Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. A Dangerous Debt Ceiling Deal – Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D. Who To Blame for Defense Cuts? – John Guardiano Obama and McConnell: Debt Ceiling Gives GOP’s Great Dismantler His Moment – Howard Fineman Super Congress? Better be Super Transparent. – John Wonderlich Why there is no left-populist movement – Moe Lane Liberal overpopulation alarmists are exactly wrong – Charles A. Donovan Will DOJ Shoot Down South Carolina’s New Voter ID Law? …
The U.S. Treasury Department yesterday announced sanctions on six al-Qaeda leaders who have used Iranian territory to funnel money and recruits to al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan and to its bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. Treasury officials say the al-Qaeda leaders have been operating in and through Iran with the acquiescence of that government since 2005. Iran had detained several senior al-Qaeda operatives who fled there after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, keeping them under house arrest for several years. In 2009, however, Iran released Osama bin Laden’s …
On the same day, we have two arguments presented about whether to increase military-to-military engagement of the Chinese military, also known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). On the one hand, we have Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arguing that the very act of engaging the Chinese in military-to-military talks will facilitate the creation of strategic trust. As Admiral Mullen states in his op-ed in The New York Times, dialogue is critical, because it clears up misunderstandings and helps keep a focus on …
With the safe return of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, American ability to put astronauts into space come to an end—50 years after Alan Shepard piloted Freedom 7 into the heavens and became the first American to enter outer space. Later this year, China will remind the world that it remains committed to what the United States no longer seems interested in—being able to put a man in space. The Chinese are expected to place the Tiangong–1, resembling the U.S. Skylab or the Soviet Salyut space labs, into orbit sometime later …
India’s financial capital, Mumbai, experienced yet another terrorist attack today that initial estimates say killed at least 20. Terrorists detonated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in three separate locations of the city almost simultaneously. The first two blasts occurred at around 6:55 pm, one in a jewelry market and one in a business district in southern Mumbai. The third blast occurred around 7:05 pm in a crowded neighborhood in central Mumbai. This is the most significant terrorist attack in India since the three-day Mumbai shooting attacks in November 2008 that killed …
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is due to deliver the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress today before the House Financial Services Committee. What will he say about unemployment, if anything at all? The stakes are high with Bernanke’s approval rating at an all-time low. The hearing starts at 10 a.m. The Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee will hold a joint hearing on tax reform and the tax treatment of debt and equity. Heritage’s Asian Studies Center will host a briefing on the Global Scope of Radical …
The ongoing cyber-crackdown in China, as censors now prevent searches regarding the health of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, is a reminder that the Internet is seen by Beijing as a double-edged sword. By allowing the flow of information, the Internet poses challenges to Chinese authorities, not only in terms of internal messaging and dissent but also as a source of foreign influence that could affect the perceptions of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy. Yet China cannot afford to reject the Internet, given its multiple applications to daily modern life, …
At yesterday’s joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama ruled out any deadline for ending NATO’s air assault in Libya. “Qadhafi and his regime need to understand that there will not be a let-up in the pressure that we are applying,” Obama said. “Ultimately,” he added, “this is going to be a slow, steady process in which we’re able to wear down the regime forces.” It is troubling that he has refused to express similar resolve in the U.S. and NATO mission to stabilize Afghanistan, …
After Osama bin Laden’s death, it is clear that the war on terrorism is not over. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former al-Qaeda’s number two, may take over as bin Laden’s heir, unless the interim operations leader Saif al-Adel, the former Egyptian commando with Iranian ties, gets the job. In the meantime, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active and dangerous of al-Qaeda affiliate terrorist organizations, has embarked upon expanding the global reach of its supporters. AQAP recently translated al-Qaeda’s online journal Inspire into Russian in an effort to attract …
Nineteen Chinese pastors have joined together to send a remarkable petition to the National People’s Congress on behalf of one of Beijing’s largest underground churches. The Shouwang church is the most recent target of Communist authorities’ crackdown on the unauthorized house church movement that now numbers some 50–70 million Chinese Christians. The Shouwang church began in a home but has grown to 1,000 members in recent years, with many well-educated and affluent congregants. Forced out of rented meeting space in 2009, the church bought its own property—only to be denied …
