Terrorism Aided by West's Surrender to Political Correctness

In the Fox News video clip below, national security analyst KT McFarland, who is also an Institute campus speaker, discusses the changing face of terrorism and how it is being aided by Western Civilization's surrender to political correctness in failing to call terrorism what it is:

Drill, Baby, Drill Was An Effective Strategy

Liberals universally mocked when conservatives argued for more domestic drilling to increase oil and gas supplies, reduce costs to consumers, and boost the American economy. President Obama called Drill, Baby, Drill "a slogan, a gimmick, and a bumper sticker ... not a strategy."

Dependent on Middle East oil producers, Americans were paying $4 per gallon at the pump back then, and the Obama Administration refused to open federal lands for additional oil and gas drilling. So private landowners and private companies did what the federal government wouldn't do: they drilled.

Who's laughing now?

The price of a gallon of regular gasoline on Monday was $2.13 nationwide, and below $2 in 18 states.

"Of course [Obama] was wrong. We've seen oil prices fall internationally now by half since last June," said American Enterprise Institute economist Ben Zycher. "The U.S. is now the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, or almost that, and the effect has been to drive prices down as we've seen."

Fox News reporter William LaJeunesse traces liberals' energy evolution ... from scoffing to claiming credit for today's low prices:

Obama's Executive Amnesty Faces Legislative, Judicial Challenges

With funding for Homeland Security set to expire February 27, the GOP-controlled House plans to insert amendments in that department's future-funding legislation designed to block Obama's executive immigration actions. The Daily Signal reports that House leaders, after considering several proposals, have agreed to a plan that would:

• prevent Obama from implementing his recent executive actions to defer deportation for up to 5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and granting them work permits,
• bar Obama from taking similar independent action in the future,
• strip protections provided to "Dreamers" under Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and
• restore the "Secure Communities" enforcement program that Obama ended with his executive actions.

Meanwhile, 25 states have filed a lawsuit detailing the billions of dollars in costs that Obama's executive action imposes on states unless the court stops the amnesty:

More than 1,100 pages of documents submitted by Texas and two dozen other states suing to stop the amnesty detail the costs in dept, and include sworn affidavits from state officials, federal immigration officers and others arguing that the amnesty will increase illegal immigration, leaving the states with even bigger burdens. [snip]

Judge [Andrew] Hanen, who sits in Brownsville, Texas, will hear oral arguments in the case Thursday [Jan 15], with the fate of Mr. Obama's most ambitious executive action to date riding on the outcome.

The case turns on two key factors: first, whether Texas and the 24 other states that have joined the lawsuit can show they or their residents stand to suffer from the president's policies; and second, whether Mr. Obama's actions go beyond case-by-case discretion and tread on Congress' power to write laws and set policy. [snip]

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow for constitutional studies at CATO, said the case should test just how broadly states are able to challenge federal laws on behalf of their residents. Mr. Shapiro said given gridlock and the penchant for presidents to act on their own, the case could have a huge impact.

New Study Confirms Benefits of Marriage

A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that, controlling for individual pre-marital happiness levels, "the married are still more satisfied" and happier than the single. The "well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend." 

Moreover, researchers John Helliwell and Shawn Grover found that the "married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived." Reporting on the study, the New York Times writes

The benefits of marital friendship are most vivid during middle age, when people tend to experience a dip in life satisfaction, largely because career and family demands apply the most stress then. Those who are married, the new paper found, have much shallower dips – even in regions where marriage does not have an overall positive effect.

“The biggest benefits come in high-stress environments, and people who are married can handle midlife stress better than those who aren’t because they have a shared load and shared friendship,” Mr. Helliwell said.

Overall, the research comes to a largely optimistic conclusion. People have the capacity to increase their happiness levels and avoid falling deep into midlife crisis by finding support in long-term relationships.

Keystone Pipeline Clears 2 Hurdles

The Keystone XL Pipeline, designed to carry crude oil from Canada into the U.S. for refinement, cleared two hurdles today, one legislative and one judicial, reports the Washington Times.

• With the support of 28 Democrats, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 266-153 to approve construction of the project long stalled by the Obama Administration.  The U.S. Senate, now under Republican control, is working a companion bill through its own chamber and is expected to take an early test-vote early next week.

• Hours earlier, the Supreme Court of Nebraska upheld the project's proposed route through Nebraska, overturning a lower court earlier decision invalidating the pipeline's path. In its ruling, the high court determined that the landowners who challenged Keystone's route did not have legal standing to do so.

Liberalism in Retreat

In a thought-provoking piece published just before Christmas, academic Walter Russell Mead argues that the "Obama administration may represent 'Peak Left' in American politics" and, "as a result, what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets."

For liberals, these are bleak times of hollow victories (Obamacare) and tipping points that don’t tip.

Public opinion didn't move to the left after Sandy Hook (gun control), the 2014 IPCC report (climate change), Ferguson and Garner, the Senate "torture report," or the Rolling Stone campus rape story (to name a few).

In all of these cases, liberals got what, from a liberal perspective, appeared to be conclusive evidence that long cherished liberal policy ideas were as correct as liberals have always thought they were. In all of these cases the establishment media conformed to the liberal narrative, inundating the airwaves and flooding the cyberverse with the liberal line. ... [Yet] the public still doesn’t seem to accept the liberal line or draw the inferences that liberals want it to draw. It’s becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that many Americans will continue to disagree with many liberal policy prescriptions no matter what.

Liberals believed the George W. Bush administration had discredited conservatism.

The foreign policy failures of the Bush years, they believe, should have killed conservative ideology about America’s role in the world, and the financial crisis, they are certain, should have driven a stake through the heart of conservative economic doctrine. Yet: Here we are, six years into the Age of Obama, and the Tea Party is alive and Occupy is dead. The Republicans swept the midterm elections ... The liberal rout at the level of state and local politics is even more alarming.

The response by some disillusioned liberals is "to turn on Obama."

But to blame Obama for the crisis of the liberal left is unpersuasive. ... It took the unique circumstances of two wars and a financial crash to open a path to the White House for Barack Obama; absent similar circumstances, successful candidates are likely to come from his right for the foreseeable future. ... America is unlikely to go farther to the left than it went in the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crash, and while that wasn’t anywhere near enough of a shift for left-leaning Democrats, the country has already moved on.

2015: the Good and Not-So-Good Ahead

A December IBD/TIPP poll reports that Americans are upbeat on 2015 as the year begins, despite remaining split on many issues. Three areas of broad agreement, however, are the economy, immigration and Obamacare:

With the job market noticeably picking up, 62% believe there will be "significant improvement" in employment vs. just 36% saying that's unlikely.

After the border surge that saw thousands of young immigrants from Latin American cross into the U.S., setting off an often-bitter political debate, fully 59% say a new immigration law is unlikely in 2015. ... Respondents are far likelier to believe Congress will succeed in stopping President Obama's executive action granting temporary legal status to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants in America.

Meanwhile, with its fumbled website launch, rising costs and a surge of new rules, ObamaCare remains uncertain, the poll suggests. Among those who responded, 50% say that "the repeal or cutback of large parts of ObamaCare" is likely by the new Republican-led Congress, while 47% disagree.

For conservatives, reasons to be optimistic include:

• Enjoying the lowest gas prices in memory, watching a president restrained by the Supreme Court, seeing a president's policies rebuked by the electorate, a flourishing reform conservative movement, and declining abortion rates (via Jennifer Rubin);
• Obamacare is facing a serious challenge before the Supreme Court on March 4 to determine constitutionality of federal Obamacare subsidies (via Cato Institute); and
• 5 federal agencies are in the new Congress's cross hairs: Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services (Obamacare actions, enrollment), Department of Homeland Security (Obama's executive action on immigration), Environment Protection Agency (Obama's coal/climate change action), and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Obama's actions on regulating financial products like credit cards) (via Fiscal Times).

And a few reasons to stay engaged in the Washington policy debate:

• The Obamacare employer mandate kicks in Jan 1, 2015, which will impact the employees of companies with 100 or more workers in painful ways (via Washington Times);
• Right now, 87% of new Obamacare insurance users receive some sort of federal subsidy to reduce the premiums of Obamacare policies, but that could change dramatically after the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of those subsidies (via Washington Examiner); and
• Obama's federal agencies are poised to unleash another 2,375 new rules and regulations on American businesses in 2015, unless Congress issues resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (via Competitive Enterprise Institute).