I had not thought that there was anything new to say in the debate over same-sex marriage.

We stand together, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio and a senior appointee in three Republican presidential administrations, united in our support for the freedom to marry and an end to the discrimination caused by the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which treats one legally married couple differently from another.

Three years ago, in the widely watched case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court did something that many court observers found astonishing: It gave Congress an opportunity to, in effect, do over some provisions of the Voting Rights Act it reauthorized in 2006.

Yes, we need to revamp our mental health laws and state policies, but the relationship between gun violence and severe mental illness is a tenuous one: the vast majority of people with schizophrenia, bipolar illness and other psychotic disorders are not violent and most violence is not committed by people who are mentally ill. 

Cynthia Tucker, in her confessional editorial in the South’s premier newspaper, was too hard on herself. She had long supported race-conscious districting, but her erstwhile convictions had been those of the entire civil rights community and of elected officials across the political spectrum who saw such districting as one litmus test of a commitment to racial equality.

A now-irrelevant provision of the Voting Rights Act may soon be no more.

Imbued with a sense of victimhood, entitlement, and cultivated grievance that can only be taught, today's college students respond to inconvenience with temper tantrums.

One of the few issues on which opinion has moved left over the last few years is same-sex marriage. Why? One reason is probably that as people learn that friends and relatives are gay, they become more sympathetic to gay rights. But increasing support for same-sex marriage causes problems for politicians.

Michael Novak will deliver the May 2011 Bradley Lecture at AEI.

Today President Obama is ignoring the lessons of the civil rights era he claims to revere. The only purpose of the executive order is to dangle the specter of retaliation (by losing her contracts) and harassment (from political opponents).