Latest Article from Lee Harris

The Hayek Effect: The Political Consequences of Planned Austerity

May 17, 2012  •  The American

In 2010, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary named "austerity" as its "Word of the Year," noting that it had been the subject of more than 250,000 searches on its free website. This sudden flare-up of interest in austerity did not arise because large numbers of people suddenly decided to live like Trappist monks. Rather, it was owing to the austerity programs that the creditor nations of the European Union, led by Germany, had decided to impose on the EU debtor nations, such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. In return for a pledge to continue loaning the debtor nations more money, the creditor nations demanded that the debtors must in effect tighten their belts. This belt-tightening required slashing some of the government-provided benefits and social services that the citizens of the debtor nations have come to take for granted. It also took the form of higher taxes and lower wages.

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Latest Article from Clifford May

Missile Defense Is for Wimps

May 17, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Last week, the major media focused on issues of global consequence — like whether Mitt Romney and his "prep school posse" engaged in forcible hair-cutting almost a half-century ago. Most journalists had little time or patience for the issue preoccupying the majority on the House Armed Services Committee: whether Americans should have the right and capability to defend themselves from missile attacks.

Of course, the Associated Press covers just about everything, no matter how trivial, so it did produce a brief dispatch, emphasizing — in typically objective fashion — what it saw as the real news: "Republicans injected presidential politics into the debate, questioning President Obama's commitment to missile defense."

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Latest Article from Michael Freund

Land for lunch, anyone?

May 17, 2012  •  The Jerusalem Post

Amounting crisis of gastronomic proportions was averted this past week when Israel and hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners agreed to a deal that was brokered by Egypt, ending the stand-off between the two sides.

After more than a month of missed meals, skipped snacks and disregarded desserts, the jailed terrorists have at last returned to the prison cafeteria, prompting sighs of relief from throughout the international community.

Having successfully highlighted the wilted waistlines of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, Amnesty International can now finally get back to addressing some of those other pesky issues bedeviling the region, such as the slaughter in Syria or the tumult in Egypt.

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Latest Article from Jeff Jacoby

Health care: No, the state doesn't know best

May 16, 2012  •  The Boston Globe

PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3^rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned speculation and established price ceilings for a wide range of goods and services. But the ambitious law failed. Though violators could be punished with death, inflation and speculation persisted. Goods were hoarded, or sold on the black market. The economic crisis worsened. Eventually the law was abandoned. Like countless rulers before and since, Diocletian discovered the hard way that price controls don't work. They worsen the problem they are intended to solve, leading to shortages, rationing, and even higher prices.

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Latest from Frederick M. Hess's Blog

How Romney Should Grade Obama on Education

May 16, 2012 at 8:51 am

Given concerns about the economy, jobs, and health care, education policy isn't likely to be a make-or-break issue in November's presidential election. But it matters a great deal, nonetheless.

As was the case for George W. Bush in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008, Mitt Romney's stance on education will powerfully color how Americans view his broader domestic agenda. Romney's been largely silent on the issue. But now's the time for him to speak. A good place for Romney to start is by explaining what Obama has gotten right during the past four years--and then pointing out precisely where the president got things wrong.

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Latest Article from Ben Cohen

Labor Pains

May 16, 2012  •  Jewish Ideas Daily

If Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labor Party, emerges victorious from the country's next general election, he will become the first Jewish Prime Minister to inhabit Number 10 Downing Street since Benjamin Disraeli renovated the innards of that venerable residence in 1877. But the comparison with Disraeli doesn't reach far. Though Disraeli was baptized into the Anglican Church as a child, his Jewish origins were an enduring presence throughout his literary and political career. Miliband, by contrast, has treated his Jewish heritage with seeming indifference. He was raised by Jewish Marxist parents in the vibrant, multicultural surroundings of Camden Town in north London. Indeed, his late father, Ralph Miliband, was one of Britain's foremost Marxist professors—a "non-Jewish Jew," Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher's term for Jews who had transcended their Jewish parochialism to attain universalist revolutionary consciousness.

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Latest Article from Tevi Troy

Obama and TV News

May 15, 2012  •  The American

President Obama's recent announcement of his policy change on gay marriage made news, and not just because of the policy, but for the way in which he announced it: In an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts. As the Washington Post's Paul Farhi wrote, Obama's release was "controversial" in that he did not do it in the traditional ways of a press conference or an Oval Office address, but in a daytime television interview on the second-ranking network, and with a reporter who does not typically focus on politics. Politico's Dylan Byers also noted the oddity of the choice, speculating that the White House may have selected Roberts, who is an African-American and a Christian, to soften the blow of his policy shift in those particular communities.

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Latest Article from M. Zuhdi Jasser

Blasphemy bans threaten 'Arab Spring', religious freedom

May 16, 2012  •  The Hilll

Kuwait's parliament has just passed draconian legal amendments that impose the death penalty on Muslims for blasphemy. The move to stiffen the penalty came after Hamad al-Naqi, a Shi'a Muslim, was arrested in March and taken into custody for allegedly cursing the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter. The fate of the amendments and of Naqi rests in the hands of Kuwait's emir.

This action is the latest sign of an alarming trend, not just in Kuwait, but across the Middle East and parts of North Africa. From Tunisia to Kuwait, blasphemy bans increasingly are being enforced and expanded. These bans threaten individual rights to freedom of religion and expression and often have led to human rights abuses.

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Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

Academia's Jew haters

May 15, 2012  •  YNet News

In a recent lecture at the University of Oslo, Norwegian sociologist Professor Johan Galtung claimed there was a possible connection between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of youths in Norway last summer and the Mossad. "The Jews control US media, and divert for the sake of Israel," he said. Galtung added that one of the factors behind the anti-Semitic sentiment that led to Auschwitz was the fact that Jews held influential positions in German society. He also recommended reading the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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Latest Article from Soeren Kern

Islam Arrives in the Basque Country

May 15, 2012  •  Gatestone Institute

The Basque regional government in northern Spain is drafting a controversial new Law on Religious Institutions, which states that mosques and prayer rooms with a capacity of fewer than 300 people will no longer require prior local government approval.

The draft law is generating considerable opposition from elected officials of all political stripes, who fear the new measure will encourage the proliferation of mosques throughout the Basque region.

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Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Iran, The Next Cyberthreat

May 14, 2012  •  Washington Times

Since taking office in 2009, the Obama administration has made cybersecurity a major area of policy focus. The past year in particular has seen a dramatic expansion of governmental awareness of cyberspace as a new domain of conflict. In practice, however, this attention is still uneven. To date, it has focused largely on network protection and resiliency (particularly in the military arena) and on the threat potential of countries such as China and Russia. Awareness of what is perhaps the most urgent cybermenace to the U.S. homeland has lagged behind the times.

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Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

How Saudi Arabia Has Survived—So Far

Spring/Summer 2012  •  The Journal of International Security Affairs

On December 17, 2010, the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Muhammad Bouazizi, who was protesting the confiscation of his wares and harassment by the country's authorities, touched off mass protests that brought about the shocking exodus of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14th. Across the Middle East, the masses celebrated the drama in Tunisia as a step toward democracy. Indeed, it was the first time that mass protests forced an Arab leader from office. By January 25th, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Egypt's Tahrir Square, also calling for the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime. At the same time, protest movements sprouted in Jordan, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen. Media commentators called it the "Arab Spring."

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Latest Article from Herbert I. London

ObamaCare's Muslim Exemption

May 11, 2012  •  PJ Media

Laws almost always create unanticipated consequences. This is certainly likely to be the case when politicians bend over backwards to accommodate the currents of political correctness.

ObamaCare uses the Social Security language of the Internal Revenue Code to determine who is eligible for "religious conscience" objection to the insurance mandate. Specifically, the law provides exemptions for adherents of "recognized religious sects" that are "conscientiously opposed" to accepting benefits from any insurance, public or private.

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Latest Article from Raymond Ibrahim

Mexican Jihad

May 11, 2012  •  Gatestone Institute

As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it would do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da'wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.

According to a 2010 report, "Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border," which appeared in the NY Daily News:

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Latest Article from Judith Miller

Egyptian Presidential Front-Runner Predicts Israeli Strike More Likely

May 10, 2012  •  NewsMax

Egypt's former foreign minister and ex-head of the Arab League who is the front-runner in the country's upcoming presidential elections, called Israel's new coalition government a "war cabinet" that could make an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities more likely.

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