Americans are all too familiar with the federal government’s intrusion into our daily lives. It sometimes seems that the feds have their hands in nearly every aspect of our daily life: what we drive, how we educate our children, down to the very food we eat. Unfortunately, Americans are less familiar with how the federal government is able to justify such intrusions. They should look no further than the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which is embodied in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign …
We all know the stories about George Washington. He chopped down a cherry tree, but did not lie about it. He wore wooden teeth and handwrote rules of civility. But cherry trees and wooden teeth do not capture the actual Washington. His greatest legacy lies in resisting the lure of political power. The War for Independence presented several opportunities for Washington to usurp political power. In 1776 and 1777, Washington received virtually unlimited authority to wage war against the British, but promptly returned these extensive grants when the crises ended. …
Last weekend NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg inadvertently created a mini-controversy when she said on Inside Washington: “I was at — forgive the expression – a Christmas party at the Department of Justice.” Some thought that Totenberg added “forgive the expression” as a cave to political correctness. But in fact Totenberg was actually mocking the Obama Justice Department. It was the DOJ that had officially called the event Totenberg attended a “holiday party” and Totenberg later told The Washington Post: “I think that’s kind of silly because it’s obviously a …
The Heritage Foundation, in partnership with the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and Taiwan’s Institute for National Policy Research, are organizing a full day public conference in Taipei on January 10 entitled “Democracy Building in Interesting Times.” The conference, co-hosted by Heritage Foundation President Edwin J. Feulner, is intended to give folks in Asia who are engaged in the democratic experiment an opportunity to compare notes on common challenges and best practices. The list of distinguished participants includes representatives from some of the most highly developed democracies in Asia, some newly …
Achieving stable and mature democracy in sub-Saharan Africa remains a work in progress, as illustrated by the November 28 elections in Côte D’Ivoire. A once comparatively stable west African nation, Côte D’Ivoire has for over a decade existed either in conflict or on the brink of civil war. The latest electoral crisis has once more pushed the country to the brink and spurred growing concern within the international community. An ethnically divided country, Côte D’Ivoire is the world’s largest cocoa producer, attracting migrant workers from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. …
Yesterday, The Washington Post heralded the decline in teeth birth rates, stating: As the nation continued to struggle in the recession in 2009, the rate at which U.S. women are having babies continued to fall, pushing the teen birth rate to a record low, federal officials reported Tuesday. While a decrease in the teen birth rate is good and well, such news seems to portray the idea that single motherhood in the United States is on the downturn. However, just the opposite is true. In fact, the number of children …
The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin reported yesterday that “U.S. environmentalists are engaged in their most profound bout of soul-searching in more than a decade” and are planning to “redirect strategies” in the coming year. Faced with the failure of cap and trade and the defeat of “many of their political allies on both the state and federal level” the enviros are shifting focus away from “the toxic partisanship of Washington” and back to “the grass roots.” And just what type of grass roots activism will the left be pursuing at …
American exceptionalism is currently at the heart of a great debate over the country’s future and, according to one presidential hopeful at least, will be “one of the two or three deciding issues in 2012.” USA Today devoted its cover story yesterday to the storm of controversy that President Obama’s off-the-cuff remarks on the subject in Strasbourg last year continue to generate. According to a Gallup poll commissioned by USA Today for the story, three quarters of Americans fear that the country is at risk of losing its unique character. …
In the spring of 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a plastic button that was supposed to read “reset” on both sides, once in English and once in Russian. But while the Obama Administration got the English part right, the State Department got the Russian word for “reset” wrong, instead emblazoning the button with the word “overload.” With the Senate set to ratify New START sometime today, that error might just prove prophetic as already identifiable flaws in the treaty grant the Russians numerous …
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a longtime advocate of Internet freedom, said she’s undaunted by the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to adopt net neutrality rules. Instead, she thinks the FCC’s action will be a catalyst for renewed commitment on the issue in the 112th Congress. “What we will do is first use this as a way to show how we’re going to keep that Pledge to America,” she said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation. “We said in the Pledge that any rule or regulation that had more than $100 million impact …
