton called “masculinism”—actually the pseudo-masculinism of the “suffragettes” who have transformed elections into popularity contests. Without the use of polls and across the ocean, Chesterton foresaw this phenomenon 91 years ago in his essay “The...

Our free federal republic, once the envy of the world, is sinking ever further into the decadence of empire. We can scarcely call “republican” a regime in which oligarchical judges contravene law, common sense, and majority’ will, and yet are obeyed by 270 million “citizens” with barely a murmur; in which the media of education...

Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t the only politician at the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Manhattan last June, but she got the most notice. The police had trouble controlling the crowd as she walked behind the Radical Faeries, which featured a man on roller skates who was wearing a silver cape, a tiara, a...

George W. Bush’s bid for the presidency signals the death knell of the modern conservative movement. The GOP faithful are embracing the Texas governor as the true heir to the mantle of Ronald Reagan, believing that Bush will lead the Republicans out of the political wilderness and back into power. They maintain that Bush’s “compassionate...

Education is a hot topic this election year, and both Al Gore and George W. Bush are trying to claim the mantle of the “Education President.” To listen to the two campaigns, Texas either has the worst public schools in the nation, or the best; the media should be able to determine which campaign’s claims...

President Clinton failed to restart the Middle East peace process at the United Nations’ “millennial” summit in New York in September. In meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Clinton made one final attempt to provide his presidency with a badly needed foreign policy success by brokering a deal. His...

Joseph Lieberman’s selection as the first Orthodox Jew to run for vice president may have the unexpected effect of making it respectable again to maintain that the United States is a Christian country. Picking Lieberman as his running mate was the single most interesting thing Al Gore has done in his campaign for the White...

President Clinton slid to the edge of his chair and clasped his hands together. “Polls can be tricky,” he said, an eager glint in his eye. Finally, the other Bill—the Rev. Bill Hybels—had stopped asking those “tough” questions about Clinton’s “current spiritual condition” and addressed the real reason for the interview: leadership skills. This, of...

Vladimir Gusinsky, the Russian media magnate, has escaped the long arm of the law. The Russian General Prosecutor’s Office dropped charges of illegal privatization of state enterprises against the Kremlin’s chief nemesis, rescinding the freeze on his property and lifting a ban on foreign travel. Gusinsky promptly headed for his home in Spain. His NTV...

Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential nominee, may be the decisive factor in the November election. In closely contested states—Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—Nader is likely to receive three to five percent of the vote, mostiy from Al Gore’s electoral base. That is not much, but it may be enough to hand the...

The Reform Party’s national convention convened in Long Beach, California, in early August. I arrived, filled with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation: I fully expected Patrick J. Buchanan to overcome the last obstacle to launching what promises to be an historic campaign; on the other hand, I knew the anti-Buchananistas weren’t going to make...

The Rockford school case continues, and, as the most recent ruling by Magistrate P. Michael Mahoney makes clear, there is no end in sight. On August 11, the imperial ruler of Rockford denied the school board’s motion for “unitary status,” a legal term denoting the end of court control. In itself, that’s no surprise: Other...

Joseph Lieberman, Al Gores pick for vice president, is supposed to bring the Democratic ticket back to the center. Gore secured his presidential nomination by pandering to leftist interest groups, from radical feminists and “gays” to supporters of abortion and Sharptonite hate purveyors. But to have any chance of winning in November, he needed a...

Vladimir Putin’s war on the Russian oligarchs may have begun with the arrest of media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky in June, or so many Western observers hoped. Although Gusinsky was later released (after pledging to remain in Russia during the course of an embezzlement investigation against him), few in or out of Russia doubt that the...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bid for the U.S. Senate has captured the attention of the national media. Many pundits are calling the campaign between the First Lady and Long Island Republican Congressman Rick Lazio “the most closely watched U.S. Senate race in history.” For once, the national press corps may be onto something—but for the wrong...

The Patriot, Mel Gibson’s epic about the American Revolution, opened (by an amazing coincidence) in theaters on Independence Day weekend. And cynics complain that Americans don’t take national holidays seriously anymore! Many viewers may regard the film as one more wallow in fantasy and stale popcorn, but among the nation’s literati, it has actually incited...

The Presidential election campaign was well under way when the two major party candidates began crisscrossing the United States, stumping for votes at the annual meetings of Mexican-American organizations. Here in Rockford (as in other cities with significant Hispanic populations), the local Gannett paper devoted an entire Sunday commentary section to interviews with the candidates,...

Vuk Draskovic, the leader of Serbia’s major opposition party, was slightly wounded on June 15 when gunmen opened fire through a window of his holiday home in the Montenegrin coastal town of Budva. After being treated at a nearby hospital, Draskovic immediately accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of masterminding “an assassination attempt.” Two days later,...

The Supreme Court’s closely watched October 1999 term came to an end on June 28, and its themes finally became clear: inconsistency, incoherence, and arbitrariness. On that last day, the Court released important decisions on abortion, aid to religious schools, and homosexual rights, and refused to intervene in the Elian Gonzalez case. The Supreme Court’s...

“False Christs shall arise,” warned our Lord, “insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Christians of any other era would apply this admonition to the Christ of CBS’s Jesus, the April miniseries that captured a general endorsement from evangelicals and Catholics both here and abroad. On Italian television, the film...

The Supreme Court attracts the most attention when it does something new, or does something so old that it seems new. For example, the Court’s decision last May declaring that Congress had no authority to enact the Violence Against Women Act under the guise of regulating interstate commerce received plenty of media attention. And since...

The Chechen Boyeviki (“warriors”) are widening the war with Russia, dashing any hopes the Kremlin had of containing the conflict. On May 10, a group of 30 to 40 boyeviki practically wiped out an Internal Troops (MVD) convoy (killing 22 of 26 men) in the neighboring Ingush republic, embarrassing Moscow and sparking a war of...

The Confederate Flag has become a heated topic this election year. As George W. Bush and John McCain battled in South Carolina for the Republican presidential nomination, the New York Young Republican Club invited Richard Lowry, the editor of National Review, to discuss the Republican Party’s prospects for November. In the question-and-answer session that followed,...

Bill Clinton, many conservatives believe, is a smooth political operator. Shifty, unprincipled, and generally odious he may be, they say, but Clinton is a “consummate politician” and a master salesman. Mr. Clinton’s performance in Moscow during the first weekend in June did not confirm this view. He did not sell the National Missile Defense (NMD)...

Contemporary Journalism suffers from many problems; to help us understand them, a quick imaginative exercise might be useful. Not too long ago, the South Carolina legislature had to decide on the emotive issue of whether to remove the Confederate battle flag from atop the state Capitol. The issues involved were complex, and too familiar to...

Zimbabwe is in turmoil, and by early- May, the existence of elaborate plans for a British-led emergency evacuation of thousands of British and other European Union nationals was confirmed by the Foreign Office in London. Zimbabwe’s Marxist president, Robert Mugabe, reiterated his pledge to redistribute white-owned farms to landless blacks, using “emergency legislation” empowering the...

The Clinton scandals continue to gurgle below the surface of American politics and law, occasionally throwing up a polluted geyser. Kenneth Starr’s successor as independent counsel, Robert Ray, is still considering indicting the President when he leaves office; disbarment proceedings are under way against Mr. Clinton in his home state of Arkansas; and Linda Tripp,...

Vladimir Putin’s presidential election victory on March 26 was hailed by businessmen both East and West as a new beginning for economic reform in Russia. One German executive praised what he called Putin’s “open, friendly attitude” to investors, while others longed for Putin to become a Russian Pinochet, a strongman who would use an “iron...

President Putin is inheriting a mess. After almost a decade of Boris Yeltsin, Russia is reduced to a neocolonial wreck with collapsing birthrates, moribund industry, and a fractured body politic. A narrow stratum of robber barons, who do not give a hoot for the country or its people, are busy squandering Russia’s still ample resources...

The U.S. Supreme Court, many had hoped, would use this term to clarify constitutional law and move jurisprudence somewhat closer to the original understanding of the Constitution. The Court has yet to issue important opinions regarding school vouchers, partial-birth abortion, the Violence Against Women Act, and prayer at high school football games, but the latest...

The Episcopal Church used to offer salvation—on the inevitable silver filigreed platter from Tiffany’s, served up with a spot of sherry and proffered with immaculate taste and manners. A rougher-hewn brand of salvation—for the church itself, or failing that, a viable form of traditional Anglicanism—is now on offer in the United States. No silver platters,...

Although the Greenville, South Carolina, haven of fundamentalism is still holding classes, the New World Order’s steamroller has flattened the life out of Bob Jones University. I’m referring, of course, to the recent abandonment of BJU’s ban on interracial dating and marriage on campus. The school’s president, Dr. Bob Jones, III, granted the dispensation on...

The Chechen War, as the Russian leadership discovered in early March, is far from over. On the night of March 2, a convoy of nine trucks, carrying about 100 Internal Ministry special forces troops from Grozny to the strategically important crossroads village of Pervomayskava, was ambushed by an estimated 40 Chechen boyevikiy (“fighters” or “warriors”)....

“Discrimination” is one of today’s buzzwords, and laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation are fueling some of the sharpest skirmishes within America’s culture wars. A New Jersey Supreme Court ruling against the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexual Scout leaders has gained the most publicity of late. But a public feud between one...

Ronald Taylor, I’d like you to meet Buford Furrow; Buford, this is Ronald. You guys have so much in common. For one thing, you both hit the headlines. Buford Furrow became a celebrity of sorts in August 1999 when he shot up a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. Buford’s a real Aryan hero, going...

“Children killing children.” The very phrase is chilling. But what can the law do about a six-year-old who shoots and kills his first-grade classmate? According to our Anglo-American legal heritage of common law, not much. Children under the age of seven are presumed not to be able to know the difference between right and wrong,...

Al Gore and George W. Bush have a lot in common: They’re both spoiled rich boys and sons of famous politicians; both are party animals. I thought it could not get any worse, but I was wrong. The first rule of American politics is that it can always get worse and usually does. Both Gore...

The Russian Army began its big push to take the Chechen capital, Grozny, on the day after Christmas, directing artillery and air power at concentrations of Chechen fighters near the center of “Dzhokhar.” (The rebels have renamed the city in honor of the first president of independent “Ichkeriya,” Dzhokhar Dudayev.) Thousands of civilians remain, cowering...

The U.S. Supreme Court, late in January, dodged a bullet by refusing to decide whether Maryland’s decision to close its public schools on Good Friday violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. State and local Good Friday closing laws have been with us for many generations, but recently they have been challenged in the federal courts....

Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy whose mother died in an illegal attempt to enter the United States, has become the smiley-face of the New World Order. Not that Elian or his father or Fidel Castro (or, to go still lower, the Clinton administration) is to blame—far from it. This mischief is being made by...

Boris Yeltsin appeared on the Russian state-run television networks on December 31, 1999, with an unexpected—by ordinary Russians, at least—announcement: “It is time for new faces,” said the man who is most responsible for creating the “new Russia.” “I am resigning,” croaked the dipsomaniac political boss, renowned for his mastery of elite political intrigues and...

Donald Trump’s campaign for the Reform Party presidential nomination may never get off the ground, and anyone who has ever visited Trump’s stomping grounds in Atlantic City should not be surprised. The Trump Taj Mahal casino sits alongside the Atlantic City boardwalk, a gaudy reminder of the excesses of its owner. The “Taj,” which ranked...

Robert E. Lee’s picture has been restored to a mural display along Richmond’s Canal Walk. As I reported last month (“Letter From Virginia: The Battle of Richmond,” Correspondence), City Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin had declared that General Lee’s picture is “offensive to blacks” and had threatened to call a boycott of the Canal Walk unless the...

Y2K has come and gone, and the modern world (for good or ill) is still standing. In the United States, business and government spent heavily on Y2K fixes; in foreign countries, much less. Yet the results were similar: Y2K was a false alarm. Why were so many computer-savvy people mistaken? The reason computers did not...