There’s a new e-version of The Federalist Papers produced by Edward O’Connor. The innovation with this edition compared to all the other various electronic iterations of the papers is the ability to link to an exact paragraph within a particular paper. O’Connor says of the impetus for the endeavor, “I haven’t been able find one that was simultaneously nice-looking and useful (useful insofar as pinpoint linkability is concerned, at least).”

James Madison (1751–1836)

The URL is based on the number of the paper, followed by the number sign #, followed by the paragraph number (preceded by the marker “p”). So that, for example, a link to Federalist No. 37, paragraph 3, would take the following form: http://federali.st/37#p3, which begins:

It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.

“The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded,” wrote Lord Acton.

Acton called federalism “the best curb on democracy,” because it “assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.” He also described federalism as “the only barrier to Democracy,” which “generally monopolizes and concentrates power.”

“The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality,” he said, and observed that “Americans dreaded democracy and contrived their constitution against it.”

Acton defined federalism as “coordination instead of subordination; association instead of hierarchical order; independent forces curbing each other; balance, therefore, liberty.”

For more, see Acton’s James Madison entry In the Liberal Tradition.

HT: The Volokh Conspiracy via The Remedy

The world’s largest prize for technological innovation was awarded this year to Professor Shuji Nakamura, curently at the University of California Santa Barbara, for his development of bright-blue, green and white LEDs and a blue laser. According to the prize website, “The world’s largest technology prize, now being awarded by Finland’s Millennium Prize Foundation for the second time, has a value of one million euros.” Prof. Nakamura’s advances “were things that other researchers in the semiconductor field had spent decades trying to do.”

Says Pekka Tarjanne, Chairman of the International Selection committee: “The lighting applications now made possible by his achievement can be compared with Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent lamp. In the course of time, energy-efficient light sources based on Shuji Nakamura’s innovation will undoubtedly become predominant.”

HT: Future Tense (RealAudio)

Dr. Mart Laar at Acton University

How does a country transition from being an impoverished former Soviet republic to a free society that enjoys a rank among those enjoying the highest degrees of economic liberty in the world?

Last night at Acton University, former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar discussed the path his country took to do just that. In an address at times humorous, stirring, and powerful, Dr. Laar surveyed the history of his nation and the sometimes painful steps that were necessary to transition from a command economy with a corrupt leadership to a free market with remarkably open government.

You can listen to Dr. Laar’s address by clicking here (11.4 MB mp3 file).

Before reading the rest of this post, let’s try a little experiment. Here are a set of quotations…your job is to decide who said it, a real-life scientist or Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy (see answer key below the jump):

“Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

1. Humans are “no better than bacteria!”

2. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.”

3. “There is no denying the natural world would be a better place without people. ALL people!”

4. “Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!”

5. “Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but humans do not. Humans move to an area, and multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed.”

PowerBlog contributor Don Bosch has a great post over at his home blog, the Evangelical Ecologist, reacting to today’s piece from Deroy Murdock, “For them, people are just in the way.”

Murdock cites William Burger’s letter to Acton’s Jay Richards, in which Burger says, among other things, “From where I sit, Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!” Check out the full text of Burger’s letter in PDF form here. (more…)

A recent NYT article outlines some recent research showing that many people who give to charity “often tolerate high administrative costs, fail to monitor charities and do not insist on measurable results — the opposite of how they act when they invest in the stock market.” Tyler Cowen writes in “Investing in Good Deeds Without Checking the Prospectus,” about the research of John A. List, a professor at the University of Chicago, which “implies that most donors do not respond when they have opportunities to be more effective in their giving.”

Cowen, who is a professor of economics at George Mason and blogs here, concludes, “If donors do not abandon failing causes, those efforts will continue. Perhaps the content of donor pride needs to change. Rather than taking pride only in their generosity, donors should also take pride in their willingness to confront unpleasant news.”

The bottom line is that when you give to charity, you have a responsibility to give to charities that are good stewards of the money, thereby rewarding good charities and punishing bad ones. Doing this gives the proper incentives for charities to work well.

Part of the problem is that people may not really know how to measure the effectiveness and stewardship of a given charity. The Acton Institute’s Samaritan Guide is a tool designed to assist donors in meeting this responsibility.

Indeed, Acton’s effective compassion initiatives, based on Marvin Olasky’s seven principles for effective compassion, are largely based on providing the education that donors need to find out the sort of issues and questions that they should be asking.

HT: EconLog

I’ve noted before the ballooning and bipartisan feeding at the public trough conducted by this Congress, for projects of dubious value.

Brian Riedl reports on NRO today that there is at last some good news. Some of the pork from the latest spending bill has been plucked, credit due not least to a strong veto threat from the president. One might speculate that Republicans are rediscovering the benefits of spending restraint just in time to impress voters in November—but that doesn’t explain how President Bush suddenly found the gumption to do something he should have done many times before.

“Amtrak officials seem to be working hard to patch up the older parts of the system. But recent delays serve as only the latest reminder that Amtrak’s problems are not bad management so much as stingy government. With gas prices up and airplanes overloaded, the nation’s leaders should be trying to figure out why this advanced nation does not have a more advanced passenger rail system.” Thus says an editorial in today’s NYT, blaming the lack of government subsidy for the woes of the US train system.

It doesn’t seem to occur to the editorial writer that the current situation may in fact be the result of the railway system’s historic dependence on the government, which has fostered the inability to run competitively, independently, and efficiently. To me this sounds like the lament when any other government program fails: “But we didn’t have enough funding!”

I do know that booking travel on an Amtrak train can often be more expensive than flying by plane to the same destination. If a slower, more expensive form of transportation is what government subsidization gets you, no thanks.

During this year’s hurricane season, global warming will likely become a topic of discussion at dinner tables across the United States (and likely in other countries as well).

Al Gore recently released his documentary on climate change. “An Incovenient Truth” asserts that global warming is indeed a real occurance, and that it is being caused by CO₂ being pumped into the atmosphere by factories, vehicles, etc. Gore also asserts that the majority of the “scientific community” agree that global warming is a human caused phenomenon. Tom Harris, writing for the Canada Free Press says that climatologists are beginning to get fed up with these assertions.

Harris argues that the so-called “majority” of scientists who are cited in reports like those in Gore’s film are not climatologists. They are very qualified in reporting the effects of climate change, but are not qualified to report on the causes of climate change. Reports that computer simulations predict massive climage change are also misleading. These simulations are not really predictions, they are scenarios. According to Dr. Tim Ball, climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, not only are these models only scenarios but “these models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios.” Ball claims that it is irresponsible that the researchers behind these simulations have allowed the public to think that their scenarios are predictions.

Graph of solar activity versus climate

Before I point you to the rest of the article, there’s a quote from a professor of climatology that I loved: “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.” That comes from Prof. Bob Carter.

Now, while I don’t endorse massive pollution of the environment on principle, I also don’t condone finger pointing at empty space (there is a big star that tends to have quite an impact…some people call it the Sun). That said, this is a great review and commentary on global warming that also cites several experts on climate change.

If you’re interested in reading more about climate issues, check out our entries tagged with “global warming” and “climate change.”

Hat tip, Slashdot.

Pro-family and church groups are battling over a proposed policy that would allow viewers to select their cable TV plans on an “a la carte” basis. But why are they asking the federal government to referee this fight? In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine at the most powerful communications policy: Turning off the TV.

Read the full commentary here.

Related Items:

Daniel Pulliam, “Preachers and pornographers unite,” GetReligion, June 12, 2006.

Jordan J. Ballor, “Evangelicals and Cable TV,” Acton Institute PowerBlog, June 12, 2006.

Piet Levy, “Evangelicals vs. Christian Cable,” Washington Post, June 10, 2006.

Jordan J. Ballor, “Concerns about A La Carte,” Acton Institute PowerBlog, January 2, 2006.

Jordan J. Ballor, “A La Carte,” Acton Institute PowerBlog, December 2, 2005.

Jordan J. Ballor, “Faith in the FCC,” Acton Commentary, March 23, 2005.

Jordan J. Ballor, “Confusing Coercion and Conversion,” Acton Commentary, May 5, 2004.

Jordan J. Ballor, “Television not to blame for America’s laziness,” The State News, January 16, 1997.

Joe Knippenberg, who blogs at No Left Turns, provides a thoughtful and engaging analysis of the particulars of the recent Iowa court decision finding against InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an outreach of Prison Fellowship Ministries. In “Penitents in the Penitentiary?,” at The American Enterprise Online, Knippenberg writes, “Despite my general support for the faith-based initiative, and for religious efforts to put the penitence back in penitentiaries, I’m inclined for the most part to agree with Judge Pratt. In this particular case, where the state and Prison Fellowship self-consciously tested the outer bounds of current church-state jurisprudence, they went too far.”

Reaction from PFM’s president Mark Earley is available here and at the special IFI verdict page. I have written before in support of work of PFM, and this decision does nothing to change my mind on that score.

It does expose the real complexities involved with taking for Christian ministries, even those that have a strong social service component. As Knippenberg writes, InnerChange staff ran up against the difficulties of abiding by what I consider to be the increasingly rigid and invalid separation of secular and sacred elements: “Where so much of the program is devoted to inculcating a Christian worldview, it is difficult, if not impossible, to precisely delineate what portion of a staffer’s time, or what fraction of a piece of equipment’s value is devoted to secular, as opposed to religious, purposes.”

I’ve written more about the entanglements and effects of the faith-based initiative in the case of the Silver Ring Thing, and there’s conversation between myself and Knippenberg on this linked here, here and here.