Venezuela’s authoritarian populist president, Hugo Chavez, is threatening to cut off oil sales to the U.S. The latest dispute follows Colombia’s presentation of evidence regarding the presence of an estimated 1,500 FARC fighters on Venezuelan soil with the complicit support of Chávez and his government. Thundered Chavez: If there was …
The Washington Post has arrived at the conclusion, in a July 26 editorial, that the New START arms control agreement with Russia should be ratified this year. Arriving at this conclusion, however, has resulted from the Post misunderstanding important details about the treaty and failing to recognize that the Obama …
Like many federal efforts in Washington, last week’s reintroduction from House Democrats to create a public health insurance option, which would become part of the 2014 insurance exchanges created by Obamacare, is a bureaucratic redundancy. Stuart Butler points out that the health reform law already has its own “public option” …
The World Tribune’s Gregory Copley has broken the news that “U.S. powerlessness and EU confusion” have opened a “window of opportunity” for Turkey to seriously consider acquiring nuclear weapons. Just last month, Turkey defied its traditional allies, including the United States and Israel, by voting against a fourth round of …
A just released report by the Sutherland Institute introduces a metric—the Self-Reliance Index—that can be used to track people’s reliance on government and lack of self-sufficiency. You might call it the opposite of The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Dependence on Government. The report notes, “Government aid only creates an illusion …
Yesterday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a vague threat against U.N. members that try to enforce the June 9 U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized inspections on Iranian ships and aircraft suspected of carrying prohibited materials for Iran’s nuclear or ballistic missile programs: “You should know whoever takes a decision …
A Colorado federal court last week struck down another of Congress’s well-intentioned but poorly drafted criminal laws—a law that exemplifies some of the root problems of overcriminalization. In a well-reasoned opinion [2010 WL 2802691 (opinion not yet available on the Internet)], the court held that the broad offense in the …
The posting of over 90,000 classified US government documents by Wikileaks has raised fresh questions about the US strategy in Afghanistan. Leaking of classified information, particularly on this scale, has the potential to damage US national security interests and in general should be discouraged. Much of the information from the …
