Hopes for a quick diplomatic breakthrough in the long-running stalemate over Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been dimmed by Iranian backtracking on a tentative agreement reached on October 1 in Geneva and Iran’s foot-dragging on future negotiations. Reuters today quoted an anonymous senior Iranian official as saying “Time is on our side” and declaring that Iran plans to slow-walk the diplomatic negotiations that will resume on October 19 by sending junior officials who do not have the authority to make firm commitments. This confirms previous suspicions that Tehran will exploit …
TIGGER: It’s not just a character from Winnie the Pooh. It also stands for the Department of Transportation’s Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction or in other words: cash for buses. The DOT “has spent nearly half its $100 million grant budget to replace diesel buses with cleaner and more efficient hybrid-electric and fully electric models. Like Cash for Clunkers, these grants are intended to be dual-purposed: stimulate the economy and clean the environment.” And like cash for clunkers, it will most likely do neither. Although Secretary of …
When a disgruntled employee files a lawsuit that goes to court his employer must pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Even if the courts reject the allegation as frivolous employers must still pay the lawyers. That allows unscrupulous employees to use threat of going to court to win large settlements from their bosses for baseless claims. Guilty or not guilty, the employer loses money that could have been used to expand operations and hire more workers. Consequently many employers are turning to alternative dispute resolution …
Yesterday, on his Fox News program, Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn referring to Mao Zedong as one of her “favorite political philosophers.” Rather than defend Ms. Dunn or ask further questions of what she meant when she said that, the left wing has decided to Google the words “Lenin” and “Mao” with the name of any prominent conservative. Any loose mention of these historical figures was seen as them also “approvingly” citing the philosophy of these murderous despots. This is a typical scorched …
On November 9th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. In preparation for oral arguments, JLWOP: Faces & Cases will be an on-going series on The Foundry that will tell real stories about juvenile offenders who are currently serving LWOP sentences. Life without parole for the very worst juvenile offenders is reasonable, constitutional, and (appropriately) rare. In response to the Western world’s worst juvenile crime problem, U.S. legislators have enacted commonsense measures to protect their citizens and hold these …
The health care bill that emerged from the Senate Finance Committee this week will not pass the Senate in its current form if Democrat leadership comply with procedural rules, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told conservative bloggers on a conference call this morning. However, he expects the Democrats to abuse the reconciliation process to get the legislation through. Hatch’s extensive remarks were pointed and sharply critical of the Senate Democrats’ health care plan and the “shell game” he says they played in creating and passing the bill out of the Senate …
Maybe John Kerry and President Obama and proponents of a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions still have time to change message. “I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means. I don’t think the average American does,’ Kerry said recently. And he’s right. According to a new poll released from the Pew Research Center, “just 23% of Americans are aware that legislation often referred to as “cap and trade” concerns energy and environmental policy.” The other choices were banking reform, health care and unemployment. To be fair, …
Research and policy proposals to make sense of the teenage years tend to address concerns such as educational achievement, sexuality, drug abuse and suicide. Noted sociologist and University of Notre Dame professor Christian Smith has spent much of his career delving into a curiously overlooked aspect of teenage life — religion. His research offers insights into teenage beliefs while addressing common questions from parents and youth pastors: Do today’s teens remain loyal to their parents’ faith? Are they abandoning traditional religious institutions to search for a newer, more “authentic” spirituality?
The Washington Post reports: Congressional budget analysts have given House leaders cost estimates for two competing versions of their plan to overhaul the health-care system … The report from the Congressional Budget Office, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, puts the cost of one plan at $859 billion over the next decade and the other at $905 billion. … The cheaper version would rely heavily on a more dramatic expansion of Medicaid, the government health plan for the poor that is funded partly by the states …
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. would seek a “strong international standard” in the control of the conventional arms trade by “seizing the opportunity presented by the Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations.” But the participation comes with a caveat: the U.S. will actively support negotiations only if the conference “operates under the rule of consensus decision-making needed to ensure that all countries can be held to standards that will actually improve the global situation.” As we have noted before, the …
