Last week the Kremlin formally announced its decade-long anti-terror operation in Chechnya over. In practical terms, it translates into puling out the federal forces and repealing stringent restrictions related to freedom of movement for civilians in Chechnya. This measure aroused little enthusiasm in Russia, though. In point of fact, the internal conditions in Chechnya and the North Caucasus at large are continuing highly explosive. Actually, peace in Chechnya has been reached owing to massive infusions of cash by Moscow into the breakaway republic’s political and economic infrastructure. The Kremlin managed …
Last week, during his visit to Mexico, administration officials confirmed that Pres. Obama will push the U.S. Senate to ratify the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials.” The Clinton administration signed the treaty after the Organization of American States adopted it in 1997. The Administration’s nominee for Legal Adviser to the State Department, Harold Koh, has praised the Convention. This praise is misguided, and raises questions about Koh’s commitment to free speech around the world, and his willingness to …
On Sunday, April 19, 2009, Secretary Napolitano went on CNN’s “State of the Union” and proclaimed that crossing the border illegally is not a crime. This statement left a lot of folks scratching their heads given that U.S. law—the law Napolitano is sworn to uphold—says quite the opposite. Section 8, Title 1325 of the U.S. code clearly states that those who enter the U.S. illegally are committing a crime. This ‘interpretation’ of the law by Secretary Napolitano seems to be the latest in an effort by the Obama Administration to …
According to reports, President Barack Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days. Just how laughable is Obama’s latest stunt to try to maintain his “fiscal responsibility” credentials? This graphic from Heritage’s John Fleming might help:
Since 2000, The Heritage Foundation has surveyed Members of Congress to determine whether they had exercised private-school choice by ever sending a child to private school. The results of 2009′s survey is particularly relevant this year since Congress approved legislative action that threatens to phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a program that has proven to improve reading scores for 1,700 low-income students. The Washington Post editorialized on our findings: A new survey shows that 38 percent of members of Congress have sent their children to private school. About …
The numbers don’t lie; support for global warming policies are eroding, faster than polar ice caps, as it turns out. Moreover, a new poll shows just how much the political elite are losing touch with the American public when it comes to global warming. According to a Rasmussen poll released Friday, Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame. Forty-eight percent (48%) of …
The past week saw an unprecedented number of President Dmitry Medvedev’s public acts towards civil society institutions. He was interviewed by the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, met with representatives of civil rights NGOs and had a protracted televised talk on NTV channel deemed the most liberal of the government-run television channels. The President said the right things – that Russia’s democracy was similar to everybody else’s and did not need to be adapted, that political rights and freedoms cannot be traded for stability and prosperity and NGOs are an inalienable …
Commenting on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to classify carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses as a danger to the public’s health and welfare, Frank O’Donnell, president of the eco-leftist Clean Air Watch, told the Los Angeles Times, “The Obama administration now has the legal equivalent of a .44 magnum … The bullets aren’t loaded yet, but they could be.” If our economy ever hopes to recover, it is imperative that the American people reject the Obama administration’s audacious blackmail threat. The EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions on …
It’s been a particularly bad day on the energy front. Much of the news has surrounded the Environmental Protection Agency issuing an endangerment finding, saying that global warming and climate change pose a serious threat to public health and safety and thus almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. But very quietly, A program to expand oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast has been canceled by a federal appeals court because of environmental concerns. A three-judge panel …
Earlier this month, The Nation’s Chris Hayes reported on how the federal government’s alternative fuel subsidies are paying paper companies $8 billion a year to add diesel to a paper-production process that never needed it before the subsidy became available. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimbery Strassel picks up the story again today: Back in 2005, Congress passed a highway bill. In its wisdom, it created a subsidy that gave some entities a 50-cents-a-gallon tax credit for blending “alternative” fuels with traditional fossil fuels. The law restricted which businesses could apply …
