On July 9, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias began a very difficult process of seeking to mediate a restoration of constitutional order in Honduras. It is a thorny challenge, given the sharp divisions between Mr. Manuel Zelaya, ex-President of Honduras, and the new reconstituted government, led by Robert Micheletti. The …
Since 2003, when negotiations began over Iran’s nuclear program, there has been no shortage of warnings, reports and punitive sanctions voiced, written or imposed by the international community. (A quick count shows at least three punitive European Union sanctions, four US sanctions, five U.N. resolutions, 20 IAEA reports, and an …
Soon, critics of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program won’t have any arguments left. For years, opponents have argued that the scholarship program wasn’t working. But a recent federal evaluation found that scholarship students have made “statistically significant” improvement in reading compared to their peers who didn’t get scholarships. The report …
What has been going on in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee for the past three weeks? Unless you’ve been carefully watching the mark-up of the Kennedy health bill, you wouldn’t be aware that Senators have been battling over many of the 398 amendments proposed to the …
During the course of his presidency, President Obama has placed little value in encouraging democratic developments abroad, stating the need to focus on the “substance” of a government, rather than its “form.” While the president’s abandonment of democracy is certainly discouraging, he has raised an important point: We spend so …
Last Sunday, in an appearance on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) repeated yet another justification for including a “public plan” option in health care legislation. Since other advocates of a public plan have recently been offering the same justification, it is worth taking …
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has abandoned her plans to draft and mark-up a comprehensive national energy tax modeled after the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill before Congress’s August recess. According to Reuters, Boxer promised, “we’ll do it as soon as we get back” from our month-long …
