U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, while serving as Chicago Public Schools chief, maintained a list of special requests from politically connected individuals for children to attend the city’s best schools. The information, reported today by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, is the focus of a federal probe and investigation by the school district inspector general. According to the Tribune: Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city’s premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan’s office and …
It is difficult to imagine the Ninth Circuit as any more radically liberal than it already is. Despite a few stellar judges, the Court is full of liberal activists who have earned it the reputation of having the highest Supreme Court reversal rate of any court in the nation. But, with his latest judicial nominee, President Obama just may do what seemed impossible. There are many red flags in the judicial record of Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, who is Associate Dean at the University of California Berkeley Law School. …
After trying to work with Chinese authorities and live up to its announcement in January that it would not longer censor its searches in China, Google redirected its Google.cn website to Google.com.hk. Google argues that this move would help its mainland China users get uncensored searches via Hong Kong servers. Nevertheless, using Hong Kong does not solve Google’s China problem, and the connection with Hong Kong will not be free and easy. The Washington Post has already reported that sensitive searches on the Hong Kong site have been blocked. China …
As we mentioned earlier this morning, today is the 27th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) speech; the speech that paved the way for our nation’s successful missile defense program. However, America faces another threat, one that requires Congress’s immediate attention: an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Heritage fellow Jen McNeill makes the case for raising recognition of this new threat by making March 23rd EMP Recognition Day: The likelihood of an EMP attack is disconcerting. Nearly 30 countries currently possess ballistic missile capabilities. Indeed, some have extensive …
The failures of President Barack Obama’s $862 billion stimulus are legend, but the $8 billion the Obama administration will waste on high-speed rail is particularly galling. The New York Times reports today: The drive from Orlando to Tampa takes only 90 minutes or so. Despite the short distance, the Obama administration awarded Florida $1.25 billion in stimulus money to link the cities with a fast train to help kick off its efforts to bring high-speed rail service to the United States. … Proponents of high-speed rail worry that the new …
In the final hours before the passage of Obamacare, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and his like-minded Democratic colleagues announced that they would vote for the legislation after President Barack Obama agreed to sign an executive order purporting to prevent the federal government from funding abortions. But one of the problem’s with this approach is that the President isn’t bound to preserve the executive order for any length of time. The President could wake up the day after signing this executive order and rescind it. Stupak himself acknowledged this in an interview with …
Editorializing on the Obama administration’s nuclear arms control strategy with Russia, The Washington Post wrote this Sunday: This is an issue that really matters: The continued development and deployment of missile defenses arguably means more to U.S. security than a new nuclear weapons deal with Russia. Indeed, the development and deployment of missile defenses by the U.S. for the protection of itself and its friends and allies around the world is an essential component of a security policy that is adapted to the circumstances of today’s world. This is because …
The Obama Administration and Americans in general face a deadly threat close to home. The threat is posed by the violence of Mexico’s murderous drug trafficking cartels and gangs that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border. One group of Mexican killers, the Barrio Azteca, is believed responsible for the cold-blooded murder of an American citizen and a Mexican employed by the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez on March 13. A key leader of the trans-border gang is Eduardo Ravelo, who recently joined Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. …
Why has American’s concern with global warming dropped to dead last among issues surveyed (even dead last among environmental issues)? Because a great deal of their concern was based on projections that have been dramatically toned down or exposed as outright fraud. The hysteria is unsupportable and people have caught on. The very active 2005 hurricane season, underscored by hurricanes Rita and Katrina, put the national psyche in a receptive mood for Al Gore’s inaccurate portrayal of 2005 as the base of an exponentially growing hurricane horror story. Subsequent quiet …
The way Washington is operating, the fate of nuclear energy may be in trouble in the United States. When something’s unpopular with the American public, the government will find a way to make it move forward. This past weekend’s vote proves to be a pretty good example of that. A recently released Gallup poll shows support for nuclear at an all-time high of 62 percent: “A majority of Americans have typically favored using nuclear power to provide electricity for the United States since Gallup began asking about this topic in …
