Astute Acton readers more than likely are aware already that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has fired another salvo in the ongoing battle to silence conservative voices. Durbin joins our progressive friends in the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and As You Sow – both involved in proxy shareholder resolutions that would panies to disclose donations to nonprofits – in their attempts to declare lights-out on the American Legislative Exchange Council. At issue for Durbin is ALEC’s draft legislation called...

Sky News talks with Bishop Angaelos, the General Bishop of Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, about the ongoing bloodshed in Egypt. (HT: Byzantine, TX) Bishop Angaelos also issued this statement through The Coptic Orthodox Church UK media office today: Comment on the on-going situation in Egypt by His Grace Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of The Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom – 16 August 2013 As a clergyman for over twenty years, and a Christian for the...

Sometimes we are not aware of the foolishness of our private speech until our words go public. This is one of the morals of the story of Philadelphia Eagle’s receiver Riley Cooper’s n-word slip. In a video taken at a Kenny Chesney concert in June, Cooper became frustrated that an African-American security guard would not allow him backstage. With a beer in his hand Cooper responded, “I will jump this fence and fight every n***ger here, bro.” Cooper’s gaffe serves...

At , Jerry Bowyer interviews George Gilder on his new book Knowledge and Power (HT: AOI Observer). The long Q&A, titled “George Gilder Has A Very Big, Economy Boosting Idea” is very much worth a read. Here’s a snip: Jerry: “So the market system is the operating system at best, but it’s not the user. That the entrepreneur uses an operating system called the market economy: there’s hardware to it, there’re rails and canals and buildings and factories; there’s software...

The Gateway Pundit reports today that a provision in Obamacare’s Affordable Care Act allows for what the government is calling the “Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Visiting Program.” What does this mean? The program is designed to award monetary grants to states that have “modest” home visiting programs currently, and would like to expand those programs. The goal, purportedly, is to increase the health of mothers and young children and things like “developing a family-centered approach to home-visiting.” es from...

Does your state have the basic legal framework in place bat human trafficking, punish trafficker, and supports survivors? The Polaris Project recently released their 2013 State Ratings on Human Trafficking Laws, which examines the progress states have made in passing legislation bat both labor and sex trafficking. According tothe report: 39 states passed new laws to fight human trafficking in the past yearAs of July 31, 2013, 32 states are now rated in Tier 1 (7+ points), up from 21...

In 2010, voters in Oklahoma passed a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment that would prohibit state courts from using international law or Sharia law when making rulings. But yesterday, a federal judge ruled the amendment violated religious freedoms granted by the U.S. Constitution: In finding the law in violation of the United States Constitution’s Establishment Clause, U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the certification of the results of the state question that put the Sharia law ban into...

Was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books written as an anti-New Deal fable? The Wilder family papers suggest they were: From the publication of the first book in 1932, the series was immediately popular. And, at a time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was introducing the major federal initiatives of the New Deal and Social Security as a way out of the Depression, the Little House books lulled children to sleep with the opposite...

St. Ignatius of Antioch was martyred at the jaws of wild beasts in the Roman colosseum sometime around 110 AD. In her historical study of wealth and poverty in the early Church, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich, Helen Rhee offers the following interesting historical tidbit with regards to how early Christians were able to minister to their imprisoned brothers and sisters who awaited martyrdom: Bribing the prison guards, which must have cost a certain amount, features frequently enough in...

On a return trip from summer camp, Michael Hess’s young son was stuck at Chicago O’Hare airport on a four-hour layover. Having run out of his spending money, he soon grew hungry and called his Dad for help. His father’s mended solution: “go to any of the sit-down restaurants and ask if his dad could give them a credit card over the phone.” His son tried it, and everyone turned him down. “None would even try to figure out a...