Over the last two days, Italians have been heading to the polls to select a new parliament and a new government. As I’ve already noted, despite its commitment to moral and ethical issues, the Catholic Church in Italy does not have a favorite political party.

Read more on Classically Liberal, Pro-Life, and Isolated…

Awhile back in a PowerBlog exclusive I asserted, “Many, if not most, young evangelicals are just as conservative on life issues as their forebears.”

Here are some references to back that up:

Read more on Young, Conservative, and Evangelical…

After the jump is the (hyperlinked) text of a column I filed last week from GodblogCon. Here are some related items worth exploring:

• “Evangelicals and Evil Empires: Religious voters have long had an interest in foreign policy,” OpinionJournal (HT: CT Liveblog).
• “Rudy’s Gamble: Giuliani’s audacious strategy for the nomination,” OpinionJournal.
• “Evangelical flocks on their own at the polls,” LA Times (HT: J-Walking).
• “On second thought, conservatives give Huckabee an amen,” LA Times.
• “Clarifying Media Distortions,” Focus on the Family.
• “Robertson for Rudy,” God’s Politics.
• “The Robertson Effect?” Townhall.com.
• A 1992 letter from Ron Weddington, co-counsel on Roe v. Wade, to then president-elect Bill Clinton, arguing for government provision of “vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions…RU 486 and conventional abortions” (PDF) among the poor (HT: Judicial Watch). Compare this with Giuliani’s position as outlined in his 1989 speech.

I’ll also add that I discussed this topic with Hunter Baker, a columnist for ChristianityToday.com and contributor to Redstate and the AmSpec blog. Here’s what he said,

My own feeling is that Mayor Giuliani is probably the most thoroughly tested and proven politician in the United States today and that he is well-equipped for the job. However, I do not support his bid, despite his clear competency. I feel a Giuliani nomination would be a major setback for pro-lifers in the sense that neither of the major parties would have a pro-life candidate at the top of the ticket, something that hasn’t happened for over a quarter of a century. In a time when we are considering something that seems to me to be a unique form of cannibalism (embryonic stem-cell research), I don’t want to see the Republican party back off on the life issue. Rather, I’m looking forward to a time when pro-life is a given stance among candidates just as racial equality is today.

Read more on Giuliani and the Godbloggers…

I’m not typically a big fan of litigation. But that option needs to be there for some cases that can’t be solved in other ways. It’s a big stick that should only be used when absolutely necessary and only when appropriate.

Read more on A Pro-Life Club and the Public School…

For some reason, I had never thought about what pro-life socialist policies might look like. But today, Jim Wallis’s Sojourner’s blog covered a Los Angeles Times story about a strategy shift in the Democratic party to support a House bill “designed not only to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but also to encourage women who do conceive to carry to term.”

Read more on Pro-Life Socialism?…

In today’s WaPo, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson opines on Senator Barack Obama’s recent address to a gathering of UCC faithful (HT).

In “The Gospel Of Obama,” Gerson writes, “By speaking at a gathering of the United Church of Christ — among the most excruciatingly progressive of Protestant denominations — he was preaching to the liberal choir. And he did not effectively reach out to an evangelical movement in transition.”

Read more on Gerson on Obama at the UCC…

I thought this was an interesting bit at the intersection of morality and economics. An insurance brokerage firm, K&B Underwriters, is sponsoring a physicians’ survey designed to determine whether doctors who work within a “culture of life” framework (e.g., eschewing abortion) are less prone to malpractice suits than those who don’t. The company’s hypothesis is that pro-life physicians are indeed “safer” in this way, with the implication that pro-life medical practices could be one criterion taken into account when calculating malpractice insurance. It’s a controversial claim, to be sure, but an intriguing approach—and the results so far seem to be supporting the hypothesis.

Read more on Medical Malpractice and Abortion…

Welcome to the latest edition of the PowerBlog’s GLOBAL WARMING CONSENSUS WATCH, a weekly news recap where we highlight the continuing strength and enduring permanence of the universal scientific consensus on the causes and effects of global warming.

THIS WEEK: A fungus among us – again; more on Mars; are weather satellites creating more hurricanes?; Live Earth isn’t totally worthless; Laurie David is the GREATEST HERO IN AMERICAN HISTORY; and human sacrifice on the altar of environmental religion.

All this can be yours – after the jump! Read more on Global Warming Consensus Watch, Vol. III…

From the “we had to destroy the village to save it” department, check out this item from the Huffington Post by Dave Johnson, “A Global Warming Suggestion: Fewer Babies.”

It’s pretty indefatigable logic: if there are no people to be affected by environmental catastrophe, then the problem has been avoided. Johnson writes, “Yes, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages and starvation by 2080 — but only if those hundreds of millions of people are alive in the first place.”

Read more on Global Warming and Population Control…

Our 2006 year in review series concludes with the fourth quarter:

October

“Do You See More than Just a ‘Carbon Footprint’?” Jordan J. Ballor

It’s a fair question to ask, I think, of those who are a part of the radical environmentalist/population control political lobby. It’s also a note of caution to fellow Christians who want to build bridges with those folks…there is a complex of interrelated policies that are logically consistent once you assume the tenets of secular environmentalism….

Read more on 2006 in Review, 4th Quarter…