The ongoing cyber-crackdown in China, as censors now prevent searches regarding the health of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, is a reminder that the Internet is seen by Beijing as a double-edged sword. By allowing the flow of information, the Internet poses challenges to Chinese authorities, not only in terms of internal messaging and dissent but also as a source of foreign influence that could affect the perceptions of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy. Yet China cannot afford to reject the Internet, given its multiple applications to daily modern life, …
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Research Associate Morgan Roach discusses Southern Sudan’s independence on July 9th. Click here to listen. Since Sudan’s independence, the North and South have been engaged in conflict. After a decades-long civil war, and with the help of the international community, peace was brokered in 2005 . Abyei, an area bordering North and South Sudan, is still a major territorial dispute. Neither side will give up claim to the region. As violence and instability worsens, Abyei threatens a return to civil war. So what does …
Another year, another reminder that the National Education Association (NEA) is a far-left organization that is grossly out of step with the views of millions of teachers and works diligently to maintain the failed status quo for children. At the union’s convention this year, labor leadership endorsed resolutions, amendments, and new business items that seem far from benefiting their members or improving education.
President Obama’s defenders are taking to the airwaves to rebut the charge that his actions have caused the dire employment figure we see today. The rebuttals mirror those the President is making, and they sure don’t lack in audacity. Some of the president’s enablers, for example, continue to claim that the unemployment rate is the fault of George W. Bush (even though it has been steadily rising two and a half years after Mr. Bush left office). Others say it is the structural result of deindustrialization. A third excuse making …
In a victory for common-sense and a serious set-back for the Holder Justice Department, a three-judge panel of the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously reversed a decision by the district court. Today’s reversal reinstates the challenge by residents of Kinston, North Carolina, that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. The residents sued after the Justice Department objected to a referendum passed by the majority-black town of Kinston (65% of the registered voters are black) that changed its city council and mayoral elections …
Red Alert! Conservatives in Congress and elsewhere should be warned: The Administration’s latest signal for “compromise” may end up as little more than an expansion of existing bad policy, rather than a serious effort to enact substantive reforms. And only substantive reforms can change the perverse incentives that plague giant entitlement programs and have worsened America’s deepening financial crisis. Consider some of the latest ideas that have surfaced in the media for finding “savings” in health policy: Importing Medicaid drug policy into Medicare. In Medicaid, patients do not have the …
Bureaucrats have bolted a restrictor plate to our economic engine and flagged private sector job growth to the pits. The same independent government agencies, that use explicit intimidation and threats of government taking to impose “voluntary” regulations on job creators, aren’t even willing to hold themselves to the same standard. They refuse. That was the theme of yesterday’s hearing in the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Members of Congress were exploring President Obama’s Executive Order 13563 and its non-application to the independent agencies. The independent agencies have …
Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. The Debt Ceiling and the Constitution – Stephen Moore Of Pork and Trade – Investor’s Business Daily In Search of a Silver Lining – Rea Hederman For Americas 99ers, jobs crisis is hard to escape – Alexandra Alper Federal budget mess: Six ways to fix it – Mark Trumball FHA delays foreclosures for unemployed – Amanda Seitz The government’s war on cameras – C.J. Ciaramella Congress considers “resetting” Russian relations – …
Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report revealed yet another month of disastrous economic data for the U.S. economy. Heritage’s Rea Hederman, Jr. and James Sherk write in a new report: [T]he June unemployment rate stands at 9.2 percent and that the economy created only 18,000 jobs last month. This is the second straight month in which job creation has been essentially flat. Job creation as reported by the payroll survey in the second quarter of 2011 was 101,000 as compared to 165,000 in the first quarter. Labor market recovery once …
The future stability of Venezuela and the survival of the “Bolivarian Revolution” increasingly focuses on the health of Venezuela’s indispensable but stricken autocrat. Before June, the scenario called for Hugo Chavez to rule in Venezuela until 2031. Suddenly, a post-Chavez era in Venezuela, which seemed unimaginable weeks before, moved immediately closer. While the Chavez has not leveled entirely with his nation, the international press is now reporting the diagnosis: colon cancer. “President Hugo Chávez appears to be suffering from colon cancer.” “One source close to Chavez’s doctors told Reuters he …
