Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote an article claiming the American people are turning to the left, abandoning conservative policies. He wrote that conservative policies are “out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.”
But the poll results on which Krugman’s column was based didn’t strike Heritage’s Mike Franc the right way. “Do they really augur a broad and permanent ideological realignment to the left,” he asked in his recent column in Human Events, “or are they merely a temporary blip that will eventually self-correct?”
Iran said today it would free the 15 British sailors it kidnapped two weeks ago as a “gift” to the British people. But why did Iran kidnap them in the first place?
“Iran has grand ambitions,” Heritage’s Peter Brookes writes in Armed Forces Journal. “Tehran wants to be the predominant state in the Middle East, replacing the U.S. as the region's power broker and lording over its Sunni Arab neighbors.”
Recent events may have spurred this new power gab, he explains. “With the fall of its most fearsome competitors for regional pre-eminence—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan’s Taliban—Iran is unabashedly reasserting itself on the international stage.”
Congress is considering the ninth reauthorization of the failed Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. But even though federal education policy has for four decades failed to meet its original promises, liberals like Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) continue to push for the same old policies and pledge “no retreat,” Heritage education expert Dan Lips reports.
“Congress owes it to American students, parents, and taxpayers to question whether the unsuccessful strategies of the past four decades are any more likely to work today,” Lips argues.
Kennedy’s proposed reforms are based on a failed model: that more federal spending and more federal solutions will improve public schools. But if the history of federal education policy has taught us anything, it’s that the ability of the federal government to improve American education is very limited. While spending has increased dramatically over the past four decades, measures of student academic achievement show that little progress has been made in the classroom.
A better solution would be to increase the transparency and accountability in federal education spending. One bill Lips points to, the recently-introduced A PLUS Act, would accomplish these reforms while allowing states “to steer more funding to programs that actually make a difference in the classroom.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Monday that he would call for cutting funds for the troops in Iraq next year. Liberals like Reid seem dead-set on imposing artificial deadlines on America’s involvement in Iraq—whether victory is achieved or not.
Changes to government regulation of time don’t seem to have had the desired effects. Energy companies report that moving Daylight Savings Time a few weeks earlier hasn’t reduced demand appreciably.
Weather forecasters are predicting a “very active” hurricane season—just as they did last year, when fewer hurricanes than usual formed. But what’s really interesting is what the Associated Press story doesn’t mention: global warming.
Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) told state officials to register the marriages of same-sex couples who took advantage of Massachusetts’ court-ordered gay marriage rules. Deval’s predecessor as governor, Mitt Romney, had blocked out-of-state same-sex marriages as unlawful.
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