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Sen. Jeff Sessions explains how Heritage research changed the immigration debate.

Do you want to pay 40 cents more per gallon?

Think gas prices are high now? Just wait until Congress gets involved.

A new proposal from a Congressionally-mandated commission could raise federal gas taxes up to 200 percent, Heritage expert Ron Utt argues in a new in-depth analysis.

Under the commission’s plan, the government would hike “the federal fuel tax by 25 cents to 40 cents per gallon over the next five years and thereafter indexing it to the rate of inflation.”

» Take our poll: Would you accept a 200 percent increase in the federal gasoline tax?

Central planning comes to America

But it’s not just the tax that’s a problem, Utt argues.

The transportation proposal also calls for a “National Surface Transportation Commission” that would have its own independent authority to tax and spend so they can realize the plan they dream up behind closed doors. “Under this constitutionally suspect scheme, even the views of Congress would be rendered largely irrelevant,” Utt explains. This idea has “more in common with a 1970s Soviet central planning department than anything in the U.S. experience.”

What’s more, the plan would throw even more money at non-highway programs that don’t measure up to a simple cost-benefit analysis and often amount to special-interest giveaways. As it is, more than a third of all highway money is used for non-highway purposes like flower gardens and dubious mass transit programs. This program would only make things worse.

Would superheroes back the U.N.?

The United Nations has some unlikely new friends, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer reports. The scandal-prone body is teaming up with Marvel comics to promote its agenda of peacekeeping and disease eradication.

Schaefer is dubious that any real-life heroes would partner with a corrupt, abusive agency that coddles the world’s worst dictators. “The very notion that today’s U.N. is eager to embark on heroic struggles against evildoers defies reality. But reality is no check on propaganda, which explains why the organization is so keen to team up with Marvel.”

Marvel Comics has made poor decisions about its superheroes of late, Schaefer reminds us. “These are the same guys who previously thought it would be a good idea to kill Captain America.”

Explaining the Second Amendment

On Thursday, Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) will speak at The Heritage Foundation about the individual right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

» RSVP to attend this event

This right faces a serious legal challenge as the Supreme Court considers District of Columbia v. Heller, in which a federal court overturned the draconian firearms restrictions in the nation’s capital. When the case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Heritage legal scholars helped the winning side prepare its arguments.

See Sean Hannity at Heritage in May

Talk radio host Sean Hannity will give the keynote address at The Heritage Foundation’s May 5 President’s Club meeting in Washington, D.C. To secure your invitation to this one-of-a-kind event, join the President’s Club today!

Other Heritage work of note

The seriously flawed European Constitution is back in a new guise, which is bad news for the United States, Heritage expert Sally McNamara writes. The new treaty, signed in Lisbon and pending ratification by 27 countries, “will restrict the sovereign right of E.U. member states to determine foreign policy and poses a unique threat to the Anglo-American Special Relationship,” explains McNamara, a foreign policy analyst in Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
Claiming that polar bears are threatened by global warming, radical environmentalists are urging the federal government to list the animals as an endangered species. Declaring them endangered would limit America’s energy supply and could allow the imposition of government economic controls by a back door, Heritage expert Ben Lieberman writes in the Examiner.
The Heritage Foundation hosted a retreat in Baltimore for 40 conservative members of Congress last week. The annual meeting, with special guests including John Stossel, Tony Blankley, John Fund, Larry Kudlow, John Bolton and Rufus Fears, served as a forum to share ideas and develop strategies to spread common-sense ideas in the nation’s capital.

In other news

President Bush’s final budget, covering fiscal 2009, was released on Monday. Heritage’s Foundry weblog rounds up some of the more important budget news, including its steps towards entitlement reform and the massive overspending it includes.
A pernicious new “diversity” law targeting private foundations is making its way through the California legislature. An article in The Los Angeles Times explains the problem: “Every private, corporate or public operating foundation in California with assets of more than $250 million (of which there are more than three dozen) would be required to gather information about the gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation of its members and its board of directors and then publish that data on its website and in its annual report. Foundations also would be required to publish such ‘diversity data’ percentages about its staff.” The bill was approved by the Assembly last week.
Al Qaeda leader Abu Laith al-Libi is reported dead after a U.S. missile strike. The terrorist mastermind is accused of plotting an attack on Vice President Cheney during his visit to the region last year.
Virginia’s College of William and Mary will host the Sex Workers’ Art Show. The program “features performances and monologues by strippers, prostitutes and other sex workers, with its goal being to ‘dispel the myth that (the performers) are anything short of artists, innovators, and geniuses,’” the Newport News Daily Press reports.
Los Angeles is now home to the nation’s first marijuana vending machines.
Proposed legislation would allow Maryland graduate students and adjunct professors to form unions.
Berkeley, Calif. is living up to its stereotype: the city council recently condemned Marine recruiters as “unwelcome and unwanted intruders” and effectively gave its blessing to radicals seeking to disrupt their Marines’ work. The council may also go after the recruiters for violating discrimination laws by upholding the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.
The pre-game show before Sunday’s Super Bowl included a reading of the Declaration of Independence by football stars. The short film was dedicated to the men and women in the armed forces.
The AP has some good news from Eastern Europe: “Poland said Friday it has reached an agreement in principle with the United States on plans to install a missile defense system on Polish territory.”

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage’s website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.

On Thursday, Feb. 7 at noon, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States joins a panel of experts to discuss the situation in his country.
On Monday, Feb. 11 at 2:00 p.m., a panel of experts assesses the Six-Party Talks on North Korean denuclearization.
On Tuesday, Feb. 12 at 5:00 p.m., Heritage hosts a special screening of the documentary Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Chris Albright contributed to this report.