President Obama’s oil spill commission spent six months examining the “root causes” of the Gulf disaster, yet never inspected the failed blowout preventer — the part of the well that could have, as its name suggests, prevented the explosion. At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, the co-chairmen of the National Oil Spill Commission faced a barrage of questions from Republicans and Democrats about why their final report is long on regulatory recommendations but short on engineering explanations. Lawmakers took issue with the commission’s apparent lack of effort …
Today’s decision by Judge Vinson is another stinging defeat for the administration in its defense of Obamacare. Defenders of the health care bill had tried to paint any legal challenge as “frivolous.” When then-Speaker Pelosi was asked by a reporter “where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate,” Pelosi responded incredulously, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” To wit, Judge Vinson offered a serious response, striking down not only the mandate, but the whole of the health care bill. In a 78-page …
Ordinary people in Egypt are calling for greater economic freedom. In fact, “people power” has risen against government corruption and the lack of meaningful reform progress. The stagnant economy has long kept many of Egypt’s 80 million citizens deprived of economic opportunity. Particularly, the young in Egypt have been increasingly frustrated about their country’s outmoded economic system and discouraging reality. As well-documented by The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, a data-driven policy analysis of various economies, Egypt has been fluctuating only within the status of “mostly unfree” over a …
Reports that Americans are becoming increasingly hostile to trade are greatly exaggerated. The French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) recently polled people in several countries to compare their attitudes on trade and economics. Asked whether international trade is good for the United States or bad, Americans were 50 percent more likely to answer “good” than “bad.” The U.S. survey found the following opinions: The development of international trade is rather a good thing for our country: 39 percent. The development of international trade is rather a bad thing for our …
Last Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sent a letter extolling the impact of Obamacare on small business. Geithner touted small business tax credits and the creation of health insurance exchanges as ways to enable a greater number of employers to offer health benefits. But reality tells a different story. A day earlier, the House Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing to unveil the effects of the new health care law on businesses. Testifying before the committee were employers and economists, and their message was simple: Obamacare is bad …
Last week, The Washington Post pointed out one near-fatal flaw to Obama’s plans for subsidizing green energy and electric cars: snowstorms. On Wednesday a snowstorm hit D.C. commuters harder than usual, causing gridlock on the road and dragging a normally 20-minute commute into, in some cases, over six hours as people crowded the roads struggling to get home. With current technology, electric cars typically have much shorter battery lives, especially in cold weather. In an instance where a regular combustion engine car would keep its occupants safe and warm while …
Last week served up another dose of reality for Obamacare supporters. In addition to House committee hearings that exposed the negative effects of the new law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its new 10-year baseline, which unveils the “daunting economic and budgetary challenges” facing the United States. In 2011, the federal deficit will hit $1.5 trillion. Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl writes, “Historic increases in federal spending are set to create permanent trillion-dollar deficits, eventually pushing the national debt past 100 percent of the GDP. Without change, the nation …
Hundreds of Egyptians determined to drive President Hosni Mubarak from power spent all last night in Tahrir Square to keep the military from taking over the plaza. Today marks the seventh day of unrest in Egypt as the U.S. State Department began chartering evacuation flights for thousands of U.S. citizens stranded in the country. The longer the protests continue to rage, the more danger there will be that the army will wither into the crowds, throwing Egypt—and the region—into potentially violent chaos. On Sunday, the military raised its presence, sending …
Tensions on the streets of Cairo continue to rise. Looters have taken advantage of the widespread disappearance of the reviled police to smash and grab what they can. Gangs have attacked prisons to release Muslim militants held there along with hundreds of common criminals, who have added to the chaos. The Egyptian army, which was welcomed yesterday by the teeming crowds of protesters in Cairo, has sought to restore order, but it is ill-equipped to handle the growing chaos triggered by the massive protests. Today, the military command dispatched two …
From the outset of the Obama presidency and the emergence of the Obama Doctrine, the similarities between this Administration and that of Jimmy Carter have been striking. Like Obama, Carter trumpeted soft power and international institutions as the means to solve the most perplexing foreign policy problems. The programs of both Presidents hinged on the cooperation of adversaries who interpreted the U.S. initiatives as signs of weakness, and in the second half of their presidencies, both faced the prospect of sharp reversals.
