Daniel Koffler
Daniel Koffler
Recent Stories
Saviorizing our school: a brief history of gospel
A fragment of a Lost Gospel, recovered from the banks of the Quinnipiac and translated into English from Ugaritic in the Year of Our Lord the Two Thousand and Sixth: "Brothers and sisters, I bring glad tidings -- the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh.
Imprecision in language sabotages political writing
The English language, George Orwell noted, "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." Here are two specimens of ugly and inaccurate language that...
February was perilous month for free speech
It is possible there have been months in human history more globally abysmal than February 2006 for the cause of free expression, but none comes to mind. This year's commemoration of Febris, the Roman god of malaria, coincided with a violent and...
Exploring the roots of Danish controversy
What are the "root causes," to borrow the terminology of the sectarian left, of the Cartoon Intifada? On Sept. 17 of last year, the liberal Danish newspaper Politiken ran a story about author Kare Bluitgen, whose efforts to write a children's book on...
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Assuming the verity of Priya Raman's recent report on David Atlas ("Atlas '08 alleges abuse by NHPD," 1/24), it is not difficult to imagine the events surrounding Atlas's abortive prosecution and exoneration. NHPD officers arrested Atlas because they...
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A series of revelations this new year has shifted the semantics of the case for President Bush's impeachment profoundly. A Dec. 16 New York Times article set off the cascade, uncovering offenses the president personally authorized that are criminal in...
Holiday bells don't jingle for everyone
The War on Christmas is worse than you thought. If you don't believe me, ask Fox News Channel personality John Gibson. How proficient at sniffing out liberal conspiracies is Gibson? In a March editorial urging Jeb Bush to mount a putsch against the...
Right to privacy should be enumerated
In the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down an allegedly virtue-inculcating state law barring the distribution of contraceptives to married couples, on the grounds that a right to privacy, not enumerated in the...
Tammany Hall, Conn. chapter: Voting out the Democratic machine
Suppose your hometown will soon be holding an election for dog-catcher. Candidate A has spent years advocating on behalf of women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered persons, and racial and religious minorities. He supports the right of graduate...
Utilitarian rhetoric masks Kelo ruling's illiberalism
Aside from The New York Times' sore-winner editorial of June 24 -- which valorized the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London while neglecting to mention that the Times Co. acquired its current property through a fairly egregious use of eminent...