Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
Get ready to be inundated with a fresh round of Obamacare propaganda. President Obama’s health care law will be back in the news next month when open enrollment begins Nov. 15. The government is already gearing up to recruit more enrollees. But based on what we know already, the Affordable Care Act isn’t panning out…
Are non-citizens potentially voting in Tuesday’s election? Yes, according to Old Dominion University Professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest, who wrote an article for The Washington Post highlighting their findings: Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races. Because non-citizens tended to…
“I think the best way to phrase my comments on the Ebola crisis today are to quote the great contemporary philosopher, Yogi Berra, ‘It’s déjà vu all over again,’” said Bob Kadlec as he opened a panel discussion on Ebola at The Heritage Foundation on Monday. The panel, which included Charlotte Florance of The Heritage…
Your Halloween candy is costing you more than it should—because of a government program. For decades, the federal sugar program has artificially kept the price of sugar excessively high. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it cost 37.5 cents to buy a pound of wholesale refined beet sugar in…
Cheerleading squads don’t have chants with the theme “We’re getting whupped, let’s leave early.” So when an adverse outcome is obvious they either quit cheering or continue with embarrassingly inappropriate chants about the invincibility of their team. That seems to be the situation with the Southern Company’s carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project in Kemper…
On Tuesday, a federal court in Tampa, Fla. stopped the Obama administration from enforcing the new and improved version of the Obamacare mandate that employers provide healthcare coverage of abortion-inducing drugs. Ave Maria University, a Catholic school based in Florida, challenged the so-called “accommodation” that allows it to avoid directly providing or paying for coverage…
Earlier this month, it was discovered that a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign had been targeting Western government leaders and institutions—including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, energy and telecommunication companies, the Ukrainian and European Union governments, and one academic inside the United States—for almost 5 years. Dubbed “Sandworm,” a reference to the science fiction series Dune,…
By cancelling their Confucius Institute programs, the University of Chicago and Penn State have signaled resistance to the People’s Republic of China’s attempt to promote the image of a culturally benign China. The Chinese communist government established the Confucius Institutes to educate foreign nations about China’s language and culture. The Confucius Institutes operate within foreign…
So now, Hillary Clinton is saying: Never mind, I goofed. The former senator, secretary of state and first lady on Friday declared that businesses and corporations don’t create jobs. Yesterday, she, ahem, clarified things. “I short-handed this point the other day,” she said. “So let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple…
From 2000 to 2012, the U.S. violent crime rate fell over 23 percent. Such an improvement in the social fabric would be cause enough for celebration. But the crime drop of the 2000s followed an even larger decline in the previous decade: 32 percent from 1993 to 2000. The 1990s crime drop (in both personal…
Has the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve been a success or a failure? Does the Fed’s full history contain fewer symptoms of instability than the decades prior to the Fed’s establishment? The infographic below highlights a few reasons the the Fed's effectiveness should be questioned. You can read the full research here. >>>Federal Reserve…
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., has introduced a resolution that allegedly would eliminate domestic sugar subsidies after numerous other countries got rid of their subsidies. This “zero-for-zero” plan, which has been pushed by U.S. sugar growers, is based on a seriously flawed premise: that the United States shouldn’t eliminate damaging economic policies if other countries have…
On Friday, Hillary Clinton said during a campaign rally in Massachusetts, “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” The remarks were widely quoted, and on Monday, Clinton herself commented further on them: Let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy…
Thirty-two percent of the growth in family income inequality since 1979 can be linked to the decline in the marriage rate. That’s according to a new study from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, authored by W. Bradford Wilcox and Robert Lerman. Marriage’s economic benefits are numerous, according to the study….
Last week, the shooting in Ottawa that claimed the life of Corporal Nathan Cirillo was called a terrorist attack by Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper. The shooter, Michael Zahef-Bibeau, was radicalized within Canada and had not left the country—in fact his application for a passport was under review at the time of the shooting. So…
North Korea now has the ability to produce a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be mounted atop a ballistic missile. That is the assessment of Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the senior U.S. commander on the Korean Peninsula, as he talked to reporters Friday. Scaparrotti also concluded that Pyongyang has a functioning long-range mobile missile launcher….
Holding a free and fair election without violence, Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has defied skeptics once again and continues its bottom-up democratic transition from despotism. On Sunday, October 26, Tunisians peacefully cast critical ballots in their country’s first full parliamentary election under the constitution they adopted early this year. With leading secular party Nidaa Tounes (Tunisia’s Call) surprisingly outperforming the moderate Islamist party Ennahda (Renaissance party), the 217 members voted…
New research into humanities education suggests student learning outcomes increase with exposure to the arts. Few empirical studies have been conducted on the benefits of arts education for students. Jay Greene, endowed chair of the Department of Education at the University of Arkansas, and his team have released two studies on the educational benefits of…
The family of a Georgia teenager is suing the Waycross, Ga., Police Department for $12.5 million after a police officer allegedly pointed a gun to their son’s head and handcuffed him on the ground—all for a seatbelt violation. The incident occurred on Jan. 18 when high school senior Montre’ Merritt was returning home and pulling into…
“Now some people want to criticize the way the administration has handled this [ebola] crisis. And it’s true we made a few mistakes early on. But I assure you, it was nowhere near as bad as how we handled the ISIS situation.”