The concentration of agribusiness has resulted in record production while hunger continues to grow.

The relatives of James Foley report that US officials told them that paying a ransom for him would be a crime.

This policy is just and necessary to avoid encouraging the taking of more hostages. Foley's relatives, mad with grief, would have saved Foley by endangering others; the officials prevented this. It's not that they didn't understand what it's like to be a relative of a hostage. Rather, it's that they recognized their duty was not solely to that family. I only wish President Reagan could have been prosecuted for ransoming hostages from terrorists.

The one doubt that occurs to me is whether ransoming hostages might encourage terrorism less than letting them be used in the snuff videos that are effective propaganda for ISIS. The current policy was not chosen for a situation like this, which nobody envisioned.

Meanwhile, it is foolish to criticize the US government for not rescuing Foley. I'm sure the Pentagon was looking for a chance to rescue these hostages, but that is much easier said than done. Many attempts to rescue hostages have ended up killing them instead.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize US foreign policy, but we shouldn't endorse every criticism just because the US is its target.

A teenager in Pennsylvania faces two years in prison for faking oral sex with a statue of Jesus.

This law should certainly be unconstitutional. The right to offend people is part of freedom of speech.

China is systematically harassing and excluding foreign journalists, and pressuring their Chinese assistants to spy on them.

The US is not blemish-free in this area: it requires foreign journalists to get a special visa. The US should repeal this law so that it can effectively criticize other countries.

A study of unschoolers — people who were allowed as children to learn on their own for some years — shows that they turned out quite well as adults. They had no trouble getting into college or being successful there.

I suspect that one of the conditions for this to be successful was that the children did not feel the threat of poverty and were not surrounded by despair. It might not work for most children of the non-rich in the US today.