A wonderful piece by Deroy Murdock today on NRO. Though most fiscal conservatives understandably vote Republican, the record substantiates the theory that spending is less responsible when Congress is dominated by one party—either party—than when each party has enough votes to frustrate the other. Others have drawn attention to the problem of Republican pork, but Murdock does so in an especially devastating way. ...

Federal involvement in education has grown steadily throughout the nation’s history, encroaching on what is still viewed by American’s as mostly a state and local responsibility. Kevin Schmiesing looks at a new book that examines U.S. education policy, the red tape and bureaucracy that has resulted, and the opposition to federal control that arose from parochial school administrators. Read the full text here. ...

Because too much has already been said about the recent gulf hurricanes, I won’t put in my two cents. I will, however, direct the reader to the most insightful take on this situation that I have yet to stumble across. As you read it, think again about the importance of the definitions of the words we use, such as ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ as are discussed in the mentioned article. ...

In the wake of overwhelming need of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thankfully a number of us are voicing irritation with the inquiry, “How important do you think that faith-based organizations are to helping people”? Before ANY organization — government agency of any kind or national nonprofit — made a move, faith organizations had already moved. In San Antonio, where several Russian students were among New Orleans evacuees, Victory Fellowship, a faith-based, privately funded substance abuse treatment program, simply did the...

An article by City University of New York professor Richard Wolin celebrates the legacy of Jürgen Habermas, who represents a shift from philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche. “Among 19th-century thinkers it was an monplace that religion’s cultural centrality was a thing of the past,” but in the words of Habermas, “For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a...

Why review a television show that pleted even its first season nearly three years ago? The confluence of events and circumstances that resulted in the cancellation of the Fox show Firefly in 2002 has done little to destroy the resiliency of the Firefly phenomenon. While only 14 episodes were ever made, and only 11 of those ever shown, once plete series of Firefly came out on DVD, it topped sales at Amazon for months (it’s currently ranked #7). Fans of...

Two stats featured in this month’s Go Figure section of Christianity Today: 17: Percentage of the top 50 Fortune 500 corporations’ foundations whose policies prohibit their giving to faith-based groups. 57: Percentage of corporations that mention faith-based organizations and will not match employee contributions to them. ...

Pope Benedict XVI: “A tolerance which allows God as a private opinion but which excludes him from public life, from the reality of the world and our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy,” the pope said in the homily he gave at a three-week-long synod’s opening mass in St Peter’s Basilica. “When man makes himself the only master of the world and master of himself, justice cannot exist. Then, arbitrariness, power and interests rule.” ...

The current situation in New Orleans can be seen in part as a result of the circumstances and context of the city’s founding in 1718. According to one report, the French settled on the site for New Orleans in response to “the need to control the Mississippi River and its tributaries.” But in order for this to happen, the French “would need to control the mouth of the river in the delta at the Gulf of Mexico. The problem with...

Check out this exchange, involving Tony Blankley from The Washington Times, Pat Buchanan of MSNBC, and Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, from last week’s McLaughlin Group about President Bush’s call for people to conserve gasoline in their daily activities: MR. BLANKLEY: Let me make a quick point. Free-market prices maintain equilibrium of supply and demand. Let the price go up. People will make individual decisions. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. MR. BLANKLEY: And they will cut back. They did when the prices went...

Also from last week’s McLaughlin Group, Mort Zuckerman from U.S. News & World Report makes the important point that rising costs of gasoline greatly impact the poorest and most vulnerable populations. MR. ZUCKERMAN: …It is very difficult in America to really cut back on gasoline consumption, because people go to work and go shopping in their cars. We do not have public transportation in the way that Europe does. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we need that for the macroeconomy and the...

Eric Schansberg ponders the lessons that we can learn from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One of Schansberg’s biggest questions in light of the government’s failure to effectively manage the disaster is this: if the government, both local and federal, failed at all levels to deal with Katrina before, during, and after it made landfall, shouldn’t we be looking for other options rather than trying to depend more on a system that obviously failed? Schansberg suggests that while the government...