James Heffernan

"A direct attack on religious liberty."

Echoing the words of many Catholic authorities and their socially conservative allies, that's what Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, has said about a new rule announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

By Aug. 1 of this year, says...

Now that everyone is chuckling -- albeit some a little nervously -- about Stephen Colbert's campaign for the presidency of the United States, I want to raise a truly serious question.

Could he become the next pope?

Matt Moore, Executive Director of the South Carolina Republican Party, obviously thinks...

Now that Christmas is behind us and the next major election is less than ten months off, 'tis the season to be fighting. And President Obama himself has just scored the first punch of the new year.

Oh yes indeed. Our great conciliator, our champion of consensus and bipartisan cooperation...

"Tax increases destroy jobs."

So said House Speaker John Boehner in a speech on Thursday to the Economic Club of Washington, denouncing President Obama's jobs bill because it would raise taxes on the "job-creating" rich.

Mr. Boehner did not tell us how many jobs have been created in the past...

Five days after President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden, we are still weighing the impact of this news. Most Americans rejoiced at his death, and to many--if not all--of those who lost friends or family members in the wreckage and flames of 9/11, the news that a...

Twelve days ago, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the Libyan government's repeated attacks on civilians and civilian facilities in Misrata and warned that these attacks could be treated as criminal.

"Under international law," said Commissioner Navi Pillay, "the deliberate targeting of medical facilities is a...

Catholic conservatives in America are now wringing their hands.

From their reaction to the Pope's latest comment on condoms, you might have thought that he had just questioned the existence of God. But all he did was clarify the church's opposition to the use of...

OK, folks, I goofed.

Not for the first time in my short and happy life as a HuffPost blogger, I missed a big chunk of the story that I wrote about in my previous post.

When I claimed that the 33 Chilean miners were saved...

In a world pockmarked by hunger and poverty, darkened by misery, riven by earthquake, scorched by fire, ravaged by flood, and shattered by bombs, we have just witnessed a modern miracle. Thirty-three miners who had been buried alive for 68 days over 2,000 feet beneath the Atacama desert of northern...

Just after reading the latest story about a famous golfer whose behind-the-wheel driving has turned out to be not quite up to par, I had a dream in which William Blake appeared to me and dictated the following revision of his famous poem:

Tiger, Tiger, taking flight
In thy...

Now that the public option for health insurance has been all but jettisoned from the health care reform ship that is tacking and veering its way through Congress, it's high time to consider another option--not for consumers but for health care providers treating Medicare patients, whose health insurance is already...

What is it with guys named Joe Wilson?

The last time anyone publicly called the president of the United States a liar, it was a guy named Joe Wilson. But that Joe Wilson--a career diplomat with extensive experience in both Iraq and Africa--didn't literally say the president lied.

In...

I have a simple message for all those who denounce the reform of our health care system as a government "takeover" and warn that government "death panels" will decide whether or not older Americans (like this one, who just turned 70) will live or die.

With a combination of gross...

Mr. President, your plan to reform our health care system is in trouble.

Reading the latest New York Times/CBS poll (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/us/politics/30poll.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print) on health care is about as easy as reading tea leaves through a cracked-lens telescope aimed at Mars. While 75 percent of the 1,050 adults...

The short answer is what I'm doing right now, which is Googling my way to other sources on a story the Times itself resolutely refuses to tell.

The latest and most reliable dispatch on this crisis comes from Richard Siklos of Fortune, who reports 1) that former Hollywood mogul...

Blogger's note: To preclude any misunderstanding, the following is a complete fabrication meant to portray a certain kind of mindset. Any resemblance to the mindset of any actual AIG bonus recipient is purely coincidental.

OK, so I bagged a chunk of change: $4,605,321.54, to be exact. But I'm here...

In my last blog on this site, I wrote that Israel should drop its demand that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist and start trading in real, crunchy carrots, such as blockade-free roads for rocket-free skies. "The name of the game," I argued, "is changing what the Palestinians DO. So...

"Do you think I'm against them [Hamas] firing rockets now? No. I was against it before. Not anymore."
--Olfat Jaawanah, mother of nine, who moved her children out of their house in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza on Monday morning after Israeli shrapnel flew through a window and...

While just about everyone is agonizing over the 700 billion dollars we're going to spend on bailing out financial institutions, our pro-life president is hard at work. He's making sure that just in case we survive this crisis, our babies will be carefully protected from mad scientists grumbling about...

Now that John McCain has re-energized the Republican right by choosing a running mate who is ardently "pro-life," the topic of abortion will once again play a big role -- possibly a decisive one -- in a presidential campaign. See for instance David Kirkpatrick, "Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic...