James Downie, standing in for Jonathan Chait at The New Republic, believes that The Heritage Foundation’s view of the relationship between first principles and foreign policy is wrong, and contrary to George Washington’s vision. Inevitably, he seeks to prove his point by quoting Washington’s Farewell Address. His case would be even less persuasive if he’d read a little more, or a little more thoroughly. But before we go into that, it’s worth drawing attention to Downie’s concluding point: “the Founding Fathers don’t provide much of a foundation at all” for …
In the run-up to her (or perhaps husband and former President Nestor Kirchner’s) expected bid for re-election in 2011, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is flexing her government’s muscles to pressure the media for favorable coverage. Opposition leaders, however, call it an attempt to silence critics. Fernandez is sending draft legislation to Argentina’s Congress mandating governmental regulation of “the production, sale and distribution of newsprint in the public interest.” The Kirchners are taking yet another page from Hugo Chávez’s playbook. He clamped down on freedom of speech in Venezuela …
Earlier this week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an important religious liberty decision that protects the right of faith-based social service organizations to protect their religious identity and mission. The case involves World Vision, a nonprofit Christian humanitarian organization focused on the causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision was sued for religious discrimination by two employees it fired after learning that they did not agree with World Vision’s doctrinal beliefs. As a general rule, federal nondiscrimination law demands that private employers ignore religion in …
It’s not just the majority of American voters who are itching from the rash of regulations, taxes and government bureaucracy that has stemmed from Obamacare. Small physician groups aren’t ecstatic with the White House’s latest effort to cajole them into swallowing some bitter pills regarding their day-to-day operations. This week, several Obama administration officials, including a former member of the National Economic Council, published an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine that urged doctors to “embrace rather than resist change” coming from the new health reform law, which passed …
According to a press release, Energy Secretary Steven Chu says that the billions of dollars in federal stimulus money directed toward solar-power will cut solar power costs in half by 2015. It’s a grand sounding prediction, but his own Energy Information Agency projects that electricity from solar cells will cost nearly five times as much as electricity from natural-gas-fired power plants. And that’s without any adjustment for the unreliable nature of solar power or for the additional transmission costs. Forcing those higher costs on taxpayers and ratepayers, spells bad news …
Pity the poor Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director. Congress passes and the President signs the most massive fiscal stimulus program in history, spending more money on Keynesian stimulus than has been spent so far on the Iraq war. But, unlike the Iraq war, the stimulus has been a complete bust. Rather than launch a recovery, the stimulus managed only to launch a jump in the national debt. The economy enjoyed a mild bump late in 2009 as businesses rebuilt their inventories—a development completely unrelated to the stimulus—and then slid back …
On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors reported that July sales of existing homes fell by 27% from June of this year and by 25.5% compared to July 2009. This annual sales rate of 3.83 million homes was the lowest since NAR began keeping track of sales in 1999. Then yesterday, the Commerce Department reported that July sales of new homes fell 12.4% from June and by 32.4% compared to July 2009. This annual rate of 276,000 new units sold is the lowest since 1963, when government records were first …
Washington think tanks and commentators continue to spin out impressive reams attempting to explain the necessity and virtues of adding a value-added tax (VAT) on top of all the taxes the federal government already collects. The fiscal policy problem is real enough—thanks to the Obama spending surge, federal budget deficits are unsustainable and a course correction is inevitable. What most VAT-istas refuse to acknowledge is that the problem is due to new spending, not a sudden collapse in the ability of the federal tax system to raise revenues. Even so, …
Health care isn’t something most students worry about. Government stats show about 80 percent of college students are covered under a parents’ plan. For them, Obamacare may mean they can keep the insurance they already have for a few years beyond college, but it won’t affect the coverage they carry during school. But what about kids without parental coverage? The new law’s requirement that insurance cover children up to age 26 won’t make any difference for them. Currently, college students without coverage can enroll in low-cost student health plans offered …
Retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and former Defense Nuclear Agency Director Robert Monroe writes in today’s Wall Street Journal: “The Obama administration’s nuclear policy is set out in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was released in April, two days before the signing of New Start. The NPR is joined at the hip with New Start, and together they take this country down a dangerous path.” Monroe continues: Mr. Obama’s NPR treats nuclear weapons as an evil to be eliminated, rather than as the ultimate foundation of America’s security in …
