Yet Another Brilliant Idea from the Bureaucrats

Let’s Send Your Tax Forms To China!, Forbes, May 26, 2016, "There are bad ideas – such as making our tax code so complicated and intrusive that compliance costs billions, yet we can’t be sure what we owe, or that we’re not paying too much. Then there are really bad ideas – such as taking the tax forms of any American who does any international business and sending them to the People’s Republic of China or Russia."

Unmoored from Reality

Obama’s Hiroshima Trip Just More of the Same, Newsday, May 22, 2016, "On Friday, President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. His spokesmen have promised that he won’t apologize for the U.S. use of atomic bombs to end the Second World War. But Hiroshima’s meaning is more powerful than any words he may utter."

Brexit, Britain, and the US

What is “Brexit” and Why Does it Matter?, Heritage Foundation News Release, May 20, 2016. "On June 23, Great Britain will vote in a nationwide referendum to decide if it wants to remain part of the European Union. If Britain exits – Brexit – it will remain a member of NATO, but it will recover the freedom to make its own trade agreements and write its own laws. President Obama believes that it’s in the interests of the U.S. that Britain stay in the European Union. But many British politicians disagree, including Chris Grayling MP, the Leader of the House of Commons, who will be visiting the U.S. this coming week."

Back to the Future in Europe

America’s Outdated Europe Policy: In 2017, the Next President Must Adapt to New Reality, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4559, May 18, 2016, "Since the end of World War II, U.S. policy toward Europe has drifted, without deliberate thought, far from its initial premises—while Europe itself has changed beyond recognition. It is time that the U.S. recognized this fact. The incoming President should direct the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee a comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Europe, a study to be based on the enduring American interests in Europe, the lessons of the post-1945 era, and on the new facts of Europe that have emerged since 1989."

On Churchill and Brexit

Would Churchill Have Backed Brexit?, Forbes, May 17, 2016, "London’s now-former mayor, Boris Johnson, a best-selling biographer of Winston Churchill, has claimed the Great Man for the side of Brexit, Britain’s exit from the EU. Writing in the Guardian, journalist Martin Kettle offers the contrary argument that “everything we know” about Churchill suggests that would “be a committed voter to remain” inside the European Union."

The Strengths and Weaknesses of TPP's ISDS

Straight Talk on the ISDS Provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with James M. Roberts and Riddhi Dasgupta, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4564, May 17, 2016. "The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an investment and trade agreement signed last February between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, contains enforcement provisions, including an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, for resolving potential investment disputes related to the agreement. Today, the ISDS system is used widely around the globe to help protect the investor and to secure for the signatory nation the foreign investment it seeks. But ISDS has become controversial, both as part of the TPP and because it may be included in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) presently being negotiated between the U.S. and the European Union. The ISDS provisions are only one component of the TPP. The agreement must be assessed as a whole. The purpose of this Issue Brief is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the ISDS provisions of the TPP, both as part of the agreement and as part of the broad agenda of American investment and trade diplomacy."

Better Out Than In

Why the U.S. Fails to Grasp British Disquiet Over EU, Yorkshire Post, May 16, 2016, "If it made any difference to the debate, President Obama’s recent press conference with the Prime Minister appears to have boosted the Brexit cause. Obama’s intervention is just the latest incident in the history of American failures to realise why Britain is better off out than in."

Neither Binges Nor Purges

U.S. Does It Again On Military Spending, Newsday, May 8, 2016. "The United States needs to spend more on defense. Not a lot more, but more. And it needs to spend more in a predictable way. Today, as in the past, we’re swinging up and down. That’s wasteful, and it’s dangerous."

By Remembering the Lessons of Adam Smith

How Should Europe Respond to Islamism?, Hoover Institution Caravan, May 4, 2016, "In this era of mass and uncontrolled migrant flows, Adam Smith’s 1776 classic on The Wealth of Nations offers insight into the nature of the challenge posed by Islamism. Far from being a mere manual of economics, Smith’s work reveals how competition promotes progress across society and government, and how it created the modern state and the modern international state system."