Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
The Assad regime recently targeted a Syrian refugee camp for the first time, according to residents and activists in the area. Syrian army helicopters dropped several barrel bombs on one of the camps in southern Syria, killing at least 20 people and injuring 80 more, mostly women and children. Although these highly destructive crude explosive…
Security at U.S. diplomatic posts is falling short, and Benghazi is only the most visible example. A new report on “Diplomatic Security” by the Government Accountability Office — GAO-14-655 — demonstrates the problem is systemic, leaving U.S. personnel serving overseas at unnecessary risk. At a time of rising security threats from metastasizing Al Qaeda spinoffs…
Howard Baker, who died this week at the age of 88, is being remembered as a great American statesman who gave a lifetime of service to the nation. But to many, his greatest service came was seeing the Reagan White House through troubled times. After he represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate for three terms, Baker’s name…
I want to thank Ramesh Ponnuru for an enlightening debate on the idea of expanding the child tax credit (CTC). His latest posts are here and here. It seems like we agree on many aspects of the debate. First, a CTC expansion combined with lower rates on income and investment could be a big improvement…
Has spending billions of dollars in foreign aid to Cambodia over the course of decades done more harm than good? Dr. Sophal Ear, author of the book Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy, thinks so. In his recent presentation at The Heritage Foundation, Dr. Ear looked at failed land-titling campaigns spear-headed by…
While Americans have been focused on the Middle East, the situation in the South China Sea has heated up. Beijing’s latest moves to push it its claims include the deployment of several new oil rigs into various parts of the South China Sea. As Chinese officials have noted in the past, Beijing views these rigs…
North Korea may be committing genocide, says a recently released report from international law firm Hogan Lovells. In accusing North Korea of genocide, the Hogan Lovells report goes beyond the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI), which found North Korea guilty of crimes against humanity but did not address genocide. Findings from both of these…
In 2007, Massachusetts passed a law that prohibited anyone from knowingly entering or remaining on a “public way or sidewalk adjacent to a reproductive health care facility within a radius of 35 feet of any portion of an entrance, exit, or driveway…” In case it’s not obvious, this law was targeted at “sidewalk counselors” and…
Today, in a blow to the Obama administration, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that President Obama’s “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board violated the Constitution in NLRB v. Noel Canning. Art. II, section 2, clause 3 of the Constitution allows the president to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the…
The World Cup is underway, and other than the Olympics, it will surely be the most closely followed sporting event with estimates of more than one billion TV viewers worldwide. Oh, and I won’t be one of them. Why? Soccer is B-O-R-I-N-G. I’ve often argued that in the entire world, the only thing worse than…
Americans know the drill. When Congress faces a gap between its spending wants and available money, it is quick to ask for more money, instead of fixing the spending side of the budget ledger. This time it’s Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has proposed a rag tag group of revenue provisions, including…
Who needs that Export-Import Bank? There is healthy debate going on in Washington. The side that wants Washington to agree to extend the bank charter has pulled out the national security card, suggesting that the bank’s continued existence boosts our security. But they can’t provide a convincing argument that promoting the bank provides for the…
Eight out of 10 voters say the national debt should be a top priority for the President and Congress, according to a new poll from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Yet, voters would be hard pressed to find much mention of the growing debt problem in the news these days. One reason for this is…
Nowhere in the song “This Land Is Your Land” do the lyrics mention the federal government. Yet, a new report released on June 19 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirms the large role the government has taken in regulating federally owned land in the oil, gas, and coal industries. Crude oil production in…
Today the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important ruling on Utah’s marriage amendment. This is the first time a circuit court has ruled on marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) this time last year. In a 2-1 split decision, the 10th circuit ruled that…
Tennessee has removed itself from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing consortium aligned to the Common Core national education standards, joining the ranks of 18 other states pushing back against Common Core. Gov. Bill Haslam, Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman and the chair of the state board of education, Fielding…
Check the regulations: You may be in violation of a city ordinance if you decide to share your books with friends and neighbors. For 9 year-old Spencer Collins of Leawood, Kansas, it meant receiving a government citation for doing just that in his front yard. It all started with Spencer’s plan to create a little…
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., may have taken his state tourism commissioner’s statement to NPR that “money falls from trees [in the fall],” a bit too literally. During a House-Senate conference meeting to resolve differences in competing veterans reform legislation this week, Sanders suggested that “emergency funding” would act as a “pay for” for potentially $50…
Today the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a warrant before searching the digital contents of cell phones taken from people who have been arrested. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Constitution generally requires police to obtain a warrant from a neutral…
Social media sites are the latest battleground in the war on terror. On June 20, the Sunni terrorist group ISIS, which is on a rampage in northern Syria and Iraq, launched a Twitterstorm under the hashtag #AllEyesOnIsis. It was aimed to appeal to impressionable Muslim youth, scare ISIS’s enemies on the ground., and intimidate the…