Marc Vander Maas

Posts by Marc Vander Maas

October 27, 2005

Miers withdraws

And so the search for a replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor will continue: Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of strong criticism from President Bush’s most conservative supporters, who say she doesn’t have the qualifications or experience necessary to serve on the nation’s highest court. Continue Reading...
October 25, 2005

Ideas have consequences

An illuminating passage from an interview with Peter Schweizer on National Review Online. Schweizer is the author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy: …the consequences of liberal hypocrisy are different than for the conservative variety. Continue Reading...
October 14, 2005

Attack of the so-called free markets!

Economic reality is finally catching up with the big American automakers and their suppliers, as noted by Thomas Bray in Wednesday’s Detroit News: Around Detroit, the bankruptcy of giant auto parts maker Delphi Corp. Continue Reading...
October 13, 2005

Harriet miers and proper jurisprudence

Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico appeared yesterday on Your World with Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel and discussed the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O’Connor as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Continue Reading...
October 03, 2005

Tolerance: True and false

Pope Benedict XVI: “A tolerance which allows God as a private opinion but which excludes him from public life, from the reality of the world and our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy,” the pope said in the homily he gave at a three-week-long synod’s opening mass in St Peter’s Basilica. Continue Reading...
September 20, 2005

Freedom from the welfare trap?

Rich Lowry: It is the other flood: The outpouring of concern for the poor of New Orleans. According to nearly every journalist in America, our consciousness has been raised about the invisible scourge of poverty in this country, and nothing is too much to ask when addressing the plight of the disadvantaged evacuees of New Orleans. Continue Reading...
September 15, 2005

Katrina: A chance to escape the welfare trap?

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today that President Bush has a chance to encourage a more free-market oriented approach to rebuilding the gulf coast: Instead of channeling more cash through the same failed bureaucracies, he should declare the entire Gulf Coast region an enterprise zone, with low tax rates for new investments and waivers for any regulatory obstacles to rebuilding. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2005

The welfare trap

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Brendon Miniter notes that many of those stranded in New Orleans after the levee breaches were literally caught in a trap set by government “assistance”: We still only have anecdotal evidence to go on, and we can be hopeful as the death toll remains far below the thousands originally predicted. Continue Reading...
September 02, 2005

Principled giving

The devastation that we have seen this week in the Gulf Coast region and especially New Orleans is almost beyond our capacity to understand. Our instinct is to do something – anything – to help those in need, but when the crisis is this huge, what does one do? Continue Reading...