The left’s war against genetically modified foods continues apace. Last week, the nonprofit Green America outfit boasted a victory over The Hershey Company, which has agreed to use “simpler ingredients” in its addictive Hershey’s Kisses Milk Chocolates and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars. Yes, “Frankenfood” fearers, the delicious GMO-derived sucrose of Hershey’s chocolate soon will be replaced with an identical product coincidentally known as sucrose. Finally, the “Sugar, Sugar” bubblegum world imagined by The Archies in 1969 has been realized as...

The end of the Civil War was five days away when Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. Yet in his speech, delivered 150 years ago today, Lincoln did not gloat about the impending victory, choosing instead to use the occasion to bring both sides of the conflict together. As Matthew S. Holland says, the speech reminds us that we must resist the poisonous temptation to see those with whom we disagree as bitter enemies even...

Any parent or teacher has heard the cry: “It’s not fair!” It can be a battle over who gets to ride in the front seat, who gets to stay up late, or who gets anything perceived as a special privilege. “Fairness” to children means, “I should get what I want.” Apparently, it’s the same with politicians. Daniel Hannan, Conservative Member of the European Parliament (and last year’s speaker at Acton’s Annual Dinner) tackles “fairness” in terms of politics at CapX....

The rapid rise and threat of the jihadist group Islamic State has confounded the secularist West. The idea that their motivations could truly be driven by religious ideology simply fails to register with those who view religion as an individualistic, private affair. If we are going to defeat ISIS, though, this will have to change. As Kishore Jayabalan says, it’s time to start taking the relationship between religion and politics seriously: The idea of a caliphate is, of course, very...

Since last August, federal prosecutors and civil rights investigators have been investigating whether the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson was a civil rights violation. In an 86-page report released Wednesday, the Justice Department cleared the officerof any criminal wrongdoing or violation of civil rights in the shooting. Here are some highlights from that report. • FBI agents independently canvassed more than 300 residences to locate and interview additional witnesses. Federal investigators also collected cell...

Fr. Matthew Baker Alexis de Tocqueville, observing the young United States in the 1830s, wrote, “Wherever, at the head of a new undertaking, you see in France the government, and in England, a great lord, count on seeing in the United States, an association.” In the midst of recent tragedy — the untimely death of Fr. Matthew Baker, a Greek Orthodox priest killed in a car accident this past Sunday evening, leaving behind his wife and six children — it...

“Christ followers are to see the world differently and have a different posture toward it. Rather than safety from or capitulation to the world, the grand narrative of Scripture describes instead a world we are called to live for. This world, Scripture proclaims, belongs to God, who then entrusted it to His image bearers. He created it good and loves it still, despite its brokenness and frustration.” –John Stonestreet &Warren Cole Smith Through thenew film series, For the Life of...

Lovers of freedom lost alongtimeally this week with the passing of author, journalist and intellectual M. Stanton Evans at age 80. Stephen Hayward penned a remembrance of Evans at Powerline: If you’ve never heard Stan’s deadpan midwestern baritone in person, you’ve missed a great treat, as it e across anywhere near as well in pixels. But all is not lost: there are supposedly some recordings of his greatest hits available on the Philadelphia Society website. [There are also several great...

“Being Godly doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be wealthy. God makes no such guarantees in the Bible, so goodbye, prosperity gospel…[But] God clearly is not opposed to wealth in a kind of blanket way. He’s not even opposed, necessarily, to tremendous wealth, gobstopping amounts of money.” –Owen Strachan In a lecture for The Commonweal Project at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Owen Strachan tackles the tough subject of whether it’s morally wrong for Christians to make lots of money....

“What could possibly go wrong with a regulatory power grab by a government agency applying an 80-year-old law to the most dynamic and innovative aspect of the world’s economy?” asks Bruce Edward Walker in this week’s Acton Commentary. The Federal Communications Commission last week voted along partisan lines for passage of network neutrality regulations. The first two attempts were both defeated in U.S. Circuit Court, and one hopes this third try meets the same fate. The latest strategy deployed by...