A country up for grabs
Myanmar’s military toppled the civilian government. Now the country’s diverse population is banding together in protest
Holding the line
Chaplains are pursuing their mission in a military suddenly hostile to Christianity and ready to suppress religious freedom
Rochester strong
The DiMartino family is one among many beginning a life forever altered by the Boston bombing
Big rock candy mountain
Recession refugees and a host of dropouts and seekers find solace in an off-grid squatter community known as ‘the last free place in America’
Information, please
Privacy advocates of different political stripes want to halt or declassify the government’s leaked surveillance programs
Voices
Mindy Belz
The Syrian muddle
As of this writing here’s a snapshot of U.S. policy on Syria: The president in recent days has signed onto a communiqué pledging with G8 leaders to support a negotiated settlement while at ...
Joel Belz
Hard to swallow
The evidence that Obamacare is a disastrous shipwreck—already on the rocks—is everywhere. There are the headlines about actual behavior. For the Obamacare formula to work, for example, 4 or...
The Editors
Mailbag
‘Stacking library shelves’ June 1 Why is the ACLU not suing the National Endowment for the Humanities for violation of “separation of church and state” given that the books it is dona...
Marvin Olasky
Staring at death
Secularists sometimes say that it’s time to give up on a faith-based belief in Christ left over from the ancient Mediterranean world. They don’t acknowledge, though, that in the early A.D. years t...
Andrée Seu Peterson
Stretch marks
Many people of marriageable age think it insane to marry before living with the person first. “You need to get to know them,” they say. What about getting to know them in marriage? They say it’s t...
Sophia Lee
God bless the U.S.A.!
The morning I became a U.S. citizen, I stood between a well-groomed Vietnamese woman and a rotund Mexican man. In front of me, an Armenian with a ponytail raised his point-and-shoot camera. Behind...
Janie B. Cheaney
Prison bars or pillars?
In The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Rod Dreher memorializes his sister, who grew up in a small Louisiana town, married her high-school sweetheart, hunted deer, praised God, taught sixth grade, coo...
Notebook
Houses of God
Sint-Jozefkerk
An empty Sint-Jozefkerk (St. Jozef church) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on May 31 after more than 100 rejected asylum seekers left the building. After demonstrating against the Dutch asylum poli...
Money
Labor disabled
The outlook for jobs seems to be brightening, albeit slowly. By mid-June, the Labor Department was reporting that the four-week moving average of jobless claims had fallen below 350,000, a level w...
Technology
No need to know?
The June leak of documents that confirmed the U.S. government is conducting broad surveillance of citizens’ phone records and international communications ruffled plenty of American feathers. In a...
Science
Testosterone trouble
“I have low testosterone—there, I said it,” says a middle-aged male actor, moments before driving off in a blue convertible with a lovely female companion. “When I started losing energy and becomi...
Religion
Down South
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) held its annual meeting in Houston in June, and although the assembly did not witness any of the spectacular controversies that have marked previous SBC meeti...
Lifestyle
Millions missing
A smiling Indian woman stands in a field and explains, without emotion, that she strangled eight of her own newborn daughters because they were girls: “Women have the power to give life and the po...
Culture
Movies & TV
Monsters University
For 15 years, Pixar Animation Studios could do little wrong. Every film it released was a critical and box office success that appealed almost as much to adults as to children. Then came several w...
Movies & TV
Unfinished Song
“The movies … are today the nearest thing ever imagined to the unaffected and unconscious process of life, as expressed in art,” wrote American film critic Otis Ferguson in his 1940s article, “Lif...
Movies & TV
White House Down
It would be impossible to detail in this space all the ways Roland Emmerich’s latest action/adventure, White House Down, violates the bounds of good (or even moderate) taste. Though rated PG-...
Movies & TV
Box Office Top 10
Cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com S ...
Q&A
Asking questions
Ron Maxwell is the son of a World War II veteran and a French mother. He grew up reading avidly in both French and English, and graduated from New York University’s Film Institute in 1970. His fir...
Music
Lost in translation
Unlike song lyrics, which are obviously meant to be sung, poetry is written to stand on its own. Not that it can’t be sung, of course. Given the right singer and composer, anything can be sung. Bu...
Music
Horror with a heart
It seems as if the American public can’t get enough of zombies these days. Whether they’re on TV like The Walking Dead, which was the season’s highest-rated cable show; in books, where novels...
Books
Filling in holes
How much do you know of the history of 20th-century American immigration? Despite or because of our current immigration debate, many of us have factual knowledge as solid as Swiss cheese. Peru nat...
Notable CDs
Notable CDs
It’s hard to say whether this synthpop confection picks up where 2011’s Celestial Electric left off or vice versa because there’s a time-traveler quality to Lee’s infusion of AM-friendly hooks int...
Notable Books
Notable Books
Dilley’s well-written memoir tells the story of a young woman who grew up in church and Sunday school, spent time in Africa with her medical missionary parents, and went to a Christian college. Th...
Dispatches
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
July 10 One hundred years ago today, Death Valley, Calif., became the hottest place on earth. On July 10, 1913, Greenland Ranch recorded a temperature of 134°F, the highest ever relia...
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Lawn enforcement Some people grow playoff beards. All Frank Miller of suburban Chicago wanted was a playoff lawn. Miller vowed to leave his Park Ridge, Ill., lawn unshorn until the Chicago ...
Quotables
Quotables
‘Triple-spaced, big letters. Got a lot of seniors in this body.’ U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., saying his amendment to the Gang of Eight immigration bill isn’t as long as it seems. The len...
News
Dispatches
JUNE 20: Thousands of people march in the center of Recife, state of Pernambuco, Brazil, during a protest in what is now called the “Tropical Spring” against corrupt...
News
Back to the states
On the dramatic last day of its term, the Supreme Court declined to declare outright gay marriage a protected right, but its decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act may have paved the w...
Human Race
Human Race
Hired The Family Research Council announced it hired Josh Duggar as the executive director of its lobbying entity, FRC Action, beginning in late June. Duggar, who worked for former Sen. Ric...