A new online publication for young conservatives, written by young conservatives
The White House is right to declare victory after Congress sent it the fiscal cliff “compromise” bill.
In what initially began as a debate over how best to reduce the budget deficit, Republicans ultimately agreed to a bill that actually increases spending by $330 million and adds $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
The fact that the deal is full of new unfunded stimulus measures adds insult to injury.
The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) proposal last week to place armed police offers in schools has many problems, but the Left’s hysterical response to the idea, calling it everything from “offensive” and “insane” to a “dumb-ass idea,” is no more than another hypocritical and ignorant response from a media herd more interested in pushing a political agenda then honestly representing the truth.
Just as the media threw a tantrum after Hurricane Sandy about Mitt Romney’s year-old suggestion that federal disaster response responsibilities be transferred to localities and private industry (despite the overlooked fact that federal disaster response is already largely “privatized“) the media is in overdrive attempting to redefine the NRA’s not-so-new idea into a fringe position.
Here we go again. The left, which was so fond of reminding Americans how terrible it was to “politicize a tragedy” just a few months ago, has predictably moved quickly to capitalize on an absolutely horrific mass-shooting at a grade school in Connecticut. Within hours of the appalling news, gun control rallies were held outside of the White House, the media was calling for tougher laws, and liberals were demonizing the NRA.
Although the shooter, who was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, has miraculously avoided any fault for his evil acts by much of the punditry, it’s probably only a matter of time before specific Republicans are identified as particularly blameworthy (perhaps Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, or the Tea Party).
On Tuesday a federal appellate court in Chicago held that Illinois’ absolute ban on concealed handguns outside of the home was unconstitutional and gave the state 180 days to write a new concealed carry law.
Gun rights groups should be pleased with Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner’s blunt finding that the inconclusive, empirical literature on the effects of permitting concealed guns, which he documents and describes, fails to justify Illinois’ absolute ban.
The Supreme Court’s announcement that it will consider a pair of gay marriage cases this term puts conservatives in a tough spot.
As Democrats and Republicans bargain over how to address the “fiscal cliff,” young people stand to lose a lot more in the outcome than just a negligible decrease in student loan interest rates and the right to stay on their parents’ health insurance well into their adulthood (both staples of President Obama’s 2012 campaign appeal to college students and recent graduates).
Despite the fact that young people overwhelmingly supported President Obama in 2012, most were probably unaware that they did so against their own long-term self-interest.
Here are three reasons young Americans should be watching the fiscal debate closely:
As the battle over tax rates for top-earners escalates on this side of the Atlantic, the American media has largely ignored Great Britain’s recent tax-increase debacle. After sticking it to the rich by pushing top tax rates from 40 percent to 50 percent in 2010, Britain lost two-thirds of its millionaires and £7 billion in tax revenue. In response, Britain is dropping the top rate down to 45 percent next April.
Last week, the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House Republicans, issued a report on potential copyright law reform that likely sent the entertainment industry into a scramble. Perhaps due to immediate pressure from the industry’s powerful lobby, RSC retracted the report within 24 hours.
In essence, the retracted report argued that Congress has turned copyright law into an excessive, government enforced monopoly on content. Contrary to the Constitution’s endorsement of time-limited copyright protections of 14 years with the ability renew for an additional 14 years if the author was still alive “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” today, creators of copyrighted material can ask the government to strictly protect their work for more than a hundred years!
