Today at 2:30 PM at the Collingwood Library and Museum portion of George Washington’s original Mount Vernon estate, a Who’s Who of the conservative movement’s leaders unveiled and signed The Mount Vernon Statement: a document defining the movement’s principles, beliefs and values in light of the challenges facing the country. The full statement is below, and you can add your name in support here. The Mount Vernon Statement Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the …
Following the lead of a handful of other states, the Virginia House yesterday passed a bill by an 82–13 margin that would require all state agencies, public contractors and Virginia-based employers with 15 or more employees to ensure that any potential hires are eligible to work in the United States. The bill would require employers to use the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system, a joint project between DHS and the Social Security Administration. The online system allows employers to check information from a new hire’s I-9 form against the …
President Obama says he wants to reduce America’s record trillion-dollar deficits. Too bad he hasn’t even correctly diagnosed their cause. During his State of the Union Address, the president asserted: “At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription-drug …
If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change credibility has been taking hit after hit as several flaws were recently revealed in its 2007 report – the same report our politicians use to justify urgent action on climate change. The IPCC’s statement of principles reads, “IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, but its claims that the Himalayan glaciers would be melted by 2035 were admittedly based on political action. Dr Murari Lal, the lead author on the IPCC report’s chapter on Asia, said, We thought that if we …
The Department of Homeland Security recently published a report on the total population of illegal immigrants in the U.S. The conclusion: the overall illegal immigrant population decreased from 11.6 million to 10.8 million in 2008, down further from 11.8 million in 2007. As both the DHS report and an earlier report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) indicate, this decline in illegal immigrant numbers within the U.S. coincides directly with the recent economic downturn and increased enforcement measures to encourage illegal immigrants to go home in 2005-2008. Facing economic …
The headlines should read: World Didn’t End! Sub-head: We didn’t know what we were talking about. The data for official Chinese purchases of Treasury bonds in 2009 were published yesterday. Verdict: the PRC bought practically nothing. In 2008, official Chinese purchases of US Treasury bonds were equal in size to half our federal budget deficit. Last year they were equal to 2%. That’s not a typo, that’s a ’2′. According to the “China is our banker!” hysteria, our interest rates should be soaring. Of course, they aren’t. The whole idea …
Dr. James Eelkema, a Burnsville, MN family practice physician was fed up with the costly paperwork insurance companies required and the second guessing of his medical decisions by company bureaucrats. So when he learned that up to a third of his pay was to become contingent on “measures such as whether his patients got pap smears or whether he got them to stop smoking,” Dr. Eelkema decided enough was enough and converted to a cash-only practice. Dr. Eelkema’s decision represents a growing trend of medicine returning to its fundamental role …
The recent capture of the number two Afghan Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Bahadur in Pakistan is a blow to the Afghan Taliban and their ability to coordinate the insurgency in southern Afghanistan. Bahadur’s arrest will help reestablish Pakistan’s counterterrorism credentials with Washington. The Pakistan military leadership also may be seeking to ensure a role in determining the future direction of Afghanistan, at the same time U.S. and coalition forces begin an important offensive in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. While it is too early to say whether …
According to a recent story by the McClatchy newswire, Hispanics are frustrated with President Obama now that it is becoming increasingly clear that his campaign promises were nothing more than empty rhetoric. Although the article focuses on Hispanics’ disappointment in the lack of a comprehensive immigration bill to emerge from the Democratic-controlled Congress, Hispanics would do well looking beyond the immigration issue to realize how misguided the President’s policies are for all Americans – including Hispanics. Nowhere is this more evident than on the issue of education, where the high …
Facing new polling showing that 52% of the American people believe that he does not deserve a second term in office, President Barack Obama attempted to reach out to conservatives yesterday by promising $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees for a pair of nuclear reactors in Georgia. The President told an enthusiastic audience of union officials in Lanham, MD: “Those who have long advocated for nuclear power — including many Republicans — have to recognize that we will not achieve a big boost in nuclear capacity unless we also create …
