In this week’s Acton Commentary, Jennifer Roback Morse wonders why no one is talking about the Forbidden Topic in the Social Security debate. That taboo subject is the declining birth rate. Jennifer Roback Morse writes that “the collapse in the fertility levels, particularly striking among the most educated women in society, is a contributing factor to the insolvency of our entitlement programs.” Read the mentary here. ...

I got a copy of Marvin Olasky’s The Politics of Disaster: Katrina, Big Government, and a New Strategy for Future Crisis in the mail today, fittingly enough on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating storm surge. Olasky, among many other roles, is a senior fellow at the Acton Institute. You can expect a review of the book to appear here in the near future. Olasky blogs over at the World Magazine Blog. Update: Related interview with Olasky at NRO here....

In the modern classic Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, asks Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday why the sinister Johnny Ringo is so evil: “What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?” Doc’s memorable answer is, “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” This echoes, I think,...

Today’s WaPo has a story about Incident Commander, “a training simulator that gives players a lead role in managing crisis situations such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters.” In “A Computer Game for Real-Life Crises: Disaster Simulator’s Maker Gives It to Municipal Emergency Departments,” Mike Musgrove writes about the video game software, which was used by an Illinois paradmedic just days before he was called into duty following Hurricane Katrina. According to Musgrove, “Yesterday, on the first anniversary of Hurricane...

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, will address “Capitalism and the Common Good: The Ten Pillars of the Moral Economy” on September 14, 2006, at The University Club of Chicago. Join Rev. Sirico as he examines ten features of market economy that often are viewed as disruptive, but in actuality are positive forces in forming the cultural, moral and behavior traits most often associated with virtue, responsibility, and good society. Reserve your spot here today. ...

Tort reform has been on the political agenda for some time. Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok make a unique contribution to the debate in their new monograph, Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial (Independent Institute). The first lines are clever: Recently each of us has successfully sued more than a half dozen large corporations. No, we are not outrageously rich plaintiffs’ lawyers or the attorney general of New York. In fact, neither of us even knew that we...

Tension between China and Taiwan is one of the more troubling matters in geopolitical affairs. Now AsiaNews reports that trade between China and Taiwas increased by 15 percent in the first half of 2006. It’s been said that “where goods cross borders, armies don’t,” a reference to the fact that historically nations mercial ties rarely go to war against each other. Without reading too much into one trade report, it may be a hopeful sign for the prospects of peace...

This is a blog, so I can say “goofy.” There are some other erudite and plex terms, but “goofy” pretty much sums up political norms at the moment. What are we thinking. Or, rather, are we thinking? The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life just released a report titled, “Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics.” Not to slight Pew’s substantive work and fully defensible conclusions,...

Rick Ritchie has a thought-provoking post over at Old Solar, deconstructing a rather shrill WorldNetDaily article. In a piece titled, “What!? Caesar’s Money Has Strings Attached?,” Ritchie soberly observes, “When you do accept state funding, the state does have an interest in how its money is used.” The WND piece and Ritchie’s post refer to this bit of California legislation, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which requires any educational institution that receives government support in any form, including...

Passed on to me by a friend about a post last week: If a thorium reactor, among other things “created no weapons-grade by-products,” and Iran wants nuclear reactors simply “to establish plete nuclear fuel cycle to support a civilian energy program,” as it claims, perhaps we could set it up so that potentially dangerous regimes like Iran can use thorium and not uranium based nuclear reactors. As Tim Dean highlights the possibility in the Cosmos article: “Imagine the West offering...