Political Commentary & Opinion
Analysis, commentary, and opinion essays on politics and policy from The Daily Signal’s contributors and experts.
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opinion
Just a Common Soldier: A Moving Tribute for Memorial Day
For many years, Stephen Clouse has made videos designed to inspire donations to worthy causes. Recently, he made a different kind of video. It’s not designed to solicit donations but to honor those who have given so much for our country. In this video, veteran Hollywood actor Tony Lo Bianco reads a poem called “Just a Common… -
opinion
Islamic Terrorists Should Be Called Islamic Terrorists
For more than three decades, they have sought out and killed Americans. In 1983, in one of the first major anti-American attacks, they bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen. In 1992, they used bombs to kill two people in Aden, Yemen, in hopes of killing American troops that might be passing… -
opinion
A Few More Hot Days Does Not Equal a Lot More Heat Waves
Whatever the combination of human and natural causes, the world has warmed by about 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last century or so. During this time, there have been no increases in tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or droughts associated with this mild increase in world temperature. But much has been made about a dramatic increase… -
news
Heritage Action to Host Presidential Candidate Forum in South Carolina
Heritage Action for America announced today that it will host a forum for presidential candidates in the early primary state of South Carolina this September. According to Heritage Action, during the forum, candidates who are seeking the Republican nomination will partake in a “wide-ranging” policy discussion and outline their platforms. The candidates participating in the… -
opinion
Minimum-Wage Lessons from Puerto Rico
If a policy change results in large numbers of poor people losing their jobs, would The Washington Post downplay the job destruction as a minor effect that can be worked around? That’s how Post reporter Lydia DePillis skirts the horrifying result of a 1970s minimum-wage increase in Puerto Rico, which destroyed one in 11 jobs… -
opinion
Here’s Why the Path to Ex-Im Reauthorization Is Rapidly Closing
With today’s news that the 170-member Republican Study Committee is opposed to reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, the House appears poised to allow the troubled agency to finally expire on June 30 without taking any action. That, however, hasn’t stopped proponents of the bank from staking their hopes on the Senate’s taking action to jam… -
news
Why Conservatives in Nebraska Want to End the Death Penalty
Nebraska’s legislature has approved legislation that would abolish the death penalty in the state. Lawmakers approved the legislation in a 32-to-15 vote despite the governor’s threat to veto it. Many of the legislature’s senators cited their conservative principles as reason to oppose the death penalty. They called capital punishment bureaucratic and fiscally irresponsible. They also… -
news
How Jeb Bush Would Address Climate Change
DUBUQUE, Iowa—In his first sit-down interview with The Daily Signal, Jeb Bush blames the “hard-core left” for trying to force its way on the issue of climate change. “The problem is climate change has been co-opted by the hard-core left and if you don’t march to their beat perfectly then you’re a denier,” Bush said… -
news
‘Gosnell’ Movie Producer Confronts the Convicted Killer in ‘Chilling’ Prison Interview
Ann McElhinney, co-producer of “Gosnell,” a film about abortionist Kermit Gosnell, came face to face with the convicted killer in an exclusive prison interview. In 2013, Gosnell was convicted of violating Pennsylvania’s 24-week abortion limit, and for the first-degree murder of three infants and the involuntary manslaughter of an adult patient named Karnamaya Mongar. In… -
opinion
Why Letting Ex-Im Bank’s Charter Expire Won’t Lead to Massive Job Losses
The charter of the Export-Import Bank is set to expire on June 30 unless it is reauthorized by Congress. Scare tactics of bank supporters aside, the end of Ex-Im would not mean the loss of thousands of American jobs. Economists have long understood that subsidies doled out by government credit agencies such as the Ex-Im… -
opinion
What It’s Like to Find Out Bin Laden Read Your Work. A Heritage Researcher Talks About the Discovery.
Today, many of Osama bin Laden’s documents and writings were declassified. It turns out that bin Laden’s library included a paper by The Heritage Foundation’s Jim Phillips, “The Evolving al-Qaeda Threat.” Phillips spoke to CNN about the discovery. -
news
Wisconsin Bill Would Limit Types of Food That Could Be Purchased With Food Stamps
Wisconsin’s State Assembly approved legislation last week that puts in place new rules about what recipients of food stamps may purchase with the benefits. Assembly Bill 177 would limit the types of food that could be purchased with Wisconsin’s food stamp program, FoodShare. In addition to banning the purchase of foods such as lobster with the publicly-funded… -
news
‘Honoring a Commitment:’ Soldier’s Remains Found After 70 Years
This week, The Heritage Foundation will host the debut of the film “Honoring a Commitment: The Story of PFC Gordon.” “Honoring a Commitment” is a feature-length film about Pfc. Lawrence Gordon, who went missing in action during World War II. Gordon, a Canadian citizen, enlisted in the United States Army not long after Pearl Harbor… -
opinion
Congress Is Trying to Push Through an Expensive Program Shown to Hurt American Workers
In recent weeks there’s been a bit of controversy in Washington over an “alphabet soup” of legislation and tactics all dealing with trade issues. Amid the hubbub, Americans should be aware that Congress is working to bring back an expensive program that has been shown to hurt American workers—and they’re trying to push it through… -
news
What Do Millennials Want From Washington? A Panel Examines
Washington, D.C.—“There’s a moment coming where we realize it’s on us, that there’s no one coming to save us, that this is not, ‘the adults are coming to fix things,’” said Rock the Vote President Ashley Spillane, alluding to a not-so-distant 2016 election. “I think that that’s coming … and hopefully we will see a… -
news
Former Baltimore Mayor Led a $130 Million Investment in Freddie Gray’s Neighborhood. Why He Defends That Move.
Sandtown-Winchester, a place of boarded-up and broken homes made famous as the neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived, is among the bleakest places in Baltimore. But it’s not for a lack of trying to make it better. In the early 1990s, former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, a Democrat who was the city’s first elected black… -
news
$5.7 Million Government Program Prompts Bipartisan Disdain
Reps. Tom Graves and Debbie Wasserman Schultz don’t agree on much, but the conservative and liberal lawmakers do share one goal when it comes to cutting government. Both Graves, a Republican from Georgia, and Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman from Florida, voiced support for shuttering the Open World Leadership Center. The Legislative Branch… -
news
Interactive Map Contains Clues About Marriage in Your Hometown
The county you grew up in may affect the likelihood you will marry, new data reveals. The New York Times utilized data from Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity Project to compile a county-by-county map of an individual’s chances of marrying by age 26. >>> View the Interactive Map The researchers studied more than 5 million people… -
news
Kirsten Powers: ‘If George Bush Had Done This, He Would Have Been Hitler’
Kirsten Powers doesn’t mince words when discussing what she calls the “illiberal silencing tactics” of the left, including those employed by the Obama administration. “It goes without saying that if George Bush had done this, he would have been Hitler,” she said of the Obama administration’s attempt to “delegitimize” Fox News. The concept of “delegitimizing”… -
news
Assisted Suicide: How One Woman Chose to Die, Then Survived
In 1994, Jeannette Hall, a resident of King City, Ore., voted in favor of Ballot Measure 16, which for the first time in the United States, would allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives through physician-assisted suicide. “I thought, hey, I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer,” Hall told The Daily Signal. “So I…