In a relatively unnoticed State Department press briefing yesterday, Acting Department Spokesman Robert Wood announced a delegation of new media executives that left for Iraq on an official, government-paid trip on Sunday. According to Wood, the purpose would be to “explore new opportunities to support Iraqi Government and nongovernment stakeholders in Iraq’s emerging new media industry.” All in all, this is a well thought out trip, and yet another implicit admission by the President that another thing he inherited from his predecessor is a budding democracy in the Arab world, …
At last week’s speech at the Air War College, Secretary Gates told the officers present that, “Health care is eating the [Defense] Department alive.” The massive expansion of military compensation spending in the past decade has placed the entire system in jeopardy. Healthcare spending alone for 2010 is set for $47 billion. And in fiscal year 2009, nearly 25 percent of the defense budget was allocated for military compensation. Fortunately, a solution exists. According to Mackenzie Eaglen, to achieve cost-effective reform, the system should become more competitive, flexible, and more …
Hoover Institution visiting fellow and chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush Marc Thiessen looks beyond last weeks headlines to find the real news buried in the released CIA memos: In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists “did not make us safer.” This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public — in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media. Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, …
National Public Radio Senior Correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams writes on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program: As I watch Washington politics I am not easily given to rage. Washington politics is a game and selfishness, out-sized egos and corruption are predictable. But over the last week I find myself in a fury. The cause of my upset is watching the key civil rights issue of this generation — improving big city public school education — get tossed overboard by political gamesmanship. If there is one goal that deserves …
Last November the U.N. Human Rights Council made news in an unexpected way. The newly renovated chamber housing the Council featured a vast piece of artwork on it’s ceiling crafted by Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo. According to Barcelo, the 16,000-square-foot ceiling artwork reminded him of “an image of the world dripping toward the sky”. To the Spanish, who found out that the $23 million dollar artwork was paid for in part with government funds intended to help developing countries, it looked more like their tax dollars swirling down the drain. …
Yesterday, President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet to identify and shave a collective $100 million in administrative costs from their budgets. This is the same President Barack Obama who berated conservatives earlier this year at a House Democrat resort retreat for not supporting his $787 billion stimulus package incredulously asking, “What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending — that’s the whole point! Seriously.” Seriously Mr. President. You can’t have it both ways. Either massive government deficit spending is our only economic salvation or it isn’t. Consider the list …
Spot on op-ed by Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post this Sunday. Diehl writes: New American presidents typically begin by behaving as if most of the world’s problems are the fault of their predecessors — and Barack Obama has been no exception. … Now comes the interesting part: when it starts to become evident that Bush did not create rogue states, terrorist movements, Middle Eastern blood feuds or Russian belligerence — and that shake-ups in U.S. diplomacy, however enlightened, might not have much impact on them.
It seems that we keep being told that the policy is temporary, and is far short of nationalization, only for Congress to turn around after the legislation has passed and “convert” loans into stock: to turn a bailout into a nationalization. This has now happened with AIG, the car companies, and today we learn, with the banks too.
Our own Brett Schaefer and Steven Groves are reporting from the Durban II Conference on Racism in Geneva for National Review’s The Corner. Their dispatches today include: Durban II Starts With a Swipe at America: Preceeding the official opening of the Durban II conference, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay hosted a panel entitled “United Against Racism.” She welcomed the delegates and other attendees. Immediately following was a short film detailing instances of racism around the world. Guess what story was given pride of place as the first …
Neither the EPA’s carbon regulations nor Congress’ cap and trade plan have become law, but already American consumers are feeling the pain of the left’s environmental policies in their pocket books. USA Today reports: Clean energy has a dirty secret. It isn’t cheap. Consumers already are starting to feel at least a modest pinch in their electric bills. The impact is expected to grow in the next few years as utilities accelerate their investments to meet state quotas requiring a portion of clean energy in their generation mix.
