Current Events

The Indiana Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the state's school voucher program—the most expansive program of its kind in America—is constitutional despite complaints that much of the money involved goes to religious schools.

According to chief justice Brent Dickson, the voucher program is constitutional because the state funds "do not directly benefit religious schools but rather directly benefit lower-income families with school children."  The voucher program provides public assistance for low- and middle-income families to send their children to private institutions, including both religious and non-religious schools. However, the Indiana State Teachers Association has "suggested the program is a backhanded method of funding religious activity," because nearly all of the funds have been directed toward religious schools.  But the court's ruling to uphold the program's constitutionality was unanimous.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2013/03/broadest-school-vouchers-in-the-nation-upheld-by-indiana-supreme-court.html

In 1990, the global middle class – defined as earning from $10 to $100 a day – comprised 1.8 billion people, and a clear majority lived in Europe and North America. By 2020, projections say the global middle class will have expanded to 3.2 billion people, with more than half living in the Asia and Pacific region.

By 2030, the U.N. report says, the middle class is likely to comprise 4.9 billion people, with two-thirds in Asia, not only in populous India and China but also in Mongolia, Laos and Bangladesh, among others. At that point, 80 percent of the world’s middle class will live in what is now considered the developing world.

Not only are citizens there growing better off, but their governments have amassed ever-greater financial reserves, Malik said. Some $6.8 trillion in reserves are now in the hands of developing nations, compared with $3.5 trillion in the central banks of developed countries.

Social policies that empower women, provide more equitable health care and better education are key factors in the expansion of the middle class, the study found. But technology also has been a huge contributor to the expansion of wealth.  [I would add: enterpreneurial Capitalism and these are all signs of the Kingdom. -CF]

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/14/5263586/un-predicts-huge-expansion-of.html#storylink=cpy

The post below is written by an editor of the New America Media- an outlet for hundreds of ethnic print media- a good resource to check out

http://newamericamedia.org/

The center shifts- what the religious world is going to look like: A Muslim Paris and London? and a Christian Latin America and a Secular USA? 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0317-rodriguez-pope-immigration-religion-20130317,0,4181027.story

What "Holder should have said is that the U.S. would only be able to use drones on U.S. soil under the same conditions it might use military force domestically — to stop an invasion by a foreign country or an attack. And it is not because due process somehow allows it, but because the nation is entitled to use military force against foreign attack. So it is not just December 7 or September 11 that uniquely call for military force because the U.S. is responding to an attack on the nation. What about an invasion, as in the War of 1812, or the Civil War, or, on a smaller scale, a situation like the Mumbai terrorist attacks where groups of heavily armed terrorists attacked high-profile, civilian targets not with airliners, but with light arms. If the federal government can use military force, such as troops or helicopters to stop those kinds of attacks, surely it can use drones. But where Holder and this administration are causing fear is because, if they believe the use of drones now, abroad, meet law-enforcement standards, then they believe they could use drones in similar situations domestically to enforce the laws, not to respond to attack. And that is manifestly wrong as a legal matter as well as mistaken as a matter of policy."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/342335/holder-drones-and-due-process-john-yoo

The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. Though Washington still isn’t their match in terms of population, it’s gaining on them in terms of economic power and national importance.

The federal government’s relentless expansion has made Washington, D.C., America’s real Second City.  ... it’s the town of the most important government there is, and that distinction matters. Washington is home to a massive number of embassies and international institutions, of course.

But what solidifies Washington’s emerging status as America’s new Second City isn’t its economic performance or its emerging global-city profile. Both of those are secondary effects of the real change in Washington: the increasingly intrusive control of the federal government over American life.  An array of programs—the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank acts governing finance; the government’s auto-industry takeover; the EPA’s declaration that carbon dioxide is a pollutant—takes regulation to new levels of detail and intrusiveness, even extending to the micromanagement of particular companies. The trend began long before President Obama took office, but its quintessence is Obamacare, an annexation by the federal government of one-sixth of the American economy via 2,000 pages of byzantine legislation, not counting the thousands of pages of implementing regulations still to come.

All this intrusion emanates from the legislative and especially the regulatory machinery in Washington.

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_1_washington-dc.html

In the current sluggish economic environment, the remarkable history of American dynamism is thus more instructive than ever. America’s economic might is rooted in an entrepreneurial culture and a passion for innovation and risk-taking, traits nourished by the nation’s commitment to the rule of law, property rights, and a predictable set of tax and regulatory policies. Policymakers have lost sight of these fundamental principles in recent years. 

Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor is the author of Economics Does Not Lie: A Defense of the Free Market in a Time of Crisis

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_4_american-prosperity.html