Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

November 10, 2005

“…and then carry the one…”

Whoops. This week, GM retracts its earnings report from four years ago, saying it overstated its profits by somewhere between $300-400 million dollars. The tendency with a story like this is to cry “fraud!” Continue Reading...
November 09, 2005

The moral legacy of Rosa Parks

Black Americans have enjoyed only a mixed record of progress in the fifty years since Rosa Parks took her seat on that Montgomery bus. Anthony Bradley examines her legacy and the nature of liberty in today’s America. Continue Reading...
November 09, 2005

Primitive genetic engineering

A long oral and written tradition about the mixing of species has been noted on this blog before, specifically with regard to Josephus. I just ran across this tidbit in Luther that I thought I would share, which points to a continuation of a tradition of this sort running down through the Reformation. Continue Reading...
November 08, 2005

Jesus loves… the welfare state?

Via Best of the Web Today, an interesting comment from Senator John Kerry: Democratic Sen. John Kerry called the Republican budget approved by the U.S. Senate “immoral” and said it will hurt cities like Manchester. Continue Reading...
November 07, 2005

Saving small-town America

For those of us who harbor some nostalgic sentiment for this country’s agrarian past… I’ve written previously about the corrosive effect of subsidies on American agriculture. Now, Denis Boyles, in a thoughtful piece on NRO, notes from a similar perspective the importance of entrepreneurial thinking in preserving the agricultural towns of rural America. Continue Reading...
November 03, 2005

What Sarbanes-Oxley hath wraught

Aaah, the magical soothing balm that is government regulation! The delightfully titled Now Batting for Pedro Borbon blog (“Manny Mota…Mota…Mota”) reveals the (predictable) results of governmental efforts to “increase transparency” in the business world: So, let’s review. Continue Reading...
November 03, 2005

A ‘Special Interest’ in education

A story on today’s Morning Edition by Claudio Sanchez examines the future of the school system in New Orleans following the hurricane Katrina disaster. New Orleans school superintendent Ora Watson complains that charter schools are stepping in to fill the void left when public schools were cancelled for the remainder of this school year. Continue Reading...
November 02, 2005

Europe’s social model closes doors to the poor

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Americans living in Europe were often scolded about the need for big, centralized government to look after the poor, and we heard yet again about the moral superiority of Europe’s social model over America’s market-driven one. Continue Reading...
November 02, 2005

Grassroots microlending

There’s a new venture, Kiva, that according to the founder Matthew Flannery is “a startup focused on connecting lenders with micro-businesses online. We provide the world’s first and only online micro-lending opportunity and just opened to the public 3 weeks ago. Continue Reading...