Scott Powell is senior fellow at Seattle-based Discovery Institute and managing partner at RemingtonRand LLC. 
Memorial Day had its origin as Decoration Day following the Civil War, but it only became an official federal holiday to honor those who lost their lives while serving in the armed forces of the United States in 1971.
Preoccupation with form over substance combined with denial and avoidance behavior are the chief causal factors for human failure—from the individual and family right up to the national level.
Of all holidays, Easter is the one that celebrates a single event that transformed the world forever. There are many religions with different founders, prophets and teachers going back thousands of years, but only one of them has a founder who professed to be the messiah—the son of God who could save mankind.
The Valentine's Day massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was the latest in a series of mass school shootings dating back to the Columbine, Colorado shooting in 1999. Evoking shock, these tragedies inevitably prompt a call to pray for the victims and their families.
In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln reminded Americans that they were uniquely privileged to have a new birth of freedom that was contingent on “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” That was then. What about now?
If there is one thing about which most economists understand and agree it's the law of supply and demand. A derivative of that law is that demand and velocity of transactions tend to diminish as costs increase.
Few would deny that the ascendance of the United States from colonial poverty to the world’s top economic and military superpower in just 200 years is largely attributable to principles and rule of law in our founding documents enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
When Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517, 500 years ago this October 31, he probably had no idea what forces he was unleashing. Although his intention was to spur reform within the Catholic Church rather than breaking off and starting a new church, he ended up accomplishing both.
Most common sense people rightly assume that reducing trade barriers is good in and of itself. But it's a mistake to think that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving the U.S., Canada and ten other countries that is close to being concluded after six plus years of negotiation under the Obama administration is primarily a free trade pact. It's also a misstep to grant the Obama administration with fast-track authority and the attendant secrecy on all details of this trade pact.
