Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
On Monday, Louisiana Gov. and likely 2016 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal will speak in London at the Henry Jackson Society about the treat of Islamist terrorism. It will be, in his own words, “blunt” and “clear.” “You cannot remedy a problem,” he says in his prepared remarks, “if you will not name it and define it.”…
Those nasty Republicans are at it again. Dennis Jett, former U.S. ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, writes in The New Republic that GOP senators are blocking “even the most reasonable international treaties.” As opposed, apparently, to that mythical entity, the domestic treaty. The ambassador proclaims the virtues of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which will…
Post-mortems on “How We Lost Iraq and Afghanistan” seem to be proliferating—even though there’s a lot of “mors” still happening in those battlegrounds. Of course, criticizing the conduct of war, even as bullets fly, is nothing new. Even “the Good War” had its share of cranky complaints about how the war was being won. One…
There is hubris in every government project. The unspoken idea behind bills as comprehensive as the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank is that legislators can understand how a system works, tinker with it and improve it. Psychologically, it is unreasonable to expect that anyone is unbiased about her own grand idea, so legislating has a…
The reported cyberstrike by the Islamic State or some of its acolytes on social media accounts of the U.S. Central Command — responsible for American military operations in the Middle East — is more insult than injury. While that’s hard to believe, it is the case. First, as of this writing we don’t know who…
From Lindsey Burke's piece on President Obama's community college proposal: The Obama administration announced that it will propose two years of “free” community college, paid for by taxpayers, for students maintaining a “C” or better average. The federal government would finance three-quarters of the costs, and the administration says it hopes the remainder would be financed…
The Equal Voting Rights Institute filed an historic lawsuit on Jan. 15 in Texas on behalf of white Dallas voters alleging that Dallas County commissioners are diluting their voting rights. Although there have been many lawsuits filed on behalf of black, Hispanic, Asian and Indian voters making such vote dilution claims since the Voting Rights…
On Friday, a bipartisan group of leaders from the United States Senate and House Judiciary Committees sent a letter calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to abandon the Department of Justice’s “Equitable Sharing” program, which has distributed billions of dollars of civil asset forfeiture revenues to state and local law enforcement agencies. The letter also…
House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., this week jumpstarted the sputtering effort to allow states to collect sales taxes on sales by out-of-state, mostly Internet-based, sellers. Known as “home rule and revenue return,” his plan would allow Internet purchases to be taxed – but at the rate established by the seller’s state, not the…
Unsurprisingly, Obamacare has made yet another problem worse—creating a government exchange that is less competitive than the prior individual market. In 2009, when President Obama was trying to sell his health care reform ideas to Congress, he promised a competitive marketplace, where costs would decrease and quality would increase. He said: We’ll…[create] a new insurance…
School lunch standards have changed—and not for the better. This was evident recently in a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama. Students took photos of their mostly inedible-looking lunch trays of food. >>> These Gross School Lunch Pictures Are Going Viral With the Hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama Yum school lunches #thanksmichelleobama pic.twitter.com/eS27j75Oae — Jess (@Jess_Sency) November 18, 2014…
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., was absolutely right when she said we had to pass Obamacare so we could find out what was in it. Did you know that the law authorizes the federal government to contract with selected health plans to compete directly with all other private plans in every state? The…
On Tuesday, Jan. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in its first campaign finance case since it threw out the aggregate limit on campaign contributions to federal candidates last year in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. But this latest case involves the rules pertaining to state elections in Florida, not federal elections,…
President Obama just urged Congress to cut workers’ wages. Of course, the news headlines did not report it as such. However, make no mistake: The president’s call for mandatory paid sick leave would simultaneously cut workers’ pay. The president proposes requiring businesses to offer seven days paid sick leave to their workers. That sounds great….
A group of South Asia experts recently submitted a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to address rising religious persecution in Pakistan during his trip to the region for the U.S.–Pakistan Strategic Dialogue this week. Unfortunately, Secretary Kerry did not publicly raise U.S. concerns on sensitive issues such as Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy…
Last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and a Jewish grocery store that killed 17 people have underscored the rising threats posed by Islamist terrorists inside Western countries. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s, the launching of terrorist attacks against western targets by radicalized…
On Monday, new mom and pop/country superstar Kelly Clarkson released “Heartbeat Song”—an upbeat, synth-driven single that celebrates her new baby girl in a unique way. “The beat is actually River’s heartbeat slowed down from when she was in my tummy!”shares Clarkson in a radio interview. Clarkson and her husband Brandon Blackstock, married in 2013, welcomed…
Life insurance company MetLife has been locked in a battle with the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) for months. Last July, the FSOC, a sort of super-regulatory agency created by the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, designated MetLife for special regulation by the Federal Reserve even though MetLife fought the process at every step. Tuesday, MetLife announced…
This year will be important for Japan’s economic growth as the country continues to struggle to control its debt problem. In the coming months, observers should watch several key indicators of Japan’s economic performance. Given Japan’s economic troubles, it is important that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe push ahead with his “third arrow” reforms, including continued…
President Obama will give his annual State of the Union address on Jan. 20. Heritage experts identified 33 policies in areas ranging from the economy to religious liberty that the president should consider for his 2015 address. Economy Energy Foreign Policy and National Security Marriage and Religious Liberty Spending and Entitlements Unions Economy 1. Advance…