Wall Street has finally caught up with Main Street -- and Frontage Road. On Wednesday, the Dow officially slipped into a bear market, closing at 20 percent below its peak.

While President Bush continues to toss around such euphemisms as "rough patch" and "tough times," most Americans have clearly...

On Friday, Americans will mark the 232nd anniversary of a statement that ranks as one of the grandest, most sublime declarations in American history, one that encapsulated the finest of American ideals and one that made the United States a source of hope to the world.

On Tuesday, Dr. James Dobson, the Pied Piper of a deliberately distorted Christianity who art in Colorado Springs, used his radio program to attack Sen. Barack Obama for "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own...

News of the death of George Carlin has left my eyes wet and reddened. Only last Wednesday, I awoke to the happy news on the front page of the Style section in the Washington Post that George had been named by the Kennedy Center as the winner of the...

There they go again. The old men in Rome are continuing their historic (and hysteric) misogyny. A week ago the Vatican reaffirmed yet again its ban on the ordination of women.

This latest proclamation from the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on May 30 can be...

How fitting--even how poetic--it is that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination during the week in which we mark the fortieth anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. This harmonic convergence has deep significance.

These events may come to be seen...

Finally realizing that he has been burned by cynically playing with fire-and-brimstone, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has in quick-though-belated succession thrown to the wolves two of the wolves in sheep's clothing of the Irreligious Wrong whose endorsements he had eagerly sought, the Irreverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

Clinton, Miss. It's Over.

And the antecedent of it is not merely the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two bigger "its" are also over: the general election and the era of Republican dominance.

While the numbers receiving the most media attention on Tuesday -- the results of the West...

OK, I was wrong. On April 23, I said here that the Democrat who won the jump ball in Indiana on May 6 would probably win the nomination. I thought that if Barack Obama lost in Indiana, nervous Democratic superdelegates might conclude that he was going to be another...

As a historian, I am painfully aware of how overused the term "historic" is. But what we are witnessing right now and throughout this presidential election year is the very definition of the word.

For all intents and purposes, Barack Obama has won the Democratic presidential nomination.

Consider the stunning...

It's here! In a quick move designed to avoid loss of market share to its main rival as a result of the much-ballyhooed roll-out of Grand Theft Auto IV, Xianity Fantasy Games has just released the newest version of its best-selling game, Grand Theft Jesus.

At the stroke of...

While the media and Sen. Hillary Clinton continue to trash Rev. Jeremiah Wright, John McCain's consorting with a flock of Jesus Thieves -- the people I describe in detail in my new book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America -- receives scant attention.

On Friday...

In a startling political cycle that has seen both John McCain and Hillary Clinton play the role of Lazarus (she three times) and a young African-American seize the position of frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, the most startling, totally unpredictable turn of all is this: the Indiana primary is probably...

Has anyone noticed that Condoleeza Rice, speaking in Baghdad on Sunday, unintentionally but tellingly ridiculed President Bush and Vice President Cheney while mocking hardline Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr?

The American Secretary of State branded the Shiite militia leader a coward for threatening to declare war unless the United States and...

Dear Pope Benedict XVI:

As an American Catholic, I want to take the opportunity of your visit to our country to call upon you to reverse some of the mistakes of the distant past that have made the Church a major force in subordinating women and in devaluing the very...

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI asked the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to pray that his first visit to the United States as pontiff this week would "be a time of spiritual renewal for all Americans." Surely spiritual renewal would be beneficial to all of us -- not least...

The Democratic party finds itself engaged in a protracted civil war at time when it had expected to be in a position to concentrate its attacks on the Republicans and their nominee. In a year in which a Republican victory seems almost impossible -- a year in which simply asking...

The conventional wisdom falls in line again. On Friday, one commentator after another in the mainstream media, from Brian Williams to Mark Shields, repeated the line: Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama helped a bit after a very bad week for Obama. Say what? A week in which the candidate...

The coincidence of the fifth anniversary of the American war of choice in Iraq with the Christian Holy Week provides an opportune moment for looking at how the names "Christianity" and "Jesus" have been stolen by people who preach and do the opposite of what Jesus taught.

This Easter, Christians...