Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

May 31, 2006

America’s 12th graders dumbing down in science

“Last week, the Department of Education reported that science aptitude among 12th-graders has declined across the last decade.” Anthony Bradley explores some of the root causes for why science education continues to falter in schools across the country. Continue Reading...
May 31, 2006

Skeptical of the convert

I have to admit I was skeptical myself of Gregg Easterbrook’s self-proclaimed “long record of opposing alarmism” regarding global warming. To be sure, a bit of my own research showed that Mr. Continue Reading...
May 30, 2006

The digital collide

According to published reports, market mechanisms, and specifically competition, are accomplishing what many decriers of the “digital divide” have long contended only big government could do. The AP, via LiveScience.com, reports, “Middle- and working-class Americans signed up for high-speed Internet access in record numbers in the past year, apparently lured by a price war among phone companies.” Continue Reading...
May 26, 2006

Mexican politics and the economy

I have argued on this site that the last thing America needs is European style government-by-demonstration, and that the massive street demostrations over illegal immigration perhaps were a sign of the Left’s intention to import exactly that style of guerilla theater politics into America. Continue Reading...
May 26, 2006

Danger + opportunity = crisis?

In a recent interview with Giant magazine (June/July 2006, “Citizen Gore,” p. 56-57, text available here) about his new movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” former Vice President Al Gore answered a few questions. Continue Reading...
May 24, 2006

Who will protect Kosovo’s Christians?

Seven years after the United Nations assumed control of the Serb province of Kosovo, talks are underway about its future. Orthodox Church leaders for the minority Serb population, which has been subject to attacks for years by Muslim extremists, are hoping to forestall mounting pressure to establish an independent state. Continue Reading...
May 24, 2006

Playing the Kyoto card

The researchers report that “latent heat loss from the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean was less in late spring and early summer 2005 than preceding years due to anomalously weak trade winds associated with weaker sea level pressure,” which “resulted in anomalously high sea surface temperatures” that “contributed to earlier and more intense hurricanes in 2005.” Continue Reading...
May 23, 2006

Outsourcing education

A couple years ago I wrote a commentary that didn’t exactly defend outsourcing, but did recognize its benefits and argued that it could be done morally if done correctly. I won’t pretend that my writing is read widely enough to generate voluminous responses of any sort, but that piece did elicit a significant number of responses, many of them negative. Continue Reading...
May 23, 2006

The wisdom of Woz

Steve Wozniak, famed inventor of Apple I, Apple II, and the original Apple software, has a new autobiography coming out. Here is a snippet from a Businessweek interview where he gives a nice, Actony take on creativity and education. Continue Reading...
May 22, 2006

Doubt and certainty about spiritual realities

This Live Science article, “How Children Learn About God and Science,” by Robert Roy Britt, summarizes a new survey of scientific studies about the way children learn. It seems that an interesting conclusion has surfaced from these studies: “Among things they can’t see, from germs to God, children seem to be more confident in the information they get about invisible scientific objects than about things in the spiritual realm.” Continue Reading...