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“Bourbon is good medicine!” Or so claimed the lobbyist looking to leave a loophole in the 1919 Prohibition Act that banned all alcohol except that which was used for religious sacraments and those medicinal distillates prescribed by doctors. While the slogan was exaggerated by politicians (and exploited by the usual assortment of snake-oil salesmen), it turns out there was some validity to the claim.  Bourbon is indeed good medicine, and that’s the truth — or, if it isn’t, it ought to be. In addition to being a beloved social accelerant, an effective community builder, and a warming nightcap, bourbon possesses properties unique among distillates. While many other types of alcohol are known for having high levels of antioxidants, American bourbon, with its high corn mash and aging in n...

ROME – Rome already has become grumpily accustomed to the sight of wild boars roaming through the streets, often feeding on uncollected garbage and generally making a mockery of any pretense at city management. Indeed, viral images of one such family of boars strolling downtown in late September hammered the final nail into the political coffin of incumbent Mayor Virginia Raggi, who lost her reelection bid overwhelmingly last week. This week it was the turn of a porcupine to take an unscheduled Roman constitutional, wandering around the city for hours and even poking its nose into several shops along the way before it was finally nabbed by animal control officers near the Vatican. The thing is, that wasn’t even the weirdest development in or around the Vatican this week. I can think of at ...

Not only does the Supreme Court regularly overturn prior precedents, it has established rules for doing so. Here are eight reasons to overturn Roe v. Wade. With the widespread public furor about whether the Supreme Court will overturn its more-than-landmark 1973 abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, it is necessary to recognize that the Supreme Court’s abortion decisions, in their content and in their judicial methods, are without precedent in American jurisprudential, political, social, cultural, and moral history. For last 48 years—that is, 20 percent of our history—no other issue, public or private, has divided and polarized the country and the Court as its decision in Roe v. Wade. In its petition to the Supreme Court filed in July, the state of Mississippi has boldly attacked the two funda...

(Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.) The bad news for proud Italian Americans is that Columbus Day looks about as sunk as the Santa Maria. It’s been 129 years since the first major national celebration of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, and the holiday for the most famous Genoese in history has never been in lower standing in American culture. Yes, there’s a parade scheduled in New York today—Joe Piscopo was even on hand for the ceremonial cutting of the first meatball. But in the city and the dwindling number of places where holiday is still publicly celebrated, there will be protests and condemnations. Native American groups seem to have mostly won their decades-long battle to pry Columbus from the national pantheon. But there is some good news in all this for prou...

Hey everybody, Welcome to The Tuesday Pillar Post. The News Here’s what’s new from The Pillar: A Catholic school in the Archdiocese of New York aims to uniquely serve students with moderate and severe learning disabilities. While the trend in education is to focus on the inclusion of children with disabilities in typical classrooms — and while many Catholic schools have no special education programs at all — the John Cardinal O’Connor School is focusing on individualized education plans and multi-sensory teaching methods. Is it working? Read what the archdiocese, school officials, and parents told The Pillar. — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in Rome last week for meetings on climate change with G20 lawmakers. While there, amid a tense situation involving her own diocesan bishop, and her ad...

Faithful followers of this website know that many, many of the news reports we critique are based on tips from readers. These emails are important to me because, frankly, there is no way for us to follow as many media sources as our readers do, combined. This is especially true now that our team, due to finances, is smaller than it was for the previous decade or so. From time to time, readers will react to something as simple as a horrible headline or a single rage-inducing phrase in a news report. There’s no way that I can respond to all of these, but here is a recent case that I think deserves a mention. Read the top of this CNN piece (“The Justice Department’s uphill battle against Texas’ abortion ban“) and try to spot the issue that ticked off a reader: In its lawsuit&...