Joel Mathis

Stephen Silver seems to think so : "In the end, I don’t see the Inquirer‘s Banner scoop as a reason to see salvation in newspapers, but rather, I view the very rarity of such an event as an indication of the medium’s doom." Only if "the medium" is composed entirely of scoops. Of course print can't compete on that basis—and, of course, it keeps trying to compete on that basis. Look at today's front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer at right: All but two stories are recaps of events that happened yesterday—events that anybody with a decent RSS or Twitter feed already knew about . Print is going to be diminished. It will be a very long time before it goes away, I think. To the extent that it can thrive in a downsized state, it will do so because it offers depth, analysis, and thoughtfulness. It can't be about the business of scoops—and the longer we keep measuring its impact by scoops, as Silver does, the harder and faster the fall will be.

A tremendous takedown of Kansas' new anti-Sharia law in (wait for it) National Review : "It is particularly disappointing to see Sam Brownback — a committed Catholic with deep ties to the evangelical-Protestant community and a strong record on religious-liberty matters — signing an anti-Sharia bill. Addressing the 2006 Religious Liberty Dinner in Washington, D.C., Brownback said that people denied religious liberty “deserve our efforts” to vindicate their rights. He cited the Epistle to the Hebrews in calling on those who possess liberty to remember “those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” Brownback’s point is as true today as ever: American Christians must stand for the religious liberty of Muslims if they are to argue persuasively for their own. " Emphasis added. This isn't nice to say, but I'll say it: There are a fair number of folks who regularly sound the alarm about "religious liberty," but really only mean "religiou

Maybe it's illegal for Philadelphia's City Hall to require workers to live in town , but it's kind of a bad idea if they do so—and it's bad for them . I've got some thoughts about public unions I'll be noodling over the next few weeks—I'm for 'em, but they're not without flaws, and those flaws must be addressed— but civic workers who make their money off the taxes of Philadelphia but don't want to live among Philadelphians probably shouldn't expect much sympathy with the politicians come after their pensions.

A perfect image. When 'Mad Men' premiered a few years back, one of the things that its fans celebrated was the show's old-fashioned sense of adulthood: Don Draper smoked, drank, dressed well, and only occasionally seemed to notice that his children existed. "Remember when men were men !" we barked, and if nobody actually said those words, well, that's what a lot of people seemed to mean. We've all expected the show to depict the rise of youth culture as the '60s wore on, and that theme was indeed explicit in the just-finished Season Five. We witness Don being out of his element at a Rolling Stones concert, befuddled by a Beatles record, chafing at his wife's out-of-office ambitions. It's in his marriage to Meagan, though, that we see something that doesn't get talked about a lot: Yes, the older generation hated the Peter Pan frivolousness of the Baby Boomers. But that older generation really helped create and nurture that frivolousnes

Dreher celebrates a Texas father who beat his child's molester to death : "[Insert pro forma regret that the alleged molester was not captured and handed over to the proper authorities.] It’s at times like this that I’m glad we have Texas, where he needed killin’ is an affirmative defense against homicide charges." I follow Dreher because I think he's mostly thoughtful, even if I don't agree with him in his vociferous opposition to gay marriage. But sometimes his instincts elude my understanding. Don't get me wrong: I'm not shedding any tears over a dead sex offender. Reacting gleefully , though, disturbs me a little bit: It suggests that civilization is little more than a game, to be abandoned when it feels good. I don't think Dreher actually thinks that, but his joy at vigilantism creates some doubts. It's just kind of ugly.

He writes about Mayor Bloomberg's proposed soda rules: The basic case in favor of Bloomberg’s proposal is in some ways even more compelling: Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News’s parent, Bloomberg LP, and therefore my boss. In all likelihood, therefore, he is right about soft drinks and sugar, just as he is right about almost everything. (And even that “almost” is only there as a sop to my dignity.)

That's what I said last week in a column at The Philly Post —a column that, coincidentally, published the same day I started a weeklong out-of-state vacation. In the meantime, the column was picked up at Reason.com's blog —they shared my interest in FOP president John McNesby's letter to the Police Advisory Commission, and I received a few letters. I'll excerpt three of them: One correspondent took issue with my contention that police officers are wrong to want to live outside the city they serve: Most of my career was spent in shift rotations of six days of 4X12, followed by six days of 8X4 and then a big one day off and the next evening you had to report for six days of 12amX8am. Included in this mess was last minute court notices and the average sleep was about two hours a day on that midnight to eight shift. Most officers were in a constant state of sleep deprivation, sometimes reporting for court at 10am and spending all day there until 5PM and were expected bac

In this week's column , Ben and I tackle Kansas' new law banning sharia law. My take: Sam Brownback and Kansas Republicans are hypocrites, through and through. In 2008, then-U.S. Sen. Brownback introduced a resolution in the Senate that designated the first weekend of May as "Ten Commandments Weekend." A few years before that, Brownback was out front urging that the Pledge of Allegiance retain its mention of "one nation under God," saying: "There is nothing more American than the Pledge of Allegiance and an acknowledgement of God is at the heart of our founding principles and is our nation's motto." The examples don't end there. Along with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Brownback has been one of America's most aggressive and unapologetic politicians in advocating for religion's role in America's public and governmental life. Islam is the exception to this rule. Brownback and Kansas Republicans are vigorous defenders

Today's New York Times : It is a maxim in Congress these days: If high-profile legislation affecting millions of Americans is about to expire, deal with it at the last possible second, preferably with rancor.  But a major exception is in the offing with the Bush-era tax cuts , which are set to lapse on Jan 1. Both parties in the House and the Senate are eager, perhaps even giddy, at the prospect of voting for their respective versions of an extension of the cuts this summer, well before the due date. Now, the piece goes on to say that the Democratic package would drop the cuts for high earners and keep them for the middle class. But with a divided Congress and this president in charge, does anybody expect the Democratic preference will become law? Anybody? (Crickets.) Right. We've already seen this movie before . So maybe it's time to end the debate, make the tax rates permanent rather than dickering with them every two years, and start planning for a budget withi

Michael Barone says that liberals only listen to liberal arguments, but conservatives have a more varied diet of ideas because they're forced to be exposed to liberal media culture. The result is that liberals only know how to preach to the choir. Liberals can protect themselves better against assaults from outside their cocoon. They can stay out of megachurches and make sure their remote controls never click on Fox News. They can stay off the AM radio dial so they will never hear Rush Limbaugh.  The problem is that this leaves them unprepared to make the best case for their side in public debate. They are too often not aware of holes in arguments that sound plausible when bandied between confreres entirely disposed to agree. I'm not sure that liberals are uniquely vulnerable to the malady of ideological isolation. Conor Friedersdorf notes the topics that dominate conservative media these days: In addition to taxes and spending, the rank and file currently spends a l

In this week's Scripps column , I argue that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have some bearing on the presidential campaign—and Ben argues that the issues are more important. Four years ago , we staked out almost precisely the opposite territory: Ben then: Yet Obama still insists that what he heard from Wright this week was unlike anything he heard over the past two decades. That simply defies belief. Obama chose Wright. His choice was unwise. His choice should tell voters something important about Obama that his position papers on the Iraq war and health care cannot. Me then: But the job of the next president will not be to pick a national clergyman. Instead, the president will have to decide what to do about Iraq, health care and the economy, among other issues. Barack Obama has an argument to make that he'll end the war, extend care to more Americans and save a few of their homes from foreclosure. Given the mood of Americans these days, that could well be a winning a

That's the the topic of my column with Ben Boychuk for Scripps Howard this week. I answer in the kind-of-affirmative: Let's give thanks for progress: A black man and a Mormon will compete for the presidency this November. More people from more backgrounds than ever can fully participate in our politics -- thanks largely to the efforts of American liberals.  Romney doesn't get a free pass for his faith, however.  Don't misunderstand: If you vote for a candidate based on the Nicene Creed, say, then you're being silly and maybe a little un-American. We're electing a president, not a pope.  But a candidate's policies are fair game, as is the worldview that shapes those policies. Faith often shapes a candidate's worldview. Romney's opposition to abortion reportedly springs from the teachings of his church: That's a topic that can't and shouldn't be avoided in a presidential campaign.  Other issues in which Romney's faith m

Ah, early 1980s country music.....

A lot of the debate over Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital has been focused on how many jobs he did or didn't create, did or didn't destroy. That's understandable, given that we're in a time of sustained high unemployment, but I'm not sure that tallying lost jobs really gets to the heart of what might be objectionable about Romney's business practices. The problem is debt. In the case of the shuttered Kansas City steel mill at the center of the debate, the chain of events is pretty clear: • Bain Capital bought the steel mill in October 1993, putting up just $8 million of its own money to gain majority control—even though the total purchase price was $75 million.  • The next year, Bain had the company issue $125 million in bonds—debt used to pay Bain itself a dividend of $36 million in 1994. Understand again: Bain made a quick profit on its investment, but it wasn't by helping the steel mill earn greater profits—but by having the mill take on a

Jonathan Chait has a pretty excellent takedown of Kevin Williamson's " the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights " piece at National Review. Two points I'd like to add: • Chait doesn't frame it in quite these terms, but Williamson's piece is heavily dependent on him ignoring the history of his own magazine and its founder, William F. Buckley, who opposed civil rights legislation on frankly white supremacist grounds : The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes— the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. …  National Review believes that t

At National Review today, Dennis Prager says that the left is dangerous because it craves power instead of money—and power in the service of Big Government leads to the Holocaust, Mao, and Stalin. Sure, some big corporations may not always  "play by the rules," but they don't have the power to send you to a concentration camp. Key graph: There is yet another reason to fear big government far more than big corporations. ExxonMobil has no police force, no IRS, no ability to arrest you, no ability to shut you up, and certainly no ability to kill you. ExxonMobil can’t knock on your door in the middle of the night and legally take you away. Apple Computer cannot take your money away without your consent, and it runs no prisons. The government does all of these things. Prager's diagnosis, of course, misses the concern that most liberals have about Big Business—which is that money and power are not separate things: Money purchases power , which can give (oh hell, let&#

Ben and I debate gay marriage in this week's column for Scripps . Rather than give you my take in this space, I want to offer Ben's—because I find it somewhat troubling: At a certain point -- long before the president concluded that the political benefits of supporting gay marriage this election cycle outweighed the disadvantages -- millions of Americans concluded that it's important affirm that marriage is exclusively a union between one man and one woman.  Those people are called bigots, and worse.  Be wary of those national polls showing a majority now supporting a redefinition of marriage. People who don't like being called bigots might just lie to pollsters. Pre-election polls in North Carolina predicted the vote on that state's constitutional amendment would be closer than the 20-point blowout it turned out to be.  For the partisans of gay marriage, North Carolina's vote was an expression of bigotry and hatred, plain and simple. No other explanatio

I missed the debut of the Philadelphia Inquirer's "augmented reality" app over the weekend—you point your mobile device at the newspaper, and the device starts playing a video linked to that particular story in the newspaper—but the Daily News' Janathan Takiff says it's getting an "undeservedly bad rap." But it sure doesn't sound like it. Listen to Takiff's explanation : The naysayers clearly didn't read the instructions (spelled out in the Inky yesterday but not in the app) about how the Aurasma AR technology works in practice. This ain't rocket science. Once you've installed the free Inquirer AR app on your camera-equipped iPhone or iPad, you look for a photo or advertisement in the paper that has a little gothic "I" symbol in the corner. You then point your Apple device's camera lens at the same image. A few seconds later a companion video starts playing on the Apple screen and speakers. Here comes the HARD p

I was at a neighborhood festival over the weekend when a Democratic activist approached and asked if he could count on my vote for President Obama this November. "Well," I said, "I haven't been too thrilled with him on the civil liberties front." "Nobody's perfect," the man shot back. "The other guys would be worse." In today's Boston Globe , John McCain steps forward with a reminder that my activist friend was probably right: “How is it that Assad is still in power?” Wiesel said. “How is it that the Holocaust’s number one denier, [Iran’s Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, is still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.” Under John McCain, then, the United States would definitely be going abroad in search of monsters to destroy . Don't get me wrong: As The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf pointed out las

Reason weighs in with round two of the debate: Farm Bureau notes that DOL claims its “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” will not change the “parental exemption” in the current law, but Farm Bureau says DOL’s new language would not include an exemption for farms that are incorporated or formed as family partnerships.  “Many farm families in Pennsylvania and across the United States have incorporated or formed a family partnership for estate planning, insurance and other reasons.  They are still family farms with moms and dads making the decisions over what work duties their children have been trained to do and are capable of doing in a safe manner.  Farmers understand that there are potential dangers on the farm and they abide by existing farm labor laws,” added [PFB President Carl T.] Shaffer. That doesn't sound right. This is what the proposed rule in the Federal Register says: The Department interprets ``operated by'' the parent or person standing in the place of