In an essay entitled “Passions, Politics and the Removal of a President: Lessons Learned from the Impeachment of President Clinton,” which appeared in Grove City College’s Journal of Law & Public Policy, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty tried to share what he and other Republicans learned from President William Jefferson Clinton’s impeachment in the late 1990s. After we are done with President Donald John Trump’s impeachment, perhaps McNulty will have a follow-up article on “lessons not learned.” In case...

E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and co-author of The Elements of Style, once wrote a story that aptly demonstrates the folly of central planning. White, a Maine farmer who wrote for The New Yorker and Harper’s, saw the story turned into an animated short, which he narrated 36 years after its publication. In “The Family that Dwelt Apart” – published in The New Yorker on July 31, 1937 – White tells the story of the Pruitt family, which...

Are churches tax exempt as a matter of privilege or right? What does tax exception munities and churches? Christianity Todayhas been hosting an interesting debate on these issues. Paul Matzko, Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the CATO Institute, argued in the cover story of this month’s issue that tax es at a high a cost to munities in which they are located: This feeling that churches don’t contribute to mon good is not mon in America. There are...

A presidential season is a time of policies, proposals, and promises. All will guarantee they will increase national wealth and well-being, but history and rational analysis show that some reforms will hurt the very voters who support them. The wealth tax is one such policy, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The organization released its analysis of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaires Tax” and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal – and the results are distinctly dispiriting. A wealth tax would shrink GDP,...

Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg recently tweeted that his political program grows out of a Jewish religious teaching giving him the “responsibility” to use the government to “‘repair the world’ in the tradition of Tikkun Olam.” While progressive Jews often use the phrase in this manner, rabbis warn equating politics with the faith distorts Judaism. Bloomberg tied his surging primary campaign to the Jewish doctrine in an online video released Sunday: My parents taught me that Judaism is about more...

This week’s Acton Commentary focuses on a Supreme Court case that could strike down an eighteenth-century statute, borne of anti-Catholic animus, that now locks poor children in underperforming schools. A clear understanding of economics and solid Supreme Court precedent could sweep this relic of anti-Catholic discrimination, known as the Blaine amendment, into the past. After tracing America’s deep and pervasive history of anti-Catholic bigotry, the Commentary moves on to the present case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue: In 2015,...

Did you know that there are over 1,300 endangered species in the United States? Polar bears, northern spotted owls, red wolves, Florida panthers and even monarch butterflies are all on the endangered species list. We’ve been given a mandate to take care of the earth and all living creatures on it. How can we make sure that vulnerable animals are protected from extinction? This week, Jonathan Wood joins Acton Line to show how market-based approaches are the best way to...

Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, writes this morning in Forbes about the relationship between economic freedom and corruption. Transparency International released its 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index last week, and Chafuen correlates these results with countries’ rankings in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. As a general rule, greater economic freedom and lower corruption seem to go hand in hand. Although I was born and raised in a country where corruption, especially petty corruption, had e part of many...

Inequality is one of those topics that is sure to spark quick and intense debate, wherever and whenever it is raised. In any such discussion, however, facts matter. That’s one reason why my attention was recently drawn to an article published in early December at Real Clear Markets, titled “Inequality Is Decidedly Not the Problem In the U.S.” The author, Aaron Brown, writes: There is a simple theory of inequality in which rich people have nearly all the wealth and...

After a bitter, three-and-a-half year political battle, the UK will leave the European Union at 11 p.m. on Friday, January 31, 2020. Brexit returns control of British political institutions, immigration laws, regulatory standards, and free trade policies to its citizens. That is, Brexit empowers the British people to determine their own destiny. “Brexit was really about a fundamental desire of humanity: our thirst for liberty,” writes Rev. Richard Turnbull ina new analysisfor the Acton Institute’sReligion & Liberty Transatlanticwebsite. Rev. Turnbull,...