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Some of These Days by: Mytheos Holt, July 08, 2009 In order to devote further analysis to the threat level posed by a nuclear Iran, the Heritage Foundation recently convened a panel of speakers to discuss a recent jointly authored paper, entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Threat: The Day After.” The talk was moderated by James Jay Carafano, Assistant Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. In his brief introduction, Carafano described the central purpose of the paper and the question it aimed to answer. “This project actually started with a very simple premise and a single...

There seems to have been a change in the mood of the electorate lately as it relates to United States President Barack Obama. This has become increasingly evident as more and more of the intrusive nature of the Obama administration’s plans for controlling climate change, the very nature of the health care relationship between patients and their providers and the de facto nationalization of the country’s major automobile producers (Ford Motor Company is the lone holdout, at present) continues at breakneck speeds in the Congress and at the White House. Truly, we feel we’re witnessing a reordering of the manner...

Obama praises Italy's 'great' leader as a man of integrity — but it's not Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi escorts the President ... Image :1 of 3 Richard Owen, L'Aquila Many Italians will no doubt be pleased that when President Obama arrived in Italy today for his first G8 summit, he immediately launched into lavish praise of the nation’s “great leader”. This eminent figure had “the admiration of the Italian people”, Mr Obama said, not only because of his long public service but also for his “integrity and his graciousness". “I just want to confirm that everything I have heard about him...

You may want to think twice before taking your next deep breath. Every time you exhale, you’re supposedly endangering the planet -- by contributing to global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency says global warming poses a “serious threat to public health and safety.” That sets the stage for the EPA to regulate, through the Clean Air Act, almost anything that emits carbon dioxide. CO2, of course, is a naturally-occurring gas. It’s produced whenever a person breathes and, yes, whenever we use any sort of fossil fuel. Driving a car, mowing a lawn, boiling a cup of water, even flipping on...

Audit: States Using Stimulus Just To Stay Afloat WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Projects in some of the nation's poorest areas don't appear to be getting a fair shake in the spending of $787 billion in stimulus funds, the chairman of the House oversight committee said Wednesday. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the panel, said he was particularly concerned that transportation projects in economically distressed areas were being left out — even though they are supposed to be a priority. "There is a substantial variation among states as to what constitutes an economically distressed area," Towns said. "For this reason, it...

Michael Jackson reportedly was very interested in being cloned. "I really want to do it Uri, and I don’t care how much it costs," he is said to have told Uri Geller, a self-proclaimed psychic who claims to bend spoons with his mind (boy, if I had that power I'd sure use it for something besides spoon-bending!). Whether the news report is accurate or not, the fact is the science didn't advance soon enough for Jackson. There have been no substantiated claims of cloned human embryos grown into fetal stages and beyond, despite rumors to the contrary. The capability to...

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MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. - Police have arrested a Muskegon Heights man after they say he threw the family cat up to 20 times, possibly breaking the animal's back and leg. Police say the 30-year-old man told them he found the cat eating his food on the kitchen counter, picked it up and threw it.

America's long-awaited fiscal train wreck is now underway.  Depending on policy actions taken now and over the next few years, federal deficits will likely average as much as 6% of GDP through 2019, contributing to a jump in debt held by the public to as high as 82% of GDP by then - a doubling over the next decade.  Worse, barring aggressive policy actions, deficits and debt will rise even more sharply thereafter as entitlement spending accelerates relative to GDP.  Keeping entitlement promises would require unsustainable borrowing, taxes or both, severely testing the credibility of our policies and hurting our...

In Russia and Italy this week, President Obama is taking steps on nuclear weapons and climate change that are in line with his pledge to rebuild U.S. alliances around the world. It's a window on what we could see in the next four to eight years: The birth of new treaties and the revival of old ones that have long been stalled, some for decades. This shift was a cornerstone of Obama's campaign. He made it clear that he sees international laws and institutions as potential "pillars of U.S. policy and influence as opposed to constraints that hinder and hobble...

<p>A man trashed his hotel room near Orlando International Airport this week after he got a call from someone posing as a front-desk clerk who told him to smash his windows because of a gas leak.</p>

I’m madder than Winston Churchill at an A.A. meeting! Just when I figured Al Gore couldn’t get any nuttier, yesterday he made a fool of himself again. He gave a speech at some fancy British college, and told the kids that fighting global warming was like fighting Hitler. Well, global warming and World War II both had something to do with “gas”, but other than that, I don’t get it. I didn’t drop out of divinity school like Al Gore did, and I didn’t invent the internet or get a hoity toity Nobel Prize, so can somebody explain his speech...

BEIJING: Even as additional security personnel and machinery poured into Urumqi, the Chinese foreign ministry has got into action asking several countries including Pakistan to prove their friendship by taking a stand on the issue. Beijing wants several countries to unearth the links between their citizens and the World Uyghur Congress. A worried Hu Jintao, secretary-general of the Communist Party of China and the country's president left the G8 summit in Italy and rushed back to Beijing on Tuesday night as it dawned on Chinese authorities that the Urumqi violence might set off a chain reaction and eventually affect the...

OK, my headline is admittedly too simplistic. In fact, the whole medical malpractice milieu is sorely in need of a fix. We have unnecessarily large awards to aggrieved patients, crushing insurance costs to doctors to cover malpractice, a situation where defensive medicine drives up costs, and an entire industry of lawyers whose job it is, apparently, to rape the system and cause it to be burdensome for all of us. On top of that, we have a national party in the Democrats assisting these very destructive lawyers to do just that. This is a part of our medical system that...

LAS VEGAS—The Clark County coroner says a 32-year-old man killed by Las Vegas police on July 1 was shot in the back. ... The coroner says an initial report that Hambleton died of a gunshot wound to the chest was a "clerical error."

Most encyclicals are so long, so dense and so reflective of the committee of theologians that prepares them that they wind up as the least-read of any papal pronouncements -- despite being the most authoritative document a pope can issue. That is especially true of encyclicals on social justice, like the one Pope Benedict XVI released today. One reason is that Catholic social-justice teaching covers so many complex issues -- trade, immigration, labor unions, business ethics and wage gaps, to name but a few -- that the eyes of the most ardent faithful can glaze over. Moreover, today's economy is...

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WHEELING - He is not yet back to work in the Senate chamber, but U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd is opposing "cap and trade" legislation pushed by the Obama administration. The 91-year-old Byrd, D-W.Va., was released from an unidentified Washington, D.C. hospital last week after a month-long stay for a staph infection. He expects to return to the chamber before the Senate begins debate on "cap and trade" - which is tentatively set for this fall, according to Byrd's office. "I cannot support the House bill in its present form," Byrd said in a statement. "I continue to believe that clean...

Unhappy at work? You're not alone. The recession has left a lot of people out of a job, but many of those still employed aren't very happy at the office. That's because layoff survivors are often stuck with increased workloads, fewer benefits and even less pay. But they're staying put -- at least for now. Fifty-four percent of employed Americans plan to look for a new job once the economy rebounds, according to a survey from Adecco Group North America. The sentiment is even stronger among younger workers. Of those ages 18-29, 71% say they are likely to look for...

Cash-strapped states have used federal stimulus dollars to close short-term budget gaps and avert major tax increases but generally have not directed the money toward long-term expansion, according to a new report released on Wednesday.