The U.S. military is on a dangerous course. Under the projected defense spending caps brought on by the Budget Control Act of 2011, funding for modernizing the military will be squeezed to a dangerous degree. That includes reduced spending on the procurement of new weapons and equipment and research and development on new defense technologies as the infographic below shows. (Article continued below.) In a new paper, Heritage’s Baker Spring, the F. M. Kirby Research Fellow in National Security Policy, explains the impact the reduced funding will have on America’s defenses: The result …
Berman’s piece is a welcome contribution to the debate about the U.S. vulnerability to EMP. This ongoing debate has recently received increased attention following the presidential GOP debate hosted by The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute in November. The United States remains unprotected from an EMP effect, a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. An EMP would disable all electric devices within its line of sight, including electric grids, computers, cell phones, and means of transportation. The congressionally mandated EMP Commission …
Throughout his presidency — and especially over the last year — Barack Obama has turned toward a bigger federal government as the answer for fixing the U.S. economy. According to a new poll, though, that’s the last thing Americans want. Rather, they want to see the government cut deficits, spending, and taxes. Rasmussen reports: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% of Likely U.S. Voters worry more that the federal government will do too much rather than not enough in reacting to the nation’s economic problems. Those figures …
There was no lack of education news in 2011. From an explosion in school choice options to the Obama Administration’s executive overreach, the top stories included the high and low lights when it came to issues affecting America’s schools. 10. Obama Administration orchestrates for-profit university witch hunt. On June 2, the Department of Education issued restrictive new regulations targeting “for-profit” higher education institutions. The new “gainful employment” regulation restricts access to student loans for students attending for-profit institutions (like Capella University or the University of Phoenix, for instance) if the school’s …
In a damning report, The Washington Post details its investigation of President Barack Obama’s much-hyped green jobs program. Its findings? Politics, not policy, underpinned the White House’s calculations. From The Post report: Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials. A centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s green jobs …
A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. The genesis of Ms. Gyamfi’s perjury is apparently rooted in political attacks on the Bush Justice Department. Throughout …
Real life can never give social scientists the kind of laboratory-quality tests that natural scientists can create, but sometimes it comes close. Since the two Koreas–North and South–are virtually identical culturally, it would appear that the different political systems explain the outcome illustrated by the figure below, which comes from last Monday’s Washington Post: Since the Korean War divided the country, South Korea’s citizens have enjoyed greater freedoms than their northern cousins, and that includes economic freedom. The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom measures economic freedom over the recent …
Medicare is in dire need of reform. This week’s chart illustrates why the entitlement program is the largest driver of long-term runaway deficits. With the country’s population aging and increasingly dependent on health care, Medicare’s cost to taxpayers is projected to rise from $522.8 billion in 2010 to $932 billion in 2020. The Heritage Foundation has long championed reforms for Medicare, most recently as part of Saving the American Dream. Heritage’s Bob Moffit recently outlined a two-stage approach to reform. The first step is saving the current program, then moving …
‘Twas the day after Christmas, And all ‘cross the land All the people were saying, “Wasn’t Christmas just grand?” The children were joyful, The parents were tired, And grandfolks, aunts and uncles Had been really inspired. The stockings still hung by the chimneys with care But the toes were now empty; there was nothing left there. All the presents were opened The carols all had been sung We’d enjoyed our big gathering Where we’d seen everyone. But beneath all the clutter, the leftovers and toys Was the meaning eternal, and …
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote. “The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Among the American Founders, there was a profound sense that faith and freedom were deeply intertwined. Nowadays, we are often told that religion is divisive and ought to kept away from politics for the sake of liberty. Religion somehow is opposed to liberty, and so liberty requires a diminution of religion in the public square. The view long consistent with our historical practice, …
