Solving the problem of cleaning up the waters in the Gulf of Mexico may depend not on government, nor on the corporate giant BP, but on innovation and commitment to free enterprise. One promising and persistent example is Mr. Nobu Su of Taiwan, CEO of TMT Corporation. Thursday morning he is to meet with Coast Guard officials in New Orleans to outline this weekend’s trial run of the A Whale, the huge tanker/oil skimmer which Su has brought to America. He says the ship is the long-needed “big answer to …
In Day Three questioning of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, conservative senators continued to press for clear, forthright answers to resolve the serious questions surrounding Kagan’s unlawful policy on military recruiting at Harvard Law School and her views on the reach of federal power to regulate details of American life, the constitutionality of state bans on partial-birth abortions, and the validity of recent Court precedent on the First and Second Amendments. After a round of obscurantist answers on Day Two, Senators Sessions, Hatch, Grassley, Kyl, Graham, Cornyn, and Coburn labored …
Today, Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl testified before the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, more commonly known as President Obama’s “deficit commission.” The commission has been tasked to offer suggestions to reduce the federal deficit—a necessity which was proven even more serious today by the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s annual long-term Budget Outlook. Today’s meeting was the third for the commission, and was intended to serve as an opportunity for the appointees to hear from the public on the topic of deficit reduction. To paraphrase Senator …
Leon Panetta, the low-key Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, made an eye-opening disclosure on Sunday that received little attention, yet called into question the Obama Administration’s strategy for preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. Speaking on ABC’s Sunday news show, “This Week”, Panetta revealed that Tehran could soon have a nuclear weapon: “We think they have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would …
After the last-second addition of another $20 billion in new taxes shattered their original coalition for passage, the majority in the Senate went back to the drawing board to identify a new way to pay for the Dodd-Frank “orderly liquidation” fund. The result of their leftist brainstorming session? Using the “profits” from the TARP bailout to pay for future Dodd-Frank financial fiascoes. The left and their allies want us to believe this would mark “the end” of TARP. The New York Times reports: The new plan would bring an early …
In her questioning of Elena Kagan yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked about the degree to which courts should defer to agency constructions of statutes, pointing to a 2006 Supreme Court decision regarding the Clean Water Act (CWA) that left intermittent seasonal streams unprotected. Kagan told Senator Feinstein she did not know of the specific decision and, instead, explained the general principles of judicial deference to agency constructions of statutes passed by Congress. In doing so, she correctly referred to the Court’s decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources …
The optimist in you might say, “Better late than never.” The pessimist in you might ask, “What took so long?” On June 29, over seventy days after the Gulf oil spill, the U.S. Department of State released the following statement: The National Incident Command and the Federal On Scene Coordinator have determined that there is a resource need for boom and skimmers that can be met by offers of assistance from foreign governments and international bodies. The United States will accept 22 offers of assistance from 12 countries and international …
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that ten people have been arrested for being alleged undercover Russian spies. They were charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, as well as for money laundering. While not yet charged with espionage, nevertheless, they walked liked spies and talked like spies. The eleventh man escaped, only to be apprehended in Cyprus. These were not the usual suspects acting under diplomatic cover and trying to recruit Americans at cocktail parties. The ten seem to be long term, …
Carnegie Mellon University economics professor and American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Allan Meltzer has a must read op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal titled: Why Obamanomics Has Failed: Uncertainty about future taxes and regulations is enemy No. 1 of economic growth. It is re-posted in its entirety below but as an added bonus we have added links supporting many of his factual and theoretical claims: The administration’s stimulus program has failed. Growth is slow and unemployment remains high. The president, his friends and advisers talk endlessly about the circumstances they …
Our newest video highlights a recent paper on welfare reform by Heritage’s Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley. In the video and this new report, we reveal some startling statistics: Welfare spending is climbing faster than spending for education, defense, and even Social Security and Medicare. After adjusting for inflation, welfare spending is 13 times higher today than in 1965, when the War on Poverty started The average out-of-wedlock birthrate is 40%, while African-American populations see a rate of 72%. In 1965, the average was 7%. Under President Obama, welfare spending …
