Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
On Sept. 10, Earl Ringo Jr. was executed in Missouri. Before you decide whether or not this is right, consider what Ringo did. In July 1998, Ringo and an accomplice planned to rob a restaurant where Ringo had previously worked. Early one morning, they followed delivery truck driver Dennis Poyser and manager-in-training Joanna Baysinger into…
President Barack Obama raised a lot of eyebrows when he declared in his United Nations climate change speech: “Over the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth.” That’s absolutely true. And it’s remarkable because we as a nation didn’t ratify the Kyoto…
It’s only natural, with reports of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State filling the news, for Americans to question just how safe they are – and if the threat is greater now than it used to be. We’ve never really been safe. At least that’s what a database maintained by The Heritage Foundation finds….
President Obama insulted many Americans when he raised events in Ferguson, Mo., during his United Nations speech. They chafed at the implied moral equivalence of a shooting still in legal dispute with the many lethal foreign threats besieging the world. While such rhetoric is divisive at home, there is another problem. The president does not…
Last week’s 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York included an address by President Obama, a celebrity-studded “People’s Climate March,” and a much-discussed speech by actress Emma Watson on gender equality. A less-heralded special session commemorated the 20th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that produced a…
In an op-ed published earlier this week for EcoWatch, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for all organizations that “deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies” to undergo the corporate equivalent of the death penalty. “This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as ‘charter revocation,’” Kennedy wrote. “State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy…
The violence erupting in Hong Kong amid what had so far been peaceful pro-democracy protests is being carried out by criminal gangs controlled by China, according to Hong Kong politicians and media sources. If true, this would mark a new, potentially more violent phase in a story that has already attracted global attention. Violence broke…
Fighting in Ukraine has continued with regularity despite an official ceasefire signed on Sept. 5. In particular, separatists have sought to gain control of Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine and have launched repeated attempts to take control of it. While the rise of ISIS and the spread of Ebola have made headlines recently, Americans should…
School choice is now a reality for children in 24 states and Washington, D.C. They take advantage of some 40 options ranging from tuition scholarships to education savings accounts. Although states across the country have embraced school choice, rural states have done so more slowly, in part, say some, out of a belief that choice…
Today’s jobs report brought mostly good news for America’s workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found the labor market grew robustly in September. Employers added a quarter-million net new jobs and the unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 5.9 percent. However, the details of the report contained some cautionary notes that make it too…
I first visited Hong Kong in 1969 when I interviewed young Chinese “freedom swimmers” who had traversed the treacherous Hong Kong Bay—infested by sharks and patrolled by Chinese Communist gun boats—to reach the British crown colony of Hong Kong. “Why did you risk your life to come to Hong Kong?” I asked the young swimmers…
Looming debt, government spending and unpaid financial obligations add up to a bad forecast for American citizens.
Surprise, surprise: Companies aren’t lining up to become the next Solyndra. Imagine that. The Wall Street Journal reports that companies are hesitating to take loan guarantees from the Department of Energy, where up to $40 billion remains available “for companies developing certain kinds of clean-energy technologies.” The Journal article hints at everything that’s wrong with…
In President Obama’s speech on the economy Thursday, he walked a tightrope between taking credit for economic progress and admitting that Americans see a weak, stale economy outside their front doors. But there’s a simpler, and more factual, explanation: Economic indicators are not actually that good. In Obama’s formulation, economic progress has been partly a…
The Jimmy Kimmel crew ask some people by a medical marijuana dispensary in California some basic questions about politics. And the results aren’t exactly high scores for anyone.
The Supreme Court’s 2014-2015 term officially begins next Monday. On Thursday, the justices added eleven cases to their docket. Here are the noteworthy additions: EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores: Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers may not discriminate based on race, color, religion or national origin in the hiring or firing…
Senators John Thune (R–SD) and Amy Klobuchar (D–MN) are calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct an economic analysis of how domestic railcar service challenges may be hurting the agriculture industry. Regardless of whether an economic analysis by the federal government is necessary, one thing is clear: To prevent unnecessary bottlenecks in transportation…
This week, Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., announced that its commencement address would be delivered by Mumia Abu-Jamal, an unrepentant cop killer serving a life sentence for murdering 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Danny Faulkner. I cannot fathom how anyone could think it appropriate to honor a cold-blooded murderer—one who ambushed a police officer, shot that…
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) that the U.S. State Department and the Obama Administration championed has been a bad deal for the U.S. Despite the fact that the U.S.’s international security obligations are vastly different from Russia’s, the treaty codified that the U.S. will have the same number of nuclear warheads as…
For third-graders learning Common Core math in Georgia, there are four ways to subtract—and only four ways allowed. The picture above is just one of the methods for subtraction under Common Core straight from RedState editor in chief Erick Erickson's third-grade daughter’s math book. Missing from the four methods: borrowing and carrying numbers. You know, the old-fashioned-taught-the-same-way-for-decades-granny-method-not-approved-by-bureaucrats subtraction. …