Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire, is a war zone. Security forces loyal to former president Laurent Gbagbo are responsible for numerous murders and the spread of terror throughout the city and beyond. Despite Gbagbo’s holding on to the main centers of power, including cabinet ministries, the military, and ports, his days in power are numbered. President Alassane Ouattara has achieved a few recent victories in his campaign to assume office. Northern resistance is hitting back against the discredited Gbagbo regime and advancing on Abidjan, and the African Union (AU), …
After spending almost two months in a Lahore jail for killing two Pakistanis, CIA contractor Raymond Davis was released today, ending one of the most serious diplomatic standoffs between Islamabad and Washington in nine years of partnering in the fight against terrorism. Davis was set free after family members of the Pakistanis killed by Davis told a Pakistani court that they were dropping charges in exchange for financial compensation, often referred to as “blood money” in Pakistan. It is likely that the deal to release Davis in exchange for compensation …
Congress needs to take stock of the daunting burdens of paperwork and red tape imposed by expanding federal regulation of local schools and beware creating new obstacles to student achievement, one of Heritage’s education experts testified yesterday before a House subcommittee conducting the first such review since the Clinton administration. “I commend this subcommittee for renewing attention to a pressing problem in education policy today. Serious investigation like this into the scope and effects of federal intervention has not taken place for more than a decade, despite massive growth in …
President Barack Obama invited ESPN into the White House yesterday so that The Worldwide Leader In Sports could tape his picks for the 2011 NCAA basketball tournament. The President picked all frontrunners. Good for him. Meanwhile, 5,000 miles away, a Libyan rebel defending the town of Ajdabiya from Muammar Qadhafi loyalists told The Washington Post: “These politicians are liars. They just talk and talk, but they do nothing.” One hundred miles north, in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, rebel spokeswoman Iman Bugaighis told The New York Times that Western nations …
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is suffering policy schizophrenia. On the one hand, it has ordered automakers to increase fuel efficiency to save the planet from global warming. On the other hand, it is setting higher quotas of ethanol in gasoline, which will decrease fuel efficiency and increase emissions of the greenhouse gases that the EPA claims cause global warming. Both actions will cost consumers and the economy a bundle. The stricter fuel-efficiency standards require automakers to attain a fleet-wide average fuel economy level of 34.1 mpg by model year …
Untouchable. That’s the treatment being given to the $23.6 billion being spent right now to implement Obamacare. This $23.6 billion is part of the $105.5 billion appropriated by the last Congress to fund Obamacare. The remainder (Think of it as post-dated checks for the other $81.9 billion.) automatically becomes available between now and FY2019. None of this is to be confused with an additional $115 billion authorized for additional appropriation to Obamacare—but which the current Congress is unlikely to provide. The most pressing question, however, is whether any of the …
According to the latest news, India has successfully tested two nuclear-capable short-range ballistic missiles. New Delhi is developing a range of missiles to improve its strategic capabilities against neighboring Pakistan (with whom it has fought three wars) and China (with whom it fought a brief border war in 1962). Pakistan was quick to follow suit and tested its own short-range missiles shortly thereafter. South Asia is a nuclear tinder box, and U.S. policymakers should do everything possible to keep regional tensions in check. But the heightened missile activity in South …
A couple of weeks back I wrote a post revealing that the EU has been giving millions of euros to anti-death penalty groups in the United States. As The Wall Street Journal subsequently commented in an editorial on my Telegraph piece: European countries may need bailing out, but you’ll be pleased to know that the European Union has enough money to promote human rights and democracy—in America. Don’t laugh. American states are free to decide their own penal codes, which vary widely and change as facts and public values evolve. Europe won’t …
Critics of America’s traditional style of leadership seem to have once again adopted a narrative of America’s inevitable decline. Drawn-out wars, China’s rising influence, and a crushing national debt are seen as kryptonite to the world’s sole superpower. The challenges these issues pose to American influence in the world is daunting, but America’s decline is not a foregone conclusion, as Heritage Vice President Kim Holmes argued in a recent Washington Times piece. During Ronald Reagan’s military buildup in the 1980s, Paul Kennedy of Yale argued that the United States suffered …
The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). According the Congressional Research Service, “Since UNRWA’s inception in 1950, the United States has provided the agency with nearly $4 billion in contributions. U.S. contributions to UNRWA have steadily increased over the past decade, with nearly $228 million thus far for [fiscal year] 2010.” This support is intended to help provide food, shelter, medical care, and education for the Palestinian refugees (and their decedents) fleeing the 1948 …
