When is an unborn baby viable? The question is central to abortion law and to the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider. Dr. Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia for the murder of fetuses at his abortion clinic, forcing this question back to the political front burner: When is terminating the life of a fetus murder? According to this professional legal services website, abortion law in the U.S. i ...

Does violence rule our species? The barrage of international conflicts now in the headlines seems to suggest that violence may be the one language we have in common. Though we all speak it fluently, very few of us learned it in school. We didn’t have to study its “vocabulary” and “grammar rules” – no, it was much easier than that. Humans pick violence up by immersion and so we are all native speakers. From ...

As the summer winds down, we will enter the campaign season in earnest. Both political parties will hold their nominating conventions and do their best to frame the political decision facing us as a choice between good and evil. The fate of the nation, they will insist, hangs in the balance and good people must choose wisely or evil people will lead us down the road to perdition. Maybe they won’t use those ...

“Be Ashamed.” That’s the title of Erick Erickson’s post. Erickson, the popular conservative blogger at RedState.com, wants you to be ashamed. I have a very different reaction: I don’t want you to care. In fact, I think we should become un-ashamed. This time, Erickson’s call for shame is directed toward his fellow conservatives. Sunday night Politco.com published an exclusive story titled, “Exclusive: FBI pr ...

Sometimes you discover God in the most unlikely places. This belief was confirmed as I listened to an episode of NPR’s program “All Things Considered.” The particular episode was called “From Minister To Atheist: A Story Of Losing Faith.”  NPR’s Barbara Hagerty interviewed Teresa MacBain, and, as you can guess from the title of the episode, MacBain is a former minister who became an atheist. It brings up an ...

Good people want justice. Good people know that the world is broken and most of that brokenness is due to people committing acts of evil. When good people desire justice, they desire to set the world right from the consequences of evil. Justice is a good thing. But it is also a complicated thing. There is truth you might not suspect in the cliché that “Justice is blind,” because our desire for justice can b ...

This is a spiritual war. - Rick Santorum It’s Lent. For Christians, Lent is a time for spiritual warfare. Yup. I’m in a war. How do you wage spiritual warfare? Christians have two models for spiritual warfare: Jesus and Satan. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned us about one of those models in 2008 at a speech he made at Ave Maria University. The speech resurfaced this week on the Internet. Here are ...