Congressional lawmakers and aides are considering exempting themselves from the mandate to enroll in the health care exchanges the ACA sets up. Hill leaders have been holding confidential meetings for months, trying to weigh the PR costs of exempting themselves and their aides from the financial realities the law is forcing them to face. Politico: […]

Students at the City University of New York will have the incredible opportunity next year to learn from one of America’s finest military leaders. David Petraeus, former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and former director of the CIA, will join the university as a visiting professor of public policy at the Macaulay […]

My previous two essays on the GOP and President Bush touched off an interesting and mostly civil debate on the blogosphere, though if I’d known I was writing within a few days of the opening of the former commander-in-chief’s Presidential Library, I probably would have waited a week. Alas, even the finely tuned news detectors […]

American fuel producers are being forced to blend more and more ethanol into our nation’s gasoline to meet requirements set by the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Most of this ethanol is produced from corn, a biofuel that isn’t green, starves the world’s poor, and potentially fuels riots. But there’s an even bigger problem with […]

Greece is dredging up some ugly memories in Europe with a new push for German war reparations from World War II. Two weeks ago, a “top-secret” report from the Greek Finance Ministry was leaked that claimed that Germany still owes Greece €162 billion in reparations. The report made waves, but it wasn’t clear whether the […]

Americans who support gun control continue to express shock, disappointment, and disgust at the recent defeat of federal legislation expanding background checks for gun buyers. And at the center of their outrage is President Barack Obama. The WSJ reports: Democratic strategists, lobbyists and some Capitol Hill aides see last week’s defeat of the gun-bill amendments […]

North Korea doesn’t just want the big fancy corner office. It wants to be called “Sir.” The Norks insisted today that the DPRK be recognized as a “nuclear weapons state” by the United States, a demand that was swiftly rejected: “North Korea’s demand to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state is neither realistic nor […]

“Confusion, total confusion.” That’s how a Michigan consumer advocate describes her state’s campaign to enroll citizens in the new Obamacare insurance plans. Mass uncertainty about the details of the ACA and a flurry of negative stories in the press have sent the law’s supporters scurrying across the country to educate the public before October 1, when open enrollment […]

Beijing apparently told Delhi today that Chinese soldiers had, in fact, not crossed the border between the two countries, contrary to widespread reports by Indian government sources and the international media that a contingent of Chinese soldiers and helicopters had ventured six miles into India and set up camp.“I want to reiterate here that the […]

There are events that are so surreal that they almost inevitably evoke religious language. This was certainly the case with the attack on the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, so it is not surprising that such language erupted in its wake. But this particular event makes religious reactions especially appropriate, more so than would […]