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ED. NOTE: As this article is posted, Pope Francis begins his visit to the United States. In his encyclical released in June of this year, the pope singled out air conditioning as being a "harmful habit" that is a symbol of rampant capitalism that is blind to the plight of the poor and disadvantaged. These comments by Matt Michel, CEO of Service Roundtable, serve as a timely response. ————— Since becoming pontiff, Pope Francis has repeatedly made the news for his criticism and condemnation of capitalism and free markets. Worse, in his encyclical, he singled out air conditioning as particularly...

Jumping into the issues of the day, Pope Francis opened his visit to the United States with a strong call Wednesday for action to combat climate change, calling it a problem that “can no longer be left to a future generation.” President Barack Obama, in turn, hailed the pontiff as a moral force who is “shaking us out of our complacency” with reminders to care for the poor and the planet. The White House mustered all the pageantry it had to offer as the pope arrived at the White House before an adoring crowd of thousands and a nation that...

I've been a Roman Catholic since 1954. I have great respect for Pope Francis. When it comes to matters of faith and morals, what he says, goes. But when it comes to politics and economics, the pope is about as far from infallible as anyone can get. For example, he was in Cuba earlier this week, meeting informally with Fidel Castro and touring the island to say Masses and meet with priests. Apparently the pope was having such a good time he forgot that for more than half a century Cuba has been a rotten communist prison camp and his...

In a 3,404-word address, he used only 75 words on the two topics. Pope Francis touched on many topics in his speech to Congress, but conservatives may have expected him to say more about abortion and same-sex marriage. During his historic speech at a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis hit upon a variety of issues that have defined the Catholic church: protecting the environment, helping the poor, addressing the plight of immigrants, abolishing the death penalty and taking a stand against the proliferation of the weapons trade, to name a few. Yet, while the pope had strong...

Mr. Vice-President, Mr. Speaker, Honorable Members of Congress, Dear Friends, I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in "the land of the free and the home of the brave". I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility. Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this...

While delivering the first address from a pontiff to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis touched on topics ranging from the plight of immigrants to climate change and the death penalty. Many of his comments were lightly delivered and unlikely to elicit much controversy, though the reaction might be different if they were given by another world leader. Case in point: Toward the beginning of his address, Francis alluded to religious extremism, noting that "no religion is immune" from it. His full quote as prepared for delivery: "Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred...

Believe it or not, the one line he devoted to abortion was one line more than he devoted to the subject of Jesus, who wasn’t mentioned at all in this morning’s speech according to the transcript. Maybe that was a deliberate choice made by Francis, to stick to politics and universal principles before a domestic television audience with many millions of non-Christians. (He did mention Moses.) Or maybe he just had more important things that he wanted to talk about, like the environment.This is exactly right: The Holy Father's politics, as w/his predecessors, defy easy right-left categorization. Not sure...

Pope Francis on Thursday urged the U.S. Congress to reject a "mindset of hostility" on immigration and to recognize people who wish to move to the United States as people who are trying to improve their lives and those of their families.

IN HIS visit to the United States beginning Tuesday, Pope Francis will meet not just President Obama and Congress but also those marginalized by our society: homeless people, immigrants, refugees and even the inmates of a jail. He’s expected to raise topics that many Americans will find challenging, such as his harsh critique of capitalism. His supporters say it’s all part of the role the pope has embraced as an advocate for the powerless, one that has earned him admiration from both Catholics and some outside the church. How, then, to explain Pope Francis’s behavior in Cuba? The pope is...

Gov. Chris Christie wants the leader of New Jersey's National Guard to shape up. The Republican governor has given Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff 90 days to slim down and meet his obligations. The action comes after Christie's staff told The Washington Post that the governor was unaware the general had been reprimanded by the Pentagon about his weight and for repeatedly dodging physical-fitness tests.

Glenn Beck has taken a lot of heat, even among people who don’t like Trump, for suggesting that tea partiers who are supporting Trump are racist. Having read what Beck said, I have to say that he is exactly right, although really the point he was making wasn’t about racism at all.....................What Glenn Beck is essentially saying is that the tea partiers who support Trump are exactly like hockey fans in that way. They claimed all this time to hate Obama for what he did, not who he was. And yet, here comes along a guy who supports all those...

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) brought his own armed guards to a Washington DC anti-gun rally sponsored by Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun advocacy group Everytown for America. The Governor saw no irony or hypocrisy in his action. “First of all, DC is a very dangerous place with a high rate of gun related violence,” McAuliffe said. “It would be foolhardy for me to expose myself without having some sort of protection. Second, a governor is no ordinary, expendable average schmo. My elevated position of power makes me a target. I have a right to defend myself against anti-government radicals.” McAuliffe also...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton posted a message Thursday saying that government officials should "uphold the law – end of story." [Snip] The message from the former secretary of State came in response to news that a judge had found Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

I have always believed that global warming is a gigantic scam, driven by greed and lust for power. Now comes the shocking news, via Steve Milloy writing on Breitbart, that following President Obama’s use of CO2 emissions as a weapon to drive major coal companies near bankruptcy, the ultimate politically connected speculator George Soros is buying up stock in major coal producers on the cheap. I predicted in this column last week that the left wasn’t going to kill off the coal industry so much as it was going to steal it. That prediction is already becoming true courtesy of billionaire...

Erick Erickson, the man who banned Donald Trump from his superficial conservative event, alleging that Trump said that Megyn Kelly must have had PMS during the debate, said that Mary had PMS when she was pregnant with Jesus Christ. He said this back in 2012, years prior to Trump’s statement on Kelly. His statement was found on twitter and retweeted by Dan Scavino, one Trump’s campaigner. Erick Erickson@EWErickson My wife tells me that Mary had PMS on the way to Bethlehem. Says the Bible says Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way there. Hahaha. WOW. This blasphemer is an absolute...

President Barack Obama told a group of young African leaders on Monday that killing others to harvest body parts was a “foolish tradition.” At the Young African Leaders Initiative summit in Washington D.C., President Obama was asked about the killing of Albinos in Africa and the harvesting of their body parts for ritual purposes. “Persons with Albinism in Africa are being killed and their body parts harvested for ritual purposes,” a woman in the audience said. “My request to you is to raise this issue with heads of state of African countries to bring these atrocities to an end.” Obama...

Want to eat genetically modified food? Expect a number of voices from the American left to tell you to avoid it. They claim it causes all sorts of maladies. To be sure, there are some voices on the right who say the same. But mostly it is socially engineering leftists who think it should be avoided. The left is OK denying Africans of corn bred to survive drought. Better the Africans die than eat corn bred to survive heat and lack of rain. For that matter, the left would also prefer Africans die of malaria than spray DDT. It is...

Lots of social and mainstream media attention is paid in the media (especially in Florida) when "luminaries" like Gloria Estefan and Pit Bull....their Cuban heritage makes them experts, apparently, on social and political matters.... A few months ago, the Estefan family hosted an Obama fund raiser in their home.....and Pit Bull recently was praised in the Miami media for openly endorsing the threat on Donald Trump's life made by a Mexican drug kingpin. So it sure is surprising that these publicity hounds...people who CLAIM to love freedom of expression and human rights have BEEN SO VERY SILENT regarding their hero...

In case anyone entertained doubts, Hillary Rodham Clinton's Monday speech on the economy offered proof positive that the center of the Democratic Party has moved left. Her address contained all the elements of the party's analysis of 21st-century American capitalism: • Economic rewards go only to the rich ("successful CEOs and money managers," as she put it). • Corporations reward shareholders and top executives at the expense of investment and employees. • The decimation of unions has left workers powerless to demand their share of the revenue they produce. • Sluggishness of investment, worker income and consumption has made the...