I grew up in a very small town. Our fashion purchases were limited to the dry goods store (yes, it still went by that name) which carried things like Buster Brown shoes and sensible sweaters, or the grain elevator, where you could buy durable overalls for farm work. As someone who eagerly awaited Seventeen magazine every month and witnessed the birth of MTV, you can imagine my fashion dilemma. The closest mall was 70 miles away. I needed Calvin Klein...

In the latest video blog from For the Life of the World, Evan Koons recites Rainer Maria Rilke’s powerful poem, “Go to the Limits of your Longing” from Book of Hours. “In this poem is the whole of what it means to live for the life of the world,” Koons explains. “God speaks to each of us as he makes us.” The poem offers plement to the conclusion of the series, in which Stephen Grabill reminds us that the “church...

On Naharnet, a Lebanese news and information site, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg and Director of Istituto Acton Kishore ment on Pope Francis’s ing environmental encyclical, which the news organization says is planned for release this summer. (Note: The article describes Acton as a “Catholic” think tank but it is, in fact, an ecumenical organization with broad participation from Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians and those of other faith traditions.) Naharnet notes that “a papal encyclical is meant to provide spiritual...

Today is tax day, the day when individual e tax returns are due to the federal government. Here are seven figures you should know about tax day: 1. The average federal tax rate for all households (tax liabilities divided by e, including government transfer payments) before taxes is 18.1 percent. 2. Households in the top quintile (including the top percentile) paid 68.8 percent of all federal taxes, households in the middle quintile paid 9.1 percent, and those in the bottom...

Over the past hundred years few judges have been able to match the wit, wisdom, and intellectual rigor of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. During his thirty year career he has been an indefatigable champion of originalism (a principle of interpretation that views the Constitution’s meaning as fixed as of the time of enactment) and a vociferous critic of the slippery “living constitution” school of jurisprudence. When future historians assess his career Scalia will be viewed as one of the...

Entrepreneur Jane Chen and artist Drue Kataoka met in 2012, and while their areas of expertise are quite different, they both wanted their work to have a meaningful impact. Working together through Embrace (Chen’s start-up), they have designed blankets that will save babies lives. They have designed swaddlers and blankets for parents in the developed world to purchase, a line of products called Little Lotus. These products help regulate babies’ body temperatures in the first few weeks of life. Meanwhile,...

The recent pushback against state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts has sent a signal that, as Utah legislator Stuart Adams say, “the landscape of protecting religious liberty has changed. Permanently.” Many Christians are drawing similar conclusions about the cause of religious liberty being all but lost. I think this view is premature and that, to paraphrase John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to fight. But our arguments aren’t for religious liberty certainly aren’t as persuasive as they should be....

One day while walking to church in Nairobi, Kenya, Kenton Lee noticed a little girl in a white dress who had shoes that were way to small for her feet. He thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a shoe that could adjust and expand – so that kids always had a pair of shoes that fit?” That question led to the development of “The Shoe That Grows,” a shoe that grows from a size 5 to a size...

Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, those of us of a particular bent loved the word “freedom.” The word was featured in the lyrics of many popular songs of the era, and the case could be made that hippies were called freaks as a pun on their oft-chanted “free” mantra. Heck, there was even a band named Free, which captivated the zeitgeist with a classic song about a man angling for a little “free” love with a woman too savvy...

Last week a group of (mostly liberal) Christian leaders took out a full-page ad in Roll Call calling on lawmakers to support the recent Framework Agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. “As Christian leaders we are telling our political leaders: It is imperative that you pursue this agreement with mitment, and perseverance,” The ad says. “We will be praying for you.” The support of the agreement is a mistake, saysNicholas G. Hahn III.Why focus on urging a nuclear agreement when Christians...