Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. Renewable Red Ink – Ed Feulner, The Washington Times Speaking the truth about right and wrong – Jennifer A. Marshall, The Heritage Foundation Strikes are reasonable, but not a cure-all – James Jay Carafano, Desert News 5 Major Ways The Obama Administration Is Killing American Jobs – John Hawkins, Townhall Pressure grows for US to list Haqqani network as foreign terrorist group – Jonathan S. Landay, The Kansas City Star …
“The Department of Defense is not what’s causing the debt and the deficit. It’s the entitlement programs,” says former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in an interview with Human Events. Rumsfeld goes on to say that if the U.S. makes the mistake of cutting defense, the country will be facing another attack and the country’s intelligence will be weakened. This is nothing new—Rumsfeld joins the ranks of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, current Secretary Leon Panetta, and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who have all sounded the alarm of real and …
“Congress hasn’t been able to do it, so I will.” With this bold statement, President Obama announced last Friday that he would unilaterally replace the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with conditions-based waivers. Obama’s waiver strategy is an alarming misuse of executive power that undermines the separation of powers. In and of itself, the use of waivers is not unconstitutional. Congress has the authority to create laws with provisions that allow the President to grant exceptions in certain circumstances. NCLB does, for instance, authorize the Secretary of …
Sometimes the writing on the wall is 10 feet tall, and you have to be willfully blind not to see it. The September attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul on September 13, which has now been linked to Pakistani secret service officials, is surely such an instance. Getting attacked by terrorists backed by someone who is supposedly your ally is a new low. As Heritage’s Lisa Curtis correctly remarks, the Obama Administration has to make it absolutely clear that this is a game changer in the Pakistani–U.S. relationship. If …
Many predicted the Obama Administration would not stop its delaying tactics in the ObamaCare litigation, which most commentators thought were an attempt to prevent the Supreme Court from deciding the case before the 2012 elections. The Administration received the equivalent of two judicial reprimands in the case brought by 25 states and NFIB that it ultimately lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. It was that very case in which the Administration could have tried one more delaying maneuver, by asking the full court (en banc) …
Troy Davis, convicted cop killer, was executed last week by the State of Georgia for the 1989 slaying of Officer Mark MacPhail. Anti-death penalty activists held Davis out as an innocent man, and repeatedly claimed that seven of the nine witnesses to the cold-blooded murder have since recanted their damning testimony. The liberal media, welcome bedfellows of those activists, blithely repeated the claims over and over, creating the impression that Davis was an innocent man and that his case proves that the death penalty is no longer acceptable public policy. …
The world is in economic crisis. Quite understandably, much attention has been given to cutting runaway government spending, a fundamental cause of the crisis. Much less attention has been given to the fundamental defects of the monetary system. These defects are at the heart of the economic collapse. Both budgetary and monetary issues must be examined and resolved. The United States and the world should not be condemned to struggle with depreciating and appreciating currencies, with inflationary and deflationary monetary policies that are out of control. The Heritage Foundation’s upcoming Conference …
Senator Harry Reid (D–NV) and his Senate colleagues rejected the idea of cutting $1.5 billion unspent from a $7.5 billion advanced vehicle manufacturing technology loan program and another $100 million from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan guarantee program—the same program that funded bankrupt Solyndra. The political squabbling did not cause the partial government shutdown that many feared, but the real issue should be about the protection of these green programs. The reality is that simply reducing the programs is not enough. By leaving them in place at all, the …
President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s return to Yemen on Friday after four months in Saudi Arabia has sparked renewed violence after protestors launched demonstrations against the government that were violently repressed. Since the beginning of the uprising last January, Yemen—an already volatile and poor country—has plunged deeper into chaos, dividing the country and creating a power vacuum for al-Qaeda. On Sunday, Saleh attempted to appease protestors, promising elections and a peaceful transfer of power, as he promised many times before but failed to deliver. The opposition movement immediately rejected his option …
New revelations in the ongoing Fast and Furious investigation show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) used taxpayer money to buy assault weapons that they then passed on to Mexican drug cartels. Sources have also claimed that ATF superiors ordered surveillance teams to stop tracking weapons once they were in the cartels’ possession. In June 2010, according to documents obtained by Fox News, undercover ATF Special Agent John Dodson purchased six AK-style CAI Draco 7.62x39mm handguns with cash provided to him by the ATF. Under orders …
