There’s something about Che Guevara that convinces older European men that they will become cooler through association with his “brand.” We saw that again yesterday when Mercedes-Benz Chairman Dieter Zetsche launched a new car under a banner picture of Guevara. Years ago, an equally desperate Anglican clergyman tried to stem dwindling congregations with a poster of Guevara wearing a crown of thorns. The hip slogan? “Meek and Mild? As if.” The Anglican Church continues to, ahem, have its problems attracting people to an increasingly troubled denomination. As to whether communism will …
The reaction of bloggers in two remaining communist dictatorships to the recent deaths of pro-freedom crusader Vaclav Havel and his polar opposite, North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il, tells you all you need to know about why communists can’t hold elections. In the restricted cyberspace afforded to Chinese and Cubans Havel is being hailed as a hero while Kim is derided for the evil he represented. In a roundup on Chinese cyber reactions to the two deaths, the BBC observed that contrary to China’s official stance, comments by Chinese microbloggers …
Liberals stumping for tax cuts are as rare as three-dollar bills and hardcover digital books, and for good reason. Devoid of any other organizing principle, the only job of progressivism today is to grow government, and taxation is the blood stream of government. It is thus with the same healthy does of skepticism that we would greet a talking turtle that we should approach claims by the Obama White House that it really, really wants to cut taxes, dang it, but conservatives won’t let them. The issue at hand is, …
Cuba—to listen to, watch or read some of the media—is a place that has remained unbowed in the face of impoverishment by the U.S. embargo. Lately what you hear is that it is attempting to make bold reforms not just in the economy, but socially as well (it just allowed gays to marry!) The people still dance. Only that the reality of Cuba bears little resemblance to the plucky little island narrative. Cuba’s penury has nothing to do with the U.S. decision not to trade with the communist island, but …
The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and CNN are pleased to announce that the presidential debate on foreign policy and national security co-hosted by The Heritage Foundation will take place in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Nov. 22. The national security debate, a landmark first for AEI and Heritage, moved to November 22 to accommodate this season’s crowded debating schedule. The debate, set in Washington, D.C., will air live nationally at 8 p.m. on CNN, CNN en Español, and worldwide on CNN International, CNN Radio and CNN.com. “The timing couldn’t …
We understand that the White House is experiencing some difficulties of late across many fronts—the Solyndra scandal and Operation Fast and Furious are two issues that come to mind. That, however, does not give spokesman Jay Carney license to misrepresent what The Heritage Foundation supports or does not. Yesterday Mr. Carney once again defended Obamacare, this time by strongly implying that we think the health care law is wise and Constitutional. Specifically, the spokesman said: We note that not only have lower courts upheld its constitutionality, but the fact of the individual mandate …
Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a group of opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The women, mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find a dignified way to bring attention to the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking their minds. The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack. You can find an eyewitness account in Spanish in the above video. …
Liberals from Capitol Hill to the cable networks keep insisting that the nation will go into default unless Congress raises the nation’s debt ceiling by August 2. All along we have felt that such a claim is at least technically wrong, seeing that unquestionably we will be able to make interest payments on our bonds. More confounding, however, is that the ones yelling the loudest that the debt limit must be raised also keep insisting that a vote tomorrow in the House of Representatives to raise the debt limit is …
Fox News haters are circling in the water so furiously that the sharks are calling their lawyers. The phone-hacking scandal that led to the closing of one of the world’s oldest papers, the News of the World, has shaken Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, and the whiff of blood in the water is obviously exhilarating for his enemies. So we’re visited by that rarest of events: an overseas news story receiving wall-to-wall coverage by domestic news outlets. Any American who hasn’t yet heard that the Murdoch-owned British tabloid hacked into people’s …
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 …
