The results of the UK elections and the new coalition government that has resulted have sparked much commentary and debate. But few Americans actually understand how the British election system works. In this week’s Heritage in Focus podcast, Ted Bromund, senior research fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, explains how Britain’s election and government-formation system differs from America’s, and what this year’s results mean to the special relationship between our two countries. Listen to Heritage in Focus: Ted Bromund on the UK Elections here.
A college graduation is a great achievement that is the culmination of years of hard work, feverish paper writing, and the occasional all-nighter. So when college students get to their graduation ceremony, they are usually greeted with a great celebration. They are also very positive affairs with well-known speakers giving a speech that makes it an unforgettable day. As well it should be. Former Vice President Al Gore seems to have not gotten the memo. You see, he used a commencement speech at the University of Tennessee as a political …
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told The Washington Post this week: “This is getting to be Judgment Day on the spending issue. I’ve come to the conclusion that voters are saying now that just throwing money at various kinds of issues — virtually all of which are deserving — isn’t good enough.” Throwing money at issues isn’t good enough? Sen. Wyden is just now learning this? Too bad his fellow colleagues in the Senate haven’t. Politico reports: In a roll of the dice, Democrats moved Thursday to take up a roughly …
It’s not exactly news that the federal No Child Left Behind program has encouraged the states to define proficiency downward in order to avoid triggering various federal sanctions. But judging from Education Next’s recent grading of state proficiency standards, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program is no fix. Here’s the journal’s overall finding: “Every state, for both reading and math (with the exception of Massachusetts for math), deems more students ‘proficient’ on its own assessments than NAEP [the National Assessment of Educational Progress] does. The average difference is a …
Another one of the standout presentations at the Heartland Institute’s fourth International Conference on Climate Change was the one by Nils-Axel Morner, former emeritus head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. His talk focused on sea level increases and the difference between observed data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) model’s predictions. Morner was a former reviewer on the IPCC report and when he was first made a reviewer he said he was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on …
Once again, George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol are asserting that midcourse missile defense interceptors will not work. This latest attack on the missile defense program is in a piece appearing in the current issue of Arms Control Today, which is a publication of the Arms Control Association. This time, however, they focus more attention on the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor that is at the heart of the Obama administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense. At the technical level, Lewis and Postol assert that midcourse interceptors are insufficiently …
Remember how Obamacare was going to save big bucks and reduce wait time in emergency rooms? The idea was that millions of previously uninsured Americans accustomed to using ERs for basic medical treatment would snatch up Obamacare coverage and start getting primary care from regular (and cheaper) medical practices. Nice thought. But it doesn’t look like it’ll pan out. Indeed, notes Rick Dallam, it looks like “it’s going to be exactly the opposite over the next four to eight years.” In an article in The Hill, Dallam, a health care …
During this past Wednesday’s mark-up of the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act my fellow conservatives on the House Armed Services Committee stood strongly on the side of the American people, vociferously fighting for security, liberty, and freedom through our Defend America First platform. One of the issues debated on Wednesday, which many of us have deemed most detrimental to our Republic, is the disgraceful actions apparently undertaken by the disloyal defense lawyers involved in the John Adams Project. We have called for an immediate and thorough investigation of …
The White House knows its signature health care legislation is still deeply unpopular with the American people, which is why it has been desperate to speed up implementation as much as legally possible. But many of the law’s new costs and limitations are still scheduled to kick into effect years down the line, when Congress hopes voters aren’t paying attention anymore. A new Foundry video illustrates the health care implementation timeline (pdf) researched by the Heritage health care team. Think you can keep your current plan? Think seniors and the …
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals just issued a blockbuster opinion that vindicates both the Bush and Obama administration’s positions regarding whether detainees captured overseas and held in Afghanistan have the constitutional right to challenge their detention via habeas corpus. The appeals court, in a methodical opinion reversing a lower court decision, said no. The opinion will have wide-ranging implications in the war on terror, and if it holds (i.e. is not taken up by the Supreme Court and overturned), it gives the green light to an administration which has, …
