Earlier this month, Paula DeSutter, former assistant secretary for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation at the State Department, wrote a piece for The Heritage Foundation, in which she discussed the weaker verification regime in the new START, in contrast to the original treaty. The former Soviet Union has violated agreements before, and START will be no different. Today’s Washington Post cites a State Department report that contends Russia is indeed violating international chemical and biological weapons pacts. The U.S. Senate will decide whether to ratify START, and seven Republicans on the …
British Prime Minister David Cameron has completed a visit to Turkey with a passionate defense of Ankara’s aspiration to join the European Union. The charismatic young leader, who also completed a successful Prime Ministerial visit to Washington this month, has joined leading figures, such as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in accusing Brussels of not playing fair with Turkey. They’re right. When negotiations with Ankara began, Brussels set out 35 chapters of EU law for Ankara to discharge before a final vote on …
While Mexico’s drug cartel violence continues to mount and the recent sophisticated car bombing in Ciudad Juarez indicate possible foreign assistance to the drug lords, the Obama Administration received a less than stellar grade from the Government Accounting Office on its handling of delivery of help to the embattled Mexicans. The latest report from the Government Accounting Office presented in Congress on July 21 reported: The pace of delivery of the supplies had picked up, the Washington Post, summarized, with the U.S. government providing five Bell helicopters, biometric equipment, forensics …
Over the last four weeks, The Heritage Foundation sent multiple teams of respected energy, environment, homeland security and response experts to the Gulf to study the federal response to the oil spill. These three delegations, with more to come, have traversed the areas hit hardest by the crisis, talking to response workers, affected oil crews, fishermen, elected leaders and BP representatives. What we found is simple: President Obama’s administration has turned a crisis into a disaster, and someone needs to be held accountable. Accountability is in short supply in Washington these days. …
There was good news this afternoon in the Senate. The effort to end the filibuster of the DISCLOSE Act, the campaign finance bill that would overturn the Citizens United decision and impose onerous new disclosure requirements, by invoking cloture was defeated 57 to 41, so it will not proceed to a vote. This is a victory for the First Amendment. However, there are no permanent victories in politics. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who supports the bill and moved for the cloture vote, changed his “yes” to a “no” vote …
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman last week became the first Democrat to ask Attorney General Eric Holder to reopen the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, according to the Washington Times. Sherman wrote a letter to Holder to request that he re-file “criminal” charges against the New Black Panthers involved in the case. Sherman’s July 19 letter to the Department of Justice stated: It appears that a decision was made in May 2009 to not use the full force of the law with regard to those members of the New Black …
Obamacare has been rightly blasted as fiscally irresponsible, yet few have noticed what may be Obamacare’s largest ticking entitlement time-bomb: the CLASS Act. My new op-ed on the subject is here, and my new report, co-written with Jim Capretta, is here. CLASS is a new long-term-care insurance program that was inserted into Obamacare so that Congress could raid its $70 billion surplus through 2020 to cover Obamacare’s initial deficits. Like the raided Social Security trust fund, future taxpayers will have to repay that $70 billion with interest when the program …
We are on the precipice of the largest tax increase in United States history. On January 1, 2011, the 2001/2003 tax relief will expire. All Americans who earn income will see their taxes go up as a result (even those who work but don’t pay any federal income taxes) unless Congress acts soon to prevent this massive tax hike. The constant refrain from those who oppose the tax relief is that they benefited only the rich. If the tax cuts expire as scheduled, this myth will be proven untrue once …
There are many shocking real-life stories in Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Research Fellow Brian Walsh’s and co-author Visiting Fellow Paul Rosenzweig’s new book, One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty. None perhaps as revealing as the one The Economist chose to highlight for their feature this week, Rough Justice: America locks up too many people, some for acts that should not even be criminal. The Economist recounts: In 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than …
?? Last week, Henry Aaron argued in this space that raising the retirement age to help Social Security’s solvency amounted to a cloaked benefit cut. He said it’s also unlikely to be much help in reducing the deficit. The way he frames the challenges facing the budget pretty much assure that conclusion. But there are other ways of looking at the impact of raising the retirement age, and more structural – dare I say “progressive” – ways of reforming Social Security in the context of alleviating the long-term deficit problem. …
