Let’s wait until the economy recovers a little before we step on it with costly environmental regulations. That was the message from Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson in a response to eight Democratic senators from industrial coal states the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Administrator Jackson said by April she will “take actions to ensure that no stationary source will be required to get a Clean Air Act permit to cover its greenhouse gas emissions in calendar year 2010.” As the Clean Air Act is …
In 1996, President Clinton created an outcry in western states with the words: NOW, THEREFORE, I WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 2 of the [Antiquities] Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431), do proclaim that there are hereby set apart and reserved as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, for the purpose of protecting the objects identified above, all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the United States within the boundaries …
What author wouldn’t cherish a plug of his book by an attractive, poised public speaker who really knows how to excite and inspire a crowd? And we don’t mean President Barack Obama citing “The Defining Moment,” Jonathan Alter’s book on FDR. This was Rep. Michele Bachmann, revving up CPAC with a speech that wound up quoting, um, liberally from “We Still Hold These Truths,” Heritage scholar Matthew Spalding’s book on America’s founding principles. The Minnesota Republican, as this clip shows, apparently likes how Spalding describes a very different defining moment: the …
On December 25th there was a clear failure to connect the dots that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane bound for the U.S with a bomb strapped to his body. However, as explained last week at Heritage by former Homeland Security Advisor, the Hon. Kenneth Wainstein, the U.S. would not have even been in the position to try and piece together this intelligence information before the Patriot Act lowered the walls between intelligence and law enforcement. Immediately after 9/11, intelligence operators realized that they possessed too …
School districts and legislatures in Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Virginia are demonstrating a commitment to greater educational opportunities for students and families by challenging the status quo of mediocre and failing public schools. While many East Coast states spent the weekend focused on snow removal, the town of Central Falls, Rhode Island focused on the removal of almost 100 teachers from one of the state’s worst performing schools. Superintendent Frances Gallo will fire all Central Falls High School teachers after union leaders refused proposed reforms that included increasing the …
For the first time in more than a decade, the rate of pregnancies among 18- and 19-year-olds is on the rise. Unwed mothers and children born outside of marriage are more likely to be poor, increasing likelihood of dependence on government welfare. If we seek limited government, we need solutions to reduce the trend of unwed pregnancy. As far as school instruction and programs for teens are concerned, the good news is that a recent report shows programs that teach abstinence exclusively (without “safe sex” caveats) are effective in delaying …
The defeated Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has dropped her court case challenging the results from the February 7th presidential election. She had attempted to annul Viktor Yanukovych’s election, citing fraud in a case appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine. Nevertheless, her legal challenge was futile. Ms. Tymoshenko dropped her case on Saturday, February 20, saying that as an ordinary citizen, she can’t find justice in courts of Ukraine. With Yanukovych’s inauguration set for February 25, Ms. Tymoshenko is now fighting to retain her control of the parliament. …
The special inspector general for the TARP program, Neil Barofsky, has made a reputation for himself by issuing tough assessments of the troubled federal program for troubled assets. It’s been a problem for Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department. No one, after all, wants a watchdog at their heels. Treasury’s solution: muzzle the dog. Specifically, Treasury is considering excluding the special Inspector General — known as “SIGTARP” in bailout circles — from the new $30 billion small-business lending program announced by President Obama in his state of the union address.
My Corner post from last Wednesday — pointing out that government “stimulus” spending does not add new purchasing power to the economy because the government must first borrow that purchasing power out of the economy — caused a stir among liberal bloggers Brad DeLong, Matt Yglesias and Stan Collender. Their posts suggest they likely didn’t actually read the report I linked to — which anticipated and answered their counterarguments. Brad DeLong predictably relied more on insults than analysis. Eventually, he asserted that my point that government “stimulus” cannot alter short-term demand …
