Daily Editorials from Creators Syndicate

Mr. President: Take a Stand on Entitlement Spending for 02/16/2012

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

President Barack Obama can reasonably claim that his new budget is fairer and less dishonest than the ideas advanced by his opponents.

But it's not enough to say that your numbers are better than the other guys' when you've just presented a budget that by its own reckoning allows spending on entitlements to crowd out nearly everything else because the administration has failed to take a ...

Updated: Thu Feb 16, 2012

What Romney Misses on Detroit Bailout for 02/16/2012

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mitt Romney gets a lot of things right in his critique of the automotive industry bailout, but he makes one critical mistake in arguing that a managed bankruptcy without government intervention would have been just as effective.

Writing on The Detroit News commentary page Tuesday, the Republican presidential hopeful defended his opposition of the initial 2008 bailout, which he first spel ...

Updated: Thu Feb 16, 2012

Internet Oversight Bill Rebooting for 02/15/2012

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," abolitionist Wendell Phillips warned in 1852.

Nothing's changed.

Just last month, literally millions of Americans rallied to prevent Congress from abridging free speech on the Internet. They sent tens of millions of emails, faxes and letters to their representatives and senators.

Congress was forced to shelve two simila ...

Updated: Wed Feb 15, 2012

Contraception Uproar Precedes Bigger Health Care Debate for 02/15/2012

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

On Friday, President Barack Obama wisely quelled a political uproar that might never have erupted had he acted more wisely in the first place. It involved new preventive health rules requiring insurance policies to cover birth control medications, procedures and devices without co-pays or deductible fees to the user.

Under changes Obama announced last week, non-profit organizations such ...

Updated: Wed Feb 15, 2012

Stop Fooling Around With Payroll Tax Cut for 02/14/2012

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

On the payroll tax cut, Republicans are playing tiddlywinks. Democrats are playing poker.

President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress want to extend the 2 percentage-point cut in the payroll tax — the Social Security tax most workers pay — that was enacted in December 2010. The tax cut expired in December 2011 but was extended until Feb. 29. The cut dropped to 4.2 pe ...

Updated: Tue Feb 14, 2012

Prayer Bill Looks Tame … For Now for 02/14/2012

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

A new "prayer bill" is trying to win converts in the Florida Legislature, but it's worded so foggily that it doesn't do much more than play legal peekaboo with the American Civil Liberties Union. The bill carefully avoids mentioning Christianity or any other religion. It doesn't require anything of anybody. It doesn't even use the word prayer.

What it talks about instead are &q ...

Updated: Tue Feb 14, 2012

Religious Groups Should Have Seen Obamacare Betrayal Coming for 02/13/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Thomas Jefferson said: "To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

The third president wasn't Catholic and, arguably, probably not Christian. But he understood that for the government to compel people to pay for something they find morally repugnant is "sinful and tyrannical." The 44t ...

Updated: Mon Feb 13, 2012

Find Compromise for Rule on Birth Control Coverage for 02/10/2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Obama administration signaled this week that it is willing to compromise on a new rule requiring religious schools and hospitals to provide free birth control in their health insurance plans. We hope it does and that the compromise it finds does not result in government telling a religious organization to ignore its core beliefs, as the two-week-old rule would do. Separation of church and s ...

Updated: Fri Feb 10, 2012

Obama Administration Must Clarify Contraception Rules for 02/10/2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

In an ideal world, reforming America's broken health care system would have produced a single-payer system — a Medicare-like program for people of all ages.

In the real world, however, the political and financial forces opposed to a single-payer system were too strong. What emerged, instead, was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, a major advance over the curren ...

Updated: Fri Feb 10, 2012

Foreclosure Fraud Demands Justice and Reparations for 02/09/2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

One of the enduring wrongs of the Great Recession has been that individual homeowners have borne and continue to bear the brunt of the housing collapse.

Nearly 4 million American families have lost their homes to foreclosure since early 2007. Another 28 percent of the nation's 45 million outstanding residential mortgages are under water, meaning homeowners owe more than the houses are wo ...

Updated: Thu Feb 09, 2012

Tax Hikes Will Slow Growth for 02/09/2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Denying the impact of taxes on the economy should be a lot harder for lawmakers now that the Congressional Budget Office has spelled it out in the most precise terms.

The nonpartisan CBO took a look at the future of the budget deficit and came up with some great news: Today's $1.1 trillion deficit will dwindle to a measly $269 billion by 2015.

Of course, making that happen assumes ...

Updated: Thu Feb 09, 2012

Diet and the Dole for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

When you accept government money, it often comes with strings attached. If two Florida lawmakers have her way, those strings could lead all the way to certain supermarket aisles.

Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood and Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, are sponsoring legislation that would prohibit food stamps from being used to purchase junk food, such as sugary soft drinks, candy, potato chips, ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

A Timely, If Unfortunate, Super Bowl Finger-Flip for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Nielsen ratings for NBC's Super Bowl broadcast Sunday estimate that nearly half of America's households were tuned to at least part of the game in Indianapolis between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

That suggests that four or five of nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were among the 110 million or so Americans exposed to the halftime show that starred Madonna and ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

Girl Scouts Mark 100th Anniversary for 02/07/2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Hitting the century mark makes for quite a milestone, one reached by few organizations. One hundred years of staying power doesn't simply happen.

Founded in Savannah, Ga., by Juliette Gordon Low in February 1912, Girl Scouts of the USA aims to build good citizens with solid values, learned through the leadership of women who give their time and talents to the next generation.

With ...

Updated: Tue Feb 07, 2012

Freddie Mac Was Wrong to Bet Against Homeowners for 02/06/2012

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

In his State of the Union speech at the Capitol last week and in a follow-up appearance Wednesday in nearby Virginia, President Barack Obama touted new administration initiatives to help hard-pressed homeowners refinance their mortgages and ease the pressure on their family finances.

"But I'll be honest," he told people at the James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, "t ...

Updated: Mon Feb 06, 2012

Obama Plan Would Prolong Housing Pain for 02/06/2012

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

It was predictable that President Barack Obama would pander again to entitlement sentiments. This time involves the misguided belief that everyone is entitled to homeownership, even at the government's — the taxpayers' — expense.

But the president's audacity is a bit much to take, even for an election year.

Obama wants to effectively bail out borrowers who owe more tha ...

Updated: Mon Feb 06, 2012

Cancer Is Not Ideological; Komen Shouldn't Be, Either for 02/03/2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

For 30 years, Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been helping women find, fight and, when possible, beat breast cancer. Toward those ends, it has contributed some $1.5 billion to support education, screening and treatment programs and advanced medical research.

Until very recently, the Komen organization has used the bounty of its prodigious fund-raising acumen to focus on improving the hea ...

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2012

Pricing Obama's State of the Union Wish List for 02/03/2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

President Barack Obama outlined a litany of proposals in his State of the Union address that he said would have a positive economic impact on the United States. As expected, his approaches would require substantial government spending and the commitment of taxpayer dollars. If Obama were successful in implementing all the programs he proposed last week, just how much would it cost taxpayers?

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2012

Good Night for Romney, Obama for 02/02/2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mitt Romney has clearly prevailed in his costly and bitter Republican presidential primary fight in Florida against Newt Gingrich, collecting the Sunshine State's full complement of 50 convention delegates.

Despite Romney's sizable margin of victory, the battle for delegates is far from over, as it will take 1,144 committed delegates to secure the nomination. None of the four candidates ...

Updated: Thu Feb 02, 2012

Has Presidential Negative Advertising Reached a Tipping Point? for 02/02/2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

While in St. Charles, Mo., on Monday seeking to bolster his flagging presidential campaign, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., took aim at the two favored candidates duking it out for the GOP nomination.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., are waging a war in "gutter politics," as they spend millions of dollars on negative te ...

Updated: Thu Feb 02, 2012