President Obama provided some much-anticipated guidance on his policy towards Iran today in the fourth news conference of his presidency. But even without teleprompters, Mr. Obama proved a master at sticking to his talking points, which were as follows: Violence is bad. At the very least, Mr. Obama is finally finding the political courage to say, as he did in his opening statement, that “we deplore violence anywhere.” Regarding the shooting of the 26 year old Iranian girl, who bled to death and whose picture is now being beamed around …
Fourteen-year-old Johnathan Krohn understands what many members of Congress do not: that school choice works and is the key to successful education reform. This morning’s edition of Fox and Friends featured the “Pint-Sized Pundit Pit: Child Prodigy Edition,” in which the guests were asked to discuss the merits of year-round schooling. Krohn, a 14-year-old columnist, explained that it’s not about lengthening the school year, but about systemic reform. Watch: From Krohn:
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski argues compellingly in last week’s Wall Street Journal for the deepening of EU cooperation with six Eastern and South Caucasus States — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The Eastern Partnership, conceived by Poland and formally constituted under the Czech Presidency of the EU this year, aims to develop political and trade links with these strategically important states which lie between Europe and Russia. Free trade and visa liberalization stand on the far horizon as incentives for the democratization of normalization of relations between …
A story coming out of Glendale, CA, reports that stimulus funds were used to help two non-profit organizations instead of a road in the city which has not been repaired since 1992. City officials believed that repairing the roads are a better fit for the purpose of the stimulus (shovel-ready public works projects); unfortunately, the Community Development Block Grant Advisory Committee had already decided where the money was going to go before the city got to tell them that. There are a few things wrong here. First of all, this is …
Since 1999, the Labour Government in Britain has been on a spending spree of historic proportions. Actually, it’s been on two of them. From 1999 to 2005/6, expenditure grew at 4.8% annually in real terms. As a proportion of GDP, it rose from 36.3% to 41.3%. Then, for a while, spending stabilized. But only for a while. In 2008/9, spending surged again, to over 43% of GDP. The 2009 Budget, as the British think-tank Policy Exchange points out, envisages spending rising to 48.1% of GDP in 2010/11. If growth is …
Last week President Barack Obama said: “It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling – the US president, meddling in Iranian elections.” But now this week, Obama’s aides are saying the exact opposite: “Obama’s approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president’s words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama …
Last week, the U.S.-U.K. Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty won strong public backing from two important allies: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). The Treaty, like a similar one between the U.S. and Australia, would permit the U.S. to trade most defense articles with these nations without an export license or other written authorization. Despite some recent improvements, the export license process remains a cumbersome and lengthy one. This discourages defense suppliers from the U.K. and Australia from participating in U.S. defense acquisition programs, which raises costs and …
As Congress grapples with how to feasibly pay for a serious overhaul of the nation’s health care sector, which makes up nearly 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, health economist James Capretta urged the American public to keep an eye on the country’s annual growth rate of retirement. “Baby boom retirement is going to have a huge impact on health care costs over the long run,” Capretta said today at a Heritage Foundation-sponsored reporter roundtable. “It’s already a very explosive budgetary situation that we’re in. That’s the context …
Yesterday, the White House released new rules for counting the number of jobs created by President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Governors, mayors, and contractors will be required to keep track of every full-time, full-year job funded by Obama’s stimulus, but they are not required to submit their data to the federal government until October of this year. White House budget office deputy director Rob Nabors told the AP: “If governors or mayors or contractors make up numbers, it’s not going to take long for that to come …
Sign your name at stopepa.com and join the 20,000 other people who have voiced their opposition to the EPA’s April 17th endangerment finding, which grants them regulatory powers to one day regulate anything that emits carbon dioxide. Hurry. The petition ends midnight on Tuesday, June 23rd.
