If Congressman Peter Defazio (D–OR), sponsor of the End the Trade Deficit Act, had grown up in Kansas instead of Massachusetts, he might have learned a valuable lesson from an association called the Kansas Agri-Women. In 1978, this group started placing billboards across the state proclaiming, “One Kansas farmer feeds 55 people + YOU.” The Agri-Women regularly had to update their billboards as farmers became more productive. Each year, one Kansas farmer could feed more people than he could the year before. By 1999, the billboards advertised that one Kansas …
An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Robert McDowell, a commissioner of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, warns that a FCC proposal to regulate broadband Internet access could lead to international regulation of the Internet by the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU, a largely autonomous organization that actually predates the United Nations, is the leading U.N. agency for information and communication technology issues. As McDowell observes, many U.N. member states are opposed to an unregulated Internet and have proposed granting the U.N. oversight of the medium. This possibility threatens …
Liberals are desperate to bully or chide the rest of the country into accepting massive new taxes to support the recent federal spending surge. Many opponents who resisted the spending on the grounds that it increased the budget deficit are now being called deficit chickens because they oppose the tax hikes needed to pay for all that spending. This is a particularly nauseating development as the charge comes from those whose actions prove they care not one whit about the nation’s finances. Nauseating or not, however, there is no reason …
You can buy a lot of car for $41,000. A BMW. A Mustang GT convertible. Even a Mercedes. Or you could shell out for a brand-spanking-new electric-powered Chevy Volt and do your part to “save the environment.” Government-owned General Motors is counting on the government to encourage you to do the latter. According to a New York Times report, GM spokesman Greg Martin said in an e-mail: Policy makers can do their part to speed the market acceptance of these vehicles as part of a much broader energy policy that …
The State Department is sorely upset about July 28 headlines in The Washington Post and The Washington Times about a recent Department report on Russian noncompliance with several existing and past arms control treaties and how the Russian record could derail Senate approval of the new arms control treaty with Russia, which is called New START. It seems, however, that the State Department cannot keep its story straight. According to a report in Foreign Policy’s online journal The Cable, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller asserts that Russian non-compliance with …
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus uses “quack medicine” to describe conservatives’ support for extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Yet she commits her own economic malpractice. Ms. Marcus asserts that the tax cuts devastated tax revenues by pointing out that “tax revenue fell from 21 percent of GDP in fiscal 2000 to 17.5 percent in 2008. (I’m leaving out the recession-induced plunge, to under 15 percent this year and last.)” This cherry-picked data is highly misleading. Her starting point (2000) was a year in which revenues reached their …
The aim of releasing thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war on the WikiLeaks Web site was apparently to undermine American public support for the war. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said he wanted the world to see the “true nature of the war” and equated the WikiLeaks Afghanistan archive with the release of the secret files of the East German police following the fall of the Berlin Wall. But an initial look at a handful of the thousands of released reports reveals no shocking information but rather …
Hours after yesterday’s decision by President Bill Clinton judicial appointee Susan Bolton to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), told The New York Times: “This is a warning to any other jurisdiction.” Just in case the message from the Obama administration and its leftist allies was not clear, Obama appointee U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke told The Associated Press: “Surely it’s going to make states pause and consider how they’re drafting legislation and how it …
LAS VEGAS – Amidst a slew of liberal legislation passing Congress, conservatives have many reasons to feel down and out. However, at the RightOnline convention this weekend, hosted by Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the mood was overwhelmingly positive. From brand-new grassroots activists to veteran campaigners, the feeling was the same. Activists from all over America took part in sessions that taught tips on how to effectively use blogs, Facebook and Twitter. There was an advanced track that focused more on connecting and mobilizing online. Other sessions stressed the importance of …
Two weeks have passed since al-Shabab, the African subsidiary of al-Qaeda, murdered over 70 innocents in Kampala. Former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen makes a convincing case that the Obama Administration must keep a sharp eye on Somalia and Yemen as an emerging terror threat to the U.S. Thiessen recounts recent adverse developments, including the July 11 Uganda bombings and the arrest of a northern Virginia man, Zachary Adam Chesser, charged with seeking to join foreign fighters in Somalia. Thiessen questions the Administration’s decision to order U.S. special operations …
