U.N. bureaucrat to investigate America
May 22, 2008 | By Nathaniel Ward
Doudou Diene, a United Nations bureaucrat, will tour eight American cities to investigate allegations of institutionalized racism—and his report may be compromised from the start. Heritage expert Nile Gardiner explained to CNN’s Glenn Beck that “in his mind he has probably already written the report.”
Worse, continues Gardiner, director of Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, the United States is helping pay for this charade. “I imagine the U.S. taxpayer will be footing a great deal of the bill,” he said.
» Watch Nile Gardiner explain the U.N. investigation to Glenn Beck
“It is hard to take the U.N. seriously when its peacekeepers are actively engaged in raping refugees in the Congo and even arming rebel groups, or when it turns a blind eye to the man-made starvation of millions in southern Africa,” Gardiner writes on National Review Online.
“In the arena of human rights, the United Nations has become an emperor with no clothes,” he concludes, “a morally bankrupt institution that wallows in its double standards and appeasement of evil. Doudou Diene’s investigation of the United States should be seen for what it is: a desperate piece of political theater that underscores the U.N.’s growing irrelevance.”
Honoring those in uniform
This coming weekend, writes Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, is “no holiday for America’s best. Memorial Day will find our troops fighting terrorists and other enemies of freedom around the globe.”
He argues that we should “honor these patriots and thank them for their service. Because of our brave troops, the United States faces a bright future of freedom and prosperity.”
But it’s not just honor and respect that our men and women in uniform deserve. Another important way we can honor the troops, Feulner continues, is “to give them what they deserve: the tools to win. That means spending what’s necessary for new weapons systems, including aircraft carriers and fighter jets. That's not too much to ask of a nation as wealthy as ours.”
Heritage experts have recommended that the government spend four percent of GDP on national security—a position echoed by leading military officials, including Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
How the global warming bill affects you
Heritage Foundation experts have conducted a thorough analysis of the leading legislation to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Now they have identified the bill’s impact on each state’s economy.
» Find out how the Lieberman-Warner bill affects your state
The liberal push to control the media
In the Internet age, media competition has never been more intense. Blogs and other online journalistic outlets are in many ways giving the mainstream media a run for their money.
Recognizing this new reality, the Bush administration decided to loosen outdated media ownership regulations to give legacy media like newspapers and television stations a fighting chance.
But liberals in Congress fear that the new rules would give conservatives “too much” of a voice, Heritage’s Brian Darling reports. So armed with alarmist rhetoric about the danger of media monopolies, they’re looking to overturn the Bush administration decision and re-impose government restrictions on media ownership.
“This resolution, similar to the fight by the left to impose the Fairness Doctrine in talk radio, would effectively attempt to use the federal government to control speech in media outlets by restoring the ban on joint ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations,” Darling argues.
So how should the media be regulated? Darling has an answer: “Conservatives should reject government interference in media, and let consumers, not politicians, make decisions on how the media marketplace works.”
Other Heritage work of note
- Health Care. Heritage experts continue to work at the state and local level to advance health care reforms based on consumer choice and free enterprise. Bob Moffit, director of Heritage’s Center for Health Policy Studies, writes in the Washington Post that the District of Columbia now has a real opportunity to improve health care in the nation’s capital by adopting a system whereby patients, not governments and businesses, make the decisions. Our experts have worked with policymakers in dozens of states on similar changes.
- Protect America. With the end of the Cold War, Heritage national security expert James Carafano argues, the definition of national security threats expanded to mean “protecting the nation from all kinds of ills.” Things like pandemic diseases and even want and fear are now seen as security threats.
“The problem with that approach,” Carafano continues, “is the tendency, in dealing with security interests, to centralize power and decision-making, and restrain individual freedoms and free markets.”
He concludes that “security shouldn’t become an excuse to take away the power of individuals and communities to decide how best to cope with the challenges of life.”
- Entrepreneurship. Liberals in Congress are once again playing politics with national security: they have added misguided legislation to extend unemployment benefits to a bill to fund our defense needs. Despite what liberals might say, Heritage economist James Sherk explains, “extending [unemployment insurance] benefits will not stimulate the economy and is not justified by economic conditions.”
- American Leadership. On Wednesday, America celebrated Cuba Solidarity Day. Heritage Latin America expert Ray Walser describes what it is: “The day seeks to remind Americans that 90 miles away from the United States is an island nation controlled by a government that remains by all objective definitions a Communist, totalitarian regime.”
In other news
- President Bush vetoed the bloated farm bill on Wednesday, arguing in part that the legislation “would needlessly expand the size and scope of government,” distort the market for farm goods and subsidize farmers with incomes up to $1.5 million.
- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is backing a radical plan to allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.
- A Texas appeals court has ruled that state officials improperly seized hundreds of children from a polygamous group.
- The Supreme Court has upheld criminal penalties for distribution of child pornography.
- “All across the country, states and local governments are promising benefits to public workers on the basis of numbers that make little economic sense,” The New York Times reports.
- A federal appeals court has upheld an earlier ruling that American currency illegally discriminates against the blind. The judicial decision could compel the government to change the size and coloration of paper bills or to add distinctive raised markings.
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 Monday, June 2 at noon, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharanksy explains why identity is freedom’s greatest ally in the struggle against tyranny.
- On Tuesday, June 3 at 11:00 a.m., scholar Victor Davis Hanson discusses the relationship between security and freedom.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
