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Today, in a 2–1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that defined marriage in the California constitution as one man and one woman.

The appeals court decision upholds the decision of the lower court, which struck down Prop 8 as unconstitutional. According to the court of appeals, there was no “legitimate reason” for California voters to enact Prop 8.

In contrast to the trial court, the appeals court decision bases its decision on very narrow grounds that might not apply in other cases not involving the unique facts of Prop 8.

The court states:

Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry…is an important and highly controversial question.… We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case, however…[, because the] unique and strictly limited effect of Proposition 8 allows us to address the amendment’s constitutionality on narrow grounds.

However, the panel’s “narrow” reasoning is little more than an activist house of cards. According to the panel, because the California constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage—a right that existed for less than six months as a result of another activist judicial decision that modified both how the California constitution had always been read and the application of a state law enacted through initiative—the people of California could not amend their constitution to putatively disadvantage those who would seek to avail themselves of same-sex marriage without meeting the liberal court’s heavy-handed standards for what constitutes “legitimate” reasons.

While denying that the decision creates a one-way ratchet in which any activist opinion creating rights or privileges becomes beyond correction by the people, that is precisely what this stunning decision does.

The ruling is lengthy and will bear additional analysis. But according to one legal scholar, “the case now has a seemingly clear path to the Supreme Court.” If the importance of the legal question wasn’t sufficient to guarantee that, consider that the decision was authored by liberal activist Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who has done much to contribute to the Ninth Circuit’s reputation for high reversal rates by the Supreme Court. Indeed, it has been frequently reported that Judge Reinhardt is so brazen about his lawless activism that he has bragged that the Supreme Court “can’t catch ‘em all”—“‘em” being his legally wayward opinions.

As the Ninth Circuit writes, the question of how to define marriage “is currently a matter of great debate in our nation.” Unfortunately, instead of permitting that debate to occur through the political process, decisions like the one issued today remove the question from voters in favor of judicially imposed social policy.

Many Americans will not recognize the name Abu Qatada. Qatada is a radical Muslim cleric currently behind bars in the United Kingdom waiting deportation to Jordan for terrorism-related charges. It has been widely reported that he is also wanted by authorities in Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Algeria and has been once described by a Spanish judge as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe.” The British government claims that Qatada provided religious and spiritual advice to extremist groups almost immediately after arriving in Britain in the mid-1990s.

Qatada is also a threat to the United States. A number of Qatada videos were found in the Hamburg apartment of Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks. He is also alleged to have links to Abu Doha, an Algerian national who was instrumental in planning an aborted plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations in December 1999.

In 2000, Qatada was convicted in absentia in Jordan for his role in plotting terrorist attacks at high-profile tourist sites. Viewed as a threat to British security, he was locked up while waiting deportation to Jordan. After he appealed his deportation in 2009, the highest appeals court in the U.K. ruled against Qatada, saying that he could be deported to Jordan because the U.K. received adequate assurances from the Jordanians that he would not be tortured.

While waiting to be deported to Jordan, Qatada took the U.K. government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to appeal the decision by the U.K. appeals court. Last month the ECHR overruled the British courts, ruling that deporting Qatada to Jordan would be a violation of his human rights. A U.K. court ruled yesterday that Qatada can longer be held behind bars and must be released on bail. It is expected that he will be back on the streets of London in the next few days.

The release, even on the terms of bail, of someone as dangerous as Qatada is unacceptable. Prime Minister David Cameron has been very critical of the ECHR and has led the calls in Europe for the court to be reformed. If supranational judges in Strasbourg continue to overrule decisions taken by national courts, London will soon have to choose between membership in the ECHR and its ability to deport terrorist suspects. The Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and Attorney General in the U.K. should do all they can to prevent Qatada from being released.

The U.S. coal industry is facing a grim outlook in 2012, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pollution rules are one big reason.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule have contributed to the premature shutdown of several coal plants and the idling of coal mines across the country. The EPA’s attack on coal is sending electricity bills skyrocketing as more expensive sources of energy take coal’s place. While anti-coal protestors cheer, American families are paying the price.

Alpha Natural Resources, a major Appalachian coal producer, announced plans to lower coal production last Friday as demand for coal by electric utilities is dropping:

Alpha subsidiaries in Kentucky and West Virginia will idle four mines immediately and two others between now and early 2013, while several other mines will alter work schedules or reduce the number of production crews. Altogether 10 mining operations are affected, four in eastern Kentucky and six in southern West Virginia.… Alpha’s Central Appalachian businesses are seeing more electric utilities switch from thermal coal to natural gas to take advantage of gas prices at 10-year lows. A series of federal regulatory actions also have prompted utilities to implement plans for shutting down a number of generating stations that have traditionally run on coals sourced from Central Appalachia.

Just a week earlier, Ohio-based FirstEnergy directly cited the impact of environmental regulations as the basis for retiring six coal plants by September of this year:

Its generation subsidiaries will retire six older coal-fired power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1, 2012. The decision to close the plants is based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.

Natural gas prices are currently at a decade low, but as demand continues to grow, natural gas prices will likely rise. The switch from coal to natural gas by electric utilities in response to the EPA regulations is thus a boon to both environmentalists and the natural gas industry. As Charles Blanchard, the U.S. power sector analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, explains:

The interests of fossil fuel producers and environmentalists are (unusually) aligned: higher domestic gas prices would bode well both for gas producers and higher-cost renewable energy projects.… The impetus for [rising gas prices] will emanate from within the United States, as old age and EPA regulation force the closure of dozens of gigawatts of coal power plants.

Household electricity bills, which skyrocketed in 2010, will continue to rise as Americans are forced to use more expensive sources of energy to power their businesses and homes. This in turn will result in higher prices for other goods and services as higher electricity prices increase production costs.

Those most hurt by policies that increase the price of energy are lower-income households, which spend a much larger portion of their income on energy, and senior citizens, who have the highest per-capita residential energy consumption.

February 7-14, 2012 is National Marriage Week. During this week, a series of blogs explores the latest trends in marriage and their implications for adults, children, and society.

Though “Americans believe overwhelmingly in the importance of marriage,” for decades now, marriage has been steadily declining.

Marriage. Americans have become less likely to marry. In 1960, about two in three adults were married, compared to one in two adults today. This is partly because Americans are marrying later. Since 1970, the median age for first marriage has increased by more than five years for both men and women. According to the National Marriage Project, other contributing factors include rising cohabitation, a small decreased tendency toward remarriage, and perhaps some increase in lifelong singlehood.

Divorce. Since its peak in 1980, the annual divorce rate has declined slightly but remains high—nearly double the rate in 1960. Overall, 40 percent to 50 percent of first marriages will end in divorce or separation. However, some emerging data suggest that recent marriages are becoming slightly more stable. For example, couples who first married in and after the late 1980s are 3 percentage points more likely to celebrate their 10th anniversary than those who first married in the early 1980s. Higher income, marital birth, older age at marriage (after age 25), intact family of origin, religious affiliation, and college education all appear to lower the risk of divorce or separation during the first 10 years of marriage.

Cohabitation. Since the 1970s, cohabitation has become increasingly common. Prior to 1970, only about 1 percent of all couples (or 523,000 couples) living together are unmarried. Today, nearly 12 percent (or about 7.6. million couples) are. Among adults ages 25–44, more than 60 percent have cohabitated at some point. Cohabitation, however, is short-lived. After three years, only one-third of the cohabiting relationships remain. (About one-half transition to marriage, and the rest break up.) Even cohabitation with one’s eventual spouse may diminish the subsequent marriage’s stability. The likelihood of making it past their 10th anniversary is 10 percent lower if they had lived together with their wives prior to marriage.

Children’s living arrangements. For many, marriage is no longer treated as necessary for the begetting and raising of children. Since the 1960s, unwed childbearing has skyrocketed. Today, four in 10 children born are to unwed mothers, and the figures are higher among African-Americans (seven in 10) and Hispanics (five in 10). Unwed childbearing occurs primarily among women in their 20s and is the main driver of the growing share of children living in single-parent families.

Divorce, cohabitation, and unwed childbearing all contribute to the growing share of children living in non-intact families. Currently, only 60 percent of children live with both married, biological parents. As decades of research persuasively shows, on average, children in intact families tend to fare better than peers in non-intact families. Thus, children’s living arrangements can significantly impact their well-being, from poverty to education to health to future life prospects.

Increasingly, a marriage caste system is dividing Americans, and its implications are troubling. Director of the National Marriage Project and University of Virginia Professor Brad Wilcox writes, “Among the affluent, marriage is stable and may even be getting stronger. Among the poor, marriage continues to be fragile and weak. But the most consequential marriage trend of our time concerns the broad center of our society, where marriage, that iconic middle-class institution, is foundering.” The evidence is powerful:

• Divorce. Among those who married in the late 1990s, 36 percent of the least educated (high school dropouts), 37 percent of the moderately educated (high school graduates), but only 11 percent of the highly educated (college graduates) divorce or separate within 10 years.
• Cohabitation. Among women, 75 percent of the least educated and 68 percent of the moderately educated but only 50 percent of the highly educated have ever cohabitated.
• Unwed childbearing. Among the least educated women, 54 percent of births are outside of marriage. The figures are 44 percent for the moderately educated and only 6 percent among the highly educated (that is, real-life Murphy Browns are rarities).
• Children’s living arrangements. For 14-year-old girls, 52 percent of those with dropout moms live with both biological parents; the figures are 58 percent for those whose mothers are high school graduates but 81 percent for those whose mothers are college graduates.

Wilcox continues:

The retreat from marriage in Middle America cuts deeply into the nation’s hopes and dreams as well. For if marriage is increasingly unachievable for our moderately educated citizens—a group representing 58 percent of the adult population (ages 25–60)—then it is likely that we will witness the emergence of a new society. For a substantial share of the United States, economic mobility will be out of reach, their children’s life chances will diminish, and large numbers of young men will live apart from the civilizing power of married life.

This retreat is also troubling because highly educated Americans…have in recent years been largely unaffected by the tidal wave of family change that first hit the poor in the 1960s and has since moved higher into Middle America. Indeed, highly educated Americans, who make up 30 percent of the adult population, now enjoy marriages that are as stable and happy as those four decades ago. There is a thus a growing “marriage gap” between moderately and highly educated America. This means that more affluent Americans are now doubly privileged in comparison to their moderately educated fellow citizens—by their superior socioeconomic resources and by their stable family lives.

As such, America “is increasingly a separate and unequal nation when it comes to the institution of marriage.”

In a historic first, Josefina Vazquez Mota was chosen on Sunday to be the presidential candidate for Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN). Vazquez Mota’s primary win makes her the first woman in Mexico’s history to be chosen to run for president by one of the country’s three main parties. The road to Los Pinos, the Mexican equivalent of the White House, will be a difficult one.

The lineup is now set. Currently leading in the polls is Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) candidate Pena Nieto. With the PRI party, however, comes uncertainty regarding its return to power, the party’s 71-year hold on the country’s leadership still fresh in the memories of many. Leading the conservative-right PAN party, Vazquez Mota will also be up against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the candidate from the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). While she currently trails PRI’s Nieto by nearly 20 points in the polls, Vazquez Mota’s nomination is likely to tighten the race.

The three leading candidates are competing to replace President Felipe Calderon, whose term in office expires in December 2012.

Numerous issues will assume a prominent place in the campaign, not the least of which is Mexico’s continued fight against organized crime and drug trafficking. To date, nearly 50,000 people have died—the majority participants in criminal activities—in fights between criminal organizations and against the government and innocent citizens. As the leader of Calderon’s incumbent party, Vazquez Mota will have to stand up against those who criticize Calderon’s efforts and who seek to use them to paint the National Action Party in a negative light. As of Spring 2011, however, 83 percent of Mexicans continued to support the use of the Mexican army to fight drug traffickers, a figure that has been nearly constant in recent years. Other issues such as jobs, poverty, the curbing of the excessive powers of monopolies and unions, rule of law, and energy reform will also figure prominently in the race.

As an economist by education, former Minister of Education and Social Development, and former congresswoman, Vazquez Mota boasts an impressive resume. Receiving 55 percent of the vote in the primary, it’s clear that the newest presidential candidate has won the hearts of her party; now, she must win those of the people.

Critical for U.S.–Mexican relations will be the selection of a president who fights to keep Mexico on the democratic track, advances a reform agenda that makes government more transparent and accountable, builds public trust and confidence, advances economic freedom, and stands ready to work closely with the U.S. on a wide range of trade, border, and security issues. At first glance, Vazquez Mota, the most conservative of the three candidates, appears to be the best of the bunch.

Anyone hoping to see serious changes to Cuba’s ruling system was again disappointed on January 28 when Raul Castro spoke. In a speech marking a critical conference, the Cuban leader promised change, term limits, economic reform, and a willingness to move younger party members to a more elevated status. Yet, as Raul Castro made many promises to his people during his 48-minute address, one could not help but notice the disparity between his words and the reality of Cuban life and politics.

At one point, he boasted that Cuba is one of the safest and most peaceful nations in the world “without extrajudicial executions, clandestine jails or tortures…[Cuba has] basic human rights that most people on Earth can’t even aspire to.” He forgot to point out that in a police state, law and order usually reign—at least on the surface.

If Cubans have enviable human rights, then why must the government repress nearly all forms of dissent? Why, according to Human Rights Watch, “does the regime continue to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions”? How does it explain the brutal treatment of Cuban women, “las Damas de Blanco” (“the Ladies in White”) who speak for those unjustly jailed by Cuban authorities? Or why does it still hold American Alan Gross, who was jailed in 2009 after donating computer equipment to Cuban Jews?

Castro railed at corruption but ignored the fact that its causes are rooted in the malfunctioning economy and the bureaucratic tyranny of the totalitarian state. And while he may want to jettison ration books in his “egalitarian” society, he fears letting go of the censorship of books and information or permitting free travel.

He warned party loyalists that “opening up” did not give them a right to “meddle in decisions that should be left up to the government officials.” As for democracy and consent of the governed, Castro justified the 52-year-old dictatorship in the following manner: “to renounce the principle of a one-party system would be the equivalent of legalizing a party, or parties, of imperialism on our soil.”

For Raul Castro and the island’s communist elite, term limits, economic reform, and new faces in high places ultimately mean little when an unelected tyrant still calls the shots.

Andrew Murray is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

Finding alternatives to cutting essential military capabilities without raising taxes or ballooning the federal deficit is prudent and necessary.

It is bad enough that, after more than 1,000 days since passing a budget resolution, the Senate has decided to forgo this fundamental obligation once again this year. Even worse is the absurd excuse by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D–NV) that a budget resolution is unnecessary because Congress already has one—in the form of the Budget Control Act (BCA).

Reid and other Senate leaders contend that the spending cap in the BCA, the product of last year’s debt ceiling debate, is a sufficient proxy for a budget resolution. This nonsensical claim willfully misrepresents the scope of a budget resolution and reflects how thoroughly the Senate majority has abandoned its fundamental governing responsibilities.

It ensures that, although the House will adopt a budget resolution, Congress will stumble along for at least another year without a coherent bicameral plan to begin addressing the government’s looming fiscal crisis—because the Senate has simply chosen not to consider one. If taken seriously, after three straight fiscal years without a congressional budget resolution, this decision could spell the end of any coherent practice of congressional budgeting itself, simply by neglect.

A budget resolution is a broad budget framework that sets priorities for spending and taxes. It guides how much will be spent and where spending should be allocated among government programs such as national defense, transportation, welfare, Medicare, and so on. A budget resolution also establishes what tax policies and major program reforms should be adopted. It charts the budget course in a rational, coherent way for all the spending and tax bills that follow.

The BCA was never more than a poor substitute for a budget resolution—a rushed, eleventh-hour “solution” to a manufactured debt ceiling crisis. Its cap on discretionary budget authority affects only about one-third of total spending, and it is riddled with deliberate loopholes that make the limit all but meaningless. Apart from that, the BCA contained a requirement for a “super committee” to identify at least $1.2 trillion for additional deficit reduction. That process has failed, triggering a crude enforcement procedure that now threatens devastating cuts in defense spending and must be rewritten.

But the BCA offers no sense of budgeting priorities (as a budget resolution does), no recommendations for entitlement reforms, no overall direction for major spending and tax policies. To say, as Senator Reid did, that because of the BCA, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year—it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” is to disavow a fundamental obligation of governing.

The Senate’s planned inaction on a budget is a cavalier choice not to take its governing responsibilities seriously. It should be judged on those terms.

It is a rare moment indeed when faith denominations of all stripes unite together in common cause, and it is rarer still when that cause is a political one, with a sole piece of legislation as its principal target. But when that law eviscerates the very foundation of religious liberty in America as protected under the First Amendment, it should not be surprising that Catholics and Jews, evangelical Christians, and mainline Lutherans alike find common cause in defense of their liberties.

Such is the case with the firestorm of opposition to Obamacare and the Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty. Under a new Obamacare mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the White House is mandating that virtually all religious employers, with the exception of churches, provide health care coverage for contraception — including abortion-inducing drugs — thereby trampling upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion. And it is this mandate that has caused a vehement response in churches and synagogues across the country.

Yesterday, the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, warned that the nation’s 70 million Catholics are ready to go to war with the Administration’s dictates, saying “Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church. This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.”

Donohue’s remarks follow those of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and at least 153 Catholic bishops across the country who have weighed in with opposition to the mandate. “We Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so,” wrote Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Michigan. Those penalties include fines imposed by the federal government that could cost larger organizations millions of dollars per year.

The Catholic Church is not alone in its opposition to Obamacare’s onslaught against religious freedom. David Addington, The Heritage Foundation’s vice president of Domestic and Economic Policy, details the growing ranks of the faithful who say the Obama Administration has crossed a very dangerous line. The National Association of Evangelicals commented that “The HHS rules trample on our most cherished freedoms and set a dangerous precedent” and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America stated, “In declining to expand the religious exemption within the healthcare reform law, the Obama Administration has disappointingly failed to respect the needs of religious organizations such as hospitals, social welfare organizations and more.” The Agudath Israel of America stated its opposition, as did the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America.

The Obama Administration is beginning to feel the pressure. On Sunday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius authored an op-ed in USA Today defending the Obama Administration’s actions, claiming that a very narrow exemption to the mandate is evidence that the White House is “working to strike the right balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing women’s access to critical preventive health services.” That exemption, though, does not apply to institutions like religious schools and hospitals. Sebelius might claim the Administration is offering grace to people of faith, but in fact it is not. In an editorial that ran the same day as Sebelius,’ USA Today agreed with those standing on the side of religious liberty, writing that “in drawing up the rules that will govern health care reform” the Obama Administration “galloped over” the line and violated the “simple proposition that the government should steer away from meddling in church affairs.”

The Obama Administration’s actions, though entirely counter to the freedom of religion, should not be surprising given the nature of the President’s health care law. Obamacare has given the federal government broad power over one-sixth of the American economy and thereby purports to grant Washington the power to force religious institutions to take actions contrary to their faith. Addington writes that this kind of concentration of power “has proved to be a drastic and dangerous experiment.” America’s religious leaders and the faithful have awoken to this wolf at their door and are lashing out in defense of their freedoms. Congress, too, should act now by repealing Obamacare and restoring the religious liberty that is so central to our way of life.

Quick Hits:

• Where does pork barrel spending go? A new investigation by The Washington Post finds that congressional earmarks are sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers’ properties.
• Will California’s ban on gay marriage stand? The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is set to decide today whether Proposition 8 violates the Constitution.
• Gas prices are again at record high levels. At an average $3.37 per gallon in January, a typical household spent $168.50 on gas last month — $30 more than in 2010.
• Iran is responding to U.S. sanctions targeting the country’s central bank, calling it “an antagonistic move, psychological warfare which has no impact.” Lawmakers there are also vowing to ban crude exports to European countries.
• Is the individual mandate at the heart of “ObamaCare” a conservative idea? Is it constitutional? And was it invented at The Heritage Foundation? In a word, no. Read more about it on The Foundry.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently delivered a new report, “A Historical Perspective on ‘Hollow Forces.’” It is cold comfort to those who are really worried about the ability of our military to defend us.

A military that looks good on paper but can’t adequately defend the country is the definition of a “hollow force.” A military force becomes hollow when it lacks sufficient capabilities to field trained and ready forces, conduct current missions, and prepare for future threats. If a military can’t do all three well, it is hollow—it can’t really deliver on government’s promise to provide for the common defense. In both the 1970s and the 1990s, military leaders used the phrase “hollow force” to describe their declining capability to meet the armed forces’ responsibility to defend the nation.

Warnings about the potential for another “hollow force” arose in 2006. The lion’s share of additional spending on the military over the last decade has gone to funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many “core” military activities—including buying new ships, planes, and vehicles—have been under-funded for decades. In addition, years of combat operations have caused great wear and tear on the force, resulting in multiple combat tours for many servicemen and equipment such as combat helicopters wearing out far faster than expected.

The warning then was that if we didn’t invest to rebuild the military after combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended, the force would “go hollow again.” That concern was echoed by the bipartisan panel chartered by Congress in a 2010 review of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review report. The panel concluded that the armed forces lacked the capacity to meet the responsibilities of protecting U.S. interests worldwide.

Those concerns were exacerbated when President Obama announced his new Strategic Guidance that envisions significant reductions in military forces. The U.S. military will be required to further divest the capacity to robustly defend U.S. interests around the world. On the ground, in the sea, and in the air, American forces will shrink drastically. The Army will shrink by 72,000 people, the active Marine Corps will be reduced by 20,000, the Air Force will see six tactical fighter squadrons de-established while an additional training fighter squadron will be eliminated, the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter procurement will be slowed, and the Navy will retire seven cruisers and two amphibious ships at an early juncture while delaying the procurements of new ships.

There is a potential for even more cuts that would be required to comply with the Budget Control Act of 2011. The House Armed Services majority staff determined that without question, the military capability would be further greatly diminished. “The Navy will likely mothball more than 60 ships,” the report concludes, “including two carrier battle groups, while we give up nearly a third of Army Maneuver Battalions and Air Force fighters, a quarter of our bombers, and jeopardize our ability to defend America against a nuclear attack. As a service, the Marine Corps will be broken.”

So what practical advice does the CRS have to offer in dealing with these challenges? The simple answer is: not much. The CRS report points out that in several ways, the challenges the military faced in the post-Vietnam years differed from those the services confronted during the Clinton presidency. Similarly, the report notes out that the issues confronting today’s military differ in key respects as well. The report concludes that, “given these conditions, it can be argued that the use of the term ‘hollow force’ is inappropriate under present circumstances.”

That’s not very helpful. How a military goes hollow is not as important as the fact that the nation is left with a force that can do the job as advertised. What is critical to understand is that if a military can’t field trained and ready forces; conduct current missions; and prepare for future threats, it is inadequate. With the Pentagon facing a dramatic reduction in capability, it is irresponsible to suggest that this isn’t something worth worrying about.

The CRS report offers a useful historical perspective on the challenges the U.S. military has faced after the “drawdowns” after Vietnam and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is wrong to infer from the report “don’t worry, be happy” about the challenges the military currently faces. The report notes that there are those who argue that this drawdown can be “managed” to prevent the military from going “hollow.” There were those that argued the same thing after Vietnam and the end of the Cold War. In many ways, they were wrong.

Rather than just accept the Administration’s claim that it is going to keep us a lot more safe with a lot less defense, let’s give the issue more careful scrutiny than glib comparisons with the mistakes of the past.

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned.

The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer.

During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who was present at the meeting.

The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity.

“Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. Two Occupiers, who the source also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”

The source quoted another protester as saying, “Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t,” seemingly suggesting that the latter two would not be as heavily guarded.

Protesters planned to conduct most of these activities on Saturday, the last day of the conference, so as not to overlap with the recently announced protests by labor groups on Thursday and Friday.

CPAC is the largest annual gathering of conservatives. Guests this year will include three of the four Republican candidates for president, members of Congress, governors, and a host of the country’s most prominent conservative activists and commentators. The Heritage Foundation is a CPAC sponsor.

Occupy DC’s initial follow-up planning session for CPAC fell off the radar after the tent city at McPherson was dismantled on Saturday, but the group agreed on Monday to move ahead with its CPAC “action plan.”

Protesters had been living in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza since October, in violation of federal statutes prohibiting camping on federal land. The National Park Service agreed to enforce the law after congressional investigators began looking into the matter.

Both the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual conference, and the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, where it takes place, said they had increased their security measures and were confident that any threat from protesters would be adequately addressed.

But concerns remain. Occupiers reportedly discussed a number of tactics for getting protesters into the conference, where they would be able to do more damage than a street protest could muster.

An attendee of the Thursday meeting, who claimed to handle relations with labor organizations, said the AFL-CIO had booked rooms for Occupiers at the Marriott hotel, with the intention of allowing them to bypass security measures at the door. Contacted by Scribe, an AFL-CIO spokesman insisted the Occupiers’ claims were untrue. The AFL-CIO has aided Occupy DC before, most recently in storing Occupiers’ belongings at its headquarters in advance of the National Park Service’s enforcement actions.

But Occupiers are apparently planning other means of infiltration. Representatives from the American University and George Washington University “Occupy” groups said they intended to actually register their members for CPAC. Student passes are heavily discounted, and allow full access to the conference.

They also said they would produce counterfeit credentials and hand them out to non-students who still wished to enter the protest.

“In order to avoid having to shower and dress in business attire to blend in,” Scribe’s source said, “they plan to wear Ron Paul 2012 gear because they believe Paul supporters ‘generally look like hippies.’”

The Obama Administration’s mandate under the Obamacare statute that many religious employers provide health care coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and human sterilization tramples upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion.  Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced the Administration policy.  Many faiths have united in opposition to the Obama Administration attack on religious liberty.

On January 20, 2012, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that “To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable.”  Also on that day, the National Association of Evangelicals commented that “The HHS rules trample on our most cherished freedoms and set a dangerous precedent.”

On January 26, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America stated, “In declining to expand the religious exemption within the healthcare reform law, the Obama Administration has disappointingly failed to respect the needs of religious organizations such as hospitals, social welfare organizations and more.”  On the same day, Agudath Israel of America stated:

The Obama Administration had an opportunity to declare that there is a fundamental American value at stake here — religious freedom — and provide strong and unequivocal protections to religious employers.  Instead, it took a step backwards by imposing religiously-objectionable mandates on countless religious entities, and by devising a cramped limitation on what “religious groups” are and what their public mission in society should be.

On February 3, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod said, “This action by HHS will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law and operating within the framework of their religious tenets.”  The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America noted that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and that “This freedom is transgressed when a religious institution is required to pay for ‘contraceptive services’ including abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization services that directly violate their religious convictions.”

The Obamacare statute has concentrated in the hands of the federal government broad power over the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care.  Obamacare purports to invest in the federal government the power to force religious institutions, such as religious hospitals, charities, and schools, to provide health care insurance for contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and human sterilization, contrary to the faiths of those religious institutions.

As Ronald Reagan said, “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”  The concentration of nearly all power over health care in the hands of the federal government has proved to be a drastic and dangerous experiment.  Congress should repeal the Obamacare statute, allow the country to have market-based, patient-centered health care, and restore our religious liberty.

President Obama and President of the Republic of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili recently announced that the two countries should start free-trade negotiations. Let’s hope both presidents are serious. Presidents Obama and Saakashvili should instruct the appropriate government agencies to expedite preparation of the agreement.

The most recentU.S.trade agreements, with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, each took more than five years to get from inception to implementation. This deal could get done in a fraction of that time. Both countries are already relatively open to international trade and investment, and the volume of trade between the United States and Georgia that would be affected by an FTA is relatively small.

Both countries are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and they already have a bilateral investment treaty that has been in place since 1997. Georgia is part of a free trade area including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and The Kyrgyz Republic, although trade relations with Russia are hampered by punitive measures that Moscow imposed before and after the 2008 Russia–Georgia War. TheUnited States has FTAs with 20 countries. These agreements can easily provide templates for a U.S.–Georgia agreement.

In 2010, the United States collected just $226,000 in tariffs on imports from Georgia on $193 million in imports, making our average tariff on imports from Georgia far less than 1 percent. Georgia is our 113th-biggest trading partner, ranking just between Iceland and Benin. Many imports from Georgia enter the United States duty-free under our Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, but not all items are eligible, and Georgia’s GSP status is not permanent. Indeed, the AFL-CIO recently asked the Obama Administration to withdraw Georgia’s eligibility for GSP trade status.

An FTA would be a win-win for theUnited StatesandGeorgia. It would benefitGeorgia, which gained independence in 1991, by making the country a more attractive destination for international investment. It would also send a signal toRussiathatGeorgiais viewed byWashingtonas an important friend.

Georgia has greatly contributed to the U.S.and allied security by participating in the international peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Georgia and the United States have important bilateral interests: The United States sought and received Georgia’s consent regarding Russia’s accession to the WTO, while Georgia is waiting for the United States’ greater involvement in security issues, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Membership Action Plan promised to Tbilisi at the North Atlantic Alliance’s Bucharest summit.

This is not an easy task. Russia launched the war against Georgia in August 2008 for highly valued strategic and geopolitical objectives, which included de facto annexation of Abkhazia, weakening or toppling the Mikheil Saakashvili regime, and preventing NATO enlargement to include Georgia.

The Russian politico-military elites had focused on Georgia since the days of the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze. Russian post-communist security establishments also viewed the attractive Abkhaz coast line and illicit business opportunities provided by lawless secessionist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as additional incentives for deep involvement along the metropolitan periphery. Things only got worse after pro-American, pro-NATO, andEurope- oriented Mikheil Saakashvili was elected president.

According to the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, Georgia already has one of the world’s best trade-freedom scores along with a high investment-freedom score. In addition, Georgia has entered into free-trade talks with the European Union (EU), which reportedly could be concluded as early as next year.

Moving in a timely manner to implement a Georgia–U.S. FTA would promote economic freedom and prosperity in both countries and would serve U.S. security goals in Eurasia.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its outlook for the federal budget last week. According to the CBO’s “Alternative Fiscal Scenario,” tax receipts will match their historical average in 2017, when revenue will be 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Receipts will continue growing after that.

CBO’s alternative scenario assumes the following:

• The Bush tax cuts remain in place for all taxpayers (even families making more than $250,000 a year);
• Congress raises the income threshold for the Alternative Minimum Tax so it doesn’t hit millions of middle-income taxpayers it was never supposed to affect; and
• Congress also retains a host of other expiring tax-reducing policies, such as the Research and Development credit and the optional deduction for state and local sales taxes.

The CBO report throws water on President Obama’s oft-repeated argument that in order to lower the deficit, it is mathematical certainty that taxes must go up. If President Obama and Congress set spending to match its historical level of 20 percent of GDP and keep it at or below that level, the deficit would be at its historical level in 2017, and the debt would fall as a share of the economy over time. All that without raising taxes a dime. Deficits are unsustainably high because the government is spending too much, not because it is collecting too little revenue.

As the CBO report makes clear, revenue is low right now relative to historical norms because the economy is still slow to recover after the Great Recession. Low receipts today have nothing to do with tax cuts “for the rich,” as President Obama often suggests, or because millionaires and billionaires pay an effective tax rate that is unfairly low.

The CBO estimate includes higher receipts from the 18 different tax hikes contained in Obamacare. Several of these tax hikes are already in place, but the biggest, most economically damaging hikes—such as the 3.8 surtax on investment income—come on line in the next few years. A repeal of Obamacare, including its growth-slowing tax hikes, would reduce revenues below CBO’s estimates.

Lower revenue from a repeal of Obamacare would not keep revenue below its historical norm, nor would it delay revenue meeting that level by 2017. Faster economic growth than CBO anticipates would raise receipts back to their historical norm before 2017 even without the extra Obamacare tax revenue.

That faster growth would occur if the economy could break through the uncertainty caused by Obama policies such as Obamacare, the Dodd–Frank financial reform law, and daily reminders that President Obama wants to raise taxes drastically on job creators and investors that the economy needs to get back on track.

Economic growth could also get a much needed boost from fundamental tax reform. Tax reform would clear the way for faster growth by lowering marginal tax rates and eliminating taxes on saving and investment. Congress and the President should focus on tax reform instead of unnecessary and growth-slowing tax hikes. If they do so this year, revenues will surge back to their historical average well before 2017.

Wonder if it’s too hot to go outside at your workplace? Don’t bother checking the thermometer or stepping outside—the federal government has the answer for you. And it’s only costing taxpayers $643,997.60.

Josh Peterson of the Daily Caller reports that the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is due to release a smartphone app that uses temperature and humidity data to warn workers if it is too hot outside.

According to OSHA’s website, the “Heat Safety Tool”—available for Android, Blackberry and iPhone—“allows workers and supervisors to calculate the heat index for their work site and, based on the heat index, displays a risk level to outdoor workers.” The app also outlines protective measures that workers can take to mitigate the risks of overexposure to heat.

A recent Freedom of Information Act request by the free-market oriented Americans for Limited Government revealed that the Labor Department contracts for the development of the “Heat Safety Tool” and related Web 2.0 technologies cost the taxpayer $643,997.60. The contracts were awarded under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus package.

This app would be laughable if wasteful spending on projects such as this were not so serious. Under President Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus, taxpayer dollars have been sent down a rabbit hole. About $10 million was to be spent renovating a century-old train station that hasn’t been used in 30 years; a non-existent Oklahoma lake was to receive $1 million to construct a new guardrail; $800,000 was allocated for a Johnstown, Pennsylvania, airport to renovate its backup runway (even though the airport is rarely used); and the town of Union, New York, was encouraged to spend money it did not request for a homeless problem it does not have. (Senator Tom Coburn [R–OK] details over 100 examples of wasteful stimulus projects here.) Now, in this latest example, Americans’ hard-earned money is being spent on a high-tech way to tell the weather. (And it’s not doing it very well, either—iTunes users who ranked the app give it just 1.5 out of 5 stars.)

The absurdity of the spending aside, the “stimulus” hasn’t even created the jobs that were promised. President Obama pledged that his stimulus would save or create 3.5 million jobs and that, if passed, unemployment would never rise above 8 percent. But here we are, nearly three years later, with 8.3 percent unemployment, a recovery that is far below the White House’s predictions, and an ever-growing $15 trillion debt. Instead of measuring the temperature going up, Washington should focus on making the spending go down, living within its means, and being responsible stewards of the people’s money.

As Israel weighs an attack against Iran in an effort to destroy its nuclear weapons program, Washington is still mulling a coherent response.

While affirming that all options are on the table, the Obama Administration has repeatedly stated that diplomacy built around a global coalition is the “preferred solution” to ending Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. But this isn’t saying much. President Obama has given no indication of how the United States would respond if Israel were to take a preventative strike against Iran or how the U.S. is preparing for such an eventuality. Furthermore, President Obama denies evidence that Iran has “intentions or capabilities” to attack the U.S. homeland in retaliation for a strike.

However, just last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that it is increasingly likely that Iran could carry out attacks in the U.S. or against U.S. targets. While Iran is feeling the effects of recent international sanctions, economic difficulties are not likely to jeopardize the regime. The plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington last year was one of Iran’s boldest moves to date in committing an attack on U.S. soil. According to Clapper, this:

shows that some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.

Considering that Iran is willing and capable of waging an attack on U.S. soil now, there is little reason to believe that Iran wouldn’t do so if attacked by Israel.

The Obama Administration should develop a proactive strategy that addresses the escalating conflict by including policies that mitigate threats posed by Iran to U.S. national security—as well as a coordinated response in the event that Israel attacks Iran. In doing so, the Obama Administration should stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel, recognizing Tel Aviv’s right to defend itself against a regime hell-bent on “erasing [Israel] from the page of history.”

More detailed recommendations can be found in the Heritage Foundation, WebMemo “If Israel Attacks.”

The PRECISE Act wisely creates a civilian lead for cybersecurity but restricts information sharing.

In his two terms in office, President Ronald Reagan gave America a powerful transfusion of his own optimism and hope. He rekindled a sense of the possible, rescuing America from defeatism and restoring our confidence and pride in this great nation. That transformation of America was possible chiefly because of Reagan’s unshakable faith in the power of ideas.

Reflecting his strong conviction in freedom, Reagan pointed out in his address to students at Moscow State University in May 1988:

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows recognizing shortcomings and seeking solutions.

President Reagan’s wisdom and insight continue to shine through The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. In reality, his legacy has lived on through experiences of many developing economies that have joined the free world only in recent decades. The embrace of economic freedom by the young democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has proved particularly notable, and many other countries have made gains in reducing poverty by adopting measures that open up their economies.

The fight for freedom is a never-ending struggle. With global economic recovery far from certain, the imperative for advancing economic freedom to revitalize vibrant entrepreneurial growth is stronger than ever. As Heritage President Edwin Feulner, Ph.D., reminds us in his preface of the Index, “Our commitment to preserving and enhancing freedom has seen us through much in the past and will surely guide us successfully in the future.”

Today, as we celebrate President Reagan’s 101st birthday, renewing our commitment to economic freedom is perhaps the best way to carry on his optimism and confidence in the power of ideas.

Think back 20 years ago. What were you doing? Whatever answer you came up with, it probably had nothing to do with the Internet, which was just coming of age. As James Carafano points out in his article in the Washington Examiner today, the discovery a valuable new world brings with it the need to protect that world.

Nearly everything in our lives today is connected to the Internet. You possibly woke up to your iPhone buzzing from an e-mail from your boss and then turned on the lights that are powered by an electrical grid that is intricately connected to the Internet. You needed to transfer money to your checking account, so you quickly jumped on your computer, and a couple minutes later you were out the door. On the way to work, you stopped to get a bite to eat at a restaurant that orders all its food and advertises heavily via the Internet. When you finally got to work, you sat down to a computer and sifted through dozens of e-mails. On your break, you ordered a birthday gift off of eBay or Amazon, and then you searched for and read countless articles for a project you are working on without even moving from your chair.

With so many widespread uses, the Internet is also very hard to defend. There are always going to be holes in security somewhere, and any people who tell you that they know how to fix the problem would probably also have told you that Corzine’s MF Capital was a great buy. Right on cue, members of our government come forward with “comprehensive,” bureaucratic command-and-control cyber security bills.

The Internet is a dynamic environment, and announcing countless new regulations or giving government bodies vast new powers over the Internet flies in the face of that reality. Most crooks and enemies can easily get around these proposed solutions. For example, before the Stop Online Piracy Act could even be voted on, free software was released that would have rendered most of the bill worthless.

Our answer to online security should be one that seeks to match our quick opponents with equally quick, creative solutions. The proposal from Representatives Mike Rogers (R–MI) and Dutch Ruppersburger (D–MD) is a solid start. It establishes the framework for government and private-sector cooperation and better enables our private sector to create new adaptive solutions to fight cyber crime and defend against cyber attacks.

New cyber threats will emerge, and just like in any other conflict, we should not get caught preparing to the fight the last war. Instead, we should give our greatest minds the best opportunity to come up with creative answers to protect this new world.

As we celebrate the 101st birthday of President Ronald Reagan, we remember the profound impact he had on government policy, but more importantly on the spirit of the American people. Whether it was through humor, sincerity, or passion, President Reagan had that rare ability to inspire individuals to strive for their greatest potential and positively impact the country. Here are 10 of his most memorable quotations:

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

There are no easy answers’ but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Although his presidency ended in 1989, President Reagan’s legacy continues to live on and is equally relevant to our world today.

For more quotes from President Reagan — and other American thinkers and leaders — visit The Heritage Foundation’s “We Still Hold These Truths” Quotes Database.

What does Ronald Reagan mean to you? Visit our Facebook page and leave a message in our special Reagan 101st Birthday application!

 

Ryan McNulty is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm