Writing in the Detroit Free Press, reporters Joe Swickard and Pat Anstett describe the life and June 3 passing of Jack Kevorkian. Long before he made a name for himself as a “assisted suicide advocate,” Kevorkian was known to the nurses at Pontiac General Hospital in Michigan as “Dr. Death” for his bizarre experiments.

Read more on Rev. Sirico: Kevorkian’s ‘Terminal TV’…

One might think that Muslim women, in traditionally Muslim countries, are under severe constrictions when it comes to becoming entrepreneurs.  After all, in Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive, and in places like Iran, women are forced to veil themselves under the law.  Do such restrictions create undue burdens for women wanting to start and maintain businesses in the Muslim world?

Read more on Muslim Women and Entrepreneurship…

Writing in the Sacramento Bee, Margaret A. Bengs cites Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s Heritage Foundation essay “The Moral Basis for Economic Liberty” in her column on faith communities and government budget battles.

Read more on The Welfare State and the Moral High Ground…

My contribution to this week’s Acton News & Commentary. Earth Day is Friday. Sign up for Acton’s free weekly email newsletter here.

Humility, Prudence, and Earth Day

By John Couretas

At a World Council of Churches conference last year on the French-Swiss border, much was made of the “likelihood of mass population displacement” driven by climate change and the mass migration of people fleeing zones inundated by rising seas. While the WCC acknowledged that “there are no solid estimates” about the likely numbers of what it called climate refugees, that didn’t stop assembled experts from throwing out some guesses: 20 million, hundreds of millions, or 1 billion people.

Read more on Commentary: Humility, Prudence, and Earth Day…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Do Less with Less: What the History of Federal Debt and Tax Leverage Teaches,” I reflect on how the federal government has lived beyond its means for decades. This reality is especially important to recognize as we approach Tax Day this year as well as in the context of debates about how to address the public debt crisis.

Read more on Acton Commentary: Do Less with Less…

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, William McGurn looks at some of the root causes of the catastrophic decline of the city of Detroit. Census information released last week showed the city — once the fifth largest in America and a place which had such awe-inspiring industrial might that President Roosevelt labeled it the Arsenal of Democracy — had lost more than 25 percent of its population in the last decade. Detroit’s population fell to 713,777 in 2010, the lowest since 1910 (two years after Henry Ford’s Model T was introduced). The city, vasts stretches of which are depopulated, is now smaller than Austin, Tex., Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla.

Read more on WSJ cites Rev. Sirico in ‘A Requiem for Detroit’…

A new commentary from Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg. Sign up here to get the latest opinion pieces delivered to your email inbox on Wednesday with the free weekly Acton News & Commentary.

Read more on Deficit Denial, American-Style…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Back to Budget Basics,” I argue that the public debt crisis facing the federal government is such that “All government spending, including entitlements, defense, and other programs, must be subjected to rigorous and principled analysis.” This piece summarizes much of my analysis of various Christian budget campaigns over the last week (here, here, and here).

Read more on Back to Budget Basics…

While there is much to applaud in the Center for Public Justice and Evangelicals for Social Action’s “A Call for Intergenerational Justice,” the lack of discussion of the problem of economic growth is troubling. I believe Don Peck is correct when he writes in The Atlantic:

Read more on ‘A Call for Intergenerational Justice’ and the Question of Economic Growth…

I’m not sure I have ever really encountered the term intergenerational justice before this discussion over “A Call for Intergenerational Justice,” at least in any substantive way. This unfamiliarity is what lay behind my initial caveat regarding the term, my concern that it not be understood as “code for something else.”

Read more on Abortion and Intergenerational Justice…