Yesterday at the White House, President Barack Obama faced the media to once again plug the American Jobs Act–his plan for more stimulus spending, paid for with even more taxes on America’s job creators. And this morning, not a day later, America received a reminder of why a continuation of the President’s tried-and-failed policies is not a prescription for success: In September, the U.S. unemployment rate held steady at a dismal 9.1 percent with 14 million Americans still out of work. About 103,000 jobs were added, but 45,000 of those …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blocked a vote on President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act tonight. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had pledged to offer an unchanged version of the President’s American Jobs Act as an amendment to the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Bill (S. 1619). Reid stopped a vote on the President’s so called jobs bill by filling the amendment tree. Last year I wrote about Reid’s obstructionism and argued that Reid’s strong arm tactics by constantly filling the amendment tree as a means to block out all amendments were against the spirit …
San Francisco is leading the way for questionable cell phone regulations that will cause a cost and a headache for retailers around the city. The first ever cell phone radiation law recently took effect, and now the city is being sued on First Amendment grounds. The trade group behind the lawsuit represents cell phone manufacturers and service providers fed up with a requirement to display warnings about radiation coming from the phones and hand out fact sheets regarding exposure risks. The main problem? The medical risks associated with cell phone …
Candidates are getting ready for yet another televised debate on October 11 in New Hampshire. Click here to join our “Lunch with Heritage” for a preview of the debate and what the candidates should focus on. We are joined by Heritage’s Vice President of Government Studies, Mike Franc and Charles M. Arlinghaus, President of the The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. Join us with your questions. If you would like to be reminded of the chat please leave your name in the form below. P.S. We have been doing the …
The newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took a step forward today to getting its first director, as the Senate Banking Committee voted 12–10 to confirm Richard Cordray in the post. Even before the vote, however, President Obama raised the stakes. Referring to Bank of America’s decision to impose a $5 debit card fees, he declared that “this is exactly why we need somebody whose sole job it is to prevent this kind of stuff from happening.” The White House later tried to back off the President’s threat of …
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied review in an important religious freedom case called Spencer v. World Vision. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization that was sued by two former employees who alleged they had been fired for religious reasons. In general, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits religious-based employment decisions. However, Title VII expressly protects the freedom of religious organizations to staff on a religious basis. The question in the World Vision case involved the scope of the Title VII religious staffing freedom: Does …
A conservative congressman today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign after new revelations surfaced about his knowledge of the botched Fast and Furious gun-running operation. Beginning in July 2010, Holder received at least five memos about the flawed operation, but told Congress this May he had just learned of Fast and Furious weeks earlier. “As our nation’s top enforcer of the principles of law and justice, Mr. Holder has lost all credibility and should step down immediately,” Rep. Raúl Labrador said in a statement this afternoon. Holder testified …
First they came for the donuts, and few dared to defend partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Then they came for the soft drinks, declaring high-fructose corn syrup verboten. Now they’re after lima beans, peas, and corn, moving us ever closer to a national diet of tofu and kale. “They,” in this latest case of dietary despotism, is the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). As required by Congress, the agency recently proposed stricter nutrition standards for school-based breakfast and lunch programs. More than 98,000 elementary …
It’s that time of year again, and the “safe sex” brigade is out in full force to educate your sons and daughters about their sexual and reproductive health. According to a recent study, more young people throughout the world are having unprotected sex and know less about effective contraception. Now contraception enthusiasts are using this as a call for action to increase youths’ access to contraception. The study shows that the number of young people in the U.S. having unsafe sex with new partners increased by 39 percent in the …
Steve Jobs, who died yesterday at the too-young age of 56, was a living refutation of all that liberals constantly tell us about our country — that we’re falling behind others and live now in a “post-American world,” as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books puts it in its title. As anyone who’s ever handled an Apple product or had his life improved by the technological innovations our system has produced in just a decade (that means all of us) will tell you, Jobs and innovators like him epitomize that …
