Economic reality is finally catching up with the big American automakers and their suppliers, as noted by Thomas Bray in Wednesday’s Detroit News: Around Detroit, the bankruptcy of giant auto parts maker Delphi Corp. is seen as a precursor of what’s in store for the entire American auto industry. More fundamentally, it confirms the bankruptcy of the industrial welfare state. The powers of denial ensure it may be some time before our politicians, unions and even corporate leaders catch up...

On the heels of a proposed city-wide tax on quickservice restaurants in Detroit, a state bill has been introduced in the Michigan House to implement a 2% tax on fast-food establishments. The “Fast-Food Restaurant and Food Service Tax Act” (HB 4804) would apply only to cities with a population over 750,000…and to the best of my knowledge the city of Detroit is the only one in the state that meets that criterion. A key provision of the bill in its...

We’ve discussed textual interpretation a bit on this blog here before. Paul Ricœur, who is famous for his “attempt bine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation,” passed away earlier this year. One of Ricœur’s important contributions involved an observation about the nature of textual interpretation in distinction to personal dialogue. He writes, for example in his book Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Dialogue is an exchange of questions and answers; there is no exchange of this sort between the writer and...

I received an email today from the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an independent outreach of Prison Fellowship Ministries. It seems the initiative is facing rising program costs due to legal battles over the legitimacy of its Christian makeup. And constant critics of the program, like Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, seem rather incredibly cold-hearted to the plight of today’s prisoner. The InnerChange Freedom Initiative is one of the few elements in prisoners’ lives that...

Dr. Jennifer Morse, a senior fellow in economics for the Acton Institute, argues in this week’s mentary that the key road-block to successful economic development in impoverished nations is the lack of good “moral qualities, like the even-handed enforcement of law, and the transparency of government.” Dr. Morse cites a report from the World Bank Institute detailing the extensive bribery that occurs in developing countries, a practice that is considered “normal” by just about everyone. While this may seem to...

The Verona-based Van Thuan Observatory has recently launched its website, reports the Zenit news service. The Observatory’s namesake, the late Cardinal Van Thuan, was the recipient of the the Acton Institute Faith and Freedom Award in 2002. On first glance, I think this resource has a long way to go. The ‘sources and documents’ page links you to only two documents. I don’t quite know how to respond to assemblies like this. It seems to me that if one wanted...

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the groups endorsing an interfaith statement on immigration reform. Like the e tax system, it seems that everyone agrees the immigration system needs reform but there’s a lot of disagreement as to how to go about it. As with most such broad consensus statements, the points articulated tend toward the innocuous, but there are a few sound ideas: for example, expediting family reunification. In general, the statement seems to be consonant with...

Spurred on by the specter of miraculous cures to horrible diseases, Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, is working on bining human brains and mice. The Stanford Daily reports that Dr. Weissman “has worked with the transfer of human neurons to the brains of mice for several years now. He has already bred mice whose brains posed of 1 percent human neurons, finding that transplanted human brain cells could successfully connect to a...

“I don’t think many of the conflicts I’ve covered were really about religion. It’s about territory. It’s about power. It’s about other things. It’s just broken down along religious lines.” James Nachtwey, war photographer, 56, New York City (Interviewed by Cal Fussman, Esquire, Oct 01 ’05) ...

The 2005 Samaritan Award Grand Prize winner was announced today! If you are unfamiliar with the Samaritan Award, or the Samaritan Guide, information can be found here.The winner of the $10,000 award was the Lives Under Construction Boy’s Ranch Residential Treatment Program. This program, based in Lampe, Missouri, takes in boys with serious behavioural problems and turns their lives around. The program teaches the value of making right choices, emphasizing the importance of good work and instilling a sense of...

Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, is calling on all “civilized and rational” people bat anti-trade populism of the sort that is designed to whip up fear and protectionism. In an interview with The Times (London), Barroso issued what he called a wake-up call: “If the signal we give to our children is ‘Protect yourself — hide under the table because there is globalisation, resist it’ — then we are nothing.” This week, European leaders are headed...

In case you missed it, the Washington Post did a fun review of the new three-volume art book on the Calvin and ic strip. For a parent who raised two daughters during the strip’s 10-year run from 1985 to 1995, it’s refreshing to learn that creator Bill Watterson rejected all attempts at mercializing the adventures and musings of the young boy and his stuffed tiger. It seems that every children’s flick and television series of the Calvin and Hobbes era...