Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
After weeks of hinting that he would “drop a bombshell” at the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday threatened to stop abiding by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which have set the framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for more than two decades. In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas complained that…
Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. has encouraged the free nations of Europe to abandon their independence in the name of closer economic and political union. That process created today’s European Union, the EU. We encouraged this partly because we believed that Europe was like the American states, and that they…
The Kremlin is not our friend. Nor is Moscow a 10-foot-tall threat to our national interests. What America needs is a middling foreign policy that looks to marginalize Russia’s capacity to mess with us. And there is no better place to start this approach than in Syria. Putin has made a muscular move to support…
Hurricane Joaquin may be getting all the attention, but another rough patch of stormy political weather has been lashing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in recent months. This summer, officials in the Dominican Republic (DR) began deporting Haitian migrants and Dominican-born but undocumented people of Haitian descent. That decision has received wide attention, and the…
When President Obama said at the United Nations on Tuesday that “defeating ISIL requires—I believe—a new leader,” I thought for a brief moment I’d finally found something on which he and I could agree. Then I realized he wasn’t talking about his own leadership. The president was actually talking about the regime of Bashar Assad,…
Critics of the House select panel probing the Benghazi attacks, and the news media in general, have had a field day as the committee concluded its 72nd week in session — overtaking the 1973 Senate Watergate investigation as the longest-running special committee in congressional history. “Benghazi is the committee that never ends,” taunted New York magazine. The…
With hurricane Joaquin intensifying to category 4, citizens all along the East Coast should be preparing for a substantial impact. In the coming days, it is important to remember the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s advice: Know your evacuation route Gather supplies (first aid, food, flashlight, etc.) Establish a family plan (method of contact in case…
James Phillips wrote recently on Russian involvement in Syria: Russia’s aggressive military intervention in Syria poses major problems for the United States, its allies, and the future of Syria. It is likely to make a bad situation worse by propping up the Assad regime, intensifying the fighting, and driving more Syrian refugees out of the country….
If there was one strong signal in President Obama’s speech to the United Nations this week, it was this: Don’t expect the American ship of state to tack in a different direction anytime soon. This address is more evidence that there are no big changes coming in the president’s defense and foreign policy. That could…
To say that Pope Francis’ visit to the United States drew a lot of media attention would be an understatement. The coverage was ’round-the-clock. Yet as a lifelong “cradle Catholic,” educated by Jesuits, I couldn’t help noticing what a remarkably incomplete, if not misleading, portrait emerged of the Holy Father. Ask most people what issues concern…
Following the completion of a six-month investigation, the House Homeland Security Committee’s Task Force on Combatting Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel released a final report on Tuesday, September 29. The bipartisan Task Force was formed in March with the primary purpose of reviewing both classified and unclassified information regarding the increased number of foreign fighters…
The government isn’t very good at disaster response (it’s also slow). In all likelihood, in a major disaster, the feds won’t get there fast enough to save people in their greatest moments of peril. The clock works against them. When communities found themselves confronting the terrible situation after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, they found it…
Last week’s U.S.-China summit offers an object lesson in how President Obama conducts foreign policy. All the rhetoric, assumptions, and diplomatic tics of the Obama Doctrine are there. And the outcomes, as usual, are not good. For example, no matter how provocative China is, it must be, according to Obama, “engaged.” It may launch a devastating…
Defense reform has gotten a lot of attention around Washington—from members of Congress and senior Pentagon leaders as well as the usual policy mavens and influencers. Lately, though, whispers wafting from the Pentagon have suggested that perhaps defense reform has peaked, that Congress won’t support meaningful reform. Bushwah! Defense reform is far from dead in…
The Islamic State continues to wreak havoc in Iraq and Syria. The extremist Islamic group, unmatched in its atrocities, has slaughtered hundreds of innocent Christians, Yazidis, Alawites, Shiites, and their more moderate coreligionists. Now, hundreds of thousands of desperate Middle Easterners are fleeing the region, creating a worldwide refugee crisis and possibly spreading terrorists throughout…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September jobs report showed unexpected weakness in the labor market. The payroll survey showed that employers created only 142,000 jobs in September. The economy created only 167,000 net new jobs a month in the 3rd quarter—a substantial drop from the 231,000 jobs a month pace in the 2nd quarter. The numbers are…
Speaking at a Democratic National Committee LGBT fundraiser on Sunday, President Obama observed that “religious freedom doesn’t grant us the freedom to deny our fellow Americans their constitutional rights.” Coming from a former constitutional law professor who is now chief executive of the United States, these remarks are a cause for concern. The sort of…
A powerful bipartisan group of senators announced their intention today to introduce The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015. The bill addresses “front end” reform and contains some of key provisions (albeit in modified form) of what had been the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 (“SSA”), which had been introduced by Senators Mike Lee,…
On Sept. 2, Russia tested a ground-launched cruise missile named SSC-X-8, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, according to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon. This test represents the latest in a long train of Russian violations of the 1987 treaty, which prohibits ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500…
Russia’s aggressive military intervention in Syria poses major problems for the United States, its allies, and the future of Syria. It is likely to make a bad situation worse by propping up the Assad regime, intensifying the fighting, and driving more Syrian refugees out of the country. Secretary of State John Kerry doggedly tried to…