Is the US merely tagging behind its European neighbors on a road to a thoroughly secular, social democracy? As the Obama Administration stretches its fingers into education, health care and failing companies, the question lingers ominously. But columnist Cheryl Wetzstein notes that, when it comes to faith and family, we’re not quite there yet. She supports her point with research highlighted at our Oct. 29th conference, Religious Practice and the Family. Wetzstein’s column in today’s Washington Times reads: Earlier this year, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray wrote a warning …
Next week, the House of Representatives is scheduled to take up a bill (H.R. 3961) which would enact a permanent “fix” to the unquestionably flawed Medicare physician payment update formula. The Congress created a formula for physician Medicare payment that would automatically cut doctor payments, but has routinely acted to prevent its own handiwork from going into effect each year. So, under current law, any permanent fix would sharply increase Medicare spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would cost an additional $210 billion over the next …
This is the first of a five part series. In the midst of frenzied efforts to remake our nation—of endless government initiatives involved in virtually every aspect of our daily lives—Americans are increasingly concerned: How did we get so far off track? And how can we get America back on course? Matthew Spalding answers these questions in a new book, We Still Hold These Truths, by looking to the timeless principles and practical wisdom that have been the source of America’s monumental success. An expert in American political history at …
The Washington Examiner‘s Tim Carney points to news from The Hartford Courant that the development project at the center of the Fifth Amendment takings clause case Kelo v. City of New London has just been abandoned by Pfizer. Watch The CATO Institute’s recitation of the case: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1svadJQ40[/youtube]
The Wall Street Journal draws our attention to a burst of honesty from The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy: The future cost savings that the Administration and its congressional allies are promising to deliver are based on wishful thinking and sleight of hand. Over time, the reform, as proposed, would almost certainly add substantially to the budget deficit, thereby worsening the long-term fiscal crisis that the country faces. … The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. …
The New York Times reports: The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy. The EPA lawyers did take their video down. But not before others reposted it. Watch:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNQzSjb38g[/youtube]
New evidence shows that ending social promotion – the practice of allowing students to advance a grade level without having mastered the content of their current grade – is having a positive result in student testing. A new study released on October 15th by the RAND corp., shows how New York City seventh graders who were held back as fifth graders have made academic gains. The study, which looks at the effectiveness of the New York City Department of Education’s 2003 grade promotion policy, finds that fifth-graders who were held …
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. Defendant: Ethan Allen Windom (17) Victim: Judith Windom Crime: Second degree murder Where: Boise, Idaho Crime date: January 25, 2007 Verdict: Guilty Sentence: Life without parole Summary Ethan Allan Windom battered his mother with a barbell and then …
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and said: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” On November 9, 1989, just two years after Reagan made his Brandenburg Gate speech, the people of Germany did tear down “this wall” and in so doing they freed hundreds of millions of people from …
The social and political drama that played out across Eastern Europe in the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall had a profound spiritual dimension. From the time of John Paul II’s visit to his Polish homeland in 1979 to November 9, 1989, what historians have called a “revolution of conscience” occurred that led to the collapse of communism with little loss of life – the combined result of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies of peace through strength and the Pope’s relentless messages of spiritual …
