A United Nations panel recently released a report on the single most important environmental problem in the world today — and yet you’ve probably read nothing about it in the news. Instead, you’ve likely heard about another U.N. report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That report claims that global warming could have a “widespread impact” by the year 2100. Yet in 2012 millions of people died — one in eight of total global deaths — as a result...

Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome, was tapped by BBC World News last week for his analysis of the meeting between Pope Francis and President Obama at the Vatican. We’ve got the video, and you can watch it below. ...

Admittedly, this writer attended a viewing of Noah last week with trepidation. A March 17 New Yorker profile on director Darren Aronofsky gave good cause for suspicion the film would be yet another Hollywood environmentalist screed wherein humanity is depicted as a cancer on God’s creation. Instead, the film (largely) avoids such proclamations in favor of some pretty intense – make that very intense – family psychodrama and a spun-from-whole-cloth story involving Watchers, clan rivalry and allusions to other Old...

Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico joins host Dennis Miller on The Dennis Miller Show to discuss President Obama’s recent visit in Rome with Pope Francis, and the differences between the current president’s relationship with the Roman Pontiff and that of Reagan and Pope John Paul II. They also discuss the PovertyCure initiative, after which Dennis declares “Bobby Sirico” to be a “good cat,” which is high praise ing from the former host of SNL’s Weekend Update. The audio...

I am not concerned how my meat is butchered. I prefer my meat to be raised organically, and I like it cooked. Other than that, I’m not too fussy, but I don’t have to be. My religious faith doesn’t have anything to say about how meat is butchered. If a person is Jewish or Muslim, however, this is a big deal. And many Jews and Muslims take it as seriously as I take the tenets of my faith. And while...

Like the proverbial sword of Damocles, the Obamacare deadline looms. Today is the last day to sign up…sort of. I’ll explain that momentarily. First, let’s look at the proverb mentioned above, lest there be any misunderstanding. As classics scholar Daniel Mendelsohn says, there is often confusion as to exactly what this allusion means. The real point of the story is very clearly a moral parable. It’s not just, oh, something terrible is going to happen, but it’s about realizing that...

“If a society regards governmental manipulation of money as the antidote to economic challenges,” writes Acton research director Samuel Gregg at Public Discourse, “a type of poison will work its way through the body politic, undermining justice and mon good.” Money: it’s on everyone’s mind sometimes. In recent years, however, many have suggested there are some fundamental problems with the way money presently functions in our economies. No one is seriously denying money’s unique ability to serve simultaneously as a...

20th Century historian Dumas Malone praised Thomas Jefferson as the exemplar of liberty. “To all who cherish freedom and abhor tyranny in any form, [Jefferson] is an abiding hope that springs eternal,” declared Malone. Jefferson crafted our creed as Americans and once wrote, “Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.” In the April issue of Carolina Journal, I review Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. You can read the review on page 20 of the issue...

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties are panies with consciences. It is that sense of morality that has put both panies before the Supreme Court right now. panies, in accordance to their understanding of right and wrong, do not want to be forced (by government mandate) to pay for employees’ birth control and abortions. Should the government have a say in pany’s conscience? Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont-based ice cream makers, have a conscience. Their mission has three parts: product,...

At the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talks with Genevieve Wood about challenges he faces from the Obama administration on Second Amendment rights, energy development, economic freedom and religious liberty issues. Days after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two religious liberty cases challenging an Obamacare mandate, Jindal said he found the government’s actions troubling. “America didn’t create religious liberty. Religious liberty created America,” he said. “It’s very dangerous for the federal government to presume they...