Sanctions will not persuade the Assad regime to surrender power, and talk about an embargo on luxury goods is a cruel joke.

In a recent column, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker declared Rep. Ron Paul votes against “virtually every piece of legislation that could be interpreted as government overreach or interference with the free market.” There one small problem with the analysis: It ignores the fact that Paul is one of the biggest pork-barrel earmarkers on Capitol Hill. 

For some months now, President Obama has increasingly been couching his rhetoric in the language of fairness. But in recent weeks, a growing number of conservative elected officials have begun contesting Obama’s claim to be the arbiter of what constitutes fairness and taking the issue of fairness head on in public policy.

Most of the exchanges rested on the ideological debate over how much attention -- and corresponding funds -- should be paid to crises abroad while economic troubles at home remain paramount from voter polls to Capitol Hill.

In recent months, electoral skirmishes and policy debates have hinged on the meaning of fairness. Defenders of free enterprise have often shied away from moral language, preferring to rely on facts, figures, or constitutional arguments to make their case. AEI president Arthur Brooks highlights free enterprise leaders who are changing, now making the moral case.

The president took an extra week to develop his budget, but the extra time was apparently not enough to yield Medicare policies that could produce real savings. Competitive bidding offers a better solution, but only if we are willing to give it a chance.

A special AEI event with Representative Paul Ryan on spending, stimulus, and budget will be held on the Hill at 210 Cannon House Office Building, on Thursday, July 1, from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

The chief obstacle to ROTC's expansion today is not antimilitary sentiment but a Pentagon that prefers to allocate its resources to surer recruiting prospects, primarily in the South and the Midwest.