I won’t bother reviewing all the details of the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court regarding the HHS mandate (you can do more reading here, here and here.) I’d like to talk about why this issue is of particular interest for women, and why the voices of all women need to be heard. The organization Women Speak For Themselves has been vocal in the fight against the HHS mandate. They want to make it known that the call for...

We would all agree that digital technology has made life better in many respects. But in what ways do smartphones, email, social media and the Internet in general bring pressures to bear upon us that diminish human dignity and work against us in the free market, our social connectivity, and the interior life? Douglas Rushkoff has been thinking and writing about these very questions for years. He is a media theorist and author of the book, Present Shock: When Everything...

This past Saturday, I attended the Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship (APTE) 2014 summit. APTE is a student group at OSU in Columbus, OH, and they put together a wonderful cast of ten speakers on the subject of the future of social entrepreneurship. With seven pages of notes (front and back), I unfortunately cannot cover every detail of the conference, but instead I will briefly focus on a theme that recurred throughout the afternoon: private, often for-profit, solutions to public service...

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has released a helpful infographic highlighting some key facts regarding Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which will be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow. Upon digesting all of this, it’s worth emphasizing how meek and mild the Greens’ plaint actually is. The demands of the State are awfully high for a feature of the faith as small and tolerable as this. As Ross Douthat once wrote: If you want to fine Catholic hospitals...

At Reason Thaddeus Russell argues that Macklemore and Lorde embody a kind of progressive cultural critique of capitalism, captured in the attack on “conspicuous consumption” made famous by Thorstein Veblen. Russell traces the “progressive lineage” of this critique: “Their songs continue a long tradition, rooted in progressivism, of protests against the pleasures of the poor.” Having never listened to him, I have no opinion about Macklemore. Russell’s piece makes me want to take a moment to hear “Thrift Shop.” But...

On Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. ET, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, both of which will have a profound impact on the future of religious liberty and freedom of conscience in America. Thus,Hobby Lobby supporters across the country have been invited to offer their prayers in support of pany, and I encourage you to participate.You can help spread the word by changing the avatar on...

“Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the decapitation of Catholic Life in Shanghai,” writes Father Raymond J. de Souza in a National Post article titled “Catholics in Chains” published last week. This strong and unfortunately true es at the heels of the passing of the 97-year-old legitimate Catholic bishop of Shanghai, Bishop Joseph Fan Zhong-Liang last week. His death underscores the continuing reality of government religious restrictions imposed on Catholicism, which hinder bishops’ ability to lead their flocks...

Images of Mississippi needing federal assistance are iconic. Robert F. Kennedy’s 1967 trip to Mississippi’s Delta region produced images of poverty not unlike LBJ’s War on Poverty tour. Jennifer Haberkorn has written a piece at Politico titled, “Obamacare enrollment rides a bus into the Mississippi Delta.” Her snooty lede to the story reads: “In the poorest state in the nation, where supper is fried, bars allow smoking, chronic disease is rampant and doctors are hard e by, Obamacare rolls into...

Given the press the Koch brothers (David and Charles) get, one would expect to see a photo of them sporting devil’s horns with blood dripping from their fangs. Here are just a few examples: They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. [The New Yorker] Today, the Kochs are being watched as a prime example of the corporate takeover of government. [Greenpeace] [W]hen Barack Obama...

Over at The Gospel Coalition, Ryan Hoselton offers a nice summary of the key ideas in Herman Bavinck’s The Christian Family, which was recently translated by Christian’s Library Press. Hoselton begins by surveying the range of evils that “threaten the well-being of the home,” as well as the dire state of the cultural landscape as it pertains to such matters. “No family evades the consequences of evil,” he concludes. Yet he wonders: “Does the problem lie in the institution of...