This column by Susan A. Carleson, CEO of the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) and Chairman of the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP), was published September 26, 2011 on Townhall.com.

Confusion is the politician’s favorite device; clarity, the statesman’s most potent weapon.

Supporters of limited government too often lose Washington policy debates because we don’t challenge our opponents on their use of weasel words. Here are some needed clarifications that will help conservatives win more debates.

Revenues vs. Taxes

How many times a day do we hear about “increased revenues” and “government investments” from an unquestioning media […]

This column by ACRU Senior Fellow Robert Knight was published September 26, 2011 in The Washington Times.

Rodney King showed up at the United Nations on Wednesday and instructed everyone there to, well, get along.

Actually, it was Barack Obama, but his message was the same as the one from the man whose beating by police (after a 117-mph car chase) triggered the Los Angeles riots of 1992 when the cops were acquitted.

During the riot, Mr. King came out and famously said, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all just get along?”

The topic […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published September 22, 2011 on Forbes.com.

An emerging, disabling problem with our democracy is that increasingly we cannot even engage in intelligent public discussions of critical issues facing our country. The strategy of central political players today is to calculate what busy voters working hard and taking care of their families do not and will not know, and take advantage of that with abusive rhetoric that cannot be characterized as intellectually honest. Contributing greatly to that is the decline of […]

This column by ACRU Policy Board Member and Professor of Economics Dr. Walter E. Williams was published September 21, 2011 on Townhall.com.

During the recent GOP presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that Social Security is a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme.” More and more people are coming to see that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, but is it a lie, as well? Let’s look at it.

Here’s what the 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: “After the first 3 years — that is to say, beginning in 1940 — you will pay, and your employer will […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published September 21, 2011 on The American Spectator website.

If you work hard, play by the rules, save your money, create jobs, and make a success out of yourself, President Obama and the Democrat party will plunder everything you have worked so hard for, because in their view that is only fair.

That is the meaning of the policies President Obama is espousing as he campaigns for re-election around the country this week. As Mark Steyn has explained, there is no bill yet that […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published September 15, 2011 on Forbes.com.

President Barack Obama’s first, nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill enacted in February, 2009, was intellectually quite shocking for its total devotion to an unreconstructed, 1970s style, college freshman’s understanding of Keynesian economics. It had a Rip Van Winkle quality in that it seemed to pretend that nothing had happened since 1980 to prove that the newer, more modern, supply side policies of Reaganomics were what would work to restore booming economic growth.

So Obama […]

This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Jan LaRue was published September 15, 2011 on the American Thinker website.

When it comes to Social Security, Republicans should stop treating seniors like the feeble-minded demographic portrayed in commercials written by 13-year-olds on Madison Avenue.

It’s like the home security commercial targeting seniors for a medical alert pendant to be worn around the neck. White-haired “Mom” didn’t want one because “it was for “some old person.” But daughter, seen patting Mom’s hand, “talked Mom into it.” Next we see “Mom” carrying a basket of laundry down a flight of uncarpeted stairs […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published September 14, 2011 on The American Spectator website.

If President Obama’s jobs plan is such a good idea, then why did he wait until the third year of his presidency to propose it?

Oh wait, he didn’t actually. The so-called jobs plan Obama is trying to con the nation with now is the same plan of government spending, tax credits, and temporary measures he passed in his trillion dollar stimulus bill in his first month in office in February 2009, only half as large. […]

This column by ACRU Policy Board Member and Professor of Economics Dr. Walter E. Williams was published September 14, 2011 on Townhall.com.

Too much of anything is just as much a misallocation of resources as it is too little, and that applies to higher education just as it applies to everything else. A recent study from The Center for College Affordability and Productivity titled “From Wall Street to Wal-Mart,” by Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, Matthew Denhart, Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, explains that college education for many is a waste of time and money. More than one-third of currently working college graduates […]

This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski was published September 8, 2011 on The Washington Examiner website.

In addition to Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s barring clergy and prayer from the 10-year 9/11 memorial service in New York, another sad incident is playing out in our nation’s capital. Religious leaders representing half of the American people are being excluded from a memorial service originally scheduled for the National Cathedral.

The National Cathedral is a familiar sight to those who live around Washington. This massive structure sits atop a ridge in northwestern D.C. Its beautiful architecture is visible for miles on the Virginia side of the […]