A newsworthy stimulus

Late last month I argued that recipients of the federal government’s stimulus package “should use this rebate money as they see fit, since they are the ones most familiar with their own situations and their own needs. Continue Reading...

Controlling the children

A few weeks ago I blogged about the California homeschooling ruling. (And Chris Banescu wrote about it in an Acton Commentary.) As you may have heard, the ruling was vacated so the threat has gone away, for now. Continue Reading...

Catholics and condoms

Catholic institutions provide a large percentage of the worldwide care devoted to those infected by HIV. That, combined with the Church’s stand on the immorality of contraceptive use, puts it at the center of debates about AIDS and condoms. Continue Reading...

Sicko: a lot healthier than I expected…

This evening, I attended a showing of Michael Moore’s movie Sicko… I wasn’t expecting much, so maybe it was easy to exceed my expectations. But I was pleasantly surprised that the movie wasn’t far more painful for me to watch. Continue Reading...

An impoverished culture

Rod Dreher links to a piece by Cato’s Brink Lindsey, “Culture of Success.” The conclusion of Lindsey’s piece is that familial culture is more important to child success in school and economic achievement than external assistance, in the form of tuition grants or otherwise: If more money isn’t the answer, what does have an impact? Continue Reading...

Population control update

Ted Turner in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today: (via) One way to combat global warming, Turner said, is to stabilize the population. “We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,” he said. Continue Reading...

CAGW names names

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has released their “Pig Book” for 2008, which is an “annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. Continue Reading...

Humans and hybrids

In recent years the UK has emerged as a key player in both genetic experimentation and in corresponding legal battles over the extent to which the government ought to regulate such research. Continue Reading...

New Deal for April Fools

Last month marked the 75th anniversary of the beginning of FDR’s “New Deal”. The Great Depression is the most famous event in U.S. macro-economic history. Most or all of my students know that it happened in the first half of the 20th century. Continue Reading...