Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law was sentenced to life in prison today in a New York federal district court. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who was convicted in his federal terrorism trial earlier this spring, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who described Ghaith at the sentencing proceeding today as bin Laden’s “propaganda minister” and,…
WARSAW — Quite suddenly, what Poland does and doesn’t do has become crucial to the United States and the Western alliance. As the next-door neighbor of Ukraine and with uncertainty about Russia’s next aggressive move, Poland matters. Adjoining as it does the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — all prime targets of…
American companies are merging with foreign firms and relocating their headquarters to those foreign countries because our tax structure is uncompetitive. So what does the Treasury Department do? Yesterday, it released long-awaited measures to combat the practice of merging with foreign companies to avoid U.S. taxes — known as inversions — that will make it…
Since this article was originally published, it has been reported that the fence jumper, Omar Gonzalez, got further inside the White House than was known. Courtesy of Mashable, here's an image showing how far Gonzalez got. Image: Mashable Composite, WhiteHouse.gov Last Friday, a troubled Army veteran jumped the White House fence and dashed across the…
Seems world leaders are busy — too busy, in fact, to attend the U.N. Climate Change Summit in New York today. Apparently coalition building isn’t as easy as it used to be. The White House says addressing global warning and climate change is a top priority, but it has failed to sway some top world…
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently designated actor Leonardo DiCaprio as a “U.N. Messenger of Peace” for climate change, touting him as a “credible voice in the environmental movement.” Upon receiving the designation, DiCaprio, who will give an acceptance speech at this week’s Climate Summit in New York City, said he feels a “moral obligation…
World leaders will gather for the United Nations climate summit this week after tens of thousands of protestors marched through Manhattan on Sunday urging action on climate change. Their time would have been better spent reading Steven Koonin’s Wall Street Journal piece, “Climate Science is Not Settled.” Before you go labeling Koonin a climate denier,…
Politico obviously had no problem finding Lois Lerner for an exclusive interview that it published on Monday. So why can’t the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., find Lois Lerner so that a federal grand jury can interview her? Perhaps the Obama administration doesn’t want Lerner answering any real questions…
Americans estimate that Washington wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends, according to a Gallup poll released last week. The timing could not have been more appropriate. The poll was released just days before Congress and the president agreed on a stopgap spending measure to fund federal government programs and agencies indiscriminately at the annualized rate…
Daily Signal’s Genevieve Wood talks to Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer representing many of the groups targeted by the IRS, and Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, about the IRS and Justice Department’s stonewalling — and what can be done.
Replaying the video of President Bush's 2007 warning against a premature withdrawal U.S. troops from Iraq is all the rage. Millions of Americans have “gone to the tape." But, unlike a referee’s decision in an NFL game, President Obama’s blown call on this question can't be reversed. There are no do-overs in war. Still, Bush’s…
If the Obama Administration has its way, Ronald McDonald may soon have to wipe that grin off his face as he stands beneath the Golden Arches. One of the most successful models for expanding small-business ownership in America is under full-scale attack from unions and the White House. The political strategy is to fundamentally change…
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk wants to sell you a car, but your state government might not let him. Why? He wants to deal directly with you, bypassing the independent dealerships that have acted as middlemen in the car industry for close to a century. In California’s Silicon Valley, where Tesla is based, the disruption…
One of the biggest threats to a civilized, free society occurs when prosecutors abuse their power and allow politics to drive their administration of the criminal-justice system. Two recent examples show how liberal, partisan prosecutors misused their authority and politicized justice. In Fall River, Mass., the New York Times reports, a local county prosecutor, Sam…
The right to live, work and worship according to one’s faith is a freedom foundational to the United States. Many of the first settlers, having faced religious persecution in England, sought a place where they could freely worship and live according to their conscience without interference from the government. The Founders were clear, and the…
The protests outside fast-food establishments last week featured calls for a $15 hourly wage. Unemployment is only the most obvious unintended consequence we could expect under such a large forced increase in wages. For consumers, the most noticeable difference would be the price of fast food: A typical fast-food meal would probably cost about $2 more. For…
Great Britain can breathe a huge sigh of relief. The people of Scotland voted Thursday to remain a part of the United Kingdom. This is great news not only for Britain, but also for the United States. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is America’s closest ally on the world stage. The…
Politics is often filled with paradoxes, and here is one that nearly defies explanation. The demographic groups that voted most heavily for Barack Obama in 2012 have suffered the most from this president's economic policies. Maybe the people in these demographic groups — blacks, Hispanics, single women and young people — are economically uninformed, or…
Voter-ID opponents have suffered another stunning blow. On Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved the injunction that had been issued against Wisconsin’s voter-ID law by a federal district court in April. The court told Wisconsin that it “may, if it wishes (and if it is appropriate under rules of state law), enforce the…
The U.S. Congress heard recently from the President that the world is a dangerous place and that we may need to defend our national security soon. That is as it should be. But before the first bullet is fired in most contests, there’s usually an information war that must be won, and there the Senate…