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An important if usually under-the-radar public policy issue is occupational licensing – state rules that require residents to meet various criteria (and pay for them) before they may earn a living in a particular profession. Rolling back licensure mandates requires taking on groups with a vested interest in preserving these restrictions on opportunity (and potential competitors). To its credit the previous Legislature did do some good if still-modest work in this area. In a bipartisan manner, legislators eliminated rules having to do with dieticians and nutritionists, interior designers, auctioneers, community planners, carnival workers, ocularists, school solicitors and immigration clerical assistants....

Matt Drudge is running a "poll" on his Web site — it's the Drudge Report, if you have paid no attention to politics for the past 17 years — that asks readers to choose their preferred 2016 Republican presidential candidate. As of 3:15 p.m. Eastern Time Monday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was dominating with 47 percent (more than 84,000 votes) followed by Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) at 14 percent and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) at 13 percent. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has been anointed by the party establishment as the front-runner in the race, takes 5 percent. Who...

There are places in the world where the obvious, open carry of firearms is a dangerous thing to do.  This occurs where life becomes cheaper than the value of a modern firearm, legal firearms are hard to obtain, and the police are held in low esteem. I first heard of this in the early 1980's in graduate school when an erudite colleague, Norman Whisler, showed me articles from India where officers were murdered for their service firearms on a fairly regular basis.   The harder a society makes it to obtain modern firearms, the more police who openly carry are...

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has a long record as a Big Government, “progressive” Republican, but in Tennessee it still pays for campaigning politicians to pretend to be politically conservative. On The New American’s rating of congressional votes, The Freedom Index, Sen. Alexander has compiled an anemic cumulative score of 53 percent. Political commentator/author Michelle Malkin has dubbed Alexander a “double-talking weasel,” especially for his deceptive flimflamming on immigration amnesty and Common Core education standards. Paul Blumenthal at the liberal-left Huffington Post reported in a piece on January 29 (Groups With Liberal Ties Tapped To Re-Elect The GOP Establishment) on the...

We at IBD often get lambasted for our gloomy take on the monthly jobs data that emerge from the government. After all, if the government puts it out, it can't be inaccurate, can it? And it must be honest, right? Well, we're not alone in casting aspersions on the dicey employment numbers.

Public Health: In their ongoing effort to politicize everything, liberals are trying to blame Republicans for the measles outbreak. But it was left-wingers who drove the anti-vaccine crusade that contributed to the outbreak.

“Indeed, those who disbelieve in Our verses – We will drive them into a Fire. Every time their skins are roasted through We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise.” Quran Sura 4:56 In the burning scene video the Islamic State gave the Islamic edict straight from the top Islamic authority of Ibn Taymiyya’s jurisprudence: “So if horror of commonly desecrating the body is a call for them [the infidels] to believe [in Islam], or to stop their aggression, it is from here that we carry...

  Sometimes the worst ideas are tried just to show how bad they are.  Like the Pontiac Aztek, or Sylvester Stallone in one more action flick.  Here’s a really bad one:  myfrienemies.com.  It describes itself as a site that “allows you to connect with people who pretend to like the same people as you”—and if you use the site, you’ll meet the other sixteen people who also pretend to like it.  Palestinians and the LGBT community:  frienemies for life.  The only thing they have in common is a hatred for Israel: a country where gays and Arabs serve in the...

Europe and America are impaled on the horns of a strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the world is besieged by jihadi religious terror, barbarity, and serial wars with jihadists. Concurrently, most of the civilized world defends the very religious cultures, Sunni and Shia Islam especially, where the problems originate. To be clear at the outset; with Islam today, there seems to be less and less daylight between secular and religious imperatives. Theology, for the most part, is the a priori premise for Muslim politics and evangelism, Islamism if you will. Culture proceeds from or is conditioned by religious writ...

2014 was 'barbaric,' deadly year for journalists On May 19, 2011, President Barack Obama spoke at the State Department about the so-called Arab Spring. He celebrated the “extraordinary change taking place in the Middle East and North Africa.” He also said that the United States had sided with the changes taking place across the region: “There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity…after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.” He talked of the...

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VIDEO: Attkisson-Obama This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Michael Loftus, host of The Flipside With Michael Loftus, Morgan Brittany, a conservative TV and movie star, and Tommi Trudeau, host of Politics Tonight With Tommi Trudeau. The Gang discussed A Day in the Life of a Dissident Reporter in Obama’s America, analyzing the frightening case of former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson — and her daring refusal to toe the Party Line (starts at 27:10 mark). The discussion was preceded by a focus on Hijab Day at NP3 High School, Michelle Obama’s “No” to Hijab in Riyadh, Islam — A House...

What do “right” and “left” mean in the Jewish world when it comes to Israel? “Right” means the view that Israel has no choice but to cope with hostility from the Arab and Muslim world, and from Europe, that it does not cause except by existing, along with criticisms and pressures from U.S. administrations that are excessive and unfair. “Left” means the view that Israel itself does much to cause the hostility, criticisms, and pressures, and could become a much more accepted country by correcting its behavior. In the current Israeli election campaign, the left-wing parties—mainly Isaac Herzog and Tzipi...

The Obama administration has a soft spot in its heart for the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. Just last month, the U.S. State Department went out of its way to insult the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom the Obama administration should be treating as a valuable ally in the fight against global jihadism, by hosting a delegation of leaders who have been aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. The State Department’s guests at the meeting, whose visit was arranged and paid for by Georgetown University, included former Freedom and Justice Party members (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party). One of the State...

Theresa-MayThe Multicultural Madness of Theresa May by Paul Weston Western politicians have got themselves into a bit of a pickle over the violent rise of Islam both globally and within the once Christian West. Just as it would be difficult for a scientist to conduct experiments related to oil and water without first accepting the fact that They Just Don’t Mix, so it becomes similarly difficult for politicians to talk rationally about the predictable outcome of trying to mix together monocultural Islam and multicultural nothingness – without succumbing to some form of inevitable mental breakdown. When we wilfully refuse to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There's less than two weeks to go for all of us to have some form of health insurance, or be penalized by the government. That means there's a last minute push in communities like Minneapolis's Cedar Riverside Neighborhood to sign people up. Every immigrant community has its own unique barriers, but in the Somali community, advocates are racing against both time and culture. Timadde Aden is a typical case. He's never had health insurance, but enrolled for medical assistance today through MNsure at the Somali Health Solutions office in Minneapolis. One of the employees at that office, Hodan Guled, says,...

Here is a post by a Colorado teacher who vividly explains the difference in the lives of fortunate students and the less fortunate students whom she teaches. Her last post on this blog was a nuanced look into the psyche of some students of color who live in poverty, which you can read here. This public school teacher often blogs anonymously under the name Shakespeare’s Sister at Daily Kos. She teaches 11th grade AP Language and Composition in the Denver area. Here is Shakespeare’s Sister newest post for this blog: Recently, events in Ferguson and New York have reminded us...

A Houston musician has been murdered by an illegal alien who had been allowed to stay in the United States, even though the alien had been convicted in Texas previously for selling narcotics. The suspect was killed by police following a second murder that he committed immediately after killing the musician. The illegal alien’s name was Victor Manuel Reyes. Court records indicate the alien was sentenced to five years for drug dealing in 2010 and had an immigration hold upon exiting prison. It is unclear at this time if he was deported and immediately came back in across the porous...

Over the past few months we have heard increasing calls for the Obama administration to “call the enemy what it is” or “identify the enemy by name.” It is true that you can’t defeat an enemy you don’t identify. These calls are invariably followed up by naming the enemy. Only the names assigned to our enemies seem to always be wrong. A few of the wrong names: • Radical Islam • Islamic extremism • Radical Islamic extremism • Islamist extremism • Radical Islamist extremism The problem with all these names is that they are names that we in the West...

It could be a great year for lasers and spy satellites, but a bad one for drones on aircraft carriers.President Barack Obama’s Defense Department budget request released Monday shows that the route to technological breakthroughs is often winding. Last year, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a new “offset strategy” to develop breakthrough solutions to secure American technological dominance into the next century. This year, the budget request increases money for research and development by about $500 million, bringing it to $13.5 billion. It will be a great year for futuristic technologies that sound like they come from a comic book....