Following months of Zimbabwe’s brutal “Drive Out Trash” campaign, pleasantries exchanged between Mugabe and a UN delegation may have made some headway. The UN report on the situation, according to Claudia Rosett, began “with a delicacy over-zealously inappropriate in itself to dealings with the tyrant whose regime has been responsible for wreck of Zimbabwe” by describing Mugabe’s reception of the UN officials with a “warm e.” Despite the ings of the UN report with respect to policy solutions (more aid!),...

Here’s a great interview from the Marketplace Morning Report with Chris Farrell, in which he argues for the lifting of trade sanctions against dictatorial and oppressive regimes. pares the cases of Cuba and China, in which two different strategies have been used, with vastly different results. We need to “stop the policy of broad based sanctions against nations that we don’t like,” says Farrell. This is directly opposite of the view, for example, which primarily blames economic engagement and the...

Alan Warren / Associated Press ...

Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was born on this date in 1805. Charles Colson, in his introduction to Carl F.H. Henry’s “Has Democracy Had Its Day?” writes that Tocqueville was a realist and recognized how fragile democracy is. He saw, as many moderns do not, that it could only survive if citizens continue to exercise their civic responsibilities, which is what our founders knew to be the most essential republican virtue. They also understood that democracy is...

“Congress should not expand the powers of the FCC by giving it a new role to regulate the latest technologies. Instead, lawmakers should direct the FCC to simply resolve issues derived from the past AT&T monopoly and government control of spectrum. And then they should keep the agency from regulating munication platforms, deferring to munications marketplace for that job. What’s more, the current static legal classification of different types munications services needs to be overhauled.” –from Braden Cox, “Reform FCC...

This has been a momentous week for manned space exploration. First, NASA returned to flight with Tuesday’s launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which was almost immediately followed by a return to not flying, as safety concerns will be grounding the shuttle fleet once again. The whirlwind of activity has rekindled the debate over the future of the Space Shuttle program and the government’s manned space flight in general. But in the end, the space news that this week may...

Two recent news items of interest, the timing of which seems serendipitous: “U.S. Muslim Scholars Issue Edict Against Terrorism” “IRA Ending Longtime ‘Armed Campaign'” ...

From ENI: Nigerian president wants Church to nurture God-fearing politicians Lagos (ENI). Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, lamenting poor leadership and corruption among public officers in his country, has urged churches to help nurture political leaders who are honest, hardworking, visionary, and inspiring. “The Church has a major role to play in identifying, nurturing, promoting and guiding such leaders at all levels of our society and our polity,” Obasanjo said in Lagos at the laying of the foundation stone of a...

The terminal politicization of the National Council of Churches has led a major Orthodox jurisdiction to throw in the towel. The Antiochian Orthodox Church, meeting for its bi-annual convention in Dearborn, Mich., has “voted overwhelmingly” to leave the ecumenical body led by Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democrat congressman. The news has been posted on Touchstone Magazine’s Mere Comments blog, and was phoned in by a correspondent for Ancient Faith Radio who was on the scene in Dearborn. Metropolitan Philip...

Here’s a view of procreation that doesn’t line up with the UN-sponsored “World Population Day”. In the midst of a discussion about a Jewish tradition mandating that each couple has at least one male and one female child, Bryan Caplan at EconLog writes, I’m on the record in favor of having more kids. I believe that, in most cases, both individuals and society would be better off if families had three or four. A lot of people have small families...

Al Gore’s new Current TV network seeks to be “the television home page for the Internet generation,” the former vice-president said. With its debut today, Current TV seeks to be a more hip and cutting-edge form of presenting the news. “I think the reality of the network will speak for itself,” Gore told reporters. “It’s not intended to be partisan in any way and not intended to be ideological.” Sure thing Mr. Gore. Of course a network you are debuting...

The current issue of Christianity Today magazine examines the lack of discipline in evangelical churches, and is presenting the themed articles in a series on its website. The litigious nature of American culture has e one of the great contributing factors to the decline of church discipline. A brief article by Ken Sande, an attorney who serves as president of Peacemaker Ministries, testifies to this reality. In “Keeping the Lawyers at Bay,” Sande writes that one way bat the tendency...