North Korea has responded to planned U.S.-South Korean military exercises by threatening a “retaliatory sacred war” with a “powerful nuclear deterrence.” Pyongyang’s belligerent propaganda is intended to show that the regime is not intimidated by the large-scale allied naval and air exercises scheduled to take place next week near the Korean Peninsula. Washington and Seoul announced that the military maneuvers are being taken in response North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean naval ship and will encompass 20 ships and 200 aircraft—a strong signal of the allies’ resolve to deter …
The White House today released its updated federal budget projections. By releasing the report late on a Friday afternoon—a longtime Washington tradition for stories that politicians want to bury—the Obama Administration is effectively admitting that its budget numbers will not be well-received. The “Mid-Session Budget Review” projects that this year’s budget deficit will reach $1.471 trillion, or 10 percent of the economy. In nominal dollars, it’s the largest deficit in American history. As a percentage of the economy, it’s the largest deficit since World War II. This will be the …
For those of you who believe in bygone notions like free speech rights and the ability to criticize politicians when they do things like nationalize 1/5 of the U.S. economy, you better taken advantage of that while you can. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has filed for cloture on the DISCLOSE Act, S. 3628, which is intended to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and impose burdensome new disclosure requirements. The cloture vote will probably occur next Tuesday in a move that avoids committee hearings. If Reid …
Trust, but don’t bother to verify. That is the Obama Administration’s latest message about how the United States of America ought to manage the most fearsome weapons known to man. There are severe deficiencies in the New START arms control treaty. In particular, the means for verifying that Russia is actually in compliance with the provisions of the treaty are grossly inadequate. Recent testimony by an Obama Administration official on this issue is stunning: if Russia cheats, America won’t terribly mind because we’re in a “good position” anyway. On Tuesday, …
An article on the Automatic IRA in the July 13 edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill (“Democrats and AARP want to make IRA enrollment automatic”) left out several crucial parts of the story. First and foremost, the Automatic IRA has enjoyed wide bipartisan and cross-ideological support since it was first unveiled at The Heritage Foundation in February 2006. This is not, as the story implied, some partisan initiative. It was co-developed by Mark Iwry, then at Brookings, and me as part of the Retirement Security Project. It was …
Perhaps the biggest news out of last week’s reaction to a federal judge striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was pundits’ response to the way the Obama Administration “threw the fight.” Echoing some of the most notorious boxing matches in the history of the ring, the Obama-Kagan Justice Department engaged in what even one supporter of same-sex marriage, the distinguished constitutional law scholar Richard Epstein, labeled “almost like collusive litigation,” where the adversaries in a case are secretly on the same side. The collusion boils down to this: …
This week over 11,000 people flocked to the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana to send a simple but important message to Washington: give us our way of life back. Lift the moratorium, stop unnecessarily killing jobs, let us clean up the Gulf and get back to work. Representatives from the oil, seafood and tourism industries as well as local politicians and residents of the Gulf rallied by Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser’s words: “This moratorium will turn Louisiana into a state of bankrupt businesses.” Louisiana’s state think tank, the Pelican Institute …
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced an energy bill without a cap-and-trade provision—a victory for the American economy. Yet, like the famous Miracle Max scene in The Princess Bride, cap-and-trade is only “mostly dead.” In a year when seemingly-dead legislation has suddenly come back to life, it is premature for Americans to dance a victory dance that their economy has been spared. Even small victories in Washington are followed closely by new battles. We must remain watchful for cap and trade to return later in the year, stay focused …
On July 22, Colombia’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) presented evidence of what is clearly a credible report on the presence of camps of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) inside Venezuela. By official U.S. designation FARC is a terrorist organization, one of three operating in Colombia. The OAS summary tells the story best: The Colombian Ambassador presented “a series of photographs, maps, coordinates, and videos that, according to his government, represent proof of the presence of illegal armed groups in Venezuelan territory. [Note: The OAS …
NPR put out a story this week on congressional oversight of homeland security. Currently, 108 Committees and Subcommittees have oversight over the Department of Homeland Security. The story includes a diagram of this oversight that should make heads spin. For some, this might seem like cute clip-art, but this is actually a nightmare for policy implementation at DHS. The oversight is a huge workload for the Department—and it also leads to conflicting messages from Congress. For example, one committee says X, another subcommittee says Y, and neither Committee nor Subcommittee …
