If you’ve heard the results of the recent Head Start Impact Study, congratulations. You are one of the few Americans who, no thanks to national media sources, are aware that your taxpayer dollars have been funding a failing federal program for the last 45 years. The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an event titled: Is Head Start Helping Children Succeed and Does Anyone Care?, to discuss the recently-released Impact Study that found no lasting impact for Head Start children after first grade. According to the study–which compared both three- and four-year-old …
This Thursday President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign a follow on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Since the day agreement on the new treaty was leaked by the Kremlin, the White House has been claiming that the treaty “does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs.” And from day one the Russians have been saying the opposite. Today in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again made it clear that …
President Barack Obama today released five specific objectives regarding the United States’ future nuclear force, but the most important objective of all – defending the United States and its allies against strategic attack – was not among them. Now, it is up to Congress, the American people and America’s allies to ask the President a simple, pointed question: Why won’t you defend us? The release of the President’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) raises significant questions about the soundness of the Obama administration’s nuclear strategy. First and foremost, the President’s priorities …
If President Obama thinks that signing his prized arms control treaty with Russia on Czech soil will repair the damage he’s done to relations with Central and Eastern Europe, he’s wrong. Cutting a deal with the Russian bear in Prague is hardly the way to tell your allies that it’s not all about Russia. Although cheering crowds greeted Obama a year ago when he told adoring Czechs of his vision for a world without nuclear weapons, Europe now is much more cautiously embracing the President’s risky and naïve agenda. The …
In the depressing aftermath of Congress’s passage of the Democratic health-care legislation, there has been an understandable temptation among conservatives to think that all their effort over the last year to derail what was coming down the tracks may have been for naught. After all, the bill did pass. The president and his allies got their signing ceremony and their victory lap, as well as a barrage of premature but predictable pronouncements from the national media that we are now witnessing a historic moment of irreversible liberal progress. And there’s …
California legislators passed a statewide cap and trade bill in 2006 that is set to begin in 2012, but a growing opposition is seeking to include a ballot measure that would postpone a carbon cap until the state’s economy recovers: “The ballot measure would bar the state from implementing the law until its jobless rate stabilized at or below 5.5% for a year, which supporters say would signal the return of a strong economy. The state’s jobless rate topped 5.5% in October 2007 and now stands at 12.5%. Supporters and …
In 2006, under former Governor Jeb Bush, Florida rolled out the most comprehensive Medicaid reform plan in the country. Studies from both The James Madison Institute and the University of Florida have shown these innovative reforms not only save money, but also improve the quality of care. On Wednesday, the Florida Senate passed a proviso amendment to their 2010-2011 budget that would require the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) to draft a new federal Medicaid waiver. This new waiver, if accepted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid …
The NATO military operation in Afghanistan is a “NATO operation” in name only. In quality and quantity, most of the forces there are from the English-speaking countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Without a doubt, some NATO nations like Romania, Poland, and Denmark clearly understand how important this mission really is, especially regarding America’s future commitment to the transatlantic security alliance. In contrast, NATO heavy-weights like France and Germany are barely present and accounted for in Afghanistan. Although Paris and Berlin are happy to micromanage …
There will be much at stake when the United Kingdom finally goes to the polls on May 6 after months of phony war between the two leading parties: the future course of the British economy, the fifth largest in the world, now submerged under mountains of debt and regulation after 13 years of socialist rule; the state of Britain’s defenses, gutted by more than a decade of vicious cuts, and under threat from a European defense identity; Britain’s relationship with the European Union, which could be renegotiated with a change …
After the first few lines of liberal columnist Thomas Friedman’s piece in Sunday’s New York Times, you would have thought he had finally seen the light: “If we want to bring down unemployment in a sustainable way, neither rescuing General Motors nor funding road construction will do it.” Yes, exactly. Maybe he’s finally seen the disastrous stimulus bill (that he supported) for what it is—a failure. “We need to create a big bushel of new companies.” Preach it, brother. “We’ve got to get more Americans working again for their own dignity—” …
