If the Secretary of State's new commission is intended neither to review U.S. human rights policy nor examine today’s debates over abortion and same-sex marriage, what, then, might it be doing?

We know of at least 4,000 planets outside our solar system, writes the astronomer Samantha Lawler, but we will not be visiting any of them soon—nor do we know if any are inhabitable. Exploring space teaches us the fragility of Earth.

What is the source of the tensions and conflicts we have in the church today? I believe the reason for the uneasiness is the pope’s emphasis on mission.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, as he became known, was a firm believer of religious liberty and an American Catholic pioneer, but his toleration of slavery was a failure of the greatest magnitude.

If the frontier of the U.S.-Mexico border represents the America that would exclude me, space is the frontier that invites me.

This spring’s floods devastated farming and rural communities in the middle of the U.S. that were already struggling with economic and social decline, writes Nathan Beacom. But ”blue” America may find it difficult to sympathize.