Everywhere we look we are facing rising prices. We find them at the gas pumps and now we see them at our supermarkets. Food prices are climbing, and just like gas prices, they are having broadly felt adverse effects on Americans.

Read more on Hardships of Ethanol…

Last week President Obama gave an address outlining his new energy policy. In light of the tragic events in Japan, the speech was much anticipated especially considering the president’s prior commitment to nuclear energy.

Read more on The Green Energy Rhetoric Continues…

A commentary by Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg titled “Deficit Denial, American Style” which was published in Acton News & Commentary on March 9^th appeared today in the Detroit News as “It’s time to curb welfare growth” and was also picked up by RealClearPolitics. Gregg provides an enlightening examination on the growth of the welfare system, and with our current budget problems, the need to also reform it:

Read more on Samuel Gregg in Detroit News and RCP: It’s time to curb welfare growth…

[UPDATE BELOW] I discussed the creepy side of President Obama’s “science czar” here. But there are more creepy things in the cabinet. The Wall Street Journal reports that the president’s health policy adviser, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, wants to implement an Orwellian-sounding “complete lives system,” which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

Read more on Health Rationing for the Greater Good…

Today, the Wall Street Journal published a letter I wrote to the editor opposing mandatory health insurance. This solution would burden the poor beyond their means, and it would deny the principle of subsidiarity by sacrificing family economic decisions to the priorities of federal legislators. Here is the text of the letter:

Read more on Forced Purchases of Health Care Will Crush Many…

In “The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism,” Arthur C. Brooks argues in the Wall Street Journal that the “major cultural schism” in America today divides those who support capitalism and, on the other side, those who favor socialism. He makes a strong case for the moral foundations of free enterprise and entrepreneurship and points to the recent “tea parties” as evidence that Americans still favor the market economy. Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, says Americans are revolting against “absurdities” like the bailout of General Motors that will be financed with ballooning budget deficits and trillions in new federal debt. He writes:

Read more on Arthur C. Brooks: Time For An ‘Ethical Populism’…

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, W. Bradford Wilcox looks at the “boost” that President Obama will give secularism through his rapid expansion of government. An Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University, Wilcox is also a 1994 graduate of the Acton Institute’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society program. Excerpt:

Read more on Wilcox: God Will Provide — Unless the Government Gets There First…

The Wall Street Journal offers a welcomed reminder of the value of tax revolts titled, “The Spirit of 13.” Proposition 13 is a notable property tax revolt which was led by the late California citizen Howard Jarvis in 1978. There are several books about the famed revolt and many attribute the event to helping fuel the “Reagan Revolution.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal on Proposition 13…

In the Wall Street Journal’s Americas column, Rev. Robert A. Sirico examines the shift in thinking about liberation theology among Catholic Church leaders in Latin America. Excerpt:

Catholic Church bishops, priests and other Church leaders in Latin America were once a reliable ally of the left, owing to the influence of “liberation theology,” which tries to link the Gospel to the socialist cause. Today the Church is coming to recognize the link between socialism and the loss of freedom, and a shift in thinking is taking place.

Read more on ‘Liberty Theology’ — WSJ article by Rev. Sirico…

Rev. Robert A. Sirico is interviewed by James Freeman, assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, about markets and morality and about the Acton Institute’s Call of the Entrepreneur documentary.

Read more on Is Capitalism Moral? — Rev. Sirico on WSJ video…