Coverage of the tumultuous events in the Middle East in the official Chinese press has gone through a few iterations. At first, the policy was no coverage or at best laconic coverage. Lately, due to internet postings and official nervousness the tone has changed to ‘ why it can’t happen here’ and ‘why it must […]
The Irish go to the polls on Friday (some of the remote islands have already voted) in elections that are all but certain to bring the Fine Gael Party led by Enda Kenny to power. The Fianna Fail Party that has been in power for 14 years is set to receive the worst political drubbing […]
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. The mandate has been declared unconstitutional by federal courts in Virginia and Florida, and appeals are pending in those cases. The committee heard from three legal experts: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Duke University law professor Walter Dellinger, and […]
As Muammar al-Qaddafi clings to power by ordering his troops to shoot on their Libyan compatriots, across the globe in the Caribbean one of his last remaining global buddies is doing his best to keep the lid on his own victims. Fidel Castro, presiding over the wreckage of what was once the thriving island of […]
Autocracies are under assault throughout the Middle East, but in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez remains sanguine and expects to steer his country into socialism. Venezuelan students have launched a hunger strike against his rule and have appealed to the Organization of American States and its head Jose Miguel Insulza to look into human rights abuses by […]
What happens when the Florida legislature eliminates the centuries-old requirement that the government must prove that an accused person acted with criminal intent before he may be punished as a criminal? It risks making almost anyone a criminal – both those who intend to commit a crime and those who do so by accident. And […]
From the outset of the Obama presidency and the emergence of the Obama Doctrine, the similarities between this Administration and that of Jimmy Carter have been striking. Like Obama, Carter trumpeted soft power and international institutions as the means to solve the most perplexing foreign policy problems. The programs of both Presidents hinged on the […]
There seems to be a fairly significant downside to a “living” Constitution: you can’t keep it from growing uncontrollably! In the latest Constitutional Guidance for Lawmakers essay, David Forte outlines the staggering expansion in the reach of the Commerce Clause under the Progressives, from “The trafficking and trading of economic commodities” to “Any human activity […]
The 112th Congress is out of the gate, and so is its mantra of getting government spending under control. But there’s one piece of the spending pie that legislators can’t overlook if they plan to get the United States back on the track of fiscal responsibility: welfare. Despite the commonly held belief that the government […]
Jared Lee Loughner, identified today as the shooter responsible for the mass shooting this morning in Tucson which took the life of federal court judge John Roll and critically injured Democrat U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, lists The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf among his favorite books. The story of the shooting of the conservative Blue […]
