According to Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, and Nina Shea in their book Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, Christians are the single most widely persecuted group in the world today. The authors write, "This persecution is targeted at all Christian faith traditions from Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant to liturgical, evangelical, and charismatic, including hundreds of small, little-known sects."

Oh, I know, I’m an ageist. But I don’t mean it that way. In fact, I firmly believe people in their twenties, officially one generation behind me, are better than my generation. What I mean by this is they are more altruistic, more international, more objective and less fearful than any generation in recent history. And yet, they are also delusional. And here’s why:

As the shadows lengthened around her family’s hut here in one of Kabul’s sprawling refugee camps, a slight 6-year-old girl ran in to where her father huddled with a group of elders near a rusty wood stove. Her father, Taj Mohammad, looked away, his face glum. If, as seems likely, Mr. Mohammad cannot repay his debt to a fellow camp resident a year from now, his daughter Naghma, a smiling, slender child with a tiny gold stud in her nose, will be forced to leave her family’s home forever to be married to the lender’s 17-year-old son.

Student fees have been something of a known irritant for years, often criticized as a kind of stealth, second tuition imposed on unsuspecting families. But such fees are still on the rise on many campuses. And though their names can border on the comical — i.e., the "student success fee" — there's nothing funny about how they can add up.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is organizing a political advocacy group with more than a dozen tech execs to push an ambitious Beltway agenda. Topping the agenda: immigration reform.

Hours after the chest-thumping Air Force leaders flew stealth bombers over South Korea, Kim Jong-Un has ordered North Korea's rocket units to be prepare for an attack on American bases. In the words of the country's state news agency, the 30-year-old leader "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation." This feels a little scary, doesn't it?

The Supreme Court appeared ready on Wednesday to strike down a central part of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as a majority of the justices expressed reservations about the Defense of Marriage Act. On the second day of intense arguments over the volatile issue of same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who most likely holds the decisive vote, returned again and again to the theme that deciding who is married is a matter for the states.

People who have camped outside the Supreme Court building in frigid temperatures and snow -- some since Thursday -- will file inside Tuesday morning to watch attorneys argue for and against California's Proposition 8. On Wednesday, justices will hear arguments in a separate case involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which, like the California law, defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

We desperately need citizens and politicians who listen to the facts, embrace good ideas no matter whether the source is "left" or "right," and then honestly negotiate reasonable solutions. Distorting careful proposals with inaccurate stereotypes make it harder for Washington to reach reasonable bipartisan compromise. I would hope that Christians could start to lead the way to a more open, less ideological approach. Our nation desperately needs it.

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income.