Author: Matthew Schmitz

My extreme long-shot replacement idea for John Paul Stevens is … Mickey Kaus! In one surprise move, Obama would have saved Barbara Boxer from a dark-horse primary threat and confounded all the partisans lining...

Boonton tells me that I have misread Bret Stephens: Matthew opens his attack on Stephens by making a red herring out of his argument. His argument is that America’s committment to freedom includes both...

Does Tiger Woods matter? Robert Wright, who is no social conservative, has a piece at the New York Times suggesting why the Tiger Woods story matters, and why moral rebukes of Woods (like this...

My belated entry in the influential books game: Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language – There are people for whom this book is a Bible. Alexander’s “patterns” — normative statements about how we should build...

Adam Gopnik has compared le fooding, the movement to shake up French food, to two other movements: the New Wave and Futurism. The first analogy nails the way that le fooding seeks to marry...

A little-reported fact:  Obama’s recent announcement of expanded off-shore drilling was made at Andrews Air Force Base before a military audience with President Obama speaking not as a civilian leader, but as commander-in-chief. That’s...

For a post with such seemingly low stakes, my recent musings on St. Patrick’s Day received an impassioned reaction. There are a lot of reasons for that. The most interesting, even if not the...

St. Patrick’s Day is America’s favorite ethnic holiday. It is also the strangest. In a calendar crowded with Cinco de Mayo, Kwanzaa, and gay pride parades, St. Paddy’s is the one chance for the...

Below I talk with Ordinary Gentleman David Schaengold about the remarkable work of the recently deceased director Eric Rohmer. MS: As I wrote in my recent First Things piece on Eric Rohmer, a lot...

Will has highlighted the growth of anti-Wilson sentiment on the left and the right. Writing in Democracy, Trygve Throntveit tries to counter the wave: True, Wilson sometimes described himself as conservative. But Wilson’s understanding...

Daniel Larison advises Republicans against attacking Obama on foreign-policy grounds: Despite the endless inane attacks from the GOP, most of the public approves of Obama’s handling of foreign policy and a plurality approves of...

Marc Thiessen has been trading punches with liberal bloggers over the factual accuracy of his new book, Courting Disaster. My guess is that he’ll be vindicated on the facts — after all, he was...

Jody Bottum’s provocative First Things piece on France put me in mind of this old but timeless piece by the late Porterfield Higgins-Jones Jr.: Why do we Anglo-Saxon nations, with our wise Moderation, reverence...

In addition to an art museum and a center for the arts, Princeton, New Jersey has a “Center for Dental Aesthetics.” These institutions are more common than one might think, and I’d like to...

Via Millinerd, I see that stimulus funds have been granted to proceed with the long-awaited Moynihan Station. Disappointing, though, if the new station only accommodates Amtrak.

Ordinary Gentleman David Schaengold recently gave a lecture for Yale Sex Week. National Review has a writeup (possibly NSFW).