Since coming into office the Obama administration has insisted on approaching all terrorist attacks as a law-enforcement-only problem. For purely ideological reasons, Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to learn what the rest of the country already learned from the 1990s and 9/11: that this unconventional enemy requires the government to use all lawful tools at its disposal, including holding some terrorists captured in the U.S. as enemy combatants. But now that he is in power and has some actual responsibility, Holder is beginning to learn the limits of the …
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) once said that the “most basic responsibility of governing is to pass a budget.” Yesterday it became clear that Congress has decided to shirk that responsibility, as word broke that the House likely will not pass a budget resolution for the first time since the modern budget process was created in 1974. That’s earthshaking news, especially given the ballooning federal spending, which soared to an $82.69 billion deficit in April, a projected $1.5 trillion deficit in 2010, and even more deficits as far as the eye can see. …
In the last week, the government-backed mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac asked the taxpayer for $19 billion to stay afloat. Add that to the $127 billion in bailouts they have already received since September 2008, and we are now talking about a whopping $146 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars being used to prop up these failed entities. In more than a year and a half we have heard nothing from the Administration about a plan to implement real reforms to stop the bleeding. This Democratic Congress, …
Senators Kerry and Lieberman have introduced their “compromise” climate change legislation that relies largely on a “cap and trade” scheme to reduce carbon emissions. Even assuming there was a need for carbon limits, the Kerry-Lieberman bill gets the mechanism all wrong, apparently because the Senators either don’t understand or don’t trust markets. Kerry and Lieberman propose that the government manage a carbon market because controlling pollution is really important. This will work about as well as the government running grocery stores because everyone needs food. The insight underlying the use …
The White House plans to submit the April 8, 2010, the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (New START) between the Russian Federation and the United States of America to the Senate for ratification today. The Senate should focus less on the text of the Treaty, its Protocol and Annexes because these documents were made available to the Senate and the public earlier. Instead, the Senate should focus more on the two documents that will accompany today’s submission and that have so far not …
Brazil’s President Ignacio Lula da Silva will visit Tehran on May 15. International attention will focus on the visit because Iran has said it agrees “in principle” with working through Brazil and Turkey to broker a nuclear fuels exchange deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Despite this diplomatic camouflage, Iran’s central objective remains avoiding or watering down possible UN sanctions and sowing confusion among international players with a diplomacy of gestures and bluffs. It aims to buy more time at the expense of the U.S. and the West …
Asked how Montana has managed to squirrel away a $400 million surplus while 48 other states in the Union are all in the red, Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) told Morning Joe: “The reason we have money in the bank is we said ‘no’ to everybody that asked for it.” But what if somebody comes along who Schweitzer can’t say ‘no’ to? Last July Schweitzer called Medicaid “a system that isn’t working” and noted that through Obamacare Congress wanted “increase the number [of people] on Medicaid so they could do it …
In case you had any doubts about whether Washington bureaucrats were completely out of touch with ordinary Americans, the Environmental Protection Agency is here to reassure you—they are. While Americans across the country have been tightening their belts and dealing with a wave of new taxes, fees, and regulations, the EPA has launched a video contest to celebrate their brand of over-regulation. They are offering $2,500 to whomever puts together the best video lauding the merits of regulation in American life.
While the supposedly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has tended toward a more partisan cast of late, in one matter at least the CBO appears to be fully non-partisan, and that is in the area of the Member kiss off. Case in point is a recent letter from CBO Director Elmendorf to Congressman Maurice D. Hinchey, a self-described progressive Democrat representing New York’s 22nd District.
Elena Kagan may be hostile to the view that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution protects American’s individual right to keep and bear arms. Bloomberg reports today, “Kagan Was ‘Not Sympathetic’ as Law Clerk to Gun-Rights Argument.” With the evidence presented by the Los Angeles Times that Kagan was very active in the gun control agenda during her time as counsel for the President Bill Clinton Administration, a thorough examination of Kagan’s views on the 2nd Amendment is merited. Bloomberg Reports that “Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court …
