Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
KYIV, Ukraine—Two years ago, on Sept. 5, 2014, the Ukraine war’s first cease-fire went into effect. For a brief moment, the guns fell silent along the front lines in Ukraine’s embattled southeastern Donbas region. These areas included the outskirts of the southern port city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian and combined Russian-separatist forces were engaged in…
A general economic principle is that any law or regulation that restricts market entry tends to impose the greatest burden on those who can be described as poor, latecomers, discriminated against, and politically weak. The president of the NAACP’s St. Louis chapter, Adolphus Pruitt, has petitioned a circuit court judge to reject the St. Louis…
The filibuster is under attack again, this time by Senate Democrats who are hoping to win back that chamber as well as the White House in November. Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, reported Wednesday that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wants Democrats to “move to curtail the filibuster” if they win both…
California just hung up a big “Manufacturing Workers Need Not Apply” sign. It took the form of extended, stricter, and even less realistic carbon dioxide regulations. A new California bill extends legislation previously set to expire in 2020 and imposes dramatically deeper emissions cuts for 2030. Under the new measure, California must cut its carbon…
In the decades since The Heritage Foundation began publishing its annual Index of Economic Freedom in 1995, the world has witnessed profound advances in economic freedom. Open economies have led the world in a startling burst of innovation and economic growth, and political authorities have found themselves increasingly held accountable by those they govern. Unfortunately,…
Virginia state legislators have filed a motion with the Virginia Supreme Court asking for an order requiring Gov. Terry McAuliffe to “show cause” why he should not be held in contempt for violating the court’s July 22 order that vacated McAuliffe’s executive orders restoring the voting rights of 206,000 felons. The court ruled that the…
Following the Dec. 20, 2014, ambush murders of New York Police Department Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, police officers and their supporters called upon Congress and the Obama administration to take action to help reduce the likelihood of similar events occurring in the future. A clarion call was struck for Congress to enact the…
The phrase “income inequality” has a lot going for it. It’s catchy and memorable, and “inequality” breeds an immediate emotional response—contempt for the existence of an unfair policy and outrage that people might support it. Those who cry out in favor of ending it have successfully packaged their indignation as a pep rally for the…
Last December, lobbyists successfully resurrected one of their favorite corporate cash cows: the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency dedicated to subsidizing wealthy and well-connected businesses at the taxpayers’ expense. But those special interests didn’t get everything they wanted. For all of this year, the Ex-Im Bank hasn’t had a full board of directors—meaning it hasn’t…
Colin Kaepernick meant to do no such thing, to be sure, but by benching himself during the national anthem because America “oppresses black people,” and then wearing a shirt celebrating actual totalitarianism and racism in Cuba, he has provided us with textbook compare and contrast case studies. To be clear, to appreciate this silver lining…
The California Senate unanimously approved a landmark civil asset forfeiture reform package last week. If signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, the bill would clamp down on one of the most pernicious practices in civil forfeiture: the bypassing of state law via the controversial federal equitable sharing program. It would also expand the range…
National Football League player Colin Kaepernick created a stir on Friday when he refused to stand for the national anthem at the start of a preseason game. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback cited the prevalence of racism and oppression in America as the primary reasons he sat during the playing of the song. The Bay…
The moment Donald Trump urged black voters to consider supporting him—asking, “What do you have to lose?”—the consultants and pundits sprang into coordinated action, bombarding the airwaves with their “r” and “b” words. “Donald Trump is a racist,” posted Daily Kos. “Donald Trump is a bigot,” piped in The New York Times’ Charles Blow. There’s…
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., has reignited the debate over state taxes on out-of-state (mostly internet-based) sales in releasing draft legislation to allow such sales to be taxed under simplified rules. The bill—the Online Sales Simplification Act of 2016—is a marked improvement over the fatally flawed Marketplace Fairness Act, which the Senate passed in 2013….
Let’s concede at the outset that many students find their college years enlightening and enriching. But something is rotten in the state of academia, and it is increasingly hard not to notice. There once was a time when employers could be reasonably certain that college graduates had a basic sense of the world and, as…
Feminists have convinced many Americans that the U.S. Constitution was and remains an impediment to the rights of women. They argue that freedom and equality for women have come to fruition only as a result of modern feminism. In reality, as I argue in “The Modern Feminist Rejection of Constitutional Government,” the Constitution has always…
In an alleged attempt to increase the income of certain salaried employees, the Obama administration issued a new overtime rule, set to take effect Dec. 1, that will almost certainly do more harm than good for the employees it seeks to help. Currently, employers only have to pay the overtime time-and-a-half rate to salaried employees…
According to recent reports, companies are giving wide swaths of their workforces raises without the government dictating it. Some of the companies that have done this in recent weeks include McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Gap Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Starbucks. Starbucks announced its workers would get at least a 5 percent raise this year. JPMorgan Chase…
North Korea conducted its most successful test launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Tuesday. The missile traveled 500 kilometers (300 miles), a considerable improvement over the 30-km range of the previous launch, and landed within Japan’s air defense identification zone. South Korean military officials report that North Korea used an unusual 500-km high trajectory…
Lurking behind the annual split among Americans over the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice” is a new reality. The fact is that today, whatever label they choose, Americans overwhelmingly support abortion restrictions. Pro-choice politicians who typically support unrestricted, or almost unrestricted, abortion share the extreme view of a tiny minority of the American people. Consider this….