In its latest joint report with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued sharp warnings on global trade restrictions: The past seven months have not witnessed any slowdown in the imposition of new trade restrictions. And there is no indication […]
Jamil Afridi (L), the elder brother of jailed Pakistani surgeon Shakeel Afridi who was recruited by the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden, addresses journalists during a news conference in Peshawar on May 28, 2012. Pakistani military officials took serious offense at the U.S. unilateral raid in their country last May to eliminate the […]
“What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin—and eventually, America—less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was more theatrical than most in denouncing Act 10, the set of public-sector reforms signed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) on March […]
Last week, the U.S. Justice Department acknowledged that its Bureau of Justice Statistics website had been hacked. The hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for the hack and published 1.7 gigabytes of data. Included in the data were internal e-mails, which possibly contained personal or sensitive information related to crimes, criminals, and crime victims. The Heritage […]
President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of […]
Iran once again has refuted optimistic predictions that meaningful progress would be made on the core issues at stake in the on-again, off-again nuclear negotiations. In two days of talks in Baghdad, Tehran rejected the Western proposal for resolving the nuclear impasse and agreed only to continue the talks in Moscow on June 18–19. After […]
The Fiscal Times recently published a hit piece attacking defense contractors who build ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems and the Members of Congress who support them. The three most egregious claims of the piece are as follows: 1. The system doesn’t work. 2. There is no threat. 3. Members of Congress who support these programs […]
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Steven Pifer responded to Senator Jon Kyl’s (R–AZ) op-ed that argued that President Obama should refuse to provide written assurances to Russia that compromise America’s ability to defend itself. Pifer’s complaint with the Senate Republican Whip’s argument is that “an assurance could open a path to a cooperative NATO-Russia missile […]
Former Representative Bob Barr’s (R–GA) criticism of the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) anti-aircraft and missile program is understandable but misplaced. Representative Barr, quite reasonably, points to the Obama Administration’s plan to continue spending money on this cooperative program with Germany and Italy despite an announcement early last year that it is moving to […]
Suppose you could produce $50 of electricity but it cost you $100 to do so. Would that make any sense? It would if you work at the White House. In a speech at a wind-turbine blade manufacturer in Iowa, President Obama called for extending two sets of subsidies that turn energy economics upside down and […]
