Latest Posts

Florist Chooses Conscience Over Settlement

Last year Washington State’s Attorney General sued Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts on the basis of consumer protection. Florist Barronelle Stutzman had refused to sell flowers to a long time customer when the arrangements were to be used for a same-sex marriage ceremony. Continue Reading...

Religious Activists Push Back Against ‘Blunt Instrument’ of Fossil Fuels Divestment

Your faithful correspondent last week exposed the fossil-fuel divestment endgame of religious shareholder activists. As You Sow President Danielle Fugere sees her group’s activities as awareness-raising exercises for climate change, but AYS’s alignment with environmentalist and divestment firebrand Naomi Klein suggests they’d settle for nothing less than nationalizing oil companies. Continue Reading...

Does Innovation Triumph Over Regulation?

Do government regulations squelch marketplace innovation? A new study from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Nathan Goldschlag and George Mason University’s Alex Tabarrok says, “Not really.” According to Ryan Young at the Competitive Enterprise Institute: …the underlying institutions of social cooperation, market exchange, and dynamism are strong enough that federal regulation has, according to Goldschlag and Tabarrok’s analysis, so far been unable to squelch them. Continue Reading...

Radically Communitarian Islam

Graeme Wood’s excellent piece in The Atlantic has justly been making the rounds for the past week or so. It is well worth reading with a number of insights and points that strike at the heart of the contemporary conflict between modernity and religious violence. Continue Reading...

Marie Harf May Have Stumbled Into Something

I do not believe Marie Harf is an eloquent speaker, but I did think her “jobs for ISIS” remarks made some sense. We know that in American cities, for instance, if young men do not have education and jobs, they get into mischief. Continue Reading...