First item in this month’s Christianity Today Bookmarks. Conclusion: “Disconcertingly, Stark argues without qualification, nuance, and the balancing of perspectives that academics love so much. Nonetheless, he may be right.” ...

With a gracious spirit, let’s say that Section 317 of Senate Tax Relief Act of 2005was penned with the intent of fostering honest accountability in the charity world. And, furthermore, let’s graciously allow that the legislation was designed to send the message that the Internal Revenue Service is vigilantly watching over the donation of tax-deductible clothing and household goods. A recent articlein the Washington Post justifiably underscored the importance of providing goods to charities that actually have value. Too much...

On Jan. 6, Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, will introduce author George Weigel at the Calvin College January Series in Grand Rapids, Mich. Weigel’s topic will be “Revolutionary Papacies: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and the Future of the Catholic Church.” You may also listen to the program live (Friday, Jan. 6 @ 12:30pm EST) through this link on the Calvin site. ...

The US government is getting set to open up a set of airwave frequencies, vacating the prime estate for obscure channels that will serve its purposes just as well. In addition, the newly available channels will provide a big boost to the capabilities of current wireless providers. As Gene J. Koprowski writes for UPI, “It’s something like an eminent-domain case — except this time, the government is vacating the space in order to further the technology economy, rather than the...

Public schools are now embroiled in the controversy over the teaching of intelligent design. Eric Schansberg points out that we wouldn’t have this problem if there were more choice in education. But neither education elitists nor theocrats are big on educational freedom. “They wage battle within the monopoly, hoping to capture the process and force their view of truth down the throats of others,” he writes. Read mentary here. ...

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the closing of a federal housing loophole. The full article is accessible only to subscribers, so I’ll summarize. College students for a number of years have been taking advantage of Section 8 (federally subsidized housing) rules to live in “projects” while they go to school. Such housing is, obviously, supposed to be for the needy, but decidedly un-needy students have been benefiting. The Des Moines Register originally investigated the story (described here) and...

The new Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal report on economic freedom is out, and the findings couldn’t be more straightforward. “The countries with the most economic freedom also have higher rates of long-term economic growth and are more prosperous than are those with less economic freedom,” the report says. Overall, the world is economically freer than it was a year ago, according the authors of the report. Of the 157 countries graded in the 2006 Index of Economic Freedom, 99 improved...

For those of you who enjoy listening to podcasts, Acton has updated its own podcast to be more iTunes friendly. We’ve added an iTunes graphic to the feed, updated our description tags, and categorized it on the iTunes music store. For those interested in checking it out, please follow this link to the iTunes Music Store (iTunes is required). ...

There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere on Mark Steyn’s “It’s the Demography, Stupid”, which appears in today’s and is originally published in the January 2006 issue of The New Criterion. As usual, Steyn has many excellent observations about our present crises, but this article is a more extended look than his op-eds. Some highlights: The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective...

The Real Clear Politics Blog passes along an op-ed from Bob Herbert, “Blowing the Whistle on Gangsta Culture,” a NYT Select item (subscription required). In the column, Herbert discusses the “profoundly self-destructive cultural influences that have spread like a cancer through much of the munity and beyond.” Tom Bevan calls the piece “suprisingly candid,” and “some stiff, righteous stuff – all the more ing from the source.” Herbert, of course, has been a NYT columnist since 1993, and Bevan thinks...