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As one might expect, Matt and my topic was the state budget and the flat tax on last night’s Matt Allen Show. By way of explanation for my opening comments, “popo” is the word that Rep. Anastasia Williams used to indicate the police when she said that the flat tax would lead her constituents to…
So the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on “The Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.” has come and gone, and we who’ve returned to our ordinary lives — with both glass slippers, as it were — must move through our days as before, awaiting the next opportunity to glimpse the world through which the threads of history run.…
The performance of Fauré’s Requiem, Op. 48 with which the Portsmouth Institute ended its conference on “The Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.” doubled as a celebration of the completed restoration of the Church of Saint Gregory the Great, in which the concert took place. This particular requiem is among my favorite works in the classical…
The final session of the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on “The Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.” could be considered fated in the fashion of those humorous suspicions that something is cursed. First slated to be filled by the subject’s son, Christopher, the slot was handed within the past few weeks to Reagan speechwriter Anthony Dolan. A…
In summarizing the first three speakers at the Portsmouth Institute’s WFB conference, I observed their different styles. Among subsequent speakers, I’d say that, truly, E.J. Dionne and K.J. Lopez spoke much as columnists. They offered facts and quotations, giving their own opinions, and building overall arguments. None who’ve read their work would be very surprised…
Kathryn Jean Lopez, of National Review Online, began her speech — beginning day three of the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on William F. Buckley, Jr. — by stating that she would not have described WFB as a “Catholic journalist,” because both descriptors were so thoroughly integrated into his persona, and she seemed genuinely awed that he…
The first thing to note about Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne’s after-dinner speech at the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on William F. Buckley’s conservatism is his mention of something that struck me for the duration of the event: namely, that religious life does not preclude real life, much less intellectual life. Stream, download (52 sec). Experience…
Friday’s pre-dinner musical interlude consisted of three soloists with piano accompaniment by Dom Ambrose, one of the abbey’s monks, a graduate of Harvard and attendee at Julliard who now teaches music theory and English. First came trumpeter Nathaniel Hepler, a professional with that instrument. Mr. Hepler played Bruce Broughton’s “Oliver’s Birthday” and a Sonata by…
Between the Friday morning talks of Maggie Gallagher and Joseph Bottum, I was asked in the presence of a notable personage about my conversion to Catholicism. It took some time — well past the cessation of the conversation — for my mind to catch up to the realization that said personage’s response indicated that I…
Perhaps because they don’t realize how little understood the world of opinion journalism is among the public, various posters in the Corner have left a large question mark in their posts about Kathryn Jean Lopez’s employment change at NRO: Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, and John Derbyshire. Right after her speech at the Portsmouth Institute’s Bill…