For those among us who do not follow the particularities of United Nations programs and declarations, apart from birthdays and anniversaries June 5 might pass every year without much special notice. But every year since 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme has set aside June 5 to observe World Environment Day (WED), designed to be “one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.” On this WED,...

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Strobl began his 2004 essay “Taking Chance” by saying, “Chance Phelps was wearing his Saint Christopher medal when he was killed on Good Friday. Eight days later, I handed the medallion to his mother. I didn’t know Chance before he died. Today, I miss him.” HBO turned Strobl’s essay into an emotional film about the journey of Chance’s body from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to his home in Dubois, Wyoming. Taking Chance is excellent at...

A few weeks back, I posted a version of the famed Richard John Neuhaus/Rockford Institute break-up incident. The story there was that the break-up happened because Neuhaus overspent the Institute’s budget on conferences after having been ordered to cancel them. That version of the story came from John Howard, who used to run the Rockford Institute a number of years ago. Howard’s version was new to me. I’d mainly heard the rumblings about ideological discontent and jumped at the chance...

Those who promoted the War on Poverty and other grand plans to end poverty, writes Hunter Baker, “had no inkling that these good-hearted strategies would lead to enduring cycles of poverty and family disintegration that threatened to consume entire generations. Wishing for good es resulted in disaster.” Read mentary at the Acton website. ...

The Detroit News says the General Motors bankruptcy filing “is a hammer blow for a state that was already on its knees.” In an editorial, the paper calls for an “emergency response” from government and an entirely new orientation to attracting businesses and jobs to the state: Longer term, Michigan’s entire focus must be on creating a business climate that makes the state attractive for job creators in a wide range of industries. It can’t afford to focus on any...

From Philip Jenkins at Foreign Policy: Ironically, after centuries of rebelling against religious authority, ing of Islam is also reviving political issues most thought extinct in Europe, including debates about the limits of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to proselytize. And in all these areas, controversies that originate in a Muslim context inexorably expand or limit the rights of Christians, too. If Muslim preachers who denounce gays must be silenced, then so must charismatic Christians. At...

A classroom of elementary children learn what the bailout is really all about. Submitted in Right.org’s $27,599 anti-bailout petition. This one was a student project done on a shoestring budget. ...

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) web site has a new page devoted to Catholic teaching on the economy. It is essentially a reorganization of existing resources, and it does helpfully provide access to the various bishops’ statements over the course of the last couple decades, as well as Vatican sources such as the Catechism and encyclicals. Here is not the place to revisit the whole question of the USCCB and its economic proposals and statements. Suffice it...

Today Dr. Donald Condit looks at a new federal proposal called the Patients’ Choice Act, which promises more freedom in choosing health care insurance. “The PCA will enhance patient and family ability to afford health care insurance and incentivize healthier lifestyles,” Condit writes. “In addition, it would surpass other options in fulfilling our social responsibility to the poor and vulnerable.” Read mentary on the Acton Website ment on it here. ...

This brings us to the central irony. The very people most inclined to gush about our “living Constitution” treat it like a Mr. Potato Head. Read More… My essay on the Constitution, judicial activism and the “living document” trope is here at The American Spectator. Here’s one passage: This brings us to the central irony. The very people most inclined to gush about our “living Constitution” treat it like a Mr. Potato Head: Ooh, states rights. Let’s pop that off...