We have more breaking news on the National Security Agency’s data collection programs. On the day that President Obama is set to announce an overhaul of how the Agency stores telephone data,  The Guardian has a story up on the agency’s global collection of text messages. One must assume the two events are related. The Guardian, […]

We’ve had tons of economic news worth highlighting over the last month, but Christmas offered much more fun than writing blog posts.  So here is a quick review of several economic issues that will continue to be issues in 2014. First up is the Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as the first female Federal Reserve Chair […]

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) held a long press conference yesterday, attempting to squelch a burgeoning scandal. People in Christie’s inner circle apparently used the Governor’s office to discomfit a political rival, and the fallout could be dramatic. Email exchanges show that Christie aids ordered lane closures during peak travel times around Fort Lee, NJ, and […]

In this new year it is always useful to take stock of where we are and have been, but more helpful is it to take a renewed look at who God is and why it matters.  For Christians 2013 has been a mixed bag, or worse, depending on one’s disposition.  We read of persecution of […]

Well, it seems the third in a series of blogs on “Legislating Morality?” has elicited a few comments on the, shall we say, opposing side of the issue.  So in the interest of fairness and sympathy I will try to clarify in this blog a couple of issues. The two most controversial issues I raised […]

In the first two blogs, I have begun the attempt to initiate greater reflection on the origins, role, authority, limits and functions of government, as well as our place as Christians under the authority of government.  I said at the start that absolute answers were limited.  This is true mainly because the Scriptures are relatively […]

It is not merely a fallacy, therefore, but a sham humanitarianism, and a cruel deception, always to insist on wage-rate increases whether or not conditions justify them, and always to resist wage-rate reductions whether or not conditions require them. From Hazlitt’s fantastic dissection of the whole system of Keynesian fallacies, in The Failure of the […]

In the end, I agree with Phil Robertson, but I also think A & E is right to put him on hiatus or to cancel Duck Dynasty if it chooses to do so. But, if A & E does pull the plug on the most popular show on cable television, the decision will reveal the […]

My colleague Jeff Haymond wrote in a comment on my recent blog, “Legislating Morality?  Christians, Law and Politics,” that I had raised questions but not given answers.  He was correct.  So now that he has prodded me for answers I will put myself in jeopardy of all sorts of criticism by offering some tentative answers.  […]

It is not so much the asceticism of biblical teaching, as its call to creativity and inventiveness, that accounts for the dynamism of Jewish and Christian civilization, including economic dynamism. While some aspects of asceticism are certainly helpful for a culture, such as the idea of deferred gratification, what really makes civilization thrive is when […]