As the U.N. Security Council finally prepares to vote on the long-awaited Iran sanctions resolution, Tehran has escalated its efforts to undermine sanctions efforts. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned today that if a fourth round of sanctions is imposed, Iran will drop its nuclear fuel swap deal with Brazil and Turkey …
Turkey may no longer be the friend the United States once knew. The Washington Post reports that thousands gathered in Istanbul on Saturday, shouting “Damn Israel!” in protest of the clash between Israeli forces and “peace activists” on a Turkish-flagged ship. The protest, together with dangerous shifts in Turkey’s foreign …
Tax hikes helped the U.S. economy go from downturn to depression in 1932.Throughout the mid-30s there were glimmers of economic recovery until taxes were raised again in 1937, helping send the economy into another recession. So, why would it be smart to raise taxes now during such a fragile economic …
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was at the Shangri-La Dialogue (aka the Asia Security Summit), and according to The Washington Post, he has engaged in sharp exchanges with the Chinese participants. Who was Gates’ interlocutor at Shangri-La? None other than People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Major General Zhu Chenghu, who …
According to the columnist Robert J. Samuelson, the new Obama poverty measure “fails.” It flunks the test of “political neutrality,” and is based on “misleading statistics that not one American in 100,000 could possibly understand.” That’s because the new calculation would measure poverty on a sliding scale. Thus, if the …
President Obama, joined by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, is holding a televised Town Hall Meeting today on the benefits of his big health care law with senior citizens in Wheaton, Maryland. The President’s public relations offensive will be coordinated with unions and a bevy of liberal interest groups, ranging from …
The U.S. is currently participating in the Review Conference for the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda, at which three amendments are under consideration that would negatively affect U.S. interests if passed. Regardless of what happens in Kampala, the Obama administration has said that it will not seek ratification of …
This morning White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag will release a memo directing all federal agency heads “to develop plans” to cut at least 5 percent from their budgets by “identifying programs that do little to advance their missions or President Obama’s agenda.” This …
Among the slew of strategy documents from the Obama administration this spring, full of academic analysis and verbal flourishes, Congress has rightly detected a certain lack of substance. Case in point: The question of whether the U.S. government needs a Center for Strategic Communications and Public Diplomacy. According to the …
