The system that administers special education in the United States is one that “parents find unresponsive, and schools find expensive,” writes Jennifer Morse, Acton Senior Fellow in Economics. She takes a look at the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling es up with a solution that involves the dreaded V-word: Vouchers. Read the mentary here. ...

Join us in ing poverty. Acton is starting a new ad campaign which aims to raise awareness of effective ways to e poverty and world hunger. We encourage everyone to view our ads and to consider them seriously as they join the rest of the developed world in extending a hand to those in need. If you’re interested in promoting real solutions to poverty, join our partnership of religious leaders. Visit our website to access valuable educational materials and connect...

Every now and then e across something in the news that makes you want to laugh and weep at the same time. Today’s International Herald Tribune contains one such article. Titled “Poles on ramparts of EU culture war”, it relates how the newly-elected Polish members of the European Parliament are causing so much rancor in Brussels. Their crime: being Christian, pro-economic growth, and friendly to the United States. It turns out that some of the new members of the European...

For those of you who are fluent in Portuguese, from a Portuguese speaking country, or who are just interested in Português, please check out our newly updated Portuguese language section. We have many translated articles, papers, editorials, interviews, and a whole catalog of biographies from “In The Liberal Tradition.” ...

Hans Mahncke, an International Law and Trade scholar at Hong Kong’s Lion Rock Institute, takes to task recalcitrant NGOs in a recent TCS article (Tech Central Station no longer active). The essential sticking point is the inability to reform the WTO: The WTO is plagued by two major faults. On the one hand, its rules have grown plex, feature too many loopholes and allow for too much discretion on the part of those who actually understand them. On the other...

What, exactly, was the point of the recent Summit of the Americas in Argentina? President Bush’s participation there seemed to plish little more than to excite street mobs and vandals. And then there was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, doing his best Fidel impersonation as he led opposition to a U.S.-backed free trade agreement. Alejandro Chafuen, president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, uses the occasion of the summit to succinctly catalog the ills that plague Latin America. “With few exceptions,”...

A consensus has developed among activists on the left that Wal-Mart is bad for America, and particularly bad for the poor, not only in America (where wages are supposedly driven down) but also abroad (where suppliers allegedly abuse and exploit their workers). Check out this litany of social harms alleged to be caused by Wal-Mart. The organization piled that list – Wal-Mart Watch – even has a “faith resource guide” that pastors can use to whip up anti-Wal-Mart sentiment within...

A good story on Moses Maimonides in this weekend’s Washington Post, “The Doctor Is Still In: Medieval Rabbi-Healer Maimonides Linked Body, Soul.” A key contention is that Jewish doctors like Maimonides “associated healing with basic religious duty.” The main source for the article is author Sherwin Nuland, whose most recent book is on Maimonides. While Nuland caricatures Christians in opposition to Jewish religious interest in healing, the perspective is a valuable one. The article does note that beyond Nuland’s interest...

The first lesson of Politics 101: When in trouble, look to your base. That’s what House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is apparently doing, in his recent push to make sure the lighted tree put up in December on the U.S. Capitol be returned to its name of the last decade, the “Capitol Christmas Tree.” Its name had been the stunningly interesting and descriptive “Holiday Tree.” You can expect any court cases involved over so-called “Christmas” trees to find the primarily...

A key barrier to economic growth in the developing world is reliable access to the global information network: the Internet. A UN-sponsored study, “Information Economy Report 2005” by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (PDF) shows that one of the features of the digital divide between the developing and the developed world has to do with the cost of high-bandwidth Internet access. The report says “that the smaller, e Internet markets in developing countries, particularly in Africa, have...

This made me think of this. If the British pany were really smart, they’d just negotiate a price to use the Book-A-Minute Classics. The versions are a bit different, though. Here’s Dante’s Inferno: “Some woman puts Dante through Hell. THE END.” These are really quite good. I especially like the War and Piece classic. ...

That’s the title of this week’s survey of Italy in The Economist. The news for Italy is quite depressing. Its economic growth is the slowest in Europe, behind even France and Germany, its productivity is down while its wages are up, and a massive demographic crisis looms. The survey is extensive, covering the structural, political and even cultural impediments today’s Italy faces. These include a tendency to blame Europe and China for Italian woes, an over-reliance on small- and medium-sized...