Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
The House and Senate budget committees have held hearings suggesting an openness to a budget commission to help fix our fiscal woes. Budget experts have suggested that the budget process has a shelf life. They say the current way of budgeting clearly isn’t working because Congress habitually fails to pass budgets and annual spending bills….
Planned Parenthood is about to celebrate its 100th birthday. It’s an odd, and frankly grotesque, commemoration for an organization that is responsible itself for ensuring over 7 million babies will never have the opportunity to celebrate even one birthday. Planned Parenthood was founded on Oct. 16, 1916, by population control advocate Margaret Sanger. Though the…
Sunday night’s second presidential debate underscored the importance of the next Supreme Court justice, as the candidates and questioners alike recognized that the fate of the federal courts rests in the next president’s hands. The high court has been closely divided on many contentious issues in recent years, and the next justice could change the…
Social Security’s benefit structure is so complex that few Americans understand it. There’s a simpler way to provide benefits that also would help to improve the program’s worsening finances. Most Americans don’t understand the rules and details that affect their monthly Social Security retirement benefits, according to a Government Accountability Office report based on data…
Detroit school students, represented by the Los Angeles-based public interest firm Public Counsel, filed suit last month against the state of Michigan, claiming a legal right to literacy based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Ninety-three percent of Detroit’s predominantly black public school eighth-graders are not proficient in reading, and 96 percent are not…
The Constitution has long been subject to attacks from individuals hostile to its guarantees of freedom, economic opportunity, and limited government, but in recent days no other provision has been as widely and intensely attacked as the First Amendment. From the IRS targeting conservative groups to those trying to limit the ability of Americans to…
Members of Congress working to block any Obamacare bailouts got two pieces of good news recently. One was that the Department of Justice filed robust and persuasive motions to dismiss the lawsuits brought by insurers seeking payment for the rest of their Obamacare “risk corridor” program claims. The risk corridor program collects money from insurers…
Tesla Motors Inc. is suing the state of Michigan in federal court over protectionist laws that forbid the popular electric carmaker from selling its vehicles in the state. It’s an all-out fight in the home state of Motor City, and it could reshape how consumers buy cars in Michigan and beyond. Believe it or not,…
Yet again, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act has spawned an out-of-touch regulation that could harm millions of Americans. The proposed rule titled “Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans” covers small-dollar loans with terms less than 45 days, as well as certain loans with terms longer than 45 days that have an “all-in” annual percentage…
This November, there are a record number of ballot initiatives in at least nine states regarding so-called medical marijuana or outright legalization of the Schedule I drug. The pot pushers, both small businesses and large, want more people smoking, eating, and consuming more pot because it is good for their bottom line. Before voting yes,…
As Britain starts extricating itself from the European Union, bureaucrats in Brussels continue to hand ammunition to Brexit supporters. Last week, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) saw fit to advocate British journalists undergo some type of sensitivity training because—get this—they write too much about radical Islamist terrorism. The 83-page “ECRI Report on the…
With the leak of Donald Trump’s tax records by The New York Times, and following round two of the presidential debates in which both candidates spoke about their tax plans, taxes are in the news to stay. But like its code, taxes are complicated. There’s the corporate tax rate, the sales tax, personal income tax,…
Criminal laws and regulations in the United States have increased to absurd proportions in the past few decades, posing a growing threat to our constitutional liberties. There are nearly 5,000 criminal laws and an estimated 300,000 or more criminal regulations at the federal level alone. In fact, there are so many possible criminal offenses that…
The very first line of today’s court ruling in PHH Corporation v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) states: “This is a case about executive power and individual liberty.” Today, for once, liberty won in a big way. It would be hard to overstate the importance of the decision by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…
Pakistan took a positive step forward last Thursday when it passed legislation to increase the penalties for individuals guilty of committing so-called “honor killings.” Honor killings, the practice of murdering female family members who allegedly brought dishonor upon their family by disobeying them, usually on issues of love or marriage, took the lives of more…
On Wednesday, September 28, The Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion on “Geopolitics and Economic Development: Assessing the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.” The discussion focused on the economic viability of the proposed $46 billion China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), security concerns impacting CPEC, and the geopolitical and geostrategic implications of the formation of an economic corridor linking…
People may expect zombies to be wandering the streets on Halloween, but they certainly don’t expect them to start casting ballots a week later. Yet in Colorado, dead voters’ ballots are cropping up in the vote counts. CBS4, a Denver TV station, identified multiple cases of dead men and women in the state voting, with…
I was invited, along with several other American professors, to deliver lectures at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1979. Pieter Willem Botha was the prime minister, and apartheid, though becoming a bit relaxed, was the law of the land. Under apartheid, intermarriage between blacks, coloreds, and Indians on the one hand…
Maybe Bill Clinton should moderate Sunday’s presidential debate. Referring to Obamacare this week as “the craziest thing in the world,” he seems to understand that the consequences of the health care law might be of interest to voters. Indeed, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 71 percent of Donald Trump supporters and 77…