The pictures of oil-encrusted seagulls and cranes from the Gulf of Mexico glimpse only the surface of the death and destruction beneath the sea from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Marine biologists fear for shrimp, oysters, crabs and untold varieties…

Wages stagnate. Unemployment hovers near 10 percent. Jobs trickle overseas. Wall Street gets bailed out. CEOs divide billions. Folks feel anger. The result: Tea Parties.
Based on the Boston Tea Party, an historic icon of resistance to an imposed British…

Because false personal and economic choices led to the global financial crisis, Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate , addresses the fundamental principles regarding the authentic development of people. The encyclical primarily focuses on solidarity with the billions…

The Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff bilked investors out of $50 billion. Many of his victims thought so highly of his investment skills they pulled rank to become his clients. The man with the magic portfolio model reported 10-12 percent…

When Ashley Judd recently spoke before a crowd of 800 demonstrators during the “I Love Mountains” rally in Frankfort, Ky., she projected an image of Appalachia different from the stereotypes normally seen on most newscasts.
She referenced the beauty of…

The Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) is distributing a DVD, “Climate Change: Our Faith Response,” to all 27 Catholic dioceses in the Appalachian region. The 10-minute DVD is intended for religious education classes and comes with a study guide to…

With the recent spike in gasoline prices, politicians and pundits have begun calling again for energy independence for America. Ethanol refiners continue lobbying Congress for massive subsidies while electric utilities and coal producers promote clean coal and a nuclear renaissance.…

The U.S. spends more on defense than all other nations combined. Considering the basic budget for the Defense Department — that covers salaries, operations, equipment and the supplemental budget that pays for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — defense…

Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has the wealth gap between the rich and poor in the United States been wider. With 469 American billionaires, the richest 1 percent of Americans own 33.4 percent of all U.S. wealth measured as stocks, bonds, cash, real estate and personal possessions. The bottom 90 percent of all Americans divide only 30.4 percent of the wealth among them. While 37 million Americans live in poverty, most breadwinners among them have jobs and some have two or more. The numbers seemingly measure only the economic gap, but on deeper reflection they indicate a disturbing trend: the diminishing of America's middle class.

Because Congress failed last year to pass comprehensive immigration reform, 2008 began with a patch quilt of state laws and local ordinances that reflect a national confusion about dealing with immigration. On the one hand, Lake Havasu, Arizona, like a…