House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith’s anti-piracy bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), caused significant waves on its maiden voyage into congressional waters. New criticisms of the legislative proposal, however, make the Justice Department walk the plank. (more)
Several of the audience members asking questions at Tuesday night’s GOP foreign policy debate have close ties to two different presidential candidates: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. (more)
Despite Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s consistent calls for increased teacher salaries, a new study says that most public school teachers aren’t actually being underpaid. (more)
The federal government’s Office of Personnel Management rolled out a freshly overhauled USAJobs.gov website on October 11. But it has failed to dazzle federal job seekers, prompting private companies to offer to bail out the government. (more)
On the day of the CNN/Western Republican Leadership Conference debate in Las Vegas, the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and CNN jointly announced Tuesday that they will host a Republican presidential debate focused on foreign policy and national security. (more)
A just-released Heritage Foundation report dismisses popular notions about today’s teens and their sexual promiscuity. The report cites new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which indicate that most teens have not engaged in sexual intercourse. (more)
For 30 years, the Heritage Foundation has perfected its talent for offering policy makers timely and relevant conservative white papers and background information on public policy issues. Last year, they “leaned forward” to create a separate, more muscular entity that could lobby and engage in grassroots education around public policy, just like the hoard of left-wing groups operating in the nation’s capital. (more)
Do conservative or moderate Democrats still exist in Congress? No, say Tim Chapman and Michael Needham of Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation. (more)
A top conservative think tank’s political action wing is urging members of Congress to vote “no” on the White House-GOP budget compromise. (more)
A series of letters solicited by top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa put the Environmental Protection Agency in crosshairs, urging the aggressive new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate a series of strict new regulations finalized by the Obama administration. (more)
The Heritage Foundation think-tank has made it clear: they may be an established conservative organization, but they’re with the Tea Party activists who’ve risen up to protest Washington’s old ways. (more)
David Addington, a former aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney, is taking over a top job at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., the think tank is announcing today. (more)
There’s a lot of speculation that Tea Partiers may jump on the Left’s “cut defense spending” bandwagon. Doubtless the White House would love to bring fiscal conservatives on board with its effort to slash the Pentagon’s budget. (more)
Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s new “grassroots advocacy organization,” launched its first national campaign Wednesday evening with Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King’s filing of a discharge petition aimed at repealing Obamacare. (more)
Major players in Washington cheered the latest version of an energy bill, which tries to buy votes with “something for almost everyone.” But beleaguered consumers will get stuck with skyrocketing bills after others feast on new government benefits. (more)
Abstract: The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act could be considered an excellent piece of legislation–if, that is, the goal of the legislation was to ensure massive Social Security deficits without creating a single new job. Yet another attempt by the federal government to coerce companies into hiring more workers, the HIRE Act also signals two fundamental and likely permanent shifts to the Social Security system: a move away from a system where benefits are paid for entirely by worker contributions to a system, and backdoor increases in taxes as a consequence of partial or full general fund financing. Rather than hobbling America’s economic recovery with an ineffective payroll tax holiday like the HIRE Act, Congress should encourage productive and sustainable job creation–policies capable of generating real growth in the U.S. economy. (more)
Tomorrow, Feb. 6, is the 99th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States. Although it has been 21 years since President Reagan completed his second term and left the White House, he still remains a figure of great interest to many Americans, including a large number of young people who were not even born during the time he was president. (more)
Last year, President Obama swept into office on a promise to confront tough choices–and then released a budget proposing the largest debt-and-spending spree in American history. With Washington having committed itself to more government than its taxpayers could realistically afford, basic fiscal responsibility suggests that the President scale back his expensive proposals. Instead, this year’s budget is even more fiscally irresponsible. (more)
Abstract: In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama’s "virtual world," America faces the reality of Iran’s intransigence and aggressiveness; China’s headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia’s determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states’ refusal to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind that Israel has already offered under several governments; Syria’s designs on Lebanon; and Hugo Chávez’s designs on the weaker countries in Latin America. President Obama’s foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence and experience, all these accommodations, the weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by some cataclysm. (more)
