This article describes the relationship between countries’ lockdown responses to COVID-19 pandemic and those political rights civil liberties, macroeconomic variables, vulnerability virus. Political liberties cannot explain differences in timing across countries.

This proposed rule would implement revised Executive Branch policy that, consistent with constitutional church-state parameters, faith-based organizations compete on an equal footing with other organizations for direct Federal financial assistance, and to fully participate in Federally supported social service programs, while beneficiaries under those programs receive appropriate protections. T...

The COVID crisis of the past three years has greatly impacted stakeholder relationships between scientists, health providers, policy makers, pharmaceutical industry employees, and public. Lockdowns restrictions civil liberties strained an already fraught relationship public with scientists also seen as complicit in providing justification for abrogation liberties. This was compounded by suppres...

Visual imagery can powerfully shape perceptions of risks as is clearly demonstrated by research on the use of graphic warnings on cigarette packs. Government efforts to counteract public fears of vaccines could harness this phenomenon by using public information campaigns that present visually the effects of vaccine-preventable diseases. Visual representations can also be used to communicate th...

Americans are concerned about the problem of pornography (The term "pornography" is used herein to refer to sexually explicit media without any pejorative meaning necessarily intended. Terms such as "violent pornography" and "sexually violent media" are used to refer to media that combine sexual and violent content. We also sometimes use the term "sexually violent media" to refer to materials t...

The US Defense Department’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has recently launched a Total Information Awareness (TIA) Initiative as part of national efforts to safeguard the US homeland from future terrorist threats. The vision behind the Initiative is to integrate public and private databases of all data relevant to monitoring the activities of potential terrorists and their ...

In this paper we study the role of religiosity in political choices such as redistribution and individual liberties. To a standard model with consumption and effort, we add a third good: civil liberties with a cap established by law. More liberties, like divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage, may be considered good by the secular and detrimental by the religious individuals. With st...