Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
All across America, parents, teachers and local school districts have been having conversations about how best to accommodate the privacy and safety concerns of transgender students while also addressing the privacy and safety concerns of other students. Solutions were found, such as the creation of new single-occupancy restrooms and changing facilities for transgender students while…
By now you’ve likely read or heard of the knock-down, drag-out fight that we had at the Missouri Legislature on Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 39. If passed by simple legislative majorities, SJR 39 would have placed a ballot question on either the August or November ballot pertaining to religious liberty. Missouri voters would then decide…
The Aviation Innovation Reform and Reauthorization Act contains several reforms that move in the right direction. Notably, it removes America’s air traffic control system from the Federal Aviation Administration and establishes it as a federally chartered, nonprofit corporation. But the legislation includes troubling labor provisions. Its supporters seem intent on buying government union support by…
Brazil’s senate voted to begin impeachment trails for President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday. Rousseff, who is accused of breaking federal budget laws, will be suspended from her position while the trial takes place. The suspension provides an opportunity for Brazil—Latin America’s largest country—to bring to an end a “Lost Decade” during which misguided policies resulted…
No wonder so many Americans on the left and right are disgusted and fed up with career Washington bureaucrats and insiders. Common sense ideas which folks outside the beltway understand and take for granted are hard to come by inside the beltway. Exhibit A is the novel idea—to the Army, Air Force, and some key…
A federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled Thursday in favor of the U.S. House of Representatives’ challenge to the Obama administration’s implementation of part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The act has been “revised” dozens of times by the administration since its passage in March 2010, leading the…
Blake Gaston, 23, killed while riding his motorcycle in Seattle. He played the piano, guitar, drums, wrote music, and developed websites. Elizabeth Kemble, 46, was killed by a car while walking across the street in Portland, Ore. She previously survived three kidney transplants, and dedicated her life to helping dialysis patients and hungry seniors. Debra Majkut, 34, mother…
The Obama legacy is already unraveling. Last week, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, revealed that the nuclear deal with Iran was based on a giant lie he sold to the American public. Rhodes admitted to concocting a narrative about the U.S.-Iranian negotiations in order to create the impression that the U.S….
This week, the armed services committees in the senate and house consider an amendment requiring the Army and Air Force JAG Corps to establish career litigation tracks for uniformed attorneys. The Army and Air Force oppose such legislation and are furiously lobbying congress against the creation of career military prosecutors and defense attorneys, despite the…
It seems that federal officials have worked overtime to undermine public trust. Benghazi, the IRS abuses, the “fast and furious” gun-running fiasco, the solar power boondoggles, and the seemingly endless implementation problems of the Affordable Care Act—all these scandals have common themes: arrogant and abusive bureaucracy, double dealing, lame excuses, and legal hairsplitting. All these…
On May 9, residents of Austin, Texas, accomplished what many New York City regulators and legislators have tried in vain to achieve: they forced Uber and Lyft out of their city. Over the weekend, a mere 17 percent of the voters went to the polls and a majority voted in favor of retaining restrictive and…
Last week I had the good fortune to be in Texas discussing conservative policy solutions with hundreds of dedicated men and women in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. One of the big topics of conversation was freedom in education: How can we offer young Americans the best education possible, while ensuring that each family can…
On April 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its proposed rule regarding the implementation of the provisions outlined in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). The basic goal of the MACRA was to repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) mechanism of Medicare physician payment and replace…
History remains very much alive in East Asia. Millennia of invasions, occupations, and subjugation form the foundation for present-day perceptions. The predominant calamity for many in this regard is the 20th century war precipitated by the Japanese attempt to impose a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere on its neighbors. The second World War, or “The…
Not long ago, the Obama administration determined that women can enter all military combat occupations. Now the debate has quickly shifted to whether women can be forced into combat. Suddenly, the exceptional qualifications and ambition of a few women seeking ground combat roles could have significant consequences for all women. A proposal to “Draft America’s Daughters,” part of the National Defense Authorization…
The New York Times Magazine recently profiled President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, in an article titled “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru.” In it Rhodes openly brags about how the administration manipulated the media in the run-up to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. I want to explain very briefly why…
The Army and Air Force are engaged in an all-out legislative battle to preserve the status quo and kill a Senate and House amendment requiring them to establish a career litigation track for select judge advocates. This change would benefit both services as well as the professional careers of their individual lawyers, crime victims, and…
Innovation is a wonderful thing but can also serve as a reminder of just how good we have it. Take the journey of the solar-powered plane, for example. The Solar Impulse 2 is an airplane powered by solar panels and uses batteries at night. In promotion of weaning the world off natural resources like oil…
Promised savings rarely materialize to their fullest extent when it comes to federal spending. From budget gimmicks to accounting tricks, government agencies and Congress have their ways of making savings elusive. A House Budget Committee inquiry raised awareness for yet another example of elusive savings and a lack of transparency in government accounting: The public…
North Carolina has sustained unrelenting and coordinated attacks from big business, the entertainment industry, the American Civil Liberties Union, and now the federal government over its commonsense bathroom policies. Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature have had enough of this bullying and filed separate lawsuits against the Department of Justice Monday in the reasonable…