The Emperor Theodosius does public penance for his own scandal before the bishop St. Ambrose.

Ray Pennings recently wrote a thoughtful reflection at The Cardus Daily on the recent surge in (exposed) political scandals, Canadian and American. He bemoans that “the current version of democracy isn’t looking all that attractive right now,” writing,

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While enjoying time off this weekend, why not take some time to learn more about America’s military sacrifice in defense of liberty? Many of the best books I’ve ever read have been about American military history. When I worked for former Congressman Gene Taylor in Gulfport, Miss. one of my favorite parts of my job while working constituent services for veterans was listening to stories about battles from places like Okinawa, Khe Sanh, and Hue City. I’ve read all of the books compiled below and all of them tell magnificent stories of virtue, honor, sacrifice, and leadership. Obviously this is not a comprehensive list but I worked at including different conflicts and service branches. While I could expand it, I’m asking readers to add your own recommendations in the comment section.

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About a decade ago I joined a couple of other semi-clueless entrepreneurs in starting a regional newspaper in East Texas. Although I had always been a praying man, I found a lot more to pray about while starting a business: praying we’d make payroll, praying we’d find advertisers, praying the newspaper industry wouldn’t collapse before our next edition, etc.

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Don Boudreaux  and Mark J. Perry at Cafe Hayek are here to tell you: life in the 1950s for America’s middle class is not the wonderland we might like to think.

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At The Gospel Coalition’s 2013 National Conference, Tim Keller kicked off a Faith at Work post-conference by exploring what it means to be a Christian in the marketplace.

Keller argues that we have to view our work through the larger Biblical story of Creation > Fall > Redemption > Restoration. If God is the creator of all things, and if through Christ all things are made new, that process of restoration must include our work.

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Morality and Economic Freedom: A Response to Gregg
Robert T. Miller, Public Discourse

Aristotelian-Thomistic moral philosophy doesn’t imply that every economy should be capitalist.

Natural Law and the Economy: A Reply to Miller
Samuel Gregg, Public Discourse

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AllAfrica.com published a press release from the Guttmacher Institute, the research division of Planned Parenthood, summarizing a new study that “the poorest countries are lagging far behind higher-income developing countries in meeting the demand for modern contraception. Between 2003 and 2012, the total number of women wanting to avoid pregnancy and in need of contraception increased from 716 million to 867 million, with growth concentrated among women in the 69 poorest countries where modern method use was already very low.”

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As part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) “Fortnight For Freedom” campaign, the USCCB has enumerated a number of threats to Americans’ religious liberty. Besides the on-going battle with the Obama Administration regarding the HHS mandate and the gutting of funding to Catholic programs that fight human trafficking, the bishops want us to be aware of these perils to religious liberty:

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Adopting a child can be a laborious, time-consuming, and expensive process. So why is the IRS trying to make it even more laborious, time-consuming, and expensive? As David French notes, in 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent:

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People with autism frequently have a difficult time socially: they don’t always pick up on social “cues” most of us take for granted such as vocal inflections, facial expressions, gestures and maintaining eye contact. In terms of finding suitable jobs, this can be an obstacle. However, there are entrepreneurs who actively seek out the autistic as employees.

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