With the arrest of two New Jersey men on their way to Somalia to become jihadists, the role of the counterterrorism unit at the New York Police Department (NYPD) took center stage. The counterterrorism officer who infiltrated the small cell and recorded key communications is a proud member of the NYPD. We don’t know his identity — nor should we learn it if our media friends can respect the need to keep such information out of the public sphere — but we should loudly applaud his efforts and the efforts …
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels stopped by the Heritage Foundation yesterday to meet with conservative bloggers. His visit came a few days after The Weekly Standard released a lengthy piece on him, written by TWS Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson. Afterwards, he sat down with us for an exclusive “In the Green Room” interview. A vocal champion against Obamacare, both before and after its passage, Governor Daniels did not let up on his criticism. “I think it is a misnomer to ever refer to it as ‘reform’. It doesn’t reform anything. It perpetuates …
When the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passed in the House before last year’s summer recess, Members voting for its passage heard loudly from constituents. Since then the Senate has been reluctant to move forward with a counterpart. It took Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Kerry (D-MA) nearly a year to release their cap and trade bill. But what Congress has failed to do, the Environmental Protection Agency is willing and able. The agency has already begun the process of imposing costly and environmentally questionable CO2 cuts by using …
The Dutch electorate takes to the polls tomorrow, following the Government’s collapse in April. In fact, it was the fourth fallen Administration of Christian Democrat Jan Peter Balkenende—this time over claims that one coalition party withheld information from another. Quite simply, it looks as if the uneasy partnership between Labour and Christian Democrats finally gave way after much political infighting. The government’s declining enthusiasm to fulfill NATO’s request to extend the Dutch deployment to Afghanistan was merely a convenient scapegoat. The polls have had almost every major contender leading the …
It is not every day we get to agree with the Obama administration. But after Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary runoff election, after the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME poured millions of dollars into Halter’s campaign, a senior White House official told Politico: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet.” But it wasn’t just “their members” money that those unions were wasting. This year the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that for the first time in the …
Today, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag released a joint memo asking government agencies to create lists of ineffective programs with the intention of enacting future budget cuts of 5 percent. This initiative follows in the footsteps of proposed legislation that would give the president greater power to cut spending by requiring Congress to vote on line-item spending rescissions requested by the president. To have a significant impact on federal deficits, larger steps will need to be taken, but both ideas take small steps …
In the International Criminal Court (ICC) Review Conference’s discussion of the “crime of aggression,” the U.S. agenda — convincing ICC member states to adopt a version of the “crime of aggression” that would prevent the ICC from investigating or prosecuting individuals for that crime without an express determination by the U.N. Security Council that an act of aggression had been committed — appeared to be gaining speed. This momentum was based on the impact of strong interventions by the U.S., China, and Russia, all of whom urged rejection of proposals …
Earlier this week Politico‘s Ben Smith reported on how tough economic times are leading politicians from both parties to start attacking government unions. Smith writes: They’re the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants. But politicians are not the only ones questioning their old labor allies. Hollywood, who has long been ally of …
Within days of the oil spill, several European nations and thirteen countries in total apparently offered the Obama administration ships to assist in the clean-up of the Gulf. When asked about this, a State Department press spokesman refused to identify any offers of assistance. According to one newspaper, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S. Working with the U.S., the cleanup could be accomplished in three months. The Belgian firm DEME contends it can clean up …
News reports today on the oil spill in the Gulf have centered on the president’s crude remarks that he was looking for an “a** to kick.” But what has been largely unreported is the fact that President Obama has not spoken with BP CEO Tony Hayward one single time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April. Not once. Speaking to the BBC, Hayward said: “There is no need for that…I have spoken to his key lieutenants.” Whether Hayward sees a need for this conversation is immaterial. Just yesterday, Obama …
