Moral issues

Townhall.com Janice Shaw Crouse April 17, 2007

Jim Wallis has devoted his whole career to trying to force the round peg of leftist ideology into the square hole of biblical orthodoxy. When he wrote his “vision” designed to “transcend” the ideologies of the religious left and right, he ended up further polarizing instead of unifying the two evangelical movements. He rails against the “political language” of the right as well as the tendency of conservative evangelicals, in his opinion, to claim their use of scripture as authoritative. In so doing, Wallis hoists himself on his own petard.

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Acton’s Jordan Ballor jumps on the NCC’s silly “eco-justice” objections to bottled water

The IRD criticism of the NCC (discussed here earlier) is getting some good discussion at the Get Religion blog.

Ed. I like the airline and computer business and watch it. Here’s an interesting article on Boeing.

Townhall.com George Will January 18, 2007

CHICAGO — After an excellent year, Boeing is counting its blessings, which include its competitor. They also include an anticipated doubling of the commercial aviation market in the next 20 years, which will require 27,000 new planes costing $2.6 trillion.

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Forbes Richard C. Morais January 29, 2007

The demand for transplants can’t be met by altruistic organ banks, so Internet brokers are stepping into the breach. It’s not a pretty picture.

From his modest ranch home in the hills of Sun Valley, Calif., filled with didgeridoos picked up in Australia and German shepherd puppies, James Cohan, 66, sells organ transplant brokering services to the desperate. His customers face certain death if their diseased organs aren’t quickly swapped out. They find him on the Internet; his stated fee–$140,000 for a kidney and $290,000 for a heart, liver or lung–includes hospital and surgeon charges, and flights and accommodation for a fellow traveler, such as a nurse or spouse.

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Acton Institute Anthony B. Bradley August 23, 2006

[ … ]

The facts tell a powerful story: When the poor are invited to live as people with dignity, within structures of liberty, they will usually do so. Since the 1996 reforms child poverty has plummeted. Some 1.6 million fewer children live in poverty today than in 1995.

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Townhall.com Randy Hall April 7, 2006

Legislation approved Wednesday by the California Senate Judiciary Committee is “a sexual-agenda bomb dressed up as a child-caring Easter egg,” a conservative group charged.

SB 1437, which would amend the state’s education code by adding the words “gender” and “sexual orientation” to its anti-discrimination policy, would force school districts to “teach school children as young as kindergarten to accept and embrace transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality in all its forms,” according to Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF).

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Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship is destroying property rights across the country. We’ve noted in the past how it’s happened in the countryside, at sugar farms, on nature reserves, among the large and small corporations, and in apartment and office buildings. But these aren’t the only places – the destruction of property rights also is happening in the poorest neighborhoods.

In an unexpectedly good article, Alex Holland, a writer at Venezuelanalysis, a Chavista propaganda organ, unwittingly describes how even poor shantytown dwellerss with desperate need for title-deed ownership are being badly affected by collectivization, which is destroying the weak property rights these urban poor once had. The writer explains the horrible dynamic with perfect clarity and honesty and then ineptly defends it, making the Marxist propaganda easy for us to gloss over. Evidently, the facts on the ground were just too big for this writer.

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Article available for seven days only.
Wall Street Journal MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY December 30, 2005

“On May 27, [1966,] 166 Cubans — civilians and members of the military — were executed and submitted to medical procedures of blood extraction of an average of seven pints per person. This blood is sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint with the dual purpose of obtaining hard currency and contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression.

“A pint of blood is equivalent to half a liter. Extracting this amount of blood from a person sentenced to death produces cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. Once the blood is extracted, the person is taken by two militiamen on a stretcher to the location where the execution takes place.”

— InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, April 7, 1967
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MosNews

The Moscow Patriarchate has suspended relations with the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden after it decided to establish an official ceremony to bless homosexual couples, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

“We have received with great disappointment and grief the news that not only does the Lutheran Church of Sweden not oppose so-called homosexual marriages, but has even ruled to establish an official blessing ceremony,” the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church said in a statement at a session in Moscow.
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