Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
The United Nations is quite proud of its Millennium Development Goals—the criteria it uses to measure the success of economic development programs. In a 2013 report, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “modestly” stated that “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been the most successful global anti-poverty push in history.” Of course, this is vastly overstated. In…
Why is the government in the marriage business? As I explain in “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” it’s to encourage a man and a woman to unite as husband and wife to then be mother and father to any children their union produces. It’s based on the anthropological truth that men…
The nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) experienced mixed results in 2014. Participation and average benefit amounts fell slightly from the previous year, but the program remains much larger than it was a decade ago, despite an improving economy. And far too few working-age adults receiving SNAP are in fact working, even…
The Iran deal is the biggest nuclear story of the decade. Yet most Americans are paying little attention. Even the 70th anniversary of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan stirred little interest. Today, nuclear weapons are pretty much “out of sight, out of mind.” That’s quite a change from the Cold War era, when an…
You’ve heard the argument. If Congress turns down the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran will rush to get a nuclear bomb within two to three months. Our only alternative then is war. But what about Congress voting “no” and adjusting the terms of the agreement? Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near…
Over the weekend, massive anti-government protests swept across the South American country of Brazil. Its citizens were calling for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the Socialist Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). Less than a year into her second term, Rousseff’s support is down to single digits. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took…
The Heritage Foundation's Bryan Riley wrote this week about how sugar policies were behind Oreo's move: The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs. This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and…
The U.S. is reportedly set to block a military aid tranche to Pakistan because of its failure to crack down on the Haqqani network, a designated terrorist organization with ties to the Taliban, that attacks U.S. and Afghan forces on a regular basis. It’s about time. According to Pakistani media, U.S. officials have told their…
Margaret Sanger is a saint in the feminist church. She is a charter member of the progressive hall of fame. Liberals revere this woman who preached “race improvement” and denounced what she called “human weeds”. Hillary Clinton glows that she is “in awe of” Sanger. She said so in 2009 upon receiving Planned Parenthood’s “highest…
There were only two drunk driving arrests last New Year’s Eve in San Francisco, the lowest it’s been since 2009, according to crime statistics from the San Francisco Police Department given to the Ferenstein Wire. This recent data comes on the heels of a new study revealing that the introduction of Uber’s low-cost service, UberX,…
Recent news on the illicit access of the IRS’s systems, back in May, now shows almost three times as many accounts were accessed than originally reported. The additional 220,000 accounts brings the number of taxpayer information potentially taken up to 334,000 – adding fuel to fire over personal security in a digital world. Unfortunately this…
A recent Rasmussen poll revealed that a strong majority (71 percent) of Americans believe that middle-class Americans pay a larger share of their income in taxes than the wealthy pay. Just 20 percent think the opposite. The poll’s results are not surprising given the popular notion that millionaires use loopholes and other gimmicks to escape…
The greatest likelihood for military conflict on the Korean Peninsula is not from a full-scale North Korean invasion, but from a series of escalatory responses to a tactical-level skirmish. This is particularly true if an event occurs during already heightened tensions, as currently exists. Today’s inter-Korean exchange of artillery fire led to no injuries or…
Thailand’s long-running political turmoil, and its consequent feud with Washington over its return to democracy, was interrupted on August 17. At least 20 people are confirmed dead and more than 140 have been wounded in Thailand’s deadliest bombing in recent years. The bombing took place during rush hour at Erawan shrine—a historical Hindu shrine in…
The Department of Labor recently proposed seven rules imposing new obligations on firms selling securities to retirement plans and individual retirement account (IRA) investors. If implemented, these rules will harm the investing public, small businesses, the securities industry, and the overall economy. Among other things, the rules would substantially broaden the class of persons deemed…
The chief environmental regulator in the United States had some blunt words of reality regarding the administration’s climate change regulations. The Clean Power Plan that will require drastic cuts in 47 states’ carbon dioxide emissions – consequently shifting America’s energy economy away from affordable, reliable coal – will adversely impact poor, minority families the most….
Peter W. Schramm dedicated his life to making Americans out of the people who happened to live in a place called America. He was an immigrant, whose family escaped communist Hungary in 1956. In an autobiographical essay, Schramm describes a conversation he had with his father shortly before his family packed up what little they…
The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced earlier this week that it would extend the contract between the U.S. and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to administer the technical functions related to the domain name system, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). U.S. oversight of ICANN matters…
The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs. This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and other job-destroying trade barriers. The leading ingredient in Oreos is sugar, and U.S. trade barriers currently…
The Obama administration is proposing new regulations to reduce methane emissions for the oil and gas industry 40 percent to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025. Here are four things you need to know. 1. Methane emissions are not harmful. Methane emissions in the United States present no human health or environmental threat. Indeed,…