Days before President Obama plans to present his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, Osama Bin Laden sent his own message to the American people. According to CNN “A new audio tape allegedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claims responsibility for an attempt to blow up a plane en route to Michigan on Christmas Day and warns the United States of more attacks.” The report added, “The tape, which aired on Al Jazeera on Sunday, says ‘the United States will not dream of …
One of the loudest drumbeats in support of “Cap and Trade” legislation has been if the United States doesn’t tackle climate change with legislation we’ll face a national security catastrophe. Nations will collapse, waves of refugees will sweep the world, and states will war on other states over scarce resources. The poster child for the national security nightmare argument was melting glaciers in India that would lead to dramatic shortages of fresh water and water wars between nuclear-armed states. Now comes a report from India —never mind. Apparently the claim …
It seems every time you pick up a newspaper, the headline proclaims another military program cancelled. First, it was the F-22. Then it was missile defense. The list goes on and on. The reason given seems always the same too…“We don’t need that.” This mantra gets repeated so often, one suspects one of two truisms must be at the root of it. Perhaps, everyone in the Pentagon before Obama showed up was an idiot and didn’t know what was really needed—or, all these cuts are a budget driven exercise, gutting …
Senate Cloakroom: Jan. 25 – 29 Analysis – As Senators grapple with how to salvage health care reform, they simultaneously want to change their legislative focus to jobs and the economy. Before they can do that, they have to contend with a record $1.9 trillion debt limit increase. The debate, which is expected to last all week, will highlight our looming entitlement crisis, excessive spending and the increasingly aggressive involvement of government in our economy. Major Senate Action – The Senate will continue to debate the debt limit increase (H …
Picture the world in 1960 and imagine how much has changed over the past half century. Now picture the average classroom in 1960 and today. In both, you’d probably see roughly the same thing—a teacher standing in front of a row of desks. Today, there might be a computer or two in the classroom. But the set-up and the teaching process are probably about the same. This mental experiment highlights how education is one of the areas of American life that has been most resistance to change over the last …
First, hackers leaked e-mails and other documents from some of the world’s leading climate scientists detailing how they refused to share data, plotted to keep dissenting scientists from getting published in leading journals and discarded original data. Next, United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted the Himalayan glaciers won’t disappear by 2035 and that claim was based on speculation. Now, according to the UK’s Times Online, head of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri, “admitted that there may have been other errors in the same section of the report, …
Forget the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, even the war on poverty. President Obama seems to have declared a new war, a war on banks. It was launched last week with the proposal of a “bank tax,” supposedly meant to get TARP bailout money back to taxpayers (although it would leave out firms such as General Motors that actually owe most of the money). It continued yesterday with the President’s proposal of new bank regulations — limiting what banks can invest in as well as limiting to total …
Earlier this week, Tom Miller, president and CEO of the United Nations Association of the United States, told the Westport Rotary Club that “as the richest nation in the world, the United States could do more for Haitian earthquake victims.” Considering Mr. Miller’s position, perhaps it would be instructive to contrast the U.S. contribution and support for Haiti to that of the other members of the U.N. Claudia Rosett does just that in her Forbes.com column today where she observes: … the United Nations’ ReliefWeb database showed contributions from the …
The vote looming in the Senate to raise the debt limit should serve as a wake-up call that federal spending is out of control. Instead, Democratic leadership has tried to convince Americans that passing costly health care legislation is not only sensible, but requisite, and must be done now. Neither is true. The bills use weak spending limits, weak tax provisions, and even weaker cuts to current spending to pay for reform. Democrats claim these provisions mean that the massive health bill will not only be paid for, but will …
When a Congressionally-mandated study released in 2008 found that President Bush’s favorite reading program was a failure, it was national news. An article by Greg Toppo in the USA Today blared the headline “Study: Bush’s Reading First Program Ineffective” and reported that the results could be a “knockout punch” for the program. Similar articles appeared in the New York Times (by Sam Dillon) and Washington Post (by Maria Glod). But when a similarly devastating report was published last week that undercuts a pillar of President Obama’s education plans, none of …
