As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates promised last February, the Pentagon’s working group on Congress’s military eligibility law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” has issued a report advocating for and detailing implementation steps of the law’s repeal. After several weeks of media spin occasioned by a WikiLeaks-style drip of select findings from the report, and within minutes of the Pentagon’s release, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) re-embraced his position favoring repeal and pushed for rapid action in the lame duck session now underway. The armed forces deserve more …
The House of Representatives is set to open the next act in the grand political theater, a fiscal tragedy of epic proportions surrounding the prevention of a massive tax hike set to befall the American taxpayer in a few weeks. Why? The Bush tax cuts expire. The scene opens with the Members voting on an expanded version of the President’s original proposal to allow the tax hike to fall only on singles making more than $200,000 and married filers making more than $250,000 annually. The expansion is the addition of …
Retiring Senator Chris Dodd (D–CT) gave his farewell speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, and his speech was an excellent discussion of the pitfalls of so-called “filibuster reform.” Dodd is the longest serving Senator in Connecticut history and a veteran of the Senate Rules Committee. Other left-of-center Senators should read his speech and listen to his sage advice. There is bipartisan opposition to the idea that the Senate’s rules on the filibuster should be changed. I explained the filibuster rule in a Foundry post in January of this year, …
The 2010 hurricane season ended yesterday, utterly failing to measure up to the Category 5 predictions made in the spring. The failure of a single hurricane to strike the United States makes it five years since a hurricane of Category 3 strength or higher has struck the United States. You remember 2005, right? The year Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma pummeled the Gulf Coast, FEMA Director Mike Brown, and President George W. Bush. Those were the busy days of FEMA. Despite no hurricanes striking the U.S. and only one minor …
The Heritage Foundation has never been one to rest on laurels. We know that if we want to live in a country where freedom, opportunity and civil society are to flourish, we must remain vigilant and heed Ronald Reagan’s words that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” That is why today, we are excited to launch Libertad.org, our new Spanish-language website. Libertad.org will communicate the message of conservatism to a Hispanic audience that prefers to read news in their first language. We are a country of …
As the rest of the world continues to drill off its respective coasts, the United States is heading in the opposite direction. The Obama Administration announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will not be part of the government’s 2012–2017 Outer Continental Shelf program, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years. The decision is a reversal from the President’s announcement in March in which he opened access to waters for offshore drilling in the Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico. …
Naively thinking that Pyongyang and Tehran could be sweet-talked out of their nuclear programs was one of President Obama’s earliest foreign policy blunders. Despite initial giddy expectations that the Obama Administration would achieve a breakthrough in the six-party talks, Pyongyang quickly sent clear signals that it would not adopt a more accommodating stance. But in response to its series of rapid-fire provocations in 2009, the Obama Administration realized that that approach was a failure and reversed its policy 180 degrees to adopt a two-track strategy of pressure and conditional negotiation. …
Documents from WikiLeaks published in International Business Times disclosed that American officials warned Washington that the Russian intelligence services are working closely with organized crime. This did not come as a great surprise, as Viktor Bout, one of the most infamous alleged arms traders, was extradited from Thailand last month. The search for Bout took close to 10 years, and the excruciating extradition procedures took two more years. There were numerous court appeals and legal motions in the Thai courts, but Bout lost in the end. While there was also …
Diplomats have often been disparaged as honest men sent abroad to lie for the good of their countries. If the plethora of disloyal, dangerous attacks launched by WikiLeaks continues and if the Obama Administration cannot stanch the bleeding, foreign officials and U.S. diplomats will soon find it just as likely that they must also lie to Washington. WikiLeaks promises to release thousands of cables from U.S. embassies in the Americas, although only a few cables appear noteworthy. They reflect the states of mind of some members of our diplomatic corps, …
Less than 24 hours after declaring victory in his quest to vastly expand the regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—for the children—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) is mired in a procedural misstep that may well kill the legislation. Despite the time constraints of the waning session, Reid focused Senate attention on passage of S. 510, the Food Safety Protection Act, which was approved on Tuesday by a vote of 73–25. Spanning some150 pages, the act authorizes the FDA to dictate how farmers grow fruits and vegetables, …
