Neil McCarthy

Mitt Romney is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president and after tomorrow's round of GOP primaries, that result will be all but official. He has managed to be the last man standing in a field notorious for its extremism on the one hand and transparent lunacy on the other....

Time to go radical.

Reasonable is not working.

If I hear one more politician or ersatz journalist rail about the need to find bi-partisan common ground in the sweet spot of a centrism where immediate deficit reduction and job growth live in some sort of economic harmony, I am going...

Rick Santorum is the GOP's current flavor of the month.

In the national polls, he leads Mitt Romney by a slight margin and Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul by rather large ones. His rise is attributed, depending on who is doing the analyzing, to either a no-nonsense and unapologetic social...

It's the Tuesday after Super Bowl Sunday and everyone here in New York is gaga over the Giants.

There was, of course, no guarantee that the Giants would actually win, and at game time they were a slight underdog. Nevertheless, between New England fans and New...

For two months, protesters have occupied a square block in lower Manhattan known as Zuccotti Park.

The park, named for the citizen who contributed to its creation more or less as a condition for developing other profitable property in the same neighborhood, is itself a misnomer. Most of it...

My Dad died last week.

He loved martinis, women named Joan, a breaking news story, and books. In 1975, he had to give up the martinis, because, as it turned out, he loved them too much. Then, he loved God.

Which, I have discovered, can be just as intoxicating.

He...

The market is tanking. The unemployment rate is still north of 9% and much higher when you count those who have stopped looking. It is almost a given that we are on the verge of a second recession. Corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, waiting for demand to re-emerge....

Some very smart people do some very stupid things.

Exhibit A this week is Anthony Weiner, the talented and pugnacious New York Congressman whose triple-X twitter messages (and pictures) to on-line "fans" have now been plastered all over the tabloids. An emotional apology has not kept the vultures from...

It is overcast and cold on April 22 in New York.

After a brutal winter, the lawn sports large blotches of patted down straw, a sort of sub-Arctic permafrost in a region that is supposed to have none. The heavy coats still hang in the pantry ready to be...

I am teaching a college class at the end of March. The class will be at a small Catholic liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania.

What will I say to them?

I have already spoken to the president of the college, a friend from law school. I told him I...

"And so this is Christmas. And what have we done?"

John Lennon's question hangs in the air this frustrating year.

For liberals, the answer is "Not nearly enough." For the conservatives, it is "Way too much." For the putative guy or gal on the street, it is "Would the...

Maybe it was just a matter of time.

For the past week, Sharron Angle has been garnering national headlines with her sexist challenge that Harry Reid "man up." The Nevada GOP Senate nominee has told enthralled crowds that her opponent Harry Reid's problem is an accountability one. She blamed...

The big news this week is the multiple victories wrought by so-called Tea Party candidates in Republican primaries in Delaware and New York.

In the former the GOP stole general election defeat from the jaws of almost certain victory by casting aside Rep. Mike Castle in favor of Christine O'Donnell...

St. Peter's is the oldest Catholic Church in New York City. It is located on Barclays Street in lower Manhattan, a block from Ground Zero.

The church was founded in 1840 and is iconic for New York Catholics as the place where Mother (now St.) Elizabeth Seton converted to Catholicism....

We have avoided the fate now for more than eighty years.

Back then, when my parents were infants and my grandmother a wannabe flapper (she loved to party a Friday and Saturday night away), before Keynes was a soothsayer and the government went counter cyclical, before unions and the Democrats...

Nancy Reagan is apparently being channeled throughout the nation's capital, especially among the Republicans.

As you may recall, during her time in the White House, the former first lady made one of her signature initiatives the "Just Say No" campaign to combat the nation's drug problem. Mrs. Reagan claimed that...

My daughter, a freshman in college, called earlier in the semester to report that she had gotten a high mark on an English essay. The professor had even read part of it to the class. At home, this was greeted with cheers, coming as it had from a young adult...

I'm bored.

I know this is my problem and not yours.

Maybe you are very excited.

Barack is arguing with Fox over whether Fox is really a wing of the Republican Party or a straight news organization. The Republicans are arguing with Norway over who deserves to get the Nobel...

It is hot and humid in New York City. After an unseasonably cool summer, the natural order has reasserted itself.

So, too, it appears in the nation as a whole.

The Republicans have now pretty much embraced their alternative to Obama's politics of change. To "Yes, We Can" they shout...

It's only a game for the elite on this side of "the pond," as they say.

Over there, where golf began, it's played by everyone from the assembly line worker to the hedge fund manager. If you live in St. Andrews, you can buy an (affordable) annual pass that allows...