President Obama is a school choice success story, and 38 percent of those in Congress have sent a child to a private school. So why are they denying the same choice to low-income parents in our nation’s capital? The Obama administration and Congress have put the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program on a path to elimination. The program provides scholarships to 1700 low-income students to attend private schools. Students are making academic gains, and parents are satisfied now that their children finally can attend safe and effective schools. Ten days …
From day one we have been highly skeptical of Congress’ ability to cut Medicare as necessitated to fund Obamacare’s $2.5 trillion in new spending. The top down cuts-by-committee-of-experts approach is far too susceptible to typical Washington deal making. Now we learn that in order to secure votes in the final days before passage, the House has already proved Obamacare will only increase, not decrease, Medicare spending. Kaiser Health News reports: A last-minute deal to win votes for the health care overhaul underscores the political dilemma for Congress as it tries …
It’s hard not to sympathize with organized labor—at least to some extent. After all, during the 2008 elections, unions donated roughly half a billion dollars to Democrats, and so far have few legislative victories to show for their efforts; the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the Respect Act, and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act have all stalled in Congress. Union leaders were further outraged by last month’s bipartisan Senate vote against Craig Becker, President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Rather than accept another setback, however, …
A few weeks ago, I posted that CBO’s estimate that the stimulus created saved 1.5 million jobs was not based on any actual examination of the post-stimulus economy. Instead, CBO essentially re-released their initial prediction that the stimulus would work, and presented that as proof that it did work. This is like a weather forecaster saying that the high yesterday was 65 degrees, because that is what had been predicted — even though it actually never topped 50 degrees.
Ever since Sunday’s vote to pass health care reform, the media has focused on the reconciliation vote in the Senate, analysis of how passage affects Democrats political standing, President Obama’s poll numbers—anything other than how this new law will affect the American people. However, now that Obamacare is law, it’s more important than ever to remind ourselves about the true consequences of this massive legislation and the importance of repealing it.
As soon as President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2010 into law, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed suit against the federal government, arguing that the legislation is unconstitutional. Cuccinelli highlights the individual mandate as particularly offensive to the Constitution, emphasizing that “at no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service.” Some disagree with Cuccinelli, pointing to the Second Militia Act of 1792 as evidence that the individual mandate is not unprecedented and furthermore that the …
Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama Justice Department would appeal a U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson’s order to release 9/11 terrorist operative Mohamedou Ould Slahi. This is a good decision by Holder. Our nation would be less safe if Slahi was released from U.S. custody. But the very need for the appeal underscores how the Obama administration’s larger approach to detainee treatment is seriously undermining our national security. Former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and current National Review Institute senior …
In mid-October 2008, at the height of the Presidential campaign, Heritage Foundation analyst Rea Hederman began receiving emails alerting him that he was a star in a new multimillion-dollar ad campaign for then-candidate Barack Obama. The ads claimed that Hederman believed the middle class would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, Hederman’s analysis of the Obama tax plan found the exact opposite: that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) tax plan would produce twice as many jobs as then-candidate Obama’s …
The Cold War is supposed to be over, and the murderous ideology of Marxist-Leninist revolution either tempered by capitalism and consumerism in China or Vietnam, or confined behind the grim ramparts of communist throwbacks like Cuba and North Korea. If that’s the case, Bolivian leader Evo Morales must not have gotten the memo. In a sharp contrast with Bolivia’s history – it was in fact Bolivian troops which executed the violently homicidal Cuban Communist leader Che Guevara in 1967 for attempting an ill-fated repeat of Cuba’s communist revolution – the …
The Saudi Interior Ministry announced yesterday that it had uncovered a plot to attack Saudi oil facilities and arrested 113 suspected members of al-Qaeda. The 113 militants reportedly were organized into three cells and had been planning suicide attacks on oil and security facilities in Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing Eastern Province. Fifty two of the suspects were from Yemen, which has become the primary base for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after many cells based in Saudi Arabia were uprooted in previous Saudi crackdowns. Al-Qaeda long has been focused on attacking …
