Though certainly no originalist, Justice David Souter is not a complete judicial activist, either. On a number of cases and issues, he has rejected the activist “empathy” standard promoted by President Obama to instead cast votes and write opinions that are in accord with the demands of the Constitution and the rule of law. And in a number of cases, particularly in the areas of crime and punishment and lawsuit abuse, he has broken ranks with the Court’s more liberal wing to do so. Here is a sampling of some …
On April 20, President Obama called for $100 million in budget cuts after announcing spending increases of $4 trillion. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl breaks it down nicely: • It is 1/40,000 of the federal budget; • It is 1/7,830 the size of the recent “stimulus” bill; • It would close 1/1,845 of this year’s budget deficit; • It is the amount the federal government spends every 13 minutes; and • For a family earning $40,000 annually, it is the equivalent of cutting $1 from their family budget. But …
Cap and Trade Top Ten List 1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax 2. It Will Not Make A Substantive Impact on the Environment 3. It Will Kill Jobs 4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase 5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade 6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing or Haircuts. 7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption 8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst 9. It Will …
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a series of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary. Past questions can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Does the Obama Administration support the use of Social Security Administration’s no-match data? The federal government via the Social Security Administration (SSA) mails out no-match letters when information …
In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman writes: “I cringe when “green economy” enthusiasts insist that protecting the environment would be all gain, no pain.” We feel his pain. But then Krugman goes on to write: Consumers would end up poorer than they would have been without a climate-change policy. But how much poorer? Not much, say careful researchers, like those at the Environmental Protection Agency …. But the EPA made some revealing assumptions about the relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth in their study. Specifically, to …
The news that Justice David Souter will be resigning from the Supreme Court has left some conservatives momentarily confused. It should not. As much as Justice Souter disappointed those faithful to the Constitution, and those disappointments are legion, he was reasonable or even sound in several key areas (more will be forthcoming from my colleagues on that). Any Supreme Court appointment is momentous, but what is at stake now is a potential shift from a center-left justice to a far-left justice. This is what all Americans have a right to …
“I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector.” – President Barack Obama, April 29, 2009 “After consulting with my auto task force, industry experts, and financial advisors, I decided to give Chrysler and Fiat 30 days to reach an agreement. The standard I set was high: I challenged them to design a plan that would protect American jobs, American taxpayers, and the future of a great American car company.” – President Barack Obama, April 30, 2009 It is quite …
In his latest reflection, Cuba’s Fidel Castro writes with an air of nostalgia about the presidency of John F. Kennedy and the travails of the Kennedy family: He [JFK] saw himself as the representative of a new generation of Americans confronting the old and dirty politics of men in the mold of Nixon and had defeated him with a feast of political talent. As for the Bay of Pigs, Castro applauds JFK for recognizing defeat.
Last year, then-candidate Barack Obama told a rally in Albuquerque, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” Earlier this month in Chicago, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told a rally of government-run health care supporters: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there …
