NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

U.S. Money, U.N. Budgets

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:07:00 -0700

National Review - By The Editors - Aug. 31 - In its opening days, the Obama administration naïvely believed that the U.N.’s resistance to reform was the product of a “sour climate” created by the Bush administration’s unilateralism, and attributable to U.S. contributions’ being in arrears. Neither

NewsTrust Rating: 1.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Let the Perry Hatred Begin

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Rich Lowry - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - xas governor Rick Perry is about to stride purposefully through every cultural tripwire in the country. He may not become as despised as Sarah Palin, but that’s because he’ll never be a pro-life woman — the accelerant for the conflagration of Palin-hatred. The disdain for Perry won’t burn as hot, but it’ll burn just as true. He’ll become a byword for Red State simplemindedness in the New York Times and an object of derision for self-appointed cultural sophisticates everywhere.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Is IPAB Repeal in the Cards?

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Andrew Stiles - Jun. 13 (News Analysis) - Under last year’s health-care law, IPAB must go into effect in 2014. But a growing number of lawmakers and policy advocates are working to make sure it never does. Seven Democrats have now signed on as cosponsors to a Republican bill to repeal IPAB, many of them outspoken proponents of Obamacare — Rep. Allyson Schwartz (Pa.), for example, sent a letter to colleagues in April describing IPAB as a “flawed policy that will risk beneficiary access to care” and urging them to support legislation to end IPAB authored by Rep. Phil Roe (R., Tenn.) “Congress is a representative body and must assume responsibility for legislating sound health care policy for Medicare beneficiaries, including those policies related to payment systems,” Schwartz wrote. “Abdicating this responsibility, whether to insurance companies or an unelected commission, would undermine our ability to represent the needs of the seniors and disabled in our communities.” Democratic opposition to IPAB runs the gamut from staunch liberals such as Schwartz and Rep. Pete Stark (Calif.) to conservative Blue Dogs such as Rep. Larry Kissell (N.C.).

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Issa Investigates Project Gunrunner

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Frank Miniter - Jun. 10 (News Report) - Representative Issa’s investigation has been so stymied by the Obama administration that on June 3, some 31 congressional Democrats wrote to the president to urge him to end the administration’s stonewalling on the Fast and Furious program. In the letter, spearheaded by Rep. Jason Altmire (D., Pa.), the lawmakers called the uncooperative tactics “extremely troubling” and found the Justice Department’s failure to provide information to congressional investigators “equally troubling.” They say Americans deserve “prompt and complete answers.”

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ryan’s Leap

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Charles Krauthammer - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - In 1983, the British Labour Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it “the longest suicide note in history.” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has just released a recklessly bold, 73-page, ten-year budget plan. At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history. That depends on whether (a) President Obama counters with a deficit-reduction plan of equal seriousness, rather than just demagoguing the Ryan plan till next Election Day, (b) there are any Republicans beyond the measured, super-wonky Ryan who can explain and defend a plan of such daunting scope and complexity, and (c) Americans are serious people. My guesses: No. Not really. And I hope so (we will find out definitively in November 2012). In 1983, the British Labour Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it “the longest suicid

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Mama Bachmann

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Katrina Trinko - Apr. 04 (Interview) - When most women are expecting their fourth child, they don’t decide to start taking in foster children. But that’s what Michele Bachmann did. For six years, from 1992 to 1998, she opened her home to a total of 23 teenage girls who needed a family. She juggled raising up to nine kids at a time, homeschooling her grade-school-age and younger biological children during the day and bonding with her high-school-age foster children at night. It was a demanding life -- to get a taste of the workload, consider that Bachmann was often doing four loads of laundry daily -- but one that she loved. “It was wonderful, probably the most intellectually rewarding time of my life,” says the Minnesota GOP congresswoman. It was during her pregnancy with her fourth child that Bachmann decided to become a stay-at-home mom. That decision paved the way for her and her husband, Marcus, a clinical therapist, to also consider taking in foster children. Inspired by the example of church friends who were foster parents, the Bachmanns decided to get licensed and give it a try. “We both had broken hearts for at-risk children,” Bachmann recalls.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama’s Missionless War

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Mark Steyn - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - The “Arab Spring” turns out to be a bit more complicated than it looks on CNN, and a CIA that failed to see the bankruptcy of its own pension plan looming is unlikely to be a very useful guide to the various forces in play. For the Western powers to be bogged down in the least consequential Arab dictatorship’s low-grade civil war desultorily providing air support to incompetent al-Qaeda sympathizers may be an artful if expensive piece of misdirection.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Understanding the Violence in Israel

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By John Hannah - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - As many others have remarked, for all their individual differences, the dozen or so mass movements that have emerged across the Middle East over the past three months have all been distinguished by the near total absence of anti-American or anti-Zionist sentiment. Even in the Palestinian territories, the issue has been less Palestine and more the pathological inadequacies of their own governing structures that make normal civic life largely unbearable.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iran Burns Bibles, Condemns Quran Burning

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Paul Marshall - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Iran’s own Bible-burnings are only one part of its ongoing repression of Christians, Baha’is, Sufis, and others. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that, in two weeks, five Iranian Christians, who were recently sentenced in Shiraz to one year’s imprisonment for “crimes against the Islamic Order,” will be tried for blasphemy.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

On Libya, France Takes the Lead

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:04:00 -0700

National Review - Mar. 24 - These howlers were delivered with commendable poker faces, given that Qaddafi is unrelievedly bad and that his “organic” support and mercenaries could be sent packing by the Tallahassee police force, with a couple of armored personnel carriers. The Libya

NewsTrust Rating: 2.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Another Three Mile Island

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Matthew Shaffer - Mar. 22 (News Analysis) - First, shutting down the production of new nuclear facilities would mean more reliance on old nuclear facilities, which are less safe. Second, shutting down or phasing out all nuclear facilities would necessitate greater reliance on other energy technologies that have their own dangers. As Professor Brown says, in a refrain common to all the nuclear experts, “Think of the BP explosion. Or Exxon Valdez. Those were pretty hellacious. And every month there’s a coal-mine disaster, and you read about pipelines exploding.” He recommends acknowledging that we are in “a pragmatic space. That doesn’t mean you don’t think every life is valuable. But you’re balancing risks, and acknowledging their reality in the real world we live in.”

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama’s Incoherent Case for War

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Mona Charen - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - As American forces join the war against Moammar Qaddafi, the nation is entitled to an explanation. How is the case for war against Qaddafi smarter (remember, Obama is only against “dumb” wars) or less “ideological” or more prudent than that for war against Saddam Hussein? Certainly with an army of only 50,000, Qaddafi represents far less of a threat to his neighbors or to us than did Saddam, who commanded an army estimated at 350,000. As for humanitarian concerns, what Qaddafi is doing to the rebels in Libya is exactly what Saddam did to his domestic enemies, but on a reduced scale. As Obama himself said, Saddam was “a ruthless man . . . who butchers his own people to secure his power.” Yet that didn’t justify a war, state senator Obama told us.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Adam and the Eve of a New Election Cycle in Florida

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Kathryn Jean Lopez - Mar. 16 (News Analysis) - Hasner, who currently has a Senate exploratory committee, has been traveling the state like a candidate and is open about the fact that he is “taking all the necessary steps to move forward.” But, given the relative political powerhouses running, it will be far from a given that he will be the nominee. And he’s open about that, too, embracing his relative outsider-ness, confident it’s a winning strategy.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Christian Convicted of Blasphemy Found Dead in Karachi Jail

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Lela Gilbert - Mar. 16 (News Report) - Qamar David is the most recent in a mounting toll of Pakistani deaths his year related to blasphemy. In January 2011, Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab, was shot by one of his bodyguards, who was angry about Taseer’s opposition to the blasphemy laws. Taseer, a Muslim, had come to the defense of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, who was sentenced to death by hanging for blasphemy in November 2010. Her continuing imprisonment has attracted international concern.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

‘Bipartisan’ Redistricting in Va. Targets Cantor, Other Republicans- National Review Online

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Hans A. von Spakovsky - Mar. 14 (News Analysis) - Virginia Republicans are shortchanged in the redistricting plan advanced by the state’s supposedly “bipartisan” Advisory Commission last week. A consultant to the commission, George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, presented draft congressional-redistricting maps last week. Despite thousands of plan options, McDonald’s maps would carve House Majority Leader Eric Cantor out of his congressional seat. How curious that an “apolitical” redistricting plan would torpedo the first Virginian and Jewish man ever to serve as House majority leader.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

There’s No State Pension Crisis After All!

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Veronique de Rugy - Mar. 09 (News Analysis) - We can argue endlessly over when the pension plans will run out of cash, or what the value of their unfunded liabilities is. We can even debate the true meaning of being broke. But there is one issue where there is no room for debate: Once the pension plans run out of money, the payments will have to come out of general funds, meaning taxpayers’ pockets. That will happen very soon: The number of retirees is going up, the promises made have gotten more and more generous over time, and pension plans aren’t underfunded just because of the recession. States are already broke, so if they want to avert a pension crisis, they need to push through reforms as soon as possible.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A New Strategy for Wisconsin

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By James Lindgren - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - Split out the union provisions and pass them by a simple majority.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Koch Executives Speak Out on Wisconsin

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Robert Costa - Feb. 25 (News) - “With the Left trying to intimidate the Koch brothers to back off of their support for freedom and signaling to others that this is what happens if you oppose the administration and its allies, we have no choice but to continue to fight,” says Richard Fink, the executive vice president of Koch Industries.

NewsTrust Rating: 1.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Who's Polarizing America?

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Stanley Kurtz - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - American politics just keeps getting more polarized. Be assured that Obama wants it that way. I argue in Radical-in-Chief that Obama’s long-term hope is to divide America along class lines (roughly speaking, tax payers versus tax beneficiaries).

NewsTrust Rating: 1.9 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Obama Budget’s Magic Asterisks

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Brian Riedl - Feb. 15 (News Analysis) - Past presidential budgets have been declared “DOA,” or dead on arrival. President Obama’s budget should be declared “TBD” — to be determined. Despite taking an extra week to release this year’s budget, the president’s budget is an incomplete list of magic asterisks. Overall, the budget’s claimed $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the decade is based on smoke and mirrors. It claims $315 billion saved from eliminating “certain tax expenditures” — but doesn’t list which ones. It claims to finance a $328 billion transportation trust fund without specifying what taxes would be raised. It takes credit for $321 billion in spending cuts to offset the Medicare “doc fix” from 2014 through 2021. What are the cuts? To be determined. It claims more than $150 billion in “program integrity” savings so vague that the Congressional Budget Office could not even score them in past budget estimates. The budget takes credit for $700 billion in “cuts” by comparing the long-planned drawdown of Iraq and Afghanistan spending against a baseline that implausibly assumes those costs would rise forever.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Reagan Reclaimed

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Steven F. Hayward - Feb. 04 (News Analysis) - But while conservatives should pocket these unexpected concessions, they should also note that the admiration of Reagan in the media-academic complex is highly qualified and mostly limited to his role in the Cold War. (And even this story they get wrong.) About the domestic-policy Reagan, liberals are currently engaging in a clever two-step — either excoriating Reagan with recycled 1980s clichés (favors the rich, hates the poor and minorities, reckless deregulation, and so forth), or making him out to be a crypto-liberal who tacitly set out to shore up the welfare state while cloaking himself in anti-big-government rhetoric. Ever so slowly, liberals are attempting a subtle revisionism. This revisionism is alarming not simply as an offense against historical accuracy, but also because the Liberal Revised Standard Version of Reagan will be used against the Tea Party and congressional Republicans in the months and years to come. We can expect to hear (and have already heard once or twice) that even Reagan didn’t attack entitlements the way Paul Ryan and today’s radical House Republicans propose to do.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Puzzling Times

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Michael New - Jan. 31 (News Analysis) - The Sunday edition of the New York Times featured a shrill house editorial complaining about ongoing efforts to enact state level pro-life laws. Pro-life proposals to regulate abortion clinics and protect unborn children were deemed “ominous” “big brother measures” and “outrageous government intrusions.” Both the timing and tone of this editorial are puzzling. Just last week Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder for using scissors to kill babies delivered alive in his abortion mill. His clinic was described by regulators as a “filthy, foul smelling house of horrors.” In light of this, the New York Times must be the only newspaper in the country which believes that abortion clinics are somehow over-regulated.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Holder and Sebelius on Obamacare

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Yuval Levin - Dec. 14 (News Analysis) - After all, mandating the purchase of insurance is by no means the only way to address the problem of covering people with pre-existing conditions. As the first paragraph of Holder and Sebelius’s own op-ed makes clear, high-risk pools can achieve this too, and without a mandate. Champions of Obamacare only very grudgingly attached a temporary high-risk pool system to the law so that they would have something to show for themselves before 2014 when the new entitlement system gets going. But as many conservative health-care experts have long argued (here’s a great example), high-risk pools are actually a very good alternative to the kind of command-and-control scheme Obamacare would establish. The Virginia lawsuit would in no way undermine the sort of high-risk pool that is helping Gail O’Brien.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Voting Irregularities in Alaska?

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Katrina Trinko - Nov. 18 (News Report) - The Miller campaign, citing the a past history of irregularities from Alaska’s voting machines, is considering asking the state to do a hand recount of the votes. Joining them in that request is an unusual ally: liberal Alaskan radio host Shannyn Moore, who has made it clear she doesn’t support Miller’s candidacy. But in article for the Huffington Post, she questions the accuracy of the senate vote count, writing: Despite heavy national media coverage and historic Citizens United money spent on Alaska’s hotly contested and much-watched three-way US Senate race, the results, if we are to believe them, were a surprisingly low voter turnout. In fact, this election was one of the lowest turnouts since they started tracking ballots cast versus registered voters in the mid-1970s.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A Compromise Verdict, and No Winners

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

National Review - By Andrew C. McCarthy - Nov. 18 (News Analysis) - On the one count of conviction, Ghailani faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, and there is a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in jail. In that sense, it is a victory for the government: The object of a terrorism trial is to neutralize the terrorist, and one count will do the trick. But beyond that, the Justice Department walks away from the case as a big loser. That’s because the Obama administration made this much more than a terrorism trial. It cherry-picked the case to be a demonstration that the civilian criminal-justice system is up to the task of trying terrorists. This was to be the “turn the clock back” moment -- specifically, back to the Clinton years, when Eric Holder was deputy attorney general and when prosecution in civilian courts was the U.S. government’s principal response to the jihadist onslaught that began with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer