The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new case, Gonzales v. Google, seeking to hold Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, legally responsible for injuries to victims of terrorism promoted on their sites. This case has implications far beyond terrorism, potentially making these companies responsible whenever their web search algorithms steer viewers to dangerous content. …
The big internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google are no longer allowed to censor conservative viewpoints in Texas. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a Texas law outlawing Big Tech censorship, requiring the social media platforms to disclose and justify their editorial standards. While this is generally good news for…
The Napa Catholic Conference last month included an inspiring series of talks on subjects as wide-ranging as theology, art, science and politics. One of the topics most discussed was the recent Dobbs case by which the Supreme Court finally overturned the so-called Constitutional right to abortion under the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.…
The Supreme Court has overruled Roe v. Wade, holding that each state should decide its own abortion law, but there is a new battle looming over whether that extends to chemical abortions. This is no small issue when more than half of all abortions in the United States are carried out using a drug called…
The Supreme Court’s recent decisions on abortion and the Second Amendment right to bear arms are finally placing limits on the kind of judicial activism that has made our Constitution and Constitutional law almost unrecognizable. While these two cases may seem very different, the Court is telling us in both cases that the Constitution means…
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 31, in the case of NetChoice v. Paxton, that Twitter, Facebook and Google can censor conservative political views, at least for now, while challenges against a Texas anti-censorship law make their way through the Court system. The Court’s decision would seem to condone blatant viewpoint discrimination, including the…
A Federal District Court in the case of Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Joe Biden has held that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) illegally forced passengers to wear face masks on airplanes and other public transportation since early last year. To be clear, this was not a decision that masks do not work or…
Government agencies, run by thousands of unelected, unaccountable and mostly unreachable bureaucrats, increasingly affect nearly every aspect of American life. We are forced to comply with burdensome IRS requirements. Businesses struggle under onerous EPA rules. Most recently, we’ve seen heavy-handed vaccine mandates imposed by OSHA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.) And…
President Biden has vowed to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court in order to achieve more diversity among the Justices. He wants the Court to represent all Americans, and of course he wants a Justice who will be open to his political agenda. While there is certainly nothing wrong with diversity, the Supreme Court…
The Supreme Court has rebuffed, for now, the government’s OSHA vaccine mandate that would have affected 80 million American workers. While that was good news, the Court unfortunately failed to address some of the biggest problems with that mandate, and a second case decided the same day, Biden v. Missouri, approved a different mandate that…
On Friday, January 7th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on President Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate, which applies to 80 million U.S. workers. President Biden wants the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to force all companies with more than 100 workers to make a choice. The companies can either fire all unvaccinated…
I never thought I would say this, but maybe Roe v. Wade got just one thing right. After all, even the biggest lies generally contain just a grain of truth to make the lie seem more plausible. Roe was decided in 1973 based on an implied “right to privacy” under the U.S. Constitution that cannot…
Many of us as Christians have moral and religious objections to the Covid vaccine based on the fact that aborted baby tissue was used in its development and testing. There may be other religious objections as well based on beliefs about God’s design for the human body and bodily autonomy. When employers, public schools or…
We keep reading about new Covid vaccine mandates imposed by governments, employers, educational institutions and entertainment venues. They make no exception for people who have already had the disease, despite numerous studies showing that natural immunity from having the disease is better protection than the vaccine. What about natural immunity? Isn’t natural immunity something we…
The Supreme Court has taken a big step in rebuffing legal challenges to the Texas Heartbeat law that outlaws most abortions in Texas after about six weeks from conception. We need the Court to follow through later this year by overturning the so-called constitutional “right” to abortion when it hears the case of Dobbs vs.…
President Trump has filed lawsuits against Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accusing them of working with the government to censor free speech. His lawsuits raise two points: The big internet platforms are violating the First Amendment by colluding with government officials to censor unapproved ideas. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is unconstitutional in granting…
Father Paul Mariani, S.J., professor at Santa Clara University, gave a fascinating talk at the Napa Institute Summer Conference on the subject of China and the Vatican. Father Mariani’s presentation centered on a 2018 “provisional accord” between China and the Vatican that was apparently designed to work toward normalizing relations and resolving issues over the…
The Napa Catholic Conference last month included a presentation on very practical ways to defend the Church’s moral teachings in a world that too often just doesn’t hear the truth. Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., President of the Magis Center for Faith and Reason, and President of the Napa Institute, started with some disturbing facts: Fewer…
The Eleventh Annual Napa Institute Catholic Conference included a practical but very profound talk on the subject of fasting by Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., O.P., of The Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America. The Bible is full of references to fasting, especially at critical times during a person’s life, especially necessary along…
The Eleventh Annual Napa Catholic Conference was held July 22-24, 2021, with an impressive lineup of Catholic speakers on the theme “All Things Made New.” The conference included Mass and a wide range of talks, including religious and spiritual topics, lots of commentary on current Church and world events, apologetics and some very practical subjects…
