Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

April 01, 2008

The burden of Italian red tape

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe, Alberto Mingardi of Istituto Bruno Leoni (and long-time Acton friend) lists some of the reforms Italy needs to boost economic growth, which is forecast at a measly 0.6 – 0.8 percent for 2008. Continue Reading...
April 01, 2008

Spending the stimulus

Last week the Providence Journal ran a piece by me on the forthcoming “rebate” checks from the government intended to be an economic stimulus, “The mandate is to ‘spend all you can’.” Continue Reading...
March 28, 2008

Straight talk on poverty & the family

A call to end poverty through more spending by the federal government is forever professed by some candidates and politicians. Maybe, they say, if just more money was appropriated and distributed this time, the results and relief for those in financial need would be conclusively different? Continue Reading...
March 27, 2008

Should water have a price?

In a front-page article of the March 20-21 edition of the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, entitled “L’aqua bene comune per tutti” (“Water: Common Good for All”), an Italian political scientist laments that a basic necessity of life is bought and sold. Continue Reading...
March 27, 2008

Pollyanna Krugman

In my commentary on Social Security yesterday, I referred to the latest trustees’ report as evidence of the continuing need for reform. Anyone who happened to see New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s blog a day earlier might understandably wonder whether we were looking at the same report. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2008

Truth and consequences

Tonight FOX’s new hit gameshow “Moment of Truth” will air its latest installment. For those not familiar with the show’s premise, the contestant submits to a lie detector test before the show is taped. Continue Reading...
March 25, 2008

Samaritan Guide – new and improved

“Private charities do demanding and heroic work for vulnerable people. We seek to reward their good work with prizes and publicity.” The Samaritan Guide Web site has been revamped and we’d love for you to stop by and check it out. Continue Reading...
March 19, 2008

Tempering predictions of progress

I was reading about Bill Gates’ speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council last week, which received a lot of media coverage (PDF transcript here). In the speech about software innovation, Gates “speculated that some of the most important advances will come in the ways people interact with computers: speech-recognition technology, tablets that will recognize handwriting and touch-screen surfaces that will integrate a wide variety of information.” Continue Reading...
March 19, 2008

The ABCs on AIDS in Africa

Edward C. Green and Allison Herling Ruark of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies cut through the nonsense and offer clear thinking on AIDS in Africa. Their article in the April issue of First Things more specifically criticizes a recent report on faith-based organizations and AIDS emerging from the Berkley Center at Georgetown University. Continue Reading...