When it comes to covering the debate over modernization of the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act, usually professional members of the media often expose their deep ignorance on the issue. This Sunday on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden MR. RUSSERT: After September 11th, the NSA began to eavesdrop, wiretap Americans without court approval. That has now stopped, you need approval by the FISA courts, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Administrative courts. How many Americans were eavesdropped on after September 11th? GEN. HAYDEN: I can’t get into, into …
Today, an authoritative and diverse group of scholars warned the American people: “If present trends continue, the nation’s deficit will reach unmanageable proportions, other vital public needs will be further squeezed, and/or taxes will have to rise continuously to levels that could restrict economic growth.” No, these scholars were not talking about defense spending. Instead the 16 federal budget experts from seven think tanks (including: American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Concord Coalition, Heritage Foundation, New America Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute, and Urban Institute) issued a paper concluding that automatic escalating …
With gas prices reaching an all-time high and oil companies banking record profits, it’s easy for the public to blame oil executives for draining their wallets at the pump. Ask an economist, however, and he will give you a different answer: supply and demand. Of course, it’s more complicated that. Undoubtedly, a number of variables impact the supply and demand of oil, including Big Oil. To eliminate any confusion, the American Petroleum Institute recently released a primer on the issue titled, “The Truth About Oil and Gasoline.” The clear and …
This Sunday the Washington Post profiled some local families who have elected to participate in Maryland’s open enrollment policy that requires “educators to allow families at low-performing schools to transfer not only within but outside their school system.” The Post reports: Among D.C. families of certain means, the start of high school creates a dilemma: send your child to a flawed neighborhood school, run the gantlet of private school applications and waiting lists, or move? Dozens of families choose yet another option: paying tuition for their children to attend schools …
Protectionism is not just on the rise among liberals in the United States. Leftist governments throughout the world are seeking to quash free trade in favor of redistributionist schemes. In Argentina President Christina Kirchner’s new export taxes have sparked violence throughout the country and the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady explains the stakes: But the greater motivation behind the export-tax increase is inflation. This government, it seems, will do just about anything to reduce inflation except the one thing that would solve the problem: Let the peso strengthen. It …
The latest reports out of Basra indicate that life appears to be returning to normal even as Iraq’s central government indicates that military operations around the city would continue. The Iraqi army now claims its troops are in control of much of Basra even as security forces are going house-to-house to confiscate weapons. It is still too early to determine if the Iraqi central government accomplished its objectives in Basra, but the events of the last week did demonstrate three things: Iran continues to meddle in Iraq’s internal security. Reports …
Lost in all the typical liberal hyperventilating over increased defense spending during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is just how low current defense spending compared to the last 45 years. The Heritage Foundation recently released its 2008 Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts and among the many gems is this graphic on National Defense Spending as a Percentage of GDP from 1962-2007:
The most e-mailed story today at The New York Times looks at the trouble self-employed persons face finding health insurance. The article does not look at the myriad of federal and state laws that created this problem, but instead focuses on what options and private sector tools the self-employed can utilize to procure health insurance. The Times reports: If there is one thing that separates the self-employed from those employed by others, it is their preoccupation with health insurance. I was reminded of this on Feb. 14, when I wrote …
In their Business section front page puff piece on Free Press policy director Ben Scott, the Washington Post does reports that FP’s “critics” often note that FP “is not as boot-strapped as it may appear, with donors such as billionaire George Soros and singer Barbra Streisand.” WaPo then goes on to breathlessly report that: Free Press has more than $5 million in funding, in part from major foundations such as the Soros Open Society Institute. Its annual lobbying budget is $250,000, compared with the $13.8 million spent by Verizon Communications, …
Today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day comes from former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont who writes in the Wall Street Journal: Trade creates jobs. America’s exports of goods sold abroad–electrical machinery, chemicals, plastics, agricultural products, medical and scientific instrumentation, for example–support six million American jobs. Exports of services account for another five million jobs. And foreign-owned companies operating in the U.S. directly employ five million American workers, including 16,000 in Ohio by Honda, 5,400 in South Carolina by BMW, 6,000 by Nokia and 15,000 by Nestlé. … So free …
