Next Stop for Proposition 8: U.S. Supreme Court

It was no surprise today that the most liberal (and most-overturned) federal appeals court in the nation, the Ninth Circuit, refused a request for a rehearing by the entire court of the decision by a three-judge panel that found California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. This means that the proponents of Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment […]

Full Story

Armour v. Indianapolis: “Money Down the Sewer”

Not many cases involving the financing of municipal sewer construction projects are likely to raise issues that might interest the Supreme Court (or anyone else for that matter), but at least one has.  On Monday, the Supreme Court decided Armour v. Indianapolis, which rejected an Equal Protection Clause challenge to the decision by the city […]

Full Story

Time to Return ARPA-E to Its Original Mission

Despite having a budget for only a few years, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is quickly becoming a microcosm of the larger problems associated with the entire Department of Energy (DOE). ARPA-E, a program within the DOE, is meant to fund high-risk, high-reward projects that the private sector would likely not fund because the […]

Full Story

Twenty Years of Illusion about Islamism

by Daniel Pipes June 2, 2012 updated Jun 3, 2012 Cross-posted from National Review Online The broad lines of U.S. government, other government, and generally establishment policy toward Islamism were laid down on June 2, 1992, when Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Edward P. Djerejian delivered a major speech, […]

Full Story

Al-Shabaab Targets Kenya

On Monday, a shopping center in downtown Nairobi erupted into chaos when a bomb exploded, killing at least one person and injuring dozens. While the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab has not claimed responsibility, evidence, according to Kenyan officials, indicates that the attack was carried out by al-Shabaab or one of its sympathizers. More sophisticated than […]

Full Story

A Dangerous Marriage in Northern Mali

Just as we thought the situation in Mali couldn’t get worse, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg group that historically sought to liberate northern Mali, and Ansar al-Din, an Islamic group seeking impose Sharia law, have formed a union and declared northern Mali their own. However, the two groups are […]

Full Story

“Ambassador” or Not, the UNWTO Has Honored Mugabe

Last week, the Zimbabwean newspaper The Herald published a story that was posted on AllAfrica.com reporting that, in anticipation of the upcoming 2013 U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) General Assembly meeting scheduled to take place in Zimbabwe and Zambia, “President [Robert] Mugabe and his Zambian counterpart Michael Sata have been appointed United Nations international tourism […]

Full Story