Joel Mathis

Since it now seems to be a common theme on the right that critics of police practices enabled the (horrible, awful, only-to-be-condemned) murders of two New York cops, a question: What is a permissible level of protest regarding police activities? What is a permissible level of criticism? Are any protests or criticisms permissible, or do they by definition contribute to a lawlessness that endangers police lives and thus our civic order?

Well, that was anti-climactic : The United States and NATO formally ended their war in Afghanistan on Sunday with a ceremony at their military headquarters in Kabul as the insurgency they fought for 13 years remains as ferocious and deadly as at any time since the 2001 invasion that unseated the Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks. We've been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for 13 years. We're going to keep on fighting and dying in Afghanistan ... only not quite as quickly as we have been. That's not war anymore? George Orwell, call your office.

Robert P. George, natural law theorist extraordinaire, is in my morning paper: Considered as isolated acts, someone's recreational use of narcotics, for example, may affect the public weal negligibly, if at all. But an epidemic of drug abuse, though constituted by private acts of drug-taking, damages the common good in myriad ways. This does not by itself settle the question whether drug prohibition is a prudent or effective policy. It does, however, undermine the belief that the recreational use of drugs is a matter of purely private choice. A lot of my conservative friends are fans of George, I think, and look to him when making arguments against gay marriage. (He's talking about pornography in the current column, though.) What's striking, though, is how closely this argument for drug prohibition mirrors the argument for, say, banning old-style lightbulbs in favor of more energy-efficient modern models — a project that caused no shortage of chest-beating among ma

Too often, I end up in conversations about race and politics that end up a free-for-all about which of the two major parties does more to appeal to modern racism. It's a circular argument, and I think it does more to block progress on the topic than it does to help. So, here's my own small and meager attempt to break through. I acknowledge that, for much of its history, the Democratic Party has been the party of white racism. I believe that white racism is probably the single most destructive force in American history. I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept anti-lynching bills at bay for much of the 20th century. I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept civil rights bills at bay for much of the 20th century. I acknowledge that LBJ said and did racist things, and sometimes voted for racist legislation. I acknowledge the Dixiecrats were an offshoot of the Democrats. I acknowledge that Robert Byrd was at one time a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I acknowle

Following up on my column today at PhillyMag , I'd like to address one issue that keeps coming up from critics of the NCAA sanctions against Penn State: I'll quote a Penn State friend: "None of the student athletes who are currently at Penn State were involved with the Sandusky mess, very few of the coaches who are currently there were around during that time, heck- some of the students weren't even BORN yet. So why are they the ones being punished by the NCAA's overreaching?" That is, to my mind a bit of a canard. There's not a single person on the team, at this point, who didn't choose to be there knowing the sanctions in place. Penn State is on its second coach since then; every player who was on the team at the time was allowed to transfer without penalty; every player who remains on the team or who has joined since knew what they were getting into . They are not victims. (This argument, incidentally, means that there should never be NCAA san

With Iraq suddenly embroiled in a Sunni-Shia civil war that risks leaving the country in the hands of the "worse than Al Qaeda" comic book name of ISIS — Hydra was already taken — one thing is worth remembering: We knew this was going to happen years ago. It was just a matter of time. Lots of people — conservative hawks, particularly — feel like the Iraq War was won with the " surge *" that came as a last-ditch gamble in the final two years of the Bush Administration. And in fact, the surge — combined with the so-called Anbar Awakening— did reduce the violence in Iraq quite a bit. But the surge was designed to accomplish a number of strategic goals that never got accomplished : A reduction in violence was supposed to give Iraqis the space for crucial reconciliation and institution-building achievements that never occurred. Which is why we're here today. *It's insane how quickly all of this has receded from "current events" to "history.&quo

In May 2011, I entered the hospital with constipation, found out I was on the verge of dying, went into surgery and had my guts opened up. I woke up in extreme pain and deep humiliation from the colostomy bag I was suddenly, unexpectedly (though temporarily) forced to wear. The combination of events sent me into a fairly deep — and, I think, understandable — depression. I remember the first time I laughed. It was that Thursday in the hospital; I was to leave the next day. I was resting with a TV that didn't actually offer audio for all the channels it showed — NBC was among the silent offerings. Still, I tuned into Community that night, which was ending its second season. And that night, I laughed for the first time since the surgery. It had everything to do with this moment: That's the character Troy, popping up out of a garbage can and seeing his friend Abed for the first time this episode, set during an Old West-themed paintball game. There was something about the