Free Republic

Legal Memorandum #4 on Trade and Economic Freedom Why Trade Promotion Authority is Constitutional By Edwin Meese III and Todd F. Gaziano - November 2001 Congress is expected to vote soon on whether to grant trade promotion authority (TPA) to President George W. Bush. Some critics of TPA have suggested that it might compromise national sovereignty and may actually be unconstitutional. But an important aspect of national sovereignty is the right to enter into international agreements and to participate in their enforcement. Being bound by agreements, such as mutual defense treaties, does not weaken sovereign power even though it obligates...

Richard Ingham, AFPApril 8, 2015 The Netherlands is the land of giants: on average, its women stand almost 5 feet 6 inches tall, and its men 6 feet tall. But how the Dutch became the world's tallest people has been somewhat of a mystery. After all, two centuries ago they were renowned for being among the shortest. What happened since then? A popular explanation is nutrition -- a calorie-stuffed diet rich in meat and dairy products. But that can't be the whole story, experts say. Other European countries, too, have enjoyed similar prosperity and a rise in living standards, yet...

Overlooked in the media coverage of and academic debate about physician-assisted suicide: it’s not the people most likely to receive it who are promoting it. “It’s the well off and healthy who are calling for it,” Farr A. Curlin, M.D., the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke University School of Medicine said at the Heritage Foundation on March 30, 2015. On the same panel on which Dr. Curlin spoke, Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation noted that disability rights groups are actively opposing such measures. Moreover, Anderson pointed out, in Oregon, which has physician-assisted suicide, “95 percent...

During his press briefing on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said that he's "hopeful" the House will move on immigration legislation before the end of the year. With House Republicans sticking to the mantra of border security before amnesty, it's likely the chamber will soon act on H.R.1417, the McCaul-Jackson Lee "border security" bill. Our legislative analyst Grant Newman has dissected the legislation, and he reports that the bill won't secure the border and even weakens existing law. THREE WAYS H.R.1417 WEAKENS CURRENT LAW 1) Secures only part of the border - The Secure Fence Act of 2006 requires the...

Economic growth in this recovery has averaged only half the rate of past World War II recessions. Average wages haven't risen in seven years. And most Americans are worried that the economic future for their children will be worse, not better than now. What does the new Republican Congress in 2015 need to do to pump up growth? How should it reform the tax code? Join us as our panel of experts explores these questions and debates possible solutions moving into the new Congressional year. Hosted By Stephen Moore, Chief Economist Speakers: Carly Fiorina Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard Company, and President,...

The controversial panel included two of America’s leading Islamophobes. Could you imagine a panel on Jewish issues featuring Mel Gibson?Why has hate become a part of mainstream conservatism? We saw an example of this Monday at The Heritage Foundation, a one-time quasi-respected conservative think tank. It appears that those days are gone, as Heritage has now become a platform for people denounced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for their hate-filled rhetoric. So what happened Monday? You may have read Dana Milbank’s column in The Washington Post about the panel—on the “unanswered questions” around Benghazi—that turned...

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post who serially exaggerates or distorts what he writes about. It’s just what he does. This has been established so many times by so many people that it’s disappointing to see he is still given prominent perch in his paper and that people who made it past their sophomore year in high school take him seriously. My contribution to the cataloguing of his hackery is “Dana Milbank Is Incoherent On Marriage,” which shows how he just made stuff up when covering a panel of women at the Heritage Foundation. Last night he...

We know you’re busy. And we’re quite certain you care deeply about the future of our country. We care, too. We care about your communities, your families, and how Washington’s decisions are going to impact you. More and more people are grabbing bites of news from mobile devices on the go – and they need a place where they can find digestible, trusted news on the most important policy debate of the day. That’s why the Heritage Foundation team created a digital-first, multimedia news platform called The Daily Signal. The Daily Signal provides policy and political news as well as...

We know you’re busy. And we’re quite certain you care deeply about the future of our country. We care, too. We care about your communities, your families, and how Washington’s decisions are going to impact you. More and more people are grabbing bites of news from mobile devices on the go – and they need a place where they can find digestible, trusted news on the most important policy debate of the day. That’s why the Heritage Foundation team is excited to announce that we’re creating a digital-first, multimedia news platform. After months of planning, on June 3 we will...

NEW ORLEANS — Few senators have sparked more excitement and debate in their first year in Washington as Sen. Ted Cruz. Today, the Texas Republican delivers the closing address at The Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank meeting. The Foundry will broadcast Cruz’s speech live at approximately 12:45 p.m. ET. Outside of Washington, Cruz is perhaps best known for his efforts to stop Obamacare before implementation began last fall. In recent months, he’s been an vocal supporter of conservative principles on a range of issues. Just this week, Cruz filed the American Energy Renaissance Act, legislation he’s sponsoring with Rep. Jim Bridenstine...

Machiavelli’s famous advice to politicians is that it is better to be feared than loved. Less often quoted is an equally valuable admonition: avoid being hated. Jim DeMint, the former senator-turned-Tea Party leader at the helm of the Heritage Foundation, never tried to win the love of the Republican establishment. He did, however, succeed over the past several years, first as the junior senator from South Carolina and since last year, as head of the GOP’s most prominent think tank, at being feared by his fellow Republicans. But now he finds himself in the position of being merely despised. Read...

Education savings accounts, or ESA’s, are like scholarships, where 90% of what the state would pay per student would be given to parents in a bank account-like program. The parents can use the additional funds to pay for private school tuition or other education expenses, which in Arizona amounted to about $3,000 per pupil. The program was initially started as one to help special needs students, but was expanded to adopted children, children of military families and students from failing public schools. The Heritage Foundation’s recent panel, “Education Savings Accounts: The Future of School Choice,” featured a panel discussion of...

While Heritage has drawn the ire of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for its frequent opposition to leadership proposals, the presenters largely ignored the party leaders. Instead, the lawmakers who took the stage on Monday went out of their way to align themselves with the increasingly controversial organization. “When you’re working with the Heritage Foundation, I’ll bet on that team every time,” Jordan said, calling it “the greatest policy think tank in the whole wide world.”Conservatives on Monday offered a vision of a nation without ObamaCare, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and with the federal government offloading authority over a broad...

Ever since The Heritage Foundation announced it was hiring Stephen Moore to be the think tank's chief economist, there have been rumblings on the left hoping that the new hire signaled a coming policy change on immigration. For example, Talking Points Memo's Dylan Scott reports: Outsider observers in the conservative sphere were emphatic: Moore's hiring could be a turning point for Heritage, both in general and particularly on immigration, this Congress's best shot -- however remote -- to leave a meaningful legislative mark. Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, who has called the...

The Heritage Foundation of late has been subsumed to the bare-knuckle Heritage Action, the result being a diminution in the influence and intellectual integrity of the foundation. It is therefore cause for conservative celebration that Wall Street editorial board member Stephen Moore is being brought in as the foundation’s chief economist. Moore is pro-growth, pro-immigration — a cheery conservative warrior. If allowed free rein — and I can’t believe he would have taken the job unless he was assured of intellectual freedom — he has the ability to restore Heritage Foundation’s luster and to help introduce the far right to...

<p>Stephen Moore, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and founder of the Club for Growth, is returning to The Heritage Foundation as chief economist.</p> <p>Now, with immigration reform likely to be debated in Congress again this year, Moore said he welcomed the opportunity to work on the issue at Heritage. Jim DeMint and I may not agree on everything about immigration, but what Jim wants me and others to do is develop a pro-growth immigration policy for the country. I don’t want Heritage to be viewed as anti-immigration. We all know immigration is vitally important to our economy. Our goal will be to develop an immigration policy that’s in the best interest of America, our economy, and allows the United States to get the best and brightest people to come here.</p>

I attended an excellent panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. today on GSE (housing) reform. The speakers were Mark Calabria (Cato), Alex Pollock (AEI), Arnold Kling (former Freddie Mac employee) and Josh Rosner (Graham-Fisher). All speakers agreed that the government guarantee should be eliminated on residential mortgages. Essentially, the US over invests in housing to the detriment of other aspects of the economy. Sure, we got a bubble in house prices and homeownership, but we also neglected building factories and the rest of the economy (choosing instead to import goods from abroad). Here is the result of...

-snip- “Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans,” Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, himself a longtime conservative leader in Washington, said Thursday in an interview on MSNBC. “There’s a real question on the minds of many Republicans now — and I’m not just thinking for myself, for a lot of people — is Heritage going to go so political that it really doesn’t amount to anything anymore? I hope not.” -snip- Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, said Thursday that Mr. Hatch’s criticism is unfounded and in fact, he answered his own question about the...

Heritage Action For America, an influential conservative group, on Tuesday urged House Republicans to vote against their leaders' latest bill to fund the government and raise U.S. borrowing authority. The private group said that the legislation, which was scheduled to be voted on late on Tuesday, fails to "stop Obamacare's massive new entitlements from taking root." The group is warning lawmakers that it will look at their positions on this legislation in considering whether to encourage candidates to run against them in Republican primary campaigns next year.

The Republican Party is at war with itself. It's divided over how best to shrink the federal budget and how to undo President Obama's healthcare law. Behind the GOP crackup over the government shutdown lies a much bigger battle for control of the party. And the most important actors aren't Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us the government shutdown. The party rift's chief driver is a constellation of hard-line conservative fundraising groups, led in part by a former senator most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, Jim DeMint of South...