Tonight, President Obama will speak to the country from the Oval Office for the first time in an effort to recover from his disastrous response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president will try to push back against the perception among the American people that he and his administration don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to the spill—a | Read More »
Avik Roy, a savvy health care analyst in New York City who writes an excellent blog on health policy, took the time to talk with me for The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News podcast about what we learned last week when it comes to the White House’s fraudulent case for Obamacare. Listen to it here. In case you missed it — because for some reason, | Read More »
I had the opportunity to interview Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty last week for Health Care News, an interview you can listen to here. The Governor discussed how states can respond to the passage of Obamacare, his decision to opt out of the federal high-risk pools, and how Americans can shift a polarized Washington political scene back toward common sense values. Pawlenty’s response to the passage | Read More »
“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.” – Thomas Jefferson Having dramatically expanded the role of the government in your doctor’s office and your bank | Read More »
Via my friend and colleague Paul Chesser, this footage of Colorado State University climatologist Scott Denning speaking at the Heartland Institute’s Fourth Annual Conference on Climate Change is really quite refreshing. Denning is no “skeptic,” but he stresses that he’s a scientist who believes that public policy should be based on the facts we know about the world we live in — not on the | Read More »
I find the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America outlet extremely entertaining in their capacity as the Obama White House’s fluffy attack chinchilla — not just because they clearly work so hard at such drudgery, but because they are so oblivious to their incredible irrelevance within the ongoing online conversation. In this case, I sadly didn’t even notice their long, drawn out response last week | Read More »
“Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” – Donald Berwick President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a gathering far less attention than a certain | Read More »
It’s another edition of the Health Care News podcast, this time with a special guest. Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, a physician and a leading voice on health policy for the Republicans, shares his thoughts on the upcoming summit with the President, Evan Bayh’s retirement, and what pro-consumer health reform would look like. Give it a listen here. We talk a bit in the podcast | Read More »
So what should we expect tomorrow morning on the Senate floor? Peter Fotos, The Heartland Institute’s director of government relations, did a pre-Christmas Eve interview with me hashing out where we stand. Give it a listen here. One thing worth noting that we don’t discuss in the podcast is President Obama’s rather incredible series of interviews this week. He has taken to friendly outlets — | Read More »
Father Richard John Neuhaus died this morning in New York City. He was seventy two. If there was ever a man who conveyed through his writing that he was ready for this moment, it was Fr. Neuhaus. But perhaps in my selfishness, there is no man I am more sorrowful to lose. One could consider this loss in the context of the modern social conservative | Read More »
This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash On its face, the invitation of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony is a brilliant and savvy political move. During the 2008 campaign, much was made of then-candidate Obama’s ability to potentially crack the longtime Republican hold on evangelical Christians. And while | Read More »
This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash If you’re a football fan, you know all about scripted plays – the method behind those precision-based offenses that can come out onto the field running a prepared order of plays, no huddle, picking up yards with ease. If they’re successful, they can set the tone for the | Read More »
In every Presidential election, it’s my experience that reports of fraud tend to be a bit exaggerated. Yes, there will always be a degree of problems – but most of those are of the human error variety, not purposeful lawbreaking. With so many millions voting, and so many election officials who are really just volunteer librarians, mistakes are bound to happen. The Electoral system helps | Read More »
One of the few moments in the debate between Republican Joe Biden and Democrat Sarah Palin (follow the link) when I raised my eyebrow and said, “That sounds off” from either side – on the whole, there were only a few exaggerations during the evening – came when Joe Biden mentioned the the idea that both he and Obama had warned against the Bush administration’s | Read More »
Plenty of late-breaking thoughts on the first debate around the sphere today, including my own minor submissions. But the one that’s worth your time to read is Pete Wehner’s thought process on the overall challenges the McCain campaign faces – here’s his third point, but you should read it all over at Commentary: What helps a campaign immeasurably is when the charge it makes seems | Read More »
I’m no fan of Congressman Roy Blunt, but purposefully lying about what any Congressman says is pretty low, especially when it’s of the “let’s cut out the first four words and last eight words of this television quote to make it seem like he’s saying the opposite of what he just said” variety. Which happens to be what the Obama campaign just did: REP. ROY | Read More »
Jen Rubin, one of the most diligent and perceptive writers in the ‘sphere, has this to say about the NYTimes latest hit piece: In just the first few paragraphs you have testimony that she was “effective and accessible.” So where are we going here? Well, despite the testimony that she was ”accessible,” others find her “secretive” and inclined to put a premium on “loyalty.” The | Read More »
Note: Head on over to FRCAction to view streaming video of this weekend’s conference. You want proof about how successful the Sarah Palin pick has been in coalescing and motivating the socially conservative base of the GOP? Look no further than the subdued schedule today at the FRCAction Values Voter conference in Washington, DC. A year ago, the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit propelled | Read More »
The fine folks over at 1Cast, a new media delivery tool for smartphones,, were kind enough to let me try out a beta version of their software on an iPhone during the DNC and RNC. It’s an excellent solution to a problem for smartphone users who want to find video content across multiple channels, but end up getting RickRolled by Youtube half the time, and | Read More »
Jennifer Rubin posts on something that’s a truly significant moment: The great Sally Quinn recants her position on Sarah Palin. Quinn had been one of Palin’s biggest critics in the days leading up to her speech (read her column here). But yesterday in an interview with Bill O’Reilly, she declared: “I was wrong about her.” I thought that she was amazing. in her speech. She | Read More »
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