Adele M. Stan

The members of the Senate Judiciary Committee showed up in their Sunday best — the men in the darkest of their dark suits, the whitest of their white shirts, and their most tastefully understated ties. The only woman on the panel wore pearls. With all of them on their best behavior, the senators played their […]

If you thought that last weekend’s simulcast right-wing confab, “Justice Sunday II,” was about the latest nomination to the Supreme Court, you’d be a little bit right. If you thought it was waged to demonize liberals while imparting a sense of aggrieved oppression to the white Protestants assembled in churches across the nation to watch […]

It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing about President George W. Bush’s nomination of Judge John Roberts for a seat on the Supreme Court: the man’s sparse paper trail or the loose leaves he’s scattered along the way. Either way, the nomination should give pause, not just to women or African Americans but to all […]

The announcement of Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation from the Supreme Court heralds a dark road ahead for women — not just because she will undoubtedly be replaced by some reactionary right-winger but because women will lose a genuine advocate and protector on the high court. When, in 1981, Ronald Reagan introduced the nation to Sandra […]

It was a June wedding, in the country fashion — homemade, outdoors, with neighbors from miles around proudly proffering plates brimming with the fruits of their gardens and ovens. The collection of cakes, some homely but most of them exquisite, occupied a table of their own, with a somewhat artless attempt at the classic tiered […]

Imagine, if you can bear it, Tom DeLay as the president of the United States. With its election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, the College of Cardinals has committed an act roughly analogous to that (except for the funny money, of course). Cardinal Ratzinger earned his way into the heart of Pope John […]