I have discovered this week that Florida has a major problem with teenage violence against the homeless. In a new twist on violent crime incidents the homeless are being attacked across this state regularly. In St. Petersburg two homeless men, ages 43 and 53, were shot to death in January in separate incidents. The two men indicted for these two crimes are 18 and 20. There were 41 incidents of violence against the homeless in 2006, more than in any...

Behold the rise of the perfect coalition: the climate change brigades and the Roswell True Believers! A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday. “I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83,...

Via The New Editor, a restatement of a basic economic rule that we all need to remember as government in America swings back to the left. Clive Crook, in the course of reviewing Robin Williams’ Man of the Year, notes the potential unintended consequences if an anti-business mood overtakes our representatives: Case by case, the merit in these proposals varies from substantial (executive pay) to less than none (taxing profits), but put the merits of the individual policies aside. What...

At the beginning of his journey down from the mountain of enlightenment, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra runs across an old saint living in the forest. The saint confesses to Zarathustra, “Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.” By contrast to the saint’s view, it has long been the tradition of a major strand of American Christianity that engagement in practical ministry is an important...

Oprah isn’t the only one opening a school in Africa. Fraser Valley Christian High School and Surrey Christian School in Canada have partnered together with Christian Extension Services in Sierra Leone, Africa to build a Christian Primary School in Kabala. This partnership is one of the initiatives I highlighted in a previous Acton Commentary. The partnership has released its first newsletter (PDF here), which chronicles recent news and events, including prayer requests and special opportunities for donation. Also be sure...

The John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas has been organizing a series of international conferences on Catholic Social Thought and Management Education. The latest was on the topic “The Good Company: Catholic Social Thought and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue.” You can access a number of the papers through this site. These conferences are usually a mixed bag, so investigate at your own risk. But there are always a few outstanding presentations and this edition is...

Good news (at least I think it is). Acton.org is a site not blocked by the “Great Firewall of China” (i.e. government censors). A big HT to GetReligion (which is blocked). ...

Joe Carter concludes: What we need is a third way. We need a clear Christian vision that understands that markets are a moral sphere (contra the libertarians). We need to promote the idea that free individuals rather than government force is necessary to carry out this task (as the left often contends). We need to realize that the “market” is not a mystical system that will miraculously provide for our neighbor (as many conservatives seem to think). What we need...

I’ve followed with concern the debate over global warming for years. But it’s especially troubling to see self-identifying evangelicals weighing in on the issue with such a shallow understanding of the details. Brian McClaren is a case in point. Consider his recent post at the God’s Politics blog. McClaren is bemoaning the fact that some evangelical leaders, such as James Dobson, wrote a letter urging caution on the issue of global warming. Now, whatever one’s views on this issue, it’s...

In an essay for TCS Daily last week, Arnold Kling wrote, “With or without the words ‘under God,’ the Pledge of Allegiance feels to me like a prayer. It’s a fairly nice prayer, and I have no problem with having it taught in private schools. I have no problem praying for my country — such a prayer is included in the standard weekly service at my synagogue. But government institutions ought not to be telling people how to pray.” The...