Free Republic

Too Big To Fail? Melissa Barnhart, May 5, 2010 Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), and James Gattuso, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discussed the pitfalls in Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd’s (pdf) financial regulatory reform bill during the Tuesday, April 27, Bloggers Briefing in Washington D.C. As of Wednesday, Dodd, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, agreed to take the debate of the bill to the Senate floor on Thursday, after Republicans won what concessions they could get from the Democrats. Among them, the removal of the $50...

Thaddeus Explains It All Melissa Barnhart, April 28, 2010 Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee and member of the House Financial Services Committee, was among the invited speakers at Tuesday’s Bloggers Briefing held weekly at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Instead of discussing his efforts in his Congressional District, Rep. McCotter asked bloggers to share the opinions and concerns of Americans they talk to, and thus kicked off a 30-minute Q and A at the briefing. Q: In terms of what’s coming up on the Hill, what do you anticipate happening in the Senate...

Visualize Regulation Natalia Angulo, March 11, 2010 Do consumers need a new regulatory agency to protect them in the financial marketplace? George Mason Professor of Law, Todd Zywicki, spoke to an initially sanguine audience at the Blogger’s Briefing Tuesday on his glum fiscal findings. Upon hearing about the government’s current attempt, and epic failure, to revitalize the American economy the tone of the room was noticeably more disconcerted. Zywicki explained that the original proposal for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency was disastrous because it expanded government, increased spending, and was actually out of sync with consumer needs. While the current...

Stan Evans on Blog Talk Radio Malcolm A. Kline, December 17, 2009 On December 17, 2009, author M. Stanton Evans will guest on Accuracy in Media’s blog talk radio show. Evans will discuss Accuracy in Academia’s first textbook, Voodoo Anyone? How to Understand Economics Without Really Trying. Evans wrote the forward to Voodoo Anyone? and to a large degree served as its inspiration. He was a friend and mentor to the late author, Christopher T. Warden, for the last 25 of his 51 years of life. Warden, who taught at Troy University at the time of his death, was one...

Stan Evans @ Bloggers Briefing Malcolm A. Kline, December 15, 2009 At the Heritage Foundation blogger’s briefing from 12-1 on December 15, 2009, M. Stanton Evans will be giving a few remarks on Voodoo Anyone? How to Understand Economics Without Really Trying. Evans wrote the forward to Accuracy in Academia’s first textbook by the late Christopher T. Warden and had served as a friend and mentor to him. “This is a book that’s long been needed—and is needed nowadays more than ever,” Evans wrote in the forward. “‘Economics for journalists’ may sound like a dry, academic subject, but as recent...

Chamber of Commerce Pushback Sarah Carlsruh, December 7, 2009 On November 24th, members of the Chamber of Commerce, the largest business federation, spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s conservative Blogger’s Briefing in defense of the interests of their more than three million organizations and businesses. Thomas Collamore, senior vice president of Communications and Strategy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, addressed the recent media attacks of the Chamber. He said that Moveon.org and other groups have engaged in “an orchestrated campaign… to harass the Chamber and its members.” Groups such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Center for...

There We Go Again Sarah Carlsruh, November 17, 2009 Unlike the current Republican Party, which does not “know what it stands for,” former President Ronald Reagan’s ideals encompassed the Republican party, claimed Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America. This transformed the Republican Party into a conservative party and made the conservativism of Reagan’s day into the vehicle of change, claimed Shirley Unfortunately, America has no such “father figure today” Shirley said when he introduced his book at The Heritage Foundation’s conservative Blogger’s Briefing on November 10th. In response to critics suggesting...

Viewing Progressivism With Perspective Allie Winegar Duzett, November 10, 2009 “To see what is truly afoot,” the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spalding argued, current events need to be looked at with “perspective.” “Nothing that is being proposed right now, including health care, is a new idea,” Spalding said at last week’s Bloggers’ Briefing. “These are old, tired ideas that all go back about a hundred years or so. The first time national federal health care was proposed was in 1904; it was in the 1912 Progressive platform. These are ideas that have a pedigree in this country.” Spalding explained that while...

Keeping Communism Down Allie Winegar Duzett, November 9, 2009 November 9th is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even if news stations like CNN and ABC do not, other people worldwide will be celebrating this defeat of communism. November 9th marked “the effective death of the Cold War,” Dr. Lee Edwards said at the Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing earlier this week. The Cold War was “a war which America participated in for forty-six years—it’s the reason why we fought in Korea, the reason we fought in Vietnam: fighting and opposing communism,” he explained, noting that...

Schooled On Constitutionalism Allie Winegar Duzett, November 9, 2009 America today is facing what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) called a tipping point: if President Obama’s socialist agenda is implemented, America will be on the path to total statist takeover. This takeover has been going on for a century though, as leftist politicians have encouraged a culture of entitlement throughout the nation. Rep. Ryan argued at last week’s Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing that the only way to end this culture of entitlements and handouts is to talk to the youth. No one can tell the elderly that their benefits will be...

TheConservatives.com Status Update Allie Winegar Duzett, November 2, 2009 John Solomon is not just a writer for The Washington Times—he is also a founder of the new Times-sponsored website, TheConservatives.com. Solomon discussed this new website at a recent Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing. TheConservatives.com is an innovative new site with amazing new technologies. At this website, people can keep up with profiled conservatives, such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, in a way that they couldn’t before: the site aggregates everything that such profiled conservatives are up to. This means that if you want to check out what Mitt Romney is...

Minority Raises Its Profile Allie Winegar Duzett, November 2, 2009 Yet another eloquent conservative spokesman whom media outlets can’t seem to find spoke at the Bloggers’ Briefing at the Heritage Foundation last week. “For those of you who want to know, I’m not going to be on Dancing with the Stars,” Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) said, laughing about his relationship with former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay at a recent Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing. “It’s been an interesting ten months,” Rep. Olson began, referring to the myriad of legislation the Obama administration has proposed: health care, cap and trade, et cetera....

Net Discrimination Sarah Carlsruh, October 26, 2009 At the October 13 Conservative Blogger’s Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell addressed the issue of net neutrality, specifically the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) upcoming initiative to regulate the internet. On October 22nd, the FCC voted on a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding open internet practices. According to Commissioner McDowell, the premise behind the new rules—as outlined by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski—is that the “internet is broken and government must fix it.” This draft, said McDowell, focuses on “adding a non-discrimination requirement to the four net neutrality principles that came...