Although it hardly seems possible, there has been a heightened level of confusion surrounding the government’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf this week. After being forced to create this escrow account, the White House appears to be maneuvering to force BP to use this new account to pay damages to competitors who have lost jobs as a result of the President’s decision to continue to his oil drilling moratorium. During an interview on Monday, Kenneth Feinberg, the “pay czar” who has been tasked with overseeing the BP …
7:30 Alt on Kagan’s Activism and Willingness to Interpret the Constitution based on Foreign Law Robert Alt entered into the record a written statement in support of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this evening. Alt’s statement explains why Kagan’s activism calls into question her fitness for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the nation. The key question for any nominee is how will they approach the judicial process—what is their judicial philosophy. There is a reason that critics of the Roberts Court have chosen the nomenclature …
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its annual long-term Budget Outlook, which provides a look at mandatory federal spending on health care after passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One may have expected to see drastic changes after the passage of Obamacare. After all, this legislation was supposed to reduce costs and overall health spending. However, the CBO’s report highlights the unlikelihood that cost-containment strategies included in the new law will ever come to fruition. In its projections, CBO looks at two scenarios. The extended-baseline scenario assumes …
We’ve solicited some thoughts on the American Independence and Founding from a variety of conservative and libertarian leaders. Between now and July 4, we’ll post some of the most interesting answers. Here is the first installment. What is the single best book or article you have read about the American Founding? Matt Mayer, President of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions: Outside of the fairly obvious The Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, I’d have to settle on Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of …
Last week President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka issued a full pardon to J.S. Tissainayagam, a Tamil journalist who had spent 21 months in detention for his conviction under Sri Lankan anti-terrorism laws for criticizing the actions by the Sri Lankan army during the civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). It is a welcome sign for Sri Lanka. The Committee to Protect Journalists and prominent U.S. Senators had expressed their concern about Mr. Tissainayagam’s detention. In response to Tissainayagam’s pardon, Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate …
Adding automatic enrollment to a 401(k) retirement savings plan builds retirement savings. It especially helps lower and moderate income workers, but employees at all income levels start to save earlier, save more, and have better investment choices than similar plans without that mechanism. This simple fact is true despite some press reports and blog entries suggesting that automatic enrollment may “hurt” retirement savings. Automatic Enrollment Helps Workers to Save First a quick explanation: Automatic enrollment reverses the traditional way that people sign up for a 401(k) retirement savings plan by …
On Tuesday, Lockheed Martin and the Missile Defense Agency successfully tested their Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Weapon System in Hawaii. Since 2005 there have been 11 THAAD flight tests with a 100% success rate in intercepting a missile. Not only did this test continue the perfect record of missile intercepts, but it demonstrated the ability to target a missile in the lower “endo-atmosphere.” While previous tests only have been attempted in the outer “exo-atmosphere,” this most recent test demonstrates the greatest level of operational flexibility yet achieved by …
Today, President Barack Obama gave a major speech on immigration reform at the American University in Washington, D.C. He emphasized that it was time for the United States to “squarely confront our challenges” when it comes to the country’s broken immigration system. Indeed, fixing the immigration problem is appropriate because the country is facing a serious illegal immigration problem — however, the answer of how to fix it is where President Obama deviates from common sense. It is clear that at the heart of the Administration’s immigration reform agenda will …
After more than a year of stalling, President Obama seems finally to have recognized the political imperative of pushing ahead with the South Korean free-trade deal; America’s biggest trade pact since NAFTA. “It is the right thing to do for our country. It is the right thing to do for Korea,” the president said. The statement came with the president’s first ever specific time table for implementing the trade deal. This is all good news. But does it come too late? From Seoul’s point of view, the pact is signed …
Americans do not think about the Philippines as much as they have in eras past. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th, we fought a war there, first to liberate the Philippines from Spain, and then to establish an American colony. Over the last 100 years, the Philippines has been an American territory, an American commonwealth, an ally and theater in World War II, an independent treaty ally during the Cold War, and most recently, a critical ally in the War on Terror. The history of …
