I taught high school for a number of years, but as a religion teacher, I escaped most of the trials and tribulations my fellow teachers went through annually as new teaching methods were rolled out. Even private school teachers seem to get a new set of rules each year: teach this way, not that; use these techniques, not those. However, few teaching restrictions seem to be as questionable as Common Core. What about teachers? What are their thoughts on Common...

An amicus brief is a learned treatise submitted by anamicus curiae(Latin for “friend of the court”), someone who is not a party to a case who offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties to assist a court. The amicus brief is a way to introduce concerns ensuring that the possibly broad legal effects of a court decision will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case....

“Rembrandt The Hundred Guilder Print” by Rembrandt – www.rijksmuseum.nl: Home: Info. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. “No, those who labor and are heavy-laden do not all look the way Rembrandt drew them in his ‘Hundred Guilder’ picture—poverty-stricken, miserable, sick, leprous, ragged, with worn, furrowed faces. They are also found concealed behind happy-looking, youthful faces and brilliantly successful lives. There are people who feel utterly forsaken in the midst of high society, to whom everything in their lives seems...

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no “Fortunate Son” – Creedence Clearwater Revival What do Al Gore, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Barry Bonds, Peyton and Eli Manning, Aage Bohrs, and Michael Douglas all have mon? Each of them reached the same level of success as their fathers in a petitive field. We like to think that the U.S. is a meritocracy, a...

A columnist for Al-Monitor who writes under the pseudonym Edward Dark visited Siryan Adeemeh, or Old Siryan, an elevated area in the regime-controlled west of Aleppo, the largest city in Syria. Dark wanted to “gauge the sentiment” of this area, which he describes as a working-class neighborhood home to Christian Arabs of several denominations and also inhabited by a sizable Muslim and Kurdish population. “It’s one of the few areas of Aleppo where churches outnumber mosques, munal relations had always...

Christina Hoff Sommers, of American Enterprise Institute, takes on the idea of men being obsolete. Civilization now needs empathy, social intelligence, emotional knowledge – right? And that’s where females excel. So do we still need men? ...

“60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan interviewed Iraqi Christians for a report that aired March 22. There will be mercial embedded at the start off the video, but just get past it. Logan’s interview, and the images of the destruction wrought by ISIS, vividly illustrate what this persecution means for more than 125,000 of Iraq’s Christians who have abandoned homes, villages and churches in the face of this barbaric assault. She interviewed Nicodemus Sharaf, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in...

A key way to reduce pollution is to provide a mechanism that allows some firms to pollute as much—or even more—than they normally would. That idea may sound ridiculous—reduce pollution by allowing pollution?—but it’s been proven to be a surprisingly effective means of cleaning up the environment. In 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act were added which included market-based incentives to reduce pollution, such as “emissions permits” for certain pollutants. As Robert W. Crandall explains, These are, in effect,...

A bill designed to aid victims of human trafficking in the U.S. should not be divisive. It should not be stalled in the House of Representatives. It should be enacted swiftly, so as to get help to as many victims as possible, as quickly as possible. This bill would improve programs already in place that are specifically designed to aid underage victims of trafficking, increase the ease of which local law enforcement and prosecutors can investigate possible trafficking and child...

There is a lot of talk about “privilege” in our nation: white privilege, the privilege of the “1%,” privilege of living in one school district versus another. Yet, the greatest “privilege” in America is hardly ever mentioned. It’s a privilege that creates happy, healthy, smart kids, a privilege that helps ensure economic stability for everyone involved, a privilege that keeps our neighborhoods and cities safer and more productive. It’s marriage. (I was going to say “mah-widge” and give a Princess...