MICHAEL D. writes from Australia: It is common for royals to visit religious sites overseas. Pakistan and India are members of the Commonwealth and receive frequent visits from various members of the royal family. I recall that when the minor controversy arose over the requirement that the U.S. President wear a headscarf to visit a temple earlier [...]

  THE PLIGHT of a woman struggling to find a job anywhere in the world plucks the heartstrings of the feminist journalist. And the woman who has found a job and left her children to be raised by others in some remote Communist village causes these same strings to resound with cheerful hosannas. Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes in today’s New [...]

  IVAR THE MIDWESTERNER writes: I offer an anecdote about how, in liberal society, manipulative power masquerades as charitable concern. I teach at a state college somewhere in the United States. As in all such institutions the federal laws governing disability accommodations are in place. According to these laws, so many parking spaces must be [...]

  FROM The Daily Mail: Shoeless and wearing a beekeeper-style shawl and hat, the Queen walked across the world’s largest carpet last night as she met Islamic students in Abu Dhabi at the start of her five-day state visit to the Gulf.

  CONSVLTVS writes: As a novice in the blogosphere, I’m discovering more fascinating conversations every day. I had seen a couple of references to your site, so this morning I stopped by. What a treasure! The graphics are beautiful. More importantly, the content is first rate. You are making essentially the same case on sexual relations [...]

  DUE to illness and the holiday, I have not been able to post for two days or respond to e-mails. But I hope to do so later today or tomorrow.

  KRISTOR writes in this post about Calvinist predestination: The analogy to which Alan refers, of God setting up the action of the play “behind the scenes,” while we merely recite the lines, meanwhile laboring under the illusion that they are ours, seems to me to fail. If the players can do nothing more than [...]

   THE DISCUSSION continues here on whether atheists can coherently argue for morality or tradition. In the following response to a reader, Kristor makes an excellent point. It is a point that was made by others, but Kristor fully demonstrates its validity. In sum, there is no such thing as an atheist conservative. In fact, there is no such [...]