State public service officials are gathered in Washington, D.C., this week for the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. One of shining stars involved in NARUC is a Georgian named Tim Echols, who hopes to transform America’s system of nuclear waste management. Echols won a statewide election in November 2010 to serve on the Georgia Public Service Commission. Today he leads the commission as its chairman. With nuclear energy making a strong resurgence in Georgia — two new plants are under construction — Echols has taken …
Former President Bill Clinton recently compared voter identification laws to Jim Crow-era statutes that suppressed the black vote after the Civil War. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton told liberal activists in July. Not so, says John Fund, author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.” Speaking at Heritage this week, Fund said voter ID laws have won the …
Amidst the fuzziness of the Obama Administration “reset” policy with the Russian Federation, the movie Five Days of War portrays Russia’s dark side, writes Heritage’s analyst James Carafano in a recent post. Set against the backdrop of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, the film, directed by Renny Harlin, draws from firsthand accounts—the film ends with testimonies from Georgians who lost family members in the war—and reports by Human Rights Watch of Russian atrocities. These accounts also led Harlin to take decidedly pro-Georgian stance. The Obama Administration has been hailing its reset …
On September 22, 2010, a few months before the Senate ratified the New START treaty, a bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. New START is, of course, the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s “reset” policy with Russia. Ever since the blast, many have raised questions as to who have would directly attacked the United States. Initially, Georgia’s assertions that Russia was behind the blast were dismissed on both the left and the right as a baseless allegation attempting “to stoke anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S.” However, The Washington …
Critics of state and local government action on immigration fail to keep in mind one simple but critical point: The states have these rights. It is preposterous to take the position that, short of federal action or the commission of a crime, governors and mayors are constitutionally powerless to deal with illegal immigrants within their states and cities. The argument that state and local governments must incur enormous fiscal and societal costs, asserting that all aspects of immigration (legal or illegal) are entirely the purview of the federal government, is …
Better than 97 percent proficient in reading, 94 percent proficient in math, and a perfect 100 percent in writing: These are the most recent criterion-referenced competency test and 8th grade writing assessment scores for Ivy Preparatory Charter School located in Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta. In a state where K–12 education results are not often highlighted, one would think such scores would be a cause for celebration. Think again. Instead, other Georgia schools are trying to shut down Ivy Prep. Public charter schools have become a successful part of …
Just outside Atlanta sits the city of Sandy Springs, Ga., a community that, on its surface, looks a lot like many others. But if you look at a little bit closer at how the city’s government works, you’ll find a remarkably different model of efficiency that stands apart from the rest. Reason.com explains: While cities across the country are cutting services, raising taxes and contemplating bankruptcy, something extraordinary is happening in a suburban community just north of Atlanta, Georgia.
It appears that Georgia Governor Nathan Deal will sign legislation passed by the Georgia House and Senate that adopts the Arizona SB 1070 framework for controlling illegal immigration. With the influx of 425,000 illegal immigrants into Georgia over the last two decades, this two-pronged legislation will help curb that flow. The two elements of the Georgia legislation involve permitting law enforcement to check the legal status of individuals they stop and requiring the use of the E-Verify system for businesses with more than 10 employees. Unlike Arizona’s SB 1070 “reasonable …
The New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) has been in the news for over a year now. First there were the negotiations with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the fall of 2009. Then President Obama signed the new treaty with president Medvedev in April 2010. Now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has two options: put the treaty up for a vote and send it to the Senate or acquiesce to a GOP request to release the negotiating record to the committee. Before the Senate decides they should first consider …
On Wednesday, Gen. Alexander Zelin, the commander of the Russian Air Force, announced that Moscow had deployed a state-of-the-art S-300 (SA-20 Favorit) long- range air defense system in Abkhazia, a region of the Republic of Georgia that Russia has occupied since the August 2008 war. Since then, Russia recognized breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics. According to Zelin, the task of the air defense systems is “to prevent violation of Abkhaz and South Ossetian airspace and to destroy any aircraft intruding into their airspace no matter what their …
