Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced a replacement for the Homeland Security Advisory System, which was scrapped by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January and won’t likely be missed by anyone. The new system—dubbed the National Terrorism Advisory System—takes the right steps toward adequately communicating with the public about the risks we face and will ensure that the alerts are more than just background noise in the busy lives of Americans.
The gas price headlines aren’t looking so good for Americans. Honolulu is a penny away from record gas prices. Chicago gas nears $5 a gallon. Nationally, $4 a gallon average gas may be only be a month away. There’s something that President Obama could do to help solve the problem but, instead, he’s spending his time laying blame. In a speech today in suburban Virginia, he said there’s plenty of supply to meet the world’s demand for oil, placing the blame for the high prices on speculators: The problem is … …
The Sixth Cuban Communist Party Congress and the Cuban people learned on April 19 that Fidel Castro is now fully retired. The Bearded One has become, so it appears, just another private citizen. Showing up wearing a blue track suit, helped to his seat by an aide, and appearing every day his 84 years of age, Fidel Castro relinquished all party and state posts for the first time in over a half a century. The four-day Party Congress was convened to accomplish two things: (1) open the doors for a …
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced new initiatives intended to provide states with increased flexibility to better manage their Medicaid programs. However, these initiatives do not seriously address states’ mounting Medicaid crises. The first HHS initiative is to improve coordination of care for individuals enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid, the so-called dual eligibles. Under Obamacare, 15 states will receive up to $1 million through a new bureaucracy focused on duals. While reform should address the problem of coordinating care for the duals, HHS’s approach …
A year ago today, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico cost the lives of 11 men and threatened untold damage to the ecosystem. It was an unprecedented disaster, and the tragic loss of life it entailed made it all the more imperative that such an accident never repeat itself. In the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe, the disaster response proved heroic: The crew of a Tidewater supply vessel rescued the 115 survivors of the explosion in little more than an hour. But in …
Last year in the midst of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, Heritage sent a team to the Gulf Coast to view the clean-up effort firsthand. At the time, the deepwater drilling moratorium was only beginning to disrupt the region’s economy. Today, one year after the oil spill, the Obama administration’s anti-drilling agenda poses a serious threat to recovery. Heritage recently returned to the Gulf Coast to hear from business owners. Partnering with the Institute for Energy Research, we produced a video featuring Leslie Bertucci, owner of R and …
Someone should really tell the Department of Energy (DOE) about the federal government’s spending crisis. On Monday, it granted a $2.1 billion loan guarantee to a German developer to help finance a 1,000 megawatt solar thermal power plant in Southern California. But wait, there’s more. Add to that a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for another plant in California’s Mojave Desert, a $1.2 billion loan guarantee for one in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., and $967 million for a location in Arizona, all since February, according to a Forbes.com report. That’s …
Today the Supreme Court took up the case of American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, reviewing a Second Circuit decision finding that states and private parties could sue electricity generators for global warming under the judge-made law of nuisance. To the Second Circuit, this was just a “garden-variety” claim, despite pitting all the world (those affected by warming) against all the world (those of us who breathe) and asking a court to make some unusual judgments—for example, contriving a national energy policy that permits only the “right amount” of carbon …
Speaker of the House John Boehner’s announcement that former Solicitor General Paul Clement will lead the defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court is a victory for the rule of law—and for an irreplaceable institution of civil society. Ever since February 23, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he and President Obama had concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional, litigation over the 1996 law has been held in abeyance awaiting yesterday’s decision by the Speaker. The naming of Clement ends all doubt as to whether marriage …
Last week’s congressional tussle over defunding Planned Parenthood demonstrates that national deliberation on controversial moral debates is far from over. While federal funding of abortion is currently in the media spotlight, a new fight is being waged in the culture war over individuals’ right of conscience. As new Heritage research from Visiting Fellow Thomas Messner points out, increasing government overreach through regulations and nondiscrimination policies poses serious threats to citizens’ conscience rights and religious liberty. From health care to institutional religious freedom to legalizing same-sex marriage, threats to conscience rights …
