UPDATE:Andy Puzder withdrew his name from considerationyesterday, so we’re updating and reposting this article with the information for the new nominee, Alexander Acosta. Note: This is the fifth in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Secretary of Labor Department: United States Department of Labor Current Nominee:Andrew Puzder Succession:The Secretary of Labor is the eleventh in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“To foster, promote, and...

Despite persistent caricature, corporate titans do not always view government regulators as enemies; they often see them as unwitting collaborators. Big business and the regulatory state go hand-in-hand, according to Michael Gove, a Conservative Party Member of the UK’s Parliament. Large corporations sometimes support – and occasionally help write – regulations that they can keep, but that petitors cannot. By setting the regulatory bar just out of reach, they use the lever of government to artificially petition in their favor....

Upon the announcement of President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, originalists quickly came to a warm consensus, hailing Judge Neil Gorsuch as a strong defender of the Constitution and a fitting replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia. In addition to the wide-ranging, bipartisan testimonials testifying to his character, intellectual heft, and various credentials, Gorsuch has demonstrated mitment to the Constitution and the freedoms it seeks to protect, whether in weighing issues of executive power, regulatory overreach, or, quite literally,...

February 14 is the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), one of America’s greatest champions of individual liberty. Here are five facts you should know about this writer, orator, statesman, and abolitionist: 1. Douglas was born into slavery in Maryland circa 1818. (Like many slaves, he never knew his actual date of birth and so chose February 14 as his birthday.) He was given the name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey but decided to change it when he became a free...

The most recent issue of theJournal of Markets & Morality, vol. 19, no. 2, has been published online and print copies are in the mail. This issue features the publication of Acton’s 2015 Novak Award winner Catherine Pakaluk’s lecture, “Dependence on God and Man: Toward a Catholic Constitution of Liberty,” in addition to our regular slate of peer-reviewed articles. As a special feature, this issue contains two symposia of conference papers: The Evangelical Theological Society Theology of Work Symposium and...

Despite the predictable flurry of sugary clichés and hedonistic consumerism, Valentine’s Day is as good an opportunity as any to reflect on the nature of human love and consider how we might further it across society. For those of us interested in the study of economics, or, if you prefer,the study of human action, what drives such action — love or otherwise —is the starting point for everything. For the Christian economist, such questions get a bit plicated. Although love...

St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg is one of the tens of thousands of churches seized, shuttered, or destroyedfollowing theBolshevik Revolution of 1917. Instead of leveling it – the fate of so many other houses of worship – muniststurned the architectural wonder into a Museum of Atheism, then a museum in its own right. It has e a UNESCO World Heritage Site visited by 3.5 million people last year. In January,Governor Georgy Poltavchenko announced that he would transfer ownership of...

“Acton’s ideal of the historian as judge, as the upholder of the moral standard, is the most noble ideal ever proposed for the historian,” says Josef L. Altholz in this week’s Acton Commentary, “and it is an ideal that has been rejected, perhaps with grudging respect, by all historians, including myself.” We workaday historians can have no higher ideal than Acton’s second choice, impartiality or objectivity. In this sense, as also in his relative lack of publications, Acton was somewhat...

To really serve God, a Christian should go into ministry, right? That’s what Greg McEvilly thought. But then he founded Kammok, an outdoor adventure pany. ...

Note: This is post #21 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. President Nixon had a problem—inflation was out of control. So in 1971 he attempted to implement a drastic solution: he declared price increases illegal. Because prices couldn’t increase, they began hitting a ceiling. With a price ceiling, buyers are unable to signal their increased demand by bidding prices up, and suppliers have no incentive to increase quantity supplied because they can’t raise the price. This video by...