Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
Sixty-seven years ago yesterday, the U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, creating NATO. Ravaged by two world wars, and faced with the very real existential threat of the Soviet Union, European democracies allied with the U.S. and Canada created a security pact with collective defense at its core. The United States lost over half…
North Korea provocatively conducted missile tests on Wednesday, a clear warning to the United States and its allies that nuclear defense systems must remain a priority. North Korea launched one Scud and two No Dong missiles 500-600 kilometers and announced it was a practice drill for preemptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and U.S. forces…
A court case challenging the congressional plan to deal with the Puerto Rico debt crisis has been launched to ensure the territory pays its bills. Creditors filed suit against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in San Juan’s United States District Court on Wednesday. This type of lawsuit is exactly what Congress had hoped to prevent…
When most Americans consider the right to privacy they think about the privacy they enjoy in their homes and person. They don’t think about killing unborn children in the womb. But that is not true of liberal activists. To them, the right to privacy is all about abortion because seemingly everything is about abortion on…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down its opinion in Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., that seems to suggest, as George Washington University Law Prof. Orin Kerr writes, that “It’s a federal crime to visit a website after being told not to visit it.” Although this case arose in the civil context, violations…
The steady drip of disturbing revelations about President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement continues unabated. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that key restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment activities will significantly ease after 10 years, long before those restrictions expire after 15 years. The AP acquired a confidential document, leaked by an anonymous diplomat involved in…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is inching closer to eliminating private payday lending with restrictive new rules and, some advocates hope, paving the way for the U.S. Postal Service to take over these banking services. The agency’s liberal supporters, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., long have wanted to replace the payday lending industry with a…
The prospects for a better future are nearly hopeless for roughly 20 percent of black people—those who reside in big-city, crime-infested, and dysfunctional neighborhoods. There is virtually nothing that can be done about it without a major rebuilding of the black community from within. Let’s examine some of the aspects of the problem and the…
How many non-teachers does a school district need? Since 1950, public schools all across America have added staff at a rapid rate—much faster than their increases in students. Sure, there have been some increases in lead teachers that resulted in large declines in class sizes. However, there were even greater increases in the hiring of…
Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., recently introduced the Save Our Social Security (S.O.S.) Act, which includes some practicable and commonsense solutions such as raising the retirement age and using a more accurate inflation measure. Unfortunately, the S.O.S. Act’s faults significantly outweigh its merits. The bill’s most harmful provision is a significant increase in Social Security’s payroll…
Is it possible to raise community standards by the belt buckle? Timmonsville, South Carolina, is the latest locale to answer by making it a local crime to wear sagging pants. The new law (Ordinance No. 543) bans “wear[ing] pants, trousers, or shorts such that the known undergarments are intentional[ly] displayed/exposed to the public.” It also bans…
The federal budget is out of control. Autopilot spending currently consumes 68 percent of all tax dollars and will devour an ever-larger share of the budget in the future. If the lack of a congressional budget resolution this year is any indicator, Congress isn’t jumping at the chance to make meaningful reforms. However, time is…
Austin "Jack" DeCoster and his son Peter sell a lot of eggs. They own 13 facilities comprised of 97 barns housing 5 million “layers” (egg-laying hens) and abundant “pullets” (younger nonlayers) across a total of 3 million square feet, with additional square footage for cleaning, packaging, and storing. Sometime between January and August 2010, according…
An upstart businessman wants to get ahead in society but can’t because of bureaucratic regulations. A talented college graduate can’t find a job as a result of a stagnant economy. A nation’s citizens feel threatened by terrorist attacks at home and abroad as elected officials reduce military spending. A government continues to burden the next…
Sharing passwords from popular streaming services, like Netflix and HBO, could become a federal crime under a broad federal criminal statute. Last week, a divided panel of federal judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Judge Margaret McKeown, affirmed the conviction of David Nosal under the Computer Fraud…
The barbaric attack in Nice, the slaughter of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and Hillary Clinton’s umpteenth legal cakewalk leave many Americans feeling angry and powerless—and understandably so. The social contract seems to have been shredded by the mayhem that envelops us. But the upcoming election and change of administration offer Americans an…
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently took to the Senate floor to boast that the institution was back to work. His proof: A Washington Times report noting that the Senate has so far this year approved 73 bills that became law, compared to only 27 during the same period last year, and 53 in 2014…
Communism is a cancer that must be removed lest it spread. That historical lesson led President Ronald Reagan, after four decades of containment and accommodation, to lay down a new policy to end the Cold War: “We win and they lose.” Under Reagan, the United States initiated a multipronged anti-communist strategy that was part military…
An attempted military coup in NATO member Turkey was foiled over the weekend. At the time of writing, at least 265 people have been killed and another 1,400 wounded. Thousands of judges have been dismissed or arrested. Tanks shelled the parliament in Ankara and at one point President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was forced to address…
After the horrible terrorist attack in Nice, France, millions of Americans, Frenchmen, and others around the world are probably asking themselves what can be done to stop the seemingly unending wave of deadly Islamist terrorist attacks from Dhaka, Bangladesh to San Bernardino, California. These attacks have been conducted using explosives, guns, and now an ordinary…