In his inaugural address, President Obama vowed to reach out and engage with the international community including those nations hostile to the United States. However, it is clear that Obama’s engagement with Iran has been nothing short of a failure. In her recent remarks with the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal, Secretary Clinton admitted that Iran “has failed to reciprocate.” Instead, Iran announced that it will increase its enrichment capacity and produce twenty percent uranium. The Obama administration is now preparing to move ahead on the sanctions front in …
A $5 billion stimulus program to weatherize homes is off to a shaky start. ABC News reports that at the end of 2009, only 9,100 have been weatherized to save energy through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. $522 million of the $5 billion has been spent thus far, which equates to over $57,000 per home. That’s quite a slow for a stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely and effective; the goal of the plan was to cover 593,000 homes from the passage of the stimulus bill through …
Yvo de Boer, climate chief of the United Nations for four years, unexpectedly announced his resignation today. Although he officially won’t leave his post until July 1st, it marks another turn for the worse for those hoping to see action on climate policy. De Boer, who led the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali (2007) and more recently in Copenhagen (2009) said, “Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This …
The recent debt limit increase passed by Congress has sparked a national debate on how to adequately reverse out-of-control federal spending. After much congressional hand-wringing recently over what budget process reform to attach to the must-pass increase in the debt ceiling, support for a bipartisan commission crafted by Senate Budget Committee leaders Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) crumbled. Lawmakers realized that the framing of the commission would most likely lead to tax increases with little real spending restraint with the same back-room deals of which Americans have become …
A recent war game simulating the National Security Council’s response to a cyber attack highlighted the United States’ serious vulnerability to such an attack in an era where it is increasingly important to prepare for the potential consequences of cyber warfare. The war game, in which several former government officials tried to manage the commercial and economic crash resulting from the collapse of the internet and cell phone service, indicates that the U.S. needs to do more to prepare for the worst case scenario. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair …
Continuing the wide-ranging assault on the Supreme Court’s First Amendment decision in the Citizens United case, The Washington Post claims that a poll the newspaper conducted in conjunction with ABC News shows that “Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose” the outcome. Cataloging the so-called “strong reservoir of bipartisan support,” the story suggests that already-promised legislative proposals aimed at curtailing the decision will be met with public accolades. But the Washington Post, and indeed virtually all of the critics of Citizens United, continue to recycle the same tired talking points, none …
Efforts by the Obama Administration to work with Russia on Iran, nuclear arms control, and the fight against terrorism do not prevent Moscow from periodically reasserting its presence in the Western Hemisphere. Between February 10 and 16, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov conducted a New World tour seeking deeper ties with the region, underscoring Russia’s readiness to talk trade, sell arms, and compete for influence with the U.S. In Cuba, Lavrov and his Communist hosts fondly celebrated the memory of the Havana-Moscow alliance ["five decades of brotherhood"] stretching from …
Despite claims that the theory of global warming is “irrefutable,” the science behind this theory is now being called into question. Al Gore and all the others who wanted the world to take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report as untouchable science now have a problem as reports of flaws in both the methods and the data keep on coming. The Washington Post laid out yesterday multiple flaws in the IPCC report. These include everything from misreporting critical dates, sloppy sourcing—including the use of anecdotal evidence from mountain climbers …
According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her biggest nightmare is if al-Qaeda or regimes like Iran get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction and use it against us. She is not alone. Military experts like the former head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering, say that it would take, at most, only about 33 minutes for a missile fired anywhere in the world to hit our country, and life in America would change forever. So what are we doing to prevent this …
The EU’s appointment of João Vale de Almeida as the new EU Ambassador to Washington confirms European Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s tightening grip on Brussels’ foreign policy levers. Virtually-unknown on the international stage, Vale de Almeida has been Barroso’s head of cabinet for the past five years, and intimately associated with the creation of the EU’s new diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS). The fact that someone so closely associated with the set-up of this new diplomatic corps should land such a plum role in it, would …
