Congress keeps threatening to shut down over the budget, but there is at least one thing the two houses can agree on. Pending free trade agreements have bipartisan support in both the House and Senate; all that is needed is for President Obama to send them to Congress, so that they can be passed. Congressman […]
While events at the United Nations on Friday generated many column inches in the international media, very few read between the lines and looked carefully at the actual contents of Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas’s and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches. Instead, we were treated to headlines proclaiming the “historic” moment as Abbas called for a […]
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asserted during a press conference on September 20 that the recently enacted debt ceiling law requires $450 billion in savings from the Department of Defense (DOD) budget over the next 10 years. While this is a widely accepted assertion, it is not accurate. The debt ceiling law imposes caps on […]
An attack on the rig drilling for gas off shore from Cyprus for an Israeli-American consortium would be considered an attack on the United States, says Richard Stone, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month threatened to attack the Nobel Energy rig if […]
Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday demanded a renegotiation of key aspects of the Oslo Accords, claiming that the agreement had prevented the PA economy from expanding as much as it could have. At issue is the Paris Agreement, which set up the system whereby Israel collects customs and taxes for the PA, and […]
On September 15, Johan Hari, a journalist for the UK’s Independent, published a “personal apology” following the exposure of his widespread plagiarism and dishonest journalism. It included the following: The other thing I did wrong was that several years ago I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, […]
Republicans and Democrats on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction this week finally agreed on something substantive: The U.S. corporate tax rate is too high. It’s a point we’ve been making for years at Heritage. High federal and state corporate tax rates — a whopping 39.2 percent when combined — make it difficult for […]
The United States is scrambling to avoid a diplomatic crisis at the U.N. over a Palestinian statehood vote and a promised U.S. veto. As other countries try to find a way to defuse the crisis, Palestinian officials asked for U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood yesterday. How did it come to this? Heritage’s Kim Holmes contends […]
Most Americans identify China as the country most likely to challenge the United States globally, and many even expect China to replace American dominance. U.S. lawmakers are finally waking up to the challenge, which is not only military and economic but extends to the spheres of information and public diplomacy. At least, some on Capitol […]
A few weeks ago, the President asked Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the agency’s draft for more stringent Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Although Jackson begrudgingly complied, the EPA is still moving to an ozone standard more stringent than the current one. The current ozone standard of 84 parts […]
