A speech by Chinese leader Hu Jintao, who is head of the powerful Central Military Commission that oversees the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has attracted a fair amount of attention. Western news reports note that Hu talked about the need to “accelerate its transformation and modernization in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security.” This has raised concern that China is preparing for conflict, perhaps in the context of the ongoing South China disputes, or with …
Small businesses that are important to the safety and security of the nation are being gravely threatened by deep defense spending cuts. The NAVSYS Corporation is a small business in Colorado that developed the first GPS cell phone to provide the 911 cellular location services that exist today. That first cell phone will soon be displayed in the Smithsonian. NAVSYS has gone on to create other innovations, and many of its products play an important role in America’s defense technologies. On Monday, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R–WA) hosted a panel …
Last week, The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center hosted a very timely discussion on the prospects for U.S.–Australia–India Trilateral Cooperation featuring Graham Fletcher, the deputy chief of mission at the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C.; Sunjoy Joshi, the director of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), an Indian think tank; Heritage’s own Walter Lohman, director of its Asian Studies Center; and Heritage senior research fellow for South Asia Lisa Curtis. This event follows the recent release of “Shared Goals, Converging Interests: A Plan for U.S.–Australia–India Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” a joint …
If there was any doubt where President Barack Obama’s ideological heart lies, yesterday he let it be known loud and clear in a wide-ranging speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. President Obama is at his core a dyed-in-the-wool progressive who sees the federal government as the answer to all of America’s problems. And he is charging full steam ahead on this far-left course toward Election Day 2012, despite the total failure of his big-government policies and an American people who have flatly rejected the message he is trying to sell. True to …
Reports have surfaced that conservatives in Congress may propose further increasing income adjustment in Medicare to lessen the program’s insolvency. This is a great idea. While the left continues to argue for higher taxes for the likes of Warren Buffett to maintain the status quo of a costly, failing Medicare program, it makes more sense that Congress should simply stop subsidizing them. As Congress continues to pursue solutions to the entitlement spending crisis, one question that must be answered is whether the United States should even have universal federal entitlements …
“Occupy Wall Street” is being absorbed into the existing network of liberal grievance groups, turning what began as an unconventional, generally spontaneous amalgam of demonstrations into simply an apparatus for the professional left’s unending campaign of protests. The group Rebuild the Dream staged protests on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon, flying the figurative ‘Occupy’ flag, and plugging all of its standard talking points about income inequality and corporate political influence. Scribe reported recently on the increasing presence of Big Labor among Occupy protests. Rebuild the Dream will advance that trend, as …
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman clarified his position on how policymakers should deal with climate change. In a speech Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation he said, “There’s not enough information right now to be able to formulate policies.” Even if there were a consensus that there is global warming, and it’s man-made, then the United States might still choose not to take unilateral action, he added. Premature political action, he noted, could jeopardize economic recovery for a potentially ineffectual attempt to tackle the issue. “The scientific community owes us more,” …
On this December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment was adopted and slavery was abolished. There has always been intense debate about the existence of slavery in American history, precisely because it raises questions about this nation’s dedication to liberty and human equality. At the time of the Founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where these individuals made up 40 percent of the population. From the outset, the Constitution contained three key compromises on enumeration, the slave trade, and …
With his win in the November 6 election, Daniel Ortega secured his third presidential term in Nicaragua. While few would deny the leader’s popularity, thanks in large part to aid from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the legitimacy of his position has been called into question because of the circumstances surrounding his win—and because the Nicaraguan constitution allows presidents to serve only two terms in office. Out of concern for the validity of the recent election, members on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Congress have called for further examination …
Another year, another hopeless climate talk. This time, the annual U.N. climate change summit is taking place in Durban, South Africa. It looks painfully like another misguided attempt to convince developed countries to shoulder global emissions targets while redistributing wealth to developing countries. This approach, again, is likely to fail—despite China’s recent announcement that it would consider accepting a legally binding agreement. For the past 17 years, one U.N. climate talk after another has failed over the same basic issue. While top-down international policymaking may sound appealing to those whose …
