John DiIulio is a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania known for his work on public policy, religion in public life, and criminal justice. He served as the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President George W. Bush in 2001. He contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard from its founding through 2008, writing on topics including nonprofits, religion, politics, and media coverage.
My American politics undergraduate students tease me without mercy for predicting a year ago that the Democratic nomination was Hillary Clinton's to lose. (I also predicted that Mike Huckabee would outlast all the Republican hopefuls except maybe John McCain. "Professor D's latest lucky guess,"…
Most leading conservative writers, radio hosts, and activists would probably concur that their liberal counterparts have never really connected with average Americans. Personalities on the right sell more books and get higher radio and television ratings. And until recently, conservatives seemed to…
For those who thought that Hillary Clinton was through because Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, or because the polls supposedly proved she would lose in New Hampshire, or because they let the personal, ideological, or partisan wish be father to the thought--and for those who made proclamations…
IN A PAGE-ONE STORY published Sunday, January 13, 2008, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," the New York Times reported on homicides by veterans of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven Times reporters contributed to the lengthy story, which was co-authored by Deborah…
Jesus, they preach, not only wants you to love the poor--Jesus wants you to get rich, or at least to live debt free! "They" are the Christian televangelists atop the multimillion-dollar media ministries being scrutinized by Senator Charles Grassley. The Iowa Republican has given them until December…
Speaking last December before journalists assembled by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Peter Berger had some explaining to do. Berger, an emeritus professor at Boston University, is a rightly esteemed sociologist of religion. "We live in an age of overwhelming religious globalization,"…
Philadelphia
ON SUNDAY, October 8, the "public editor" of the New York Times, Byron Calame, criticized Times reporter Linda Greenhouse for a speech she delivered last June at Harvard. Greenhouse, described by Calame as the paper's "much-honored Supreme Court reporter for 28 years," preached to the liberal choir…
Active Liberty
WEEK BY WEEK IN KATRINA'S wake, Americans and their leaders are in for two deeply painful civics lessons having nothing whatsoever to do with racially conditioned responses or partisan politics. Lesson one is that the only thing worse than having big government in the first place is relying on it…
IN 2000, the polls had Bush winning the popular vote. He went on to lose it by more than 3.5 million votes. In 2004, pollsters on election eve said the race was "too close to call." The next day, exit polls predicted a comfortable Kerry victory. Then on election night, the Bush-Kerry national…
What Price the Moral High Ground?
IN RECENT YEARS there has been an explosion in empirical research on faith-based social programs. Most studies, including the most scientifically rigorous, find that faith moves social and civic mountains. Last year, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania released a report identifying over…
THE MEDIA PUNDITS and partisan spin-doctors are nearly unanimous: President Bush and the Republicans won a big, bellwether victory in the 2002 midterm elections. Most Democratic leaders, many in obvious don't-blame-me mode, agree: Bush's post-9/11 popularity, his peripatetic campaigning and…
THIS WEEK, nearly 300 Catholic bishops are gathering in Dallas to discuss whether parish priests who behave as pedophiles should lose their clerical collars after the first offense or be given one or more chances to repent and reform before being demoted, disgraced, or defrocked. Some bishops…
SIX MONTHS after establishing the Office of Homeland Security, President Bush praised its head, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, for his service in a March 27 speech in South Carolina. Ridge's mission is a huge one: "to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national…
OVER THE last three weeks, the Bush administration has taken important steps that, together, should advance the president's volunteer service agenda, increase public and private support for community-serving religious organizations, and make federal social welfare programs work better and cost…
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
Lynne Abraham doesnt scare easily. Abraham s I the no-nonsense Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia. The city's late tough-cop mayor, Frank Rizzo, baptized her "one tough cookie." The label stuck, and rightly so. Abraham has sent more mafiosi to prison than Martin Scorcese, stood up (all…