Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
For years, the IRS has used a law meant to facilitate the tracking of illicit financial transactions by drug and terrorist organizations to seize and forfeit vast sums of money from people with absolutely no connection to the criminal underworld. On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously to curb this practice by passing…
Members of Congress are preparing to be quite active during the lame-duck session. That’s good news for cronies who want to use the political system to secure handouts but bad news for taxpayers and the economy. The targeted tax credits Congress is considering include windfalls for hybrid solar lighting systems, fuel cells, geothermal, biomass, combined…
On May 18, then-future Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump put out a list of 11 individuals, all sitting judges, who he would consider as a potential replacement for Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly last February, on the Supreme Court of the United States. Trump has now added 10 new names to that list. As was the…
In his final budget proposal, President Barack Obama proclaimed that the federal budget is “on a more sustainable fiscal path.” This is simply not true. Over the last two presidential administrations, total debt has grown considerably, along with the risk of a significant financial crisis. U.S. government debt now climbs above $19.5 trillion. When the next president takes office, publicly-held debt will be…
Has it really come to this? On the heels of dramatic disagreement between the two major party presidential candidates about how to react to ongoing tension between the police and the African-American community, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has unanimously concluded that a black man fleeing from a police officer investigating criminal activity is…
After voting to proceed to a bill that didn’t exist earlier this week, the Senate has finally produced text of the continuing resolution, a short-term government spending bill. The bill, written behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brought to the floor late Thursday afternoon, and for the majority of Senate Republicans,…
On Sept. 27, the en banc panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia will preside over oral argument in State of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. This will likely be one of the most momentous cases ever to be decided by any federal court. At issue: Twenty-eight states and numerous…
Is a right to straight-ticket (also known as straight-party) voting guaranteed under the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act? Any ninth-grader who has taken a civics course can tell you there’s no such right in the Constitution (even if they couldn’t tell you what straight-ticket voting is), but a federal district court in Michigan has…
It’s not every day you see a significant portion of Republican senators supporting a taxpayer bailout—especially for a private union pension plan. But today, six of the 14 Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee joined with Democratic counterparts in favor of a multibillion-dollar bailout of the United Mine Workers of America’s pension and health…
Last year’s college news was about demands for safe spaces, trigger warnings, and bans on insensitivity. This year’s college news is about black student demands for segregated campus housing and other racially segregated campus spaces and programs. I totally disagree with these calls by black students. It’s a gross dereliction of duty for college administrators…
Protesters took the streets to demand “justice” almost immediately following the police shooting death of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday afternoon. Like too many other similar incidents, the protests ultimately turned into riots, and widespread looting and violence ensued. Justice for what, exactly, is unknown at this point. The question…
During the last farm bill debate in 2013 and 2014, The Heritage Foundation was frequently asked what a free-market alternative to the farm bill would look like. We were listening, and we have just released a major new report that answers that question. “Farms and Free Enterprise: A Blueprint for Agricultural Policy” provides not just…
Homeschooling has been growing in popularity in recent years, and now accounts for about 3.4 percent of the school-age population. That’s more than double the percentage (1.7 percent) of homeschooling families in 1999. That’s great news for families who have chosen to give a customized, tailor-made education to their children, and for the millions of…
On Thursday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will release its report on “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.” According to the report, first generation immigrants as a group increase the nation’s fiscal deficit. In other words, the government benefits they receive exceed the taxes paid. The National Academies’ report provides 75-year…
Working with the FBI and other federal counterparts, police in New Jersey have located and taken into custody Ahmad Khan Rahami, the primary suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings and police shootings. The feds filed a four-count criminal complaint against him that was unsealed Wednesday. The authorities are still piecing together a…
This past spring, Netflix—the beloved online video streaming service—announced it would raise its monthly subscription fees. The first price hike in June cost between $1 and $2 per month. One consumer was angry enough to file a class action lawsuit. This discontent is typical when consumers feel the impact of higher payments directly. But when costs go up…
On Tuesday night, the Senate voted to proceed to the continuing resolution, a bill that will allegedly fund the government until Dec. 9. The only problem is that there isn’t actually a bill yet. There is no text. There is no agreement between Democrats and Republicans on what the bill will fund—Planned Parenthood, the Export-Import…
The incredible ingenuity of the American people invented the internet—one of the most transformational technologies in human history. But even though we created and paid for the internet, we did not keep it for ourselves; we shared it for the benefit of all humanity. That spirit of freedom and generosity is the very essence of…
New York City and New Jersey dodged a bullet on Saturday. The terrorist bombings allegedly perpetrated by Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Afghanistan, could have been much worse. Several of the bombs that he reportedly planted failed to explode, giving investigators important leads that enabled Rahami’s quick arrest….
President Barack Obama gave his eighth and final address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday morning. The tone was reminiscent of past speeches in a number of ways, both good and bad. The rhetoric was soaring in parts and it was well delivered. However, his characterization of the world and his successes tended toward…