Many of us have yet to finalize plans for our Christmas decorating this year. If you haven’t yet decided what kind of tree to put up, consider the truly environmentally-friendly choice: cutting down a live tree. While that might sound counter-intuitive at first blush, the fact is that the alignment of consumer demand for live bines with the environmental interest in growing them to create a powerful alliance. “Buying a real Christmas tree is the next ‘green decision’ the public...

I’ve had a number of new book catalogs cross my desk over the last few months. Given the gift-giving season that is upon us, I thought I’d highlight some of the more interesting items from the various publishers. If you share my varied and rather eclectic interests, ranging from scholarly to popular works on a number of subjects, you might find something here you could add to your own Christmas list (although some items are ing for 2008). Today’s post...

The Institute on Religion and Democracy has issued a background report on the drafting of a new “Social Creed for the 21st Century” by members of the National Council of Churches. As Alan Wisdom and Ralph Webb point out, the “strong ideological tilt” at the NCC (that would be to your left) “contrasts sharply with the careful efforts at balance evident in public policy guidelines produced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals.” What...

Not to belabor the topic of divorce (following Don Bosch’s interesting post from yesterday), but Acton senior fellow Jennifer Roback Morse has a thought-provoking piece on on the perverse incentives of marriage law. She makes several important points, but I am most intrigued by her suggestion that the frequency of bined with the peculiarities of the legal system designed to handle it, has created one of the most invasive areas of American law. The discussion recalls Dr. Morse’s earlier book...

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is expected to address the topic of his Mormon faith in a speech at the George Bush Library in College Station, Texas, tomorrow. The parisons are being made to President John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, who gave a speech in 1960 to assuage the concerns of American protestants over papal influence in the White House. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association can be found here. In addition, there is also a link for...

Via ABC News: In the United States, they found that divorced households spent 46 percent more per capita on electricity and 56 percent more on water than married households did. According to the study, if divorced households could have the same resource efficiency as their married counterparts, they would need 38 million fewer rooms, use 73 billion fewer kilowatt hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water in 2005 alone. More: But Raoul Felder, a prominent New York divorce...

Are farmers hooked on pork? Jordan Ballor and Ray Nothstine look at the current battle over farm subsidies. “By encouraging the production of modities, the government is creating a cycle of dependency that undermines entrepreneurial initiative,” they write. Read the mentary here. ...

Recently the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, one of the many Catholic universities in Rome, drew together church leaders and scientists from around the globe to discuss the nitty-gritty of embryology in a three day conference on bioethics, “Ontogeny and Human Life.” The presentations ranged from juridical and biomedical topics to the philosophical and theological aspects of developing persons. (A conference program is available in PDF form here.) I was unable to attend all of the sessions, but some of the...

Add another crisis to the list of problems caused by climate change – a lack of jet parking at small international airports. To be fair, this isn’t a direct consequence of climate change, but it wouldn’t be a problem in Bali, Indonesia right now if not for the big UN climate change shindig that’s going on. Via Newsbusters, a report on the urgent situation: Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura – the management of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport are...

What’s behind the stunning defeat of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez in a popular referendum this week? Undoubtedly, he overestimated the appeal of his “21st century socialism” among Latin Americans. A new poll also shows that the most trusted institution in Latin America is not the government — but the Catholic Church. Read the mentary here. ...