Note: This is post #13 in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Secretary of Energy Department:U.S. Department of Energy Current Secretary:Rick Perry Succession:The Energy Secretary is fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“The mission of the Energy Department is to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.” (Source) Department Budget:$32.5 billion...

This Sunday, April 23, French voters will go to the polls for the first round of their presidential election. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will face each other in a runoff election on May 7. Here’s what you need to know: Who are the candidates? In alphabetical order, the candidates are: François Fillon: The 63-year-old candidate of the center-Right Les Républicains served as prime minister of France from 2007 to 2012 under...

What is Earth Day? Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22, on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement. How did Earth Day get started? Earth Day was started by Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Nelson originally tried to bring political attention to environmental issues in 1962-63, when he convinced President Kennedy...

Go see The Promise, a movie opening nationwide tomorrow. Hollywood has mostly ignored the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during World War I, and subsequently pursued by the Turkish Republic. At last we have a film like The Promise, which focuses on the Armenian experience, but also the Greeks and Assyrians who were brutally victimized. There is no uglier word in any language than genocide, which is perhaps why the word is used so sparingly. Both denotatively and...

As of this month, I have joined the “What Good Markets Are Good For: Towards a Moral Justification of Free Markets” project as a postdoctoral researcher in theology and economics. The project is a multi-year, multifaceted endeavor, focusing on the central claim that “societies with free-market economies flourish because and in so far as the key market actors (states, businesses and individuals) respect morality, and act virtuously.” The project is headed by Govert Buijs at the VU UniversityAmsterdam, and includes...

From the very beginning, God set humans to work. That original design was soon to be tainted by the destruction of sin, but that by no means marked the story’s end. Even after the garden, Adam and Eve were still made in the image God. They were still co-creators with a strongstewardship mandate. Most importantly, a Savior was soon e. In a recent talk at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Greg Forster reminds us of this basic human calling, and the...

It’s an exaggeration to claim, asJohn Tierney does in the latest issue of City Journal, that “no institution or agency has done more to help the poor than Walmart.” After all,the Christian church has certainly done more. I’d even argue that in America individual subsets of the church, such as the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, have even done more. But onthe short-list of anti-poverty institutionsthat have done the most forthe poor, Walmart certainly ranks high. Tierney points...

A new study published in the science journal Nature Human Behaviour finds that in most situation people are unconcerned about economic inequality as long as distributions of wealth are fair: There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the munity and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two...

Why have nations like Hong Kong and Singapore risen to e global economic powerhouses, while resource-rich African nations remain mired in poverty? Abir Doumit, an economist at George Mason University, has identified six pillars capable of lifting a nation to prosperity, no matter where it starts. One of the most important is a small government. “If sustainable economic growth is the goal, there is no substitute for an overall policy agenda of a small state, open markets, stable money, property...

“Most Christians would agree that more flourishing is good and that educational choice is important for us to enhance our God-given creativity,” says Anne Rathbone Bradley in this week’s Acton Commentary. “The question over which many Christians disagree is the means for making these desires possible. Are the tools of policy the best mechanism for increasing educational choice and quality? Or is that better left to the market?” The debate continues but now with a new policy twist. On April...