Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Rising persecution of minority religious communities in Pakistan, Iran and Syria — and other nations — is a serious threat to stability in those countries and their neighbors, a panel of specialists said at a Hudson Institute forum this week, showing how religious tensions can have larger political ramifications in hot spots around the world.
"Mayday," the universal distress call, is herein sounded for a U.S. Navy in serious trouble. Even as the Navy continues to fulfill commitments around the world, the number of ships and aircraft is decreasing, and those that remain are aging at an unacceptable rate.
Even as Congress prepares to debate whether to legalize 11 million illegal immigrants and give them a path to citizenship, analysts are cautioning lawmakers to focus on the other part of immigration: assimilating them fully into America.
China’s military fears a major cyberattack against its strategic forces, and communist leaders also worry about cyberstrikes against infrastructure, according to Michael Pillsbury, a former Reagan administration defense-planning chief.
It was almost inevitable. Dr. Ben Carson will be a featured speaker at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in mid-March, praised by American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas as someone deeply in touch with the fiscal and social challenges of the age, who nonetheless "represents the optimism and hope of the future of the conservative movement."
Robert H. Bork, who stepped in to fire the Watergate prosecutor at Richard Nixon's behest and whose failed 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, has died. He was 85.
Apples are apples and oranges are oranges, and it makes little difference whether they are bought as organic products or not, a new study concluded this week.
Even the most sanguine American cannot say that the first decade of the 21st century was one of overall positive developments for the country. The decade's lasting successes -- meager accomplishments such as technological improvements and affordable prescription drugs for seniors -- were bookended by terrorist attacks and a financial crisis, with two wars and growing political discordance in between.
Republicans pre-loaded rebuttals to an Obamacare win in the Supreme Court, promising to "double down" on their efforts to repeal the health care law, and insisting the ruling would bolster Mitt Romney's campaign and appeal for him. They have a point. Pollsters consistently find that a majority of Americans either don't understand the law, or are wary of its big government implications and staggering costs.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney may have a cure-all for health care reform as the Supreme Court hears arguments about the constitutionality of the law on Monday.
After all, at that shrine to our most fundamental civil rights, the delegates would have found an exhibit about freedom of speech that declares: "For better or worse, the First Amendment helps shelter the varied results of free expression even when they are considered by some to be offensive or distasteful."
Black helicopters and "one-world government" have long been staples of conspiracy theories across the political spectrum, but, as the saying goes, even paranoids have real enemies. Hudson Institute senior fellow John Fonte has written a new book showing that there really are people in positions of authority who would dilute national sovereignty and transfer political power to unaccountable transnational organizations.
Stockbrokers will tell you that predicting the future is risky. Max Singer's method in "History of the Future" is to assume the future will be like the past, which skirts a multitude of pitfalls. He worked with Herman Kahn at the Rand Corp., and his book, in its optimism, would have met with Kahn's approval. Later they founded the Hudson Institute together.
Snowprah Winfrey, Snoverkill, SnOMG, Snonami — the nation has moved far beyond mere Snowpocalypse.
Read it and snort. Consider $3.4 million for termite research in Louisiana, $1 million for Hawaiian seafood studies, $1 million for a Rhode Island bike path, $800,000 for a nice little city park in Oregon, $520,000 for blueberry breeding in New Jersey.
