Google faces free speech resolution

Via Slashdot, news comes today that Google’s next shareholders meeting will feature a vote on a shareholder resolution to protect free speech and combat censorship by intrusive governments. According to the proxy statement, Proposal Number 5 would require the recognition of “minimum standards,” including, that “the company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. Continue Reading...

Global Warming Consensus Watch, Volume II

This week in the PowerBlog’s Global Warming Consensus Watch: A final pass at the Sheryl Crow/Toilet Paper controversy, just to ensure that the issue is wiped clean; The fight against climate change goes to 11; Global warming causes everything, and we’ve got professional athletes to prove it; and finally, what – if anything – are those carbon offsets offsetting? Continue Reading...

We’re doomed. Just accept it.

Whoever wrote this deserves an award for managing to keep all of the various threads together. It’s almost a perfect storm of public policy ineptitude: Just in case you lost track of the bouncing ball, here it is: Virginia has finally put the crisis-ignoring haters of truth in their place by passing a roads package to encourage the use of cars that are destroying the planet, so people can reach their sprawling subdivisions that Virginia is trying to keep in check with tax-subsidized conservation easements that will grow less popular as corn grows more expensive thanks to ethanol mandates from a federal government that is also mandating a cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay whose pollution will be made worse by corn farming. Continue Reading...

Archbishop resigns board over Sheryl Crow

Tim Townsend, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reports: ST. LOUIS — Rock singer Sheryl Crow was coming home to Missouri this weekend to sing her polished, roots-rock songs at the Fox Theater to help raise money for children with cancer. Continue Reading...

The corporate milk wars

Biotech giant Monsanto has added its considerable influence to the push to restrict or ban labeling of dairy products as free from added rBST, a hormone commonly used to induce cows to produce more milk. Continue Reading...

Virginia Tech shooting reveals America’s new ‘At Risk’ group

Anthony Bradley looks at America’s children of privilege and the influences that have put so many of them into crisis. “There is mounting evidence that we are faced with a new reality in America: educated, middle-class kids represent a new ‘at risk’ group, as both perpetrators and victims of peer-related violence,” Bradley writes. Continue Reading...

Banking: Latin America’s Achilles heel

Despite strong overall growth, a number of internal problems, including excessive regulation, continue to limit wealth creation throughout Latin America, reports Samuel Gregg. The regulations Dr. Gregg examines include those on starting a business and on banking. Continue Reading...

Black unemployment drop

Jerry Bowyer at NRO highlights a remarkable statistic with this “BuzzChart”: The unemployment rate among black Americans has fallen 2.7 percentage points since April 2003 (the data come from the National Urban League’s annual “State of Black America” report). Continue Reading...

Malaria awareness day

Today is Malaria Awareness Day. Today’s edition of Zondervan>To the Point has a plethora of related links (look under “Extra Points”). Be sure to also check out Acton’s award-winning ad campaign, which focuses in part on impacting malaria. Continue Reading...

Stepping up

Grand Rapids seems to be establishing a precedent for private corporations and individuals stepping up to the plate in the face of budget cuts and financial difficulty. The most recent example is the announcement that all six city pools will be open this summer, rather than just three. Continue Reading...