By Tom Quiner

There is a special place in heaven for anyone who sits on the Board of Education for a Catholic school.

It is a time-consuming, thankless job guaranteed to make some people mad due to the inevitable tough decisions that have to be made.

One of the perennial tough decision has to do with teachers’ salaries. Budgets are tight in Catholic Schools. Tuition doesn’t come close to covering their costs. Catholic schools depend on parish subsidies to keep their doors opened.

Teachers in Catholic schools earn less than they could earn teaching in public schools, but many stay simply because they believe in the mission. It pains the Board to underpay teachers, but that’s the way it is. Money is excruciatingly tight, and many, many Catholic schools rest on a precarious financial perch.

The perch is about to become deadly.

In Monday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court which…

By Tom Quiner

The First Amendment enrages liberals, at least that portion that protects our religious liberties.

In a conference call with the Family Research Council, putative Republican presidential nominee, Mike Huckabee, sounded the alarm:

“I think it’s fair to say that Christian convictions are under attack as never before. Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great Republic. We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity, where it’s not simply going to be that a church’s tax exempt status is threatened, but more importantly where there will be criminal charges for a person who defies what will become a new government norm, new legal norm, and that is that homosexual [unintelligible] becomes a protected class. And I don’t think a lot of people have fully comprehended that that is a bridge—we’ve never crossed that before, it would be the same kind of…

As with some television shows, where an entire episode seems to be based round a joke that came up in a production meeting, this recipe was an off-beat idea of mine that grew into a recipe. I started with the hybrid name and it kind of went from there.

But unlike some TV shows, this works. No joke.

Just a couple of notes: about the sauce, if you wish to use garam masala or another curry powder that you like, that would be just fine. Use about two tablespoons, but be prepared to add more if the flavour seems “thin.” And as for the naan, use roti or chapati if you wish, or even commercial naan, although the latter may be too thick and will tear/break (and really aren’t very nice when compared to homemade). Heck you could even add curry spices to a bought red enchilada sauce. Whatever way you do this…

Last week, a man named Freddie Gray died of injuries received after his arrest by officers of the Baltimore City Police Department. Gray’s death and the ongoing protests have focused local and national media on the violence of police brutality in Baltimore City. Reading stories on the recent history of deaths in police custody, the history of “rough rides” in Baltimore police (both from the Baltimore Sun) and a look back on a decade of police brutality complaints (“The Obscene Culture of Police Brutality”) have helped broaden my understanding of this issue. But when Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore Police Union, stated protests that call for the arrest of the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death “look and sound like a lynch mob” – it is a disturbing reminder that a deeper understanding of American history is essential to reforming an unjust police department. And much of this history is still unwritten.

With all of this in mind, I’ve assembled…