Last night Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released the version of health care reform he hopes will be considered on the Senate floor. The new bill devotes eight of its 2,074 pages to policy governing abortion in the structure of state health care exchanges and the public option it creates. Rather than retain the House-passed Stupak-Pitts abortion funding limitation adopted with 240 votes, Reid reverts to a variation on an amendment the House deleted that would both foster coverage of elective abortion and diminish the conscience rights of insurers …
This is the second of a four part series. Matthew Spalding’s new book, We Still Hold These Truths, examines the timeless principles and practical wisdom that have been the source of America’s monumental success. In this video segment Spalding discusses the progressive assault on the Founders’ principles that began more than a century ago and that continues—indeed, is accelerating—in our time. Modern political leaders and cultural elites have all too readily abandoned the principles to which America is dedicated; even more troubling is how readily we all let it happen. Progressivism …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HObnP87eWw[/youtube] For Michael Barone and Ramesh Ponnuru, conservative principles remain empirically true despite elections. The growing revolt against tired tax-and-spend policies embodied in the Tea Party movement and recent electoral wins for conservative candidates seem to indicate Americans are remembering their conservative heritage, the one that understands the growth of government inherently restricts personal freedoms. “I’d say conservatism is in the early stages of what could be a robust recovery,” said Ponnuru, a National Review senior editor. “I think there remain some very strong conservative impulses on the part of the …
Alabama has received 3 billion dollars of stimulus aid to help “save or create” jobs and cure unemployment. Yet somehow that stimulus aid isn’t helping in curing unemployment or creating new jobs, instead it’s resulting in a state unemployment rate that’s higher than the national unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. Here’s an illustration of the stimulus creating jobs in Alabama: The Fort Payne Housing Authority this year got a $540,071 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and mistakenly reported in early October that the stimulus grant …
We’re still poring over Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) just released health care overhaul, but the major outlines of the bill are no different than the policy train wreck the House passed earlier this month. The five major flaws of both the Pelosi and Reid Bills are: 1. A New Public Plan. Both the House and Senate bills would create a new government-run health care plan — a so-called public plan — intended to “compete” with private insurers in a new health insurance exchange. The result: widespread erosion of private …
Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other terrorists would be tried in a civilian court in New York City rather than before a military tribunal. Pressing Holder on this decision at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight hearing of the U.S. Department of Justice, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked: “Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic) enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?” Holder responded: “I don’t know. I’d have to look at that. …
Edwin Meese III, the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation as well as the United States Attorney General between 1985 and 1988 released the following statement today on the proposed trials of terrorists in New York City, including confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. “It is clear that foreign terrorists and terrorist groups have committed acts of war against the United States, and that our national security requires that we respond accordingly. This means that …
The latest proposal to pay for a government takeover of the health care system is to increase the Medicare tax for those that earn more than $250,000 a year. This latest proposed tax hike shows Congress is desperate to find more revenue to pay for its excessively expensive health care plan. The current Medicare tax is 2.9 percent. Workers and employers pay 1.45 percent each. It is unclear at this point whether both workers and employers would pay a higher rate, or just workers. Unlike the Social Security tax, the …
Today Iranian Foreign Minister Manochehr Mottaki publicly rejected the U.N.-backed proposal to send about 70 percent of Iran’s known supplies of enriched uranium out of the country. Mottaki suggested that instead Iran would exchange its low-enriched uranium for an equivalent amount of slightly higher enriched uranium, but only on its own territory. This clearly would be unacceptable since it would put Iran closer, rather than slightly farther away from, acquiring sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon, if the uranium were to be further enriched. French Foreign …
The Washington Post reports: Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests. … “We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending …
