A third of graduated and rising high school seniors – who will be voting in the 2012 elections – have never studied the U.S. Constitution. A recent study by the National Assessment for Educational Progress reported that only 67% of all high school students have spent any time studying the nation’s founding document. Every four years, the NAEP polls 10,000 students about their knowledge of – or even exposure to – the Constitution. The percentage of knowledgeable students is continually decreasing and, since 2007, the numbers have fallen another five …
America’s founding father, General George Washington, famously said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” On Thursday morning CIA director Leon Panetta, whom President Obama has tapped to succeed outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Committee members should remember Washington’s maxim and consider asking questions that revolve around the following theme: “Will the United States military be prepared under your oversight?” After nearly a decade of continuous warfare, underinvestment in next-generation equipment …
The Tea Party has had an extraordinary effect on American domestic policy. They have raised interest in policy debates, rallied public opinion, and given it a voice on various spending and constitutional issues. On foreign policy, though, the Tea Party has been largely silent. But with the United States currently involved in three wars on foreign soil, the Tea Party needs to think about foreign policy. Silence on foreign policy issues has allowed isolationist voices to claim to speak on the Tea Party’s behalf. That’s unfortunate, because those voices discredit …
As the Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta has his nomination hearing today, the American Enterprise Institute, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Heritage Foundation published a list of important questions that Congress should ask prior to Panetta’s confirmation. As Panetta was a chief architect of the defense budget drawdown in the 1990s, Congress should make sure that the U.S. interests at home and abroad will remain protected and that the government will “provide for the common defense.” The baseline defense budget is now 3.5 percent of America’s GDP, a …
Experts have warned that Obamacare’s new subsidy program could cause a mass exodus of businesses out of employer-sponsored insurance. New research from McKinsey and Company based on a survey of employers reinforces this concern. According to their findings, 30 percent of employers said they would definitely or probably stop offering insurance once the law’s main provisions go into effect in 2014. The inclination to dump coverage exceeded 50 percent once employers’ understanding of the law’s effects increased. Obamacare encourages employers to dump coverage on two fronts. First, several provisions will …
It is hard to make sense of many grants the U.S. gives to nations from whom it is simultaneously borrowing. The federal government’s profligate spending through grant programs is starting to get some notice—for example, on Fox News as well as The Foundry. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has provided a grant to the United Nations Environmental Program so it may help implement “Russia’s National Plan of Action for Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment from Anthropogenic Pollution.” With yet another grant, EPA is helping Interpol (the International …
The war in Afghanistan rages on, as does the conflict in Libya. U.S. troops are still deployed in Iraq. Unrest continues in the Middle East’s Arab Spring. Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear efforts are accelerating, and the global war against terrorists remains. And yet despite an aging military, President Barack Obama has called for $400 billion in cuts to national security spending over the next 12 years, in addition to the $400 billion in cuts he has already made. It is against this backdrop that Leon Panetta, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary …
Can an environmentalist morally argue for overpriced, taxpayer-funded green energy technology if it means killing off a protected species? That’s what is happening now in California, where the state’s Golden Eagles are dying off by 67 each year from colliding with the blades of wind turbines. As government demands for more turbines and green wind energy technology increase, many fear that Golden Eagles may soon be at risk for extinction. According to the Institute for Energy Research, wind turbines provide only ½ of 1% of America’s energy. Additionally, green energy …
In a recent Heritage in Focus, Heritage expert James Sherk discusses the recent unemployment report. Listen to the full podcast, here. The recent jobs report released was extraordinary. For the first time in its history, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the average length of unemployment was nearly 40 weeks – the longest average ever. Layoffs don’t account for such high unemployment, however. Believe it or not, our economy lost more jobs during the 2001 recession than we did during the 2008 recession. So what’s driving high unemployment? …
Most folks would reasonably think that a railroad engineer or conductor would be able to distinguish the front of a train from the back of it. Not so the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). To ensure against any possible confusion, the agency requires the letter F to be displayed on the sides of each locomotive to identify … the front! Most folks might reasonably think that such a rule would be ripe for elimination under the Obama Administration’s executive order to reduce unnecessary regulations. And in fact, the rule was nominated …
