New START: Been There, Threatened That

Yet again, the Russians are working to strengthen their position prior to NATO’s Chicago summit coming up in May. Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Security and Disarmament Department at the Foreign Ministry, stated that Russia’s withdrawal from the New Strategic Reductions Treaty (New START) “cannot be excluded.” Moscow primarily objects to the expansion of U.S. […]

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Chart of the Week: 1 in 5 Americans Are Dependent on Government

The number of Americans dependent on the federal government has exploded over the past five years, reaching a record 67.3 million people, according to Heritage’s annual Index of Dependence on Government. That means 1 in 5 Americans (21.8 percent) today receive some level of assistance from the federal government. This week’s chart — one of […]

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Assad Regime Escalates Repression in Syria After Russia Blocks U.N. Action

Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks in Ummayed Square, Damascus, Syria, in January 2012. The embattled Assad regime escalated its horrific attempts to crush Syria’s opposition movement this week after Russia, one of its few allies, blocked action by the U.N. Security Council. On Friday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against any foreign intervention, saying […]

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Gov. Scott Walker Defends Reforms; ‘Our Most Powerful Tool Is the Truth’

Gov. Scott Walker delivered a passionate defense of Wisconsin’s reforms at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday night. The embattled Republican governor used his keynote speech at CPAC to outline what’s at stake in Wisconsin and other states if his budget reforms are rolled back. “Our most powerful tool is the truth,” Walker told […]

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Voices of Opposition Speak Out Against Obama’s Contraception Mandate ‘Accommodation’

“Simply unacceptable.” That’s the near-unanimous response to President Obama’s supposed “accommodation” offered to those who objected to Obamacare’s mandate that religious institutions pay for contraceptive products and services—including abortion-inducing drugs. That mandate — which tramples heavily on religious liberties — drew tremendous fire across the board, from Christians and Jews alike, drowning the President in a political maelstrom of […]

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Embassy Baghdad in Decline

by Daniel Pipes February 7, 2012 Cross-posted from National Review Online: The Corner Ever since the U.S. government announced in March 2004 plans to build “the largest embassy ever run by any country,” I have been on the case, poking fun at its over-wrought size (21 acres), excessive expense (US$750 million), and gargantuan personnel (16,000) […]

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Rep. Price: Obama’s Contraception ‘Accommodation’ is ‘All Rhetoric’

The chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee blasted the president’s self-styled “accommodation” of religious employers required under the Obamacare law to provide contraceptive services to employees in apparent violation of the Constititoin’s protection of religious liberty. “Under the President’s proposal,” explained Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall, “employers and employees will still bear the cost of paying for […]

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Defense Report Gets Failing Grade

America’s military is witnessing yet another attempt to recast the negative impact of massive defense cuts, this time in a report by the Council on Foreign Relations that attempts to illustrate the effect that slashed spending will have on U.S. forces and security. Unfortunately, the report uses some of the same ill-founded assumptions that the […]

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