[Note: John Miller, mentioned below, was the immediate past chairman of the board of directors at Discovery Institute.]WHEN SEN. SAM BROWNBACK of Kansas heard President Bush address the U.N. General Assembly last week, he was taken by surprise. Bush spent several minutes urging international action against human trafficking, an issue Brownback has followed closely in the Senate, but one you Read More ›
Old Europe — France and Germany — is suffering through an economic malaise not seen since Jimmy Carter’s America of a generation ago. But we shouldn’t give up on them yet. A quarter century after Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began their crusades for high-growth economic policies in the U.K. and the U.S., a quiet movement is underway in the Read More ›
It’s been an unusual week in the academy. The academic freedom that so incensed Bill Buckley as a student at Yale decades ago is now acting to protect a conservative scholar under fire. Baylor’s J.M. Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies hired Francis Beckwith as its Associate Director last summer. Although previously known as a philosopher who had developed powerful critiques Read More ›
A letter signed by a couple of hundred well-known economists appeared under the headline “Bush tax cuts are the wrong approach” in a paid ad in the Feb. 11 edition of the New York Times. The White House also has released a list of a couple of hundred well-known economists, including this author, who endorse the president’s package. How are Read More ›
At the Federal Communications Commission these days, Commissioner Michael Powell and his one-time protege Kevin Martin have introduced a new slogan: “What, me worry?” While the communications sector suffers though a crisis of stifling overregulation, the commission seems ready to accept an outbreak of litigious new rules at the state and local levels. As the FCC prepares to meet again Read More ›
When I read Ken Miller’s contribution to the volume I’m editing with Michael Ruse (Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2004), I expected I’d have till the actual publication date next year to respond to it. But since Miller’s contribution has now officially appeared on his website (it is titled The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of Read More ›
The AAAS Board Resolution on intelligent-design theory represents the scientific establishments latest effort to insulate evolutionary biology from critique and discussion. The challenge of intelligent design for evolutionary biology is real. This is not like someone who claims that ancient technologies could not have built the pyramids, so goblins must have done it. We can show how, with the technological Read More ›
Original article The Columbia catastrophe has understandably inspired a rededication to manned space flight, lest those who perished so tragically and heroically should have died in vain. John Glenn who so memorably rode Friendship 7 into orbit 41 years ago this month has called for continuing shuttle flights. The history of the space program suggests, however, that today’s Read More ›
The 2010 Winter Olympics is stoking enthusiasm for new rail services on bothsides of the Canada-U.S. border. Leading the charge is Whistler Railtours Ltd. of Vancouver, which says it is close to a deal with Via Rail Canada Inc. that could see $20 million poured into launching tourist-oriented rail service between Vancouver and Whistler in time for the 2005 cruise Read More ›
Assume the villain in a new James Bond movie has the goal of the economic destruction of Europe. How would he do it? First some background. In the 1960s and 1970s, Europe boasted brisk economic growth. From 1965 to 1974, government spending in Western Europe averaged 37 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), and economic growth averaged 4.3 percent Read More ›