Articles
Opinion: Outsourcing debt may be viable choice
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — British Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for reinforcements to help him deal with the country’s massive debt, which has been caused by nonstop spending, severe recession and declining tax revenue. According to the UK’s Centre for Policy Studies, at the end of 2008, the national debt was 1,340 billion pounds ($2,090 billion USD), which was 103.5 percent of GDP. This figure includes all the public sector pension liabilities such as pensions, and Private Finance Initiative contracts. It’s likely that figures for last year will be even more alarming.
Opinion: Pentagon’s health depends on new policy
As Republicans take their case to the voters in November about the Obama administration’s massive overspending and record debt, they should seriously consider what could be a rare bipartisan objective: cutting defense spending.
Opinion: A promise kept, or a mission not quite a success?
President Obama claims to have kept his campaign promise to cease American combat operations (though not U.S. troop presence) in Iraq by the end of this month. But it’s not about his keeping promises about a war and an objective he never supported. It’s about whether the mission has been a success. And the answer to that question is: we don’t know yet.
Opinion: Coming soon to U.S.: National Health Service
PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a group of liberal activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn’t worry about not getting the single-payer provision in the new health care law. “We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.”
Opinion: No shame in it, but America has committed a big mistake
The latest Washington Post/ABC News Poll tells the story: Nearly six in 10 voters say they have “just some” or no confidence in President Obama to make the right decisions for the country.
America — or at least the part of it that voted for Barack Obama for president — has made a big mistake. Some of those teary-eyed people in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood on Election Night 2008 would probably admit it if they were interviewed. Many bumper stickers still display fading “Obama ’08” stickers, but you’d find fewer that read, “Yes We Can!”
Opinion: Make sure government never gets obese again
The co-chairmen of President Obama’s Debt and Deficit Commission painted a gloomy picture of the economy last weekend when they appeared at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting in Boston. Former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, called the current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.
Opinion: Famous Marx joke finds new relevance in modern case
“I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
That familiar one-liner has been attributed over the years to the late Groucho Marx, but in light of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last week in the case of Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez (UC Hastings), the sentiment it contains may have some contemporary legal relevance.
Opinion: Deporting Yousef would be victory for those who want to destroy the U.S.
What should be done with a man who infiltrated the terrorist group Hamas, spied for Israeli intelligence and broke up terror attacks, saving countless Israeli, as well as Palestinian, lives? Most people would say he should be honored. Not the U.S. government, it’s trying to deport him.
Mosab Hassan Yousef was more than a spy. He is the son of a founding leader of Hamas, which made him among the highest prizes for Israeli intelligence. Yousef and his Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) handler, Gonen Ben Itzhak, were in Washington last week, meeting with whoever would listen to them. Yousef told me — and Itzhak confirmed — that he never killed anyone and, in fact, prevented many from being killed, while providing useful information that thwarted numerous terror attacks.
Opinion: If Obama picked the wrong man, just how good is his judgment?
The World War II slogan “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” which was intended to encourage Americans to keep quiet about any information pertaining to that war, could also apply to modern generals and their staffs.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s mistake was not indulging in — and allowing his aides to indulge in — locker room guy talk; his “mistake in judgment” was allowing a writer for the far-left, anti-war magazine, “Rolling Stone” apparently unrestricted and prolonged access to him and his aides. A liberal White House won’t allow access by conservative writers to its deliberations and application of its Saul Alinsky-like redistribution of wealth philosophy.
Opinion: President on a joy ride, but without the joy
President Obama’s first address from the Oval Office can be summed up with a song lyric from the 1951 Broadway musical, “Paint Your Wagon”:
“Where am I goin’? I don’t know.
When will I get there? I ain’t certain.
All that I know is I am on my way.”
Columns
THOMAS: Not by sight, but by faith
A group of conservative evangelical leaders met in Texas last weekend and endorsed a Roman Catholic for president.
RELATED CONTENTTHOMAS: Time to run a Tebow media option play
Even fair-minded liberals, of which there must be a few, should acknowledge that the Saturday-Sunday “blitz” of the Republican presidential candidates by ABC and NBC correspondents looked like a play designed by the left wing of the Democratic Party.
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: How does one measure life’s successes?
How does one measure whether a life was a success, or a failure? Some would measure it by recognition, that is, how many knew the person’s name. For others, the measure of a successful life would be the amount of wealth accumulated, or possessions held. Still others would say a life was successful if the person made a major contribution to society — in medicine, sports, politics, or the arts
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: ‘Stupid is the new smart’ in popular culture
A friend of mine hands me what looks like a business card. It says, “Don’t Die Stupid.” As America begins another round of voting to select the next president, or retain the current one, what we need is a stupid test. Flunk it and you shouldn’t vote.
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Obama hopes public suffers from amnesia
President Obama doesn’t suffer from amnesia, but apparently he hopes the public does.
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Christmas: A season to maintain faith that God exists
Perhaps not since Madalyn Murray O’Hair and Carl Sagan has there been such an “evangelical” atheist as Christopher Hitchens, the writer and social commentator who died last week after a long and public battle with esophageal cancer.
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Not a great time for the Jewish
In a season in which there is very little “peace on Earth” and even less “good will toward men,” it is a particularly tough time for Jews, who may be finding it more and more difficult to tell who their real friends are.
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Adultery has lost stigma it once had, and that’s too bad
We live in a bipolar culture. We allow ourselves to be drenched in sexual images in movies, on television and on the Internet and then defend First Amendment protection to even the most graphic of them. Then, when a politician acts out what culture promotes, we criticize him, especially if he’s conservative, branding him with the equivalent of a “scarlet letter.”
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Politics gets dirty again
In 2007 when she was running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton told a fundraising event in Carson City, Nev., “I sure don’t want Democrats, or the supporters of Democrats, to be engaging in the politics of personal destruction. I think we should stay focused on what we’re going to do for America.”
RELATED CONTENTOPINION: Twisted logic underpins new abortion ruling
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles last Tuesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina’s new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure.
RELATED CONTENT
RSS Feeds