Newt Gingrich

Cow gas and double standards

The Obama administration has been explicit about how its decision to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant was meant as a threat to Congress. Its message was clear: Pass job-killing cap-and-trade legislation or accept more onerous (and more job-killing!) "command and control" regulation of the economy by bureaucrats at the EPA. Remarkably, congressional Democratic supporters of cap and trade have played along with the administration's attempt to greenmail Congress and the American people. They've claimed that Congress is powerless to prevent EPA regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. On "Fox News Sunday" this past...

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Has bureaucratic dictatorship arrived?

President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson got rock star treatment at the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen this week. The crowd of global environmental elites loved her, and one reason why may be that she continued her administration's unseemly practice of blaming its predecessor for all the world's ills. But Jackson's biggest applause line was when she said she was "proud" of the EPA's announcement earlier in the week that it would regulate greenhouse gases as dangerous pollutants. "That is a decision that has been a long time coming," Jackson said. And it's true, a bureaucratic dictatorship has been a long time coming in America. And...

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Crashing the Obama jobs summit

After a smoke and mirrors "jobs summit" in Washington on Thursday, President Obama is headed out into the real world today -- to Allentown, Pa. -- to talk more about jobs, and good for him. But instead of shutting out those who disagree with him like he did at his Washington gathering, the president needs to let some crashers into the jobs party in Allentown. He might not like what they have to tell him, but Obama needs to hear the voices of America's small- business men and women. To be precise, Obama needs to hear the concerns of American businessmen like David Taylor. Taylor is a leader of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association. In an interview with a Pennsylvania newspaper...

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Radical secularists won't allow a cross in the desert

In the vast desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is the 1.6 million acre Mojave National Preserve. Located within the preserve, in an area so remote that an hour can pass between cars traveling by, sits a seven-foot cross on the top of a hill. There used to be a cross there, that is. Today, the cross is covered by a plywood box, looking for all the world like a blank billboard on a lonely rock outcropping. The reason the cross is covered is as simple as it is dangerous: The cross is the latest target of radical secularists who seek to drive every manifestation of God and faith from our public spaces, however remote. That these secularists would target a cross that sits literally in...

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All (opposition) politics is local

There's good news for Americans who believe in a smaller federal government: The law of unintended consequences is alive and well in the Obama age. Take health care, for example. The intended consequence of the campaign for Democratic health reform has been to expand government into the most intimate, most consequential parts of our lives. But the unintended consequence has been to drive more Americans away from the idea of government-run health care and toward more personal responsibility. The latest polling data from Gallup show a stunning, 22-point shift among Americans away from believing that government is responsible for health care toward believing that individuals are...

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The job-killing president and Congress

Last Friday, the unemployment rate jumped to 10.2 percent. The underemployment rate -- including part-time workers who want full-time jobs and those who have simply quit looking for work -- reached 17.5 percent. How did Washington react? The next day the Democratic-controlled House passed a trillion-dollar increase in government disguised as a health care bill. In the face of the worst jobless rate in 26 years, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats don't seem to realize that adopting bad policies kills jobs. What's most remarkable about this is that the president should know better. We now have proof that the Obama administration's job-killing policies are hurting...

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Berlin Wall is worth remembering

Some consider President Obama's refusal to attend the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany next week an outrage. I consider it a tragedy. To commemorate, after all, is to remember. And Americans need to remember, not just that the Wall fell, but why it fell. We need to remember that the Berlin Wall was the symbol of more than just the Cold War, more than just the division of Europe. It was the symbol of an evil ideology that denied human dignity, denied truth, and respected only power. When the Wall fell, truth and human dignity, in a rare moment in the 20th century, triumphed over power. But that victory is not permanent. Today,...

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Wall Street + Daggett = Corzine re-elected

If Gov. Jon Corzine wins a second term next Tuesday, New Jersey voters will have two places to thank: Goldman Sachs and Chris Daggett campaign headquarters. Goldman Sachs is where Corzine made most of the astonishing $24 million he has plowed into his re-election campaign (compared with the $9 million spent by his Republican opponent, former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie). And Daggett is the third-party candidate who's never been higher then 20 percent in the polls but whose candidacy may very well determine the outcome of the race. Christie has run a less than perfect campaign, but should Corzine eke out a win, credit must go to his money and to Daggett. Why? For the simple reason...

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How would Obama deal with Paine?

In my spare time, I dabble in writing historical fiction. Lately, I've been thinking of an interesting alternative history: How would the Obama White House deal with Thomas Paine? Paine was, of course, the most influential writer of the American Revolution. As historian William Forstchen and I detail in our new novel To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom, George Washington had Paine's words read to his troops as they boarded boats to cross the Delaware River before their victory at Trenton. "These are the times that try men's souls," Paine wrote. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from...

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An honorable way to accept the Nobel

Sergeant First Class Jared Monti was leading a reconaissance mission on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2006 when the grenade hit. Besieged, under fire, and outnumbered by the Taliban, Monti and his men dove for cover. But one of his men got hit. So Monti left his cover once, twice, then three times to try to retrieve him. On the third try, Monti was hit by a grenade and died on the field. For his service, Monti was awarded the Medal of Honor. And, as he presented Monti's parents the award, President Obama captured full and well the meaning of his life and death. "Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues, to serve and to sacrifice?" the President...

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Democracy: The joke is on us

It turns out, the joke was on us. This August, while thousands of Americans were dutifully attending town hall meetings to let their elected representatives know they oppose big government, big bureaucracy, high tax health care, unelected congressional staff were huddling in Washington writing their own health care bill. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bill that emerged on Sept. 17 had actually been voted on by the committee two months earlier. For two months, the Democrats who control the committee refused to let anyone read the bill, not members of the committee, not other Senators, not the American people. Now we know why. While they held the...

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The new missiles of October

In 1962, presented with U2 spy plane photos of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy ordered his Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, to directly confront the Soviets. At a tense emergency meeting of the Security Council, Stevenson exposed the Soviets denials as lies by showing the world the U2 photos. In 2009, presented with evidence that Iran had concealed a nuclear weapons uranium processing plant, President Obama said nothing, giving Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a week at the U.N. to threaten Israel, deny the Holocaust and preen on the world stage with his fellow dictators. History books look back in admiration at how President Kennedy...

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An undemocratic tide in the Americas

AP PHOTO/ESTBEAN FELIX Although Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, like Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, right, was democratically elected, he has subverted democracy in Venezuela to ensure his rule will be uncontested for decades. What is the Obama administration thinking? A close ally of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez sits barricaded in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, having been lawfully convicted of attempting a slow-motion coup in Honduras. Paid bands of his rent-a-thugs are terrorizing and looting the city. And the Obama administration is effectively cheering them on. It all began this summer, when Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed and deported following...

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The real ACORN scandal: Its enablers

It's hard to know who should be more embarrassed by the revelations about the radical group ACORN, the mainstream media or the politicians who have funneled taxpayer dollars to the group for years. It took two amateur twentysomething filmmakers to do what ABC, NBC and CBS couldn't or wouldn't: Expose an ongoing, taxpayer-funded criminal enterprise. These intrepid filmmakers have now supplied video of four Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now offices providing detailed instructions on how to defraud the government in furtherance of child prostitution and human trafficking. So far, ACORN staffers in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York and San Diego have been...

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Prove it, Mr. President

In a speech this week riddled with partisanship, evasions, and the very demagoguery he claimed to be deploring, President Obama nonetheless gave lawmakers who are serious about health care reform several opportunities to test his commitment to reform. "I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead," Obama promised. "If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open." To which congressional reformers should respond: Really, Mr. President? Prove it. The first opportunity the president created under this plan was on the contentious issue of taxpayer-funded health care for people here illegally. Many liberals in...

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We get last word on health care reform

A headline in The Washington Post following the announcement of next week's big presidential speech on health care said it well: "Address to Congress is effort to seize control of the debate." The White House's arrogant belief in the power of Obama the Orator is contradicted by the two greatest American orators of the last 80 years, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Both these leaders knew that in a free society, presidents can shape and guide debate, but they can't "control" it. The danger for a president who seeks to control the debate is that the country will ultimately repudiate him. Such is the situation President Obama finds himself in now. His speech next...

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President Obama should fire Attorney General Eric Holder

Among the president's cabinet appointments, the Attorney General is unique. Whereas the Secretary of Transportation is responsible for the nation's highways and airways, and the Secretary of Agriculture oversees the nation's farms, the Attorney General's charge is upholding the rule of law - the glue that holds together a self-governing people. In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust. And for that, there should be consequences. Earlier this week, on the same day that the administration released a six-year-old report on terrorist interrogations, Holder announced he is appointing a...

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Sopranos-style tactics in health care

Rep. Henry Waxman is making America's health insurance companies an offer they can't refuse. Like a mafia underboss trying to face down a rival crime family, the powerful California Democratic chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has resorted to ugly intimidation tactics with opponents of government-run health care. In the spirit of Joe McCarthy, earlier this week, Waxman and House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-MI, sent a letter to 52 of the nation's largest health insurance companies that contained a not-so-veiled threat. Waxman and Stupak's letter demanded detailed information from health insurance companies about executive pay,...

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The Great Communicator and the Great Obfuscator

Republicans are sometimes criticized for focusing too much on President Ronald Reagan, so here's an idea: It's Democrats - specifically President Obama - who need to learn more from the Gipper. It was 28 years ago this week - August 13, 1981 - that Reagan signed his signature tax cuts into law. Reagan's historic 25 percent rate cuts were the first tax relief Americans had had in 20 years. They kicked off an unprecedented period of economic growth and came to define Reagan's domestic policy. In the 2008 campaign, Obama caught some heat from his liberal friends when he expressed admiration for Reagan, but Obama was on to something. Like Reagan, Obama came into office during a period of...

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Go to a Townhall meeting

Two-hundred and eleven years ago, the party in the White House grew frustrated with public opposition to its policies and passed a law designed to stifle dissent. The Alien and Sedition Acts made it a crime to "print, utter, or publish .. any false, scandalous and malicious writing against the federal government, including the President." The law was the reigning Federalist Party's attempt to beat back an ascendant Democratic-Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson in 1798. It backfired. An outraged American public elected Jefferson president in 1800. No record survives as to whether the Jeffersonian protestors were well-dressed or not, but something frighteningly similar is...

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Deal Bites Dogs

Before Blue Dog Democrats break out the champagne over the deal they won this week to water down the big government health care bill in the House, they should pay close attention to the difference between the way the deal is being spun in public and the way it's being portrayed in private. While some of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's consiglieri were hyping the deal to the media as a significant breakthrough on Wednesday, others were huddling in private with liberals to encourage them to keep hope alive. Exhibit A is what was said in a private Capital Hill meeting between a representative of Speaker Pelosi and disgruntled House liberals. According to the Politico, Speaker Pelosi's...

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Henry Waxman - fraud king

Fraud and abuse in America's healthcare system costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year - more than enough to pay for high quality private health insurance for every uninsured American. But for whatever reason, Congress ignores this massive pot of money, powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) in particular. A new Zogby poll asked Americans what is their preferred way to pay for modernizing our healthcare system. Eighty-eight percent said "eliminate fraud" which was well ahead of the second place finisher, "standardize administrative forms" at 77 percent. "Reduce medical errors" was third at 72...

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Personal liberation with Lifetime Savings Accounts

What if every child started out in life with his or her own personal savings program for college, for first-time home purchases, and for retirement? A savings program started at birth benefits from more years to earn and accumulate interest, resulting in a bigger nest egg over time. Granting every child such an opportunity would result in broader and more equal ownership of savings and capital for each citizen. Such widespread capital ownership would empower and liberate every American in their personal pursuit of happiness and the American Dream. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, has proposed a program along these lines--with a recent bill that would give every American newborn a government...

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Newt Gingrich on Pelosi allies abuse Panetta to advance Left's agenda

It has been difficult to follow the soap-opera like drama of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats' accusations against our nation's intelligence community. However, through the fog of half truths and contradictory statements, one unmistakable pattern has emerged: the House Democrats have shown a shameless willingness to play politics with our national security. And that should leave us all very worried. Recall that on May 14th, Pelosi made the stunning accusation that the CIA misled Congress "all the time." In other words, Pelosi charged that the CIA, deliberately and as a matter of policy, violated the law by lying to Congress. When challenged to produce proof...

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Newt Gingrich on come back to the truths of the Declaration of Independence

Just in time for Independence Day, the Supreme Court has come out with a decision that forces supporters of racial and ethnic quotas to reacquaint themselves with the truths of our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. In Ricci v. DeStafano, the high court ruled that the City of New Haven Connecticut was wrong to deny a promotion to firefighter Frank Ricci on the basis of his race. Ricci, who is white, quit his second job and studied 13 hours a day to pass a test for promotion within the fire department. But because no African-Americans scored high enough on the test to be promoted, the powers-that-be in New Haven tossed out the scores and promoted no one....

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Cap-and-Trade is another way of saying 2+2=5

The Obama White House has spent the week furiously working to convince its fellow Democrats in Congress to support the global warming bill that's before the House today. Former Vice President Al Gore has been working the phones, and there was even a luau at the White House last night. The question that must be asked, however, is why? If the case is closed on man's role in causing climate change, as the left assure us that it is, then why the need to twist Democratic arms to do something about it? My guess is it has something to do with 2+2=4. This simple arithmetic - 2+2=4 - was a rallying cry during the Polish Solidarity freedom movement in the 1980s. It meant that, even though the...

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The Bernanke-Bureaucrat Power Act

In the ongoing spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, the Obama Administration unveiled vastly expanded regulatory powers over the nation’s financial institutions this week. And while it travels under the guise of preventing the next financial crisis, the Obama plan is dangerously similar to another failed, big government attempt at financial reform: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. July 30 will be the seven-year anniversary of the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, which was passed by Congress in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Because both Enron and WorldCom defrauded investors by overstating their profits, Sarbanes-Oxley attempts reform by mandating that all companies...

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Why the suddenly shy press corps?

Here’s a riddle: In the midst of what is being called the worst recession since the Great Depression, why is the press being so timid about President Obama’s economic policies? I ask because the May employment figures are out. The new jobs data blatantly, unambiguously contradict the claims made by the President earlier in the year when he was justifying the stimulus bill. But the silence from the mainstream media over the difference between President’s promises and his results has been nothing short of deafening. Back in February, President Obama repeatedly argued that the need to pass the $787 billion stimulus bill was so dire that there was no time from members...

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Mr. President: Keep Gitmo open

President Obama should follow the same wise instinct that led him to reverse himself on trying terrorists before military commissions and reverse his rash campaign promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay. Why? Because closing Gitmo is a serious misreading of the motives of both critics from the international left and al Qaeda. The first won’t be placated by the closing of the prison, and the second may well be emboldened. The case for keeping Guantanamo Bay open begins with the almost universal acknowledgement today that the facility itself is an orderly and humane place; a place where detainees receive better food, medical care and respect for their...

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Sleepwalking into disaster

As GOP leaders meet in Maryland this week, the Washington conventional wisdom is that it’s the Republican Party that is struggling to stay relevant in the Era of Obama. The Democrats, the insiders tell us, are the ones with the wind – and the American people – at their backs. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it’s just that – conventional and complacent. When I became Speaker in 1995, only one member of the House had ever served under a Republican Speaker: Democrat Sidney Yates of Illinois. Prior to the 1994 elections, the conventional wisdom was that Sidney would never suffer such an indignity again. Astute analysts ignore the Washington...

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