Some time ago, I analyzed the Catholic vote and noted in passing how some members of the Church hierarchy, in places such as St. Louis and Colorado Springs, have gone on record as insisting that Catholic politicians who support the right to choose (on the abortion issue) must be denied the sacraments.  The archbishop of Newark NJ, an admirer of the Opus Dei conservative movement, agreed, and the Bishop of Trenton came to the same conclusion regarding a liberal Catholic governor in New Jersey.  The moderate voice of Theodore Cardinal McCarrick of Washington DC was hooted down when he said that he opposed using the sacred Eucharist to make a political statement.  Several months ago, when the Pope visited New York City, conservatives and the Cardinal of New York City made a big issue that one of the communicants in the Yankee Stadium mass was former mayor Rudy Giuliani, a pro choice and pro gay rights Republican.

We have been told that the ancient Olympic Games were founded by the son of Zeus, Heracles, but the first written records we have go back to 776 BC.  Then a cook from Ellis, Coroebus, won the one event being featured-- running 210 yards.  The games were played every four years for about 1200 years until the Emperor Theodosius I abolished the games because of their pagan heritage.  In the nineteenth century a Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin began to revive the Olympics.  He thought that it was necessary to restore French vigor and stamina after the Franco-Prussian War. In 1890 he set up a sports organization and pushed for a new Olympic Games.  The international delegates finally created an International Olympic Committee with contestants chosen by their clubs and not their nations.  The events were held in the Athens and the environs.

As Senators McCain and Obama move toward their party’s respective nominations, one should lay out a questionnaire for those men—a questionnaire that can inform the debate this fall. If one waits for intelligent television ads, we will be in the next generation.

As the presidential race heats up, both parties are looking at so called swing voters, those who have in the past gone from one party to another dependent on the candidates and on the issues.  One of the largest groups is the Catholic vote.  Once solidly Democratic and working class, Catholics have voted Republican in larger numbers from Reagan to Bush II. 

Recently, I walked into a large movie theatre with my wife Barbara to see "Sex and the City," the long, long rendition of themes that animated the television series: single, older women with money and time on their hands living in the greatest city in the world and complaining about life, love, and their uncertain future. As I entered, we came a bit late, and I went across the audience's front and began to climb the stairs. As I made my way across the viewers, a group of women applauded me. They said they were delighted that I would come to this event. Indeed about three of the people out of 200 were men.

One of my favorite segments of the Jay Leno Tonight show is when they stop people in the street and ask them questions on history and historical figures.  Most recently, they asked a young woman who was George Washington?  She thought he was maybe a president, probably number 50.  Jay looked at her and said we have not had that many yet.  She was unembarrassed.  Other people were asked who were Lewis and Clark.  Huh?

As George W. Bush finishes up his second term as president, some historians and political pundits have already presumed history's judgment on that incumbent.  With the publication of Bush's former press secretary, Scott McClennan's memoir those retrospective judgments have already begun. 

Somehow, something unheard of is happening—a novice politician and senator Barack Obama is going to receive the presidential nomination from the oldest political party in the world.  Somehow, in a nation with such a long and brutal history of race relations, a black man or at least a man with a black father is making a very serious bid to govern a historically white nation. 

With her victory by ten points in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton has re emerged as a very viable candidate for the Democratic nomination.  It is obvious that the party is severely split and that both she and Obama are like two punch drunk boxers slugging it out without a knock out coming.  They each have their own base in the Democratic Party, and neither is gaining or losing adherents to the other.  Clinton is strong with the lower class, union based, non college educated wing of the party that is deeply worried about employment and the difficult economy.  They are not much interested i

In their collective wisdom, the American Founding Fathers in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 wrote into our primary document that there would be no religious test for public office.  Later, in the Bill of Rights, they banned any interference between church and state.  They had learned the lessons of Western Europe all too well and sought to avoid that political climate where Catholic and Protestant did battle for centuries over religious preferences, ending up with the doctrine that the people took the faith of their rulers.