Is there a “poverty industry”?  Is the way we attempt to alleviate poverty wrong, outdated, even harmful?  These are two questions the new documentary Poverty, Inc.  attempts to address.  I had the opportunity to host a screening this video documentary at Cedarville University, sponsored by the Department of History and Government and the Institute for […]

I regret I cannot compete with my colleague Mark Smith for sheer humor.  In fact, talking about Federal regulations can be really boring.  But what they lack in pizzaz, they make up for in importance–unfortunately in a negative way. I read a very illuminating study by Clyde Crews, entitled “Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness: A Preliminary Inventory […]

The following comes from eyewitness accounts from that historic day, November 19, 1863. The occasion, as is well known, was to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the turning points of the United States Civil War. President Donald Trump, the Great Emancipator, spoke to a crowd sprinkled in the blood of the battle. Parents of […]

  To set up today’s discussion about Mr. Trump and the latest terrorist violence, we need to review the concept of profiling.  In my mind, the history of racial profiling is rightly condemned in the U.S.   Like most, my own opinions on this are colored by what I’ve seen. My first experience with racial […]

If you don’t have much to do at the moment perhaps you want to read about the proposed mens rea reform.  Perhaps that topic might sound just a bit esoteric if not downright boring, but I venture to say that it may prove to be one of the more important measures discussed among legal scholars […]

I just finished reading another interesting book, at least to me it was interesting.  And I think I can convince you that you should consider reading it too.  The book, authored by Thomas Albert Howard, is entitled God and the Atlantic: America, Europe and the Religious Divide (Oxford, 2011).  It runs to 256 pages, including […]

Once again, there is so much out there that I am somewhat at a loss to focus on a single issue.  If you haven’t been hibernating early, the newsworthy items include the refugee problem, the Paris and Mali attacks, the VA travesty regarding its treatment of veterans, the Missouri-inspired (or was it Yale) episode of […]

First, I want to wish a blessed Thanksgiving to all. My Berean colleague Mark Smith wrote a very good blog addressing the response of the West and Christians to refugees in light of the Paris attacks of last week.  I would like to extend the discussion to address how the West, including the United States […]

I just got back from the Southern Economic Association, where I attended many of the sessions of the Austrian economists.*  In one session, the subject was comparing Kant’s view of the process how the mind comes to know things vs. Hayek’s view.  One discussant said several times that he could “tell an evolutionary story” of […]

As I’ve related previously, Democrats seem convinced that legalized immigrants will become part of a permanent majority, and many Republicans (including especially talk-radio) seem to believe this as well. While I’m skeptical for many reasons, I have a small proposal that could take this issue off the table.  Since progressive supporters of immigration make many […]