Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Fact-Checking 9 Major Biden Claims About Retreat From Afghanistan <[link removed]> – In 2014, the Obama-Biden administration had opted to
declare the combat mission over as the U.S. military worked to train the Afghan army and played a counterterrorism role. During the Trump administration, the U.S.-backed Afghan government “controlled most of the country’s territory,” James Carafano, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in August. The United States was spending less per year in Afghanistan than it previously spent in a week during peak combat periods, Carafano wrote, adding: Trump was negotiating with the Taliban, but there was nothing wrong with that. The negotiations were conditions-based, and Trump made clear the Taliban would be held accountable for its actions. Moreover, Trump’s team made sure that if, in the end, the Taliban proved untrustworthy, the remaining U.S. force had been sized and scoped to present a serious deterrent to the Taliban and be sufficient to protect U.S. interests.
<[link removed]>Why Do We Keep Using Stupid War Slogans To Talk About War? <[link removed]> – Today in America, the screaming elite want us to understand everything through their politics, not our interests. This is true for everything from climate change to critical race theory and the issues of war and peace. Even the tools that are supposed to help us understand what wars are all about, like military history, are overly politicized. If Americans are really serious about their own lives and livelihoods, their community, and their country, they will start taking seriously their responsibility to be informed citizens and engage other citizens in serious discussion of serious issues. If they think this is too much of a burden, they ignore one of the few slogans that do have something serious to say — freedom isn’t free. Heritage expert: Jim Carafano <[link removed]>
America Must Stand Up for Fundamental Rights of Afghan Women <[link removed]> – It is a bitter and tragic irony that a liberal administration ever-interested in
expanding the list of “human rights” thinks that doing so requires rejecting a framework that prioritizes protection of the most basic fundamental rights, such as religious freedom, ahead of positive rights created by the state. Unfortunately, the “progressive” left sees promoting religious freedom as an impediment to advancing
abortion, a top priority of the Biden administration both domestically and abroad. The left’s deep-seated instinct to make abortion the central “women’s issue” has left them ill prepared to protect and promote the fundamental rights—to life, religious belief, conscience, speech—of Afghan women. Headlines show Afghan women seeking to exercise their fundamental rights; these women are not clamoring for abortion on demand. The Taliban undoubtedly will commit severe human rights abuses against the Afghan people, particularly women. To potentially stop those abuses, Biden must commit his administration to championing fundamental human rights for all individuals on the basis of human dignity. Heritage expert: Grace Melton <[link removed]>
<[link removed]>Office for Civil Rights Sticks Its Nose Unnecessarily Into School Masks Debate <[link removed]> – Biden’s Department of Education seeks to turn such legal requirements on their head by focusing instead on a modification of group behavior and taking the emphasis off the individual student with a disability altogether. That makes the department’s investigations nothing more than a partisan power grab—and another way to intimidate local educational associations from educating children as they see fit. Although there is an argument that states should not overstep local control and decision-making on the part of schools by prohibiting
them from mandating masks within their schools, elevating the debate to Washington erodes state education decision-making authority even further. The mask wars aren’t likely to subside anytime soon, which is why such decisions should be left in the hands of those who know their child’s education and health needs best; namely,
parents. Choice—not federal mandates and investigations—is the answer, something several states have already recognized within the COVID-19 context. Heritage experts: Lindsey Burke <[link removed]> and Sarah Perry <[link removed]>
Arizona moves to make legal assistance more affordable <[link removed]> – The Supreme Court of Arizona adopted new rules permitting non-lawyers to have an ownership interest in law firms and have also opened up the profession to allow trained paraprofessionals to provide limited legal services including negotiating with attorneys and representing
clients in court. These new business models should help address the legal needs of low- and middle-income individuals in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. Not surprisingly, many lawyers who fear the competition resist these efforts, even though the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct
explicitly provide that “the profession has a responsibility to assure that its regulations are conceived in the public interest and not in furtherance of parochial or self-interested concerns of the bar.” But for most low- and middle-income individuals, though, the choice is between self-representation, no representation, or representation
by a paraprofessional — not between representation by an attorney or a paraprofessional, the former being simply unaffordable. Heritage expert: John Malcolm <[link removed]>
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