No. Catholics as much as anyone understand that this is a democracy. So when it comes to “imposing,” it won’t happen. Yes, Catholics, as citizens, have as much of a right to seek a moral society as they see it as do “progressives,” athetists and others do–through the democratic process. How else do you think that Catholics would “impose” their views–by the pope sending over his Swiss Guards?

 
Read more at Chicago Now
image Cotton Mather had a lot to say about the role of Religion in American Governance

For uncounted thousands of Chicago-area men, last week’s announcement that Sara Lee Corp. was moving from Downers Grove to a West Loop office building meant something other than a story about Mayor Rahm Emanuel poaching suburban businesses.

For them, …

Sen Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tried to dump a $140 million Illinois white elephant, the Thomson Correctional Center, on federal taxpayers with a bizarre but revealing political trick: He’s holding up the reauthorization of an obscure federal agency that is designed to protect religious liberty around the globe. Until he gets the federal government to buy out this near-vacant state prison, he’s put a hold on the reauthorization of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Now, I’m not particularly convinced that we need a government agency to monitor violations of religious …

Catholic Charities appears to have thrown in the towel, after fighting an Illinois decision that the organization no longer is qualified to place troubled, abandoned and orphaned children with caring traditional families. Catholic Charities, you might say, brought this upon itself by standing up for its principles and refusing to place children because it doesn’t bow to demands that place children with same sex couples.

This is a bow to the worst kind of political correctness, the kind that required a highly regarded child service agency to close its doors. A …

To Dennis,

from Eric

What does it tell you that, even though the economy is apparently stuck in the doldrums and President Barack Obama’s base is dispirited and his popularity ratings underwhelming, I still confidently predict he’ll be re-elected?…

It breaks my old man’s heart to see pictures of follow seniors being herded from one “protest” to another, sheepishly abetting an industry that makes a living by manipulating the gullible, employing the Saul Alkinsky playbook. Especially when it feeds their sense of victimization. When we elderly once were lads and lassies, we saw older Americans as defenders of hard work and critics of whiners. Perhaps that’s still true. But you can’t tell by watching Schakowsky’s cynical antics.
Read more at the Barbershop

Spectacularly vast stores of natural gas — by some estimates a staggering 837 trillion cubic feet — trapped in shale formations thousands of feet below our nation’s surface could endow America with decades of energy independence.

But the…

UPDATE: Quinn signs education reform law. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to sign today what’s called "sweeping" education reform, a step in the right direction in several regards: Longer school days and a provision allowing school to place competence…

  House Speaker Michael Madigan, center, Senate President John Cullerton, left, and other Illinois Democrats largly got their way with new legislative redistricting map. (Keri Wiginton, Chicago Tribune phptp / June 8, 2011)   It’s time to revive the idea…

  A group of young men who say they were attacked Tuesday evening stand with police at Chicago and Wabash avenues. (Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune)   Chicago media must identify the race of the aggressors and victims in "flash mob"…