For the past 10 years, the United States has engaged in constant warfare. Does that mean the next 10 years will be the same, even after U.S. combat troops are out of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Put it a different way: We have spent trillions of dollars to create the most professional and powerful military force in the world to fight those wars. It continues to cost hundreds of billions more each year to help sustain this all-volunteer force.
Read full article >>A contentious battle between Catholic groups and the Obama administration has flared in recent days, fueled by the new health-care law and ongoing divisions over access to abortion and birth control.
The latest dispute centers on a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services in late September to end funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help victims of human trafficking, or modern-day slavery. The church group had overseen nationwide services to victims since 2006 but was denied a new grant in favor of three other groups.
Read full article >>Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain, hit with a barrage of questions Monday about allegations of sexual harassment, also faced new questions about financial ties between his campaign and a private charity run by two of his top aides.
Citing internal financial documents, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a Wisconsin tax-exempt charity called Prosperity USA footed the bill for about $40,000 worth of iPads, chartered airplanes and other expenses as Cain’s campaign got off the ground early this year.
Read full article >>Herman Cain emphatically denied on Monday that he had ever sexually harassed anyone, calling allegations of harassment by two former employees “totally baseless and totally false” and saying that he is the innocent victim of a “witch hunt.”
With the allegations threatening his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Cain acknowledged in an interview with Fox News Channel the harassment charges during his tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association. He said he had been “falsely accused.”
In this country’s troubling times (the Kardashian breakup, allegations of sexual harassment swirling around the GOP primary race), it’s hard to be optimistic about our future. Enter the U.S. House of Representatives, which is offering a slate of events this week certain to restore our faith in America — or at least in American branding.
Read full article >>“Compromise” is not the same thing as finding “common ground.”
That’s the argument that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made Monday morning in a lecture at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center (named for the Republican leader in the other chamber, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky).
Read full article >>Newt Gingrich has always had an instinct for the jugular. One reason his once-comatose campaign is enjoying something of a resurgence of late is the fact that he has gone on the attack — against the media.
Gingrich told me in an interview Friday that he felt everything started to go his way again after the GOP’s August debate in Ames, Iowa, where he accused FOX News’s Chris Wallace of asking “gotcha questions” and playing “Mickey Mouse games.”
Read full article >>Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who took his campaign to the Iowa airwaves last week, is out with another ad. This one tries to turn his lackluster performance in recent debates into an asset, and to soften the emerging perception of Perry as unlikable or overly aggressive.
Perry, who has fallen behind in Iowa, makes the 30-second ad’s opening statement. “If you are looking for a slick politician or a guy with great teleprompter skills, we already have that, and he’s destroying our economy,” Perry says. “I’m a doer, not a talker.”
Read full article >>(This post has been updated.)
President Obama signed an executive order Monday instructing the Food and Drug Administration to address a growing shortage of prescription drugs that are used to treat cancer and other diseases.
The order is the latest in a series of actions that the Obama administration has announced over the past week that do not require congressional approval. The White House began taking the smaller-scale initiatives after the Senate blocked the president’s $447 billion American Jobs Act.
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