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The Job Con -- By: The Editors
Posted on January 30, 2010The unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent. All those laid-off Americans must be wondering why Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein still have jobs.Romer and Bernstein, economic advisers to the Obama administration, warned back in January that, unless Congress enacted the $787 billion stimulus package, the unemployment rate would hit 9 percent by 2010...
The Superbower -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on November 21, 2009My radio pal Hugh Hewitt said to me on the air the other day that Barack Obama ?doesn?t know how to be president.? It was a low but effective crack and I didn?t pay it much heed. But, after musing on it over the last week or so, it seems to me frighteningly literally true...
A Medicaid Buy-Off -- By: Brian Blase
Posted on November 21, 2009Sen. Harry Reid needs 60 Senate votes to pass his health-care bill and, as Jonathan Karl of ABC News reported last night, is attempting to bribe Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana to be the 60th vote by shoveling money into her state. His bribe takes the form of an increased federal reimbursement of Louisiana?s Medicaid expenses...
Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 20, 2009Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus? Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor?s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:?The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn?t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle...
Medicare: A Glimpse of the Future? -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on November 20, 2009As the U.S. Senate weighs a 2,074-page health-care ?reform? bill, supporters of a government option for medical coverage consider this the finest federal initiative since the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet today?s headlines show government severely bungling its current health-care duties...
Travesty in New York -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on November 20, 2009For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the ?propaganda of the deed.? And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 -- not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York...
Holder's True Motive -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 20, 2009Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough-guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. ?After eight years of delay,? he intoned, ?those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice...
Barack Obama's Chump Diplomacy -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 20, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Oh, how the international community loves Barack Obama -- loves to stiff him, play him along, and manipulate him...
We Need Your Help -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 20, 2009How much would you pay to watch Sarah Palin beat the stuffing out of Andrew Sullivan? What would Barack Obama?s official Kenyan birth certificate be worth to you? How about a videotape proving that Bill Ayers not only wrote Dreams from My Father, but also translated it from the original Russian? How about a new Christmas CD with Robert Byrd singing all of his Yuletide favorites (?I?m Dreaming of a White Christmas,? ?I?m Dreaming of an Even Whiter Christmas,? etc)? What would you pay for a DVD of John Kerry saying ?Do you know who I am?? one time too many at a biker bar? Alas, I can?t promise to deliver any of those things any more than I can immanentize the eschaton or hold more than 46 Cheetos in my mouth at any one time...
Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on November 20, 2009In May 2008, Chicago Public Radio teamed up with National Public Radio (NPR) to produce an episode of the show This American Life called ?The Giant Pool of Money.? The episode garnered widespread praise and won several awards for explaining the subprime-mortgage crisis with clarity and concision...
End It, Don't Amend It -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 20, 2009Harry Reid offers the nation a mephitic Senate health-care bill that retains the worst features of Nancy Pelosi?s creation and adds fresh horrors of its own: It will force Americans to finance abortions and jack up some Americans? Medicare taxes by 34 percent...
Blanche Lincoln's Balancing Act -- By: David J. Sanders
Posted on November 20, 2009For Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the moderate Arkansas Democrat, the nation?s health-care woes may lead to more headaches than any medicine could alleviate. Lincoln is a pivotal vote on the motion to begin debate on Senate majority leader Harry Reid?s health-care legislation; if the motion passes, she could be the swing vote on the eventual motion to close debate...
Saturday Night Fever -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 20, 2009In the 2008 presidential race, John McCain often dueled with Barack Obama over health care. Over a year later, Obama is in the White House and McCain finds himself back on Capitol Hill. The battle, however, continues. With the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D...
The Man Who Would Kill Lincoln -- By: John J. Miller
Posted on November 20, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from The First Assassin, by John J. Miller.Saturday, February 23, 1861When Lorenzo Smith heard the chugging of the train, he felt for the revolver at his side. His fingers met its smooth handle, hidden beneath his black coat...
Just Bite Her Already -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on November 20, 2009If Elvis and Christopher Walken had a son, he would look like Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the dreamy-eyed vampire in Chris Weitz?s film The Twilight Saga: New Moon. The much-anticipated film is a sequel to the hugely popular Twilight, based on the best-selling series of books by Stephenie Meyer, who has found a teeny-bopper formula for repackaging the classic Wagnerian theme of love-death...
Criminalizing Health-Care Freedom -- By: Walsh & von Spakovsky
Posted on November 19, 2009The ?reformers? in the White House and the House of Representatives have made all too plain their vision of the federal government?s power to coerce individual Americans to make the ?right? health-care choices. The highly partisan bill the House just passed includes severe penalties for individuals who do not purchase insurance approved by the federal government...
Roadmap to Victory -- By: Tevi Troy & J. H. Anderson
Posted on November 19, 2009By proposing a health-care bill of their own, Senate Republicans can throw the extraordinary weaknesses of the Democratic bills into stark relief. In the wake of the Congressional Budget Office?s recent scoring of aspects of the House Republican bill, there is now an opening for Republicans to provide a clear contrast with the proposed Democratic overhaul...
Cobbling Together a Crisis -- By: Michael Fumento
Posted on November 19, 2009?Swine flu has killed 540 kids, sickened 22 million Americans,? screams USA Today?s page-one headline, with a sub-head proclaiming, ?CDC: Cases, Deaths are Unprecedented.? ?Swine flu cases in the U.S. are rising at the fastest pace for influenza in four decades,? breathlessly declares the lede of a Bloomberg News article...
Circling Sharks Smell American Blood -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on November 19, 2009On his recent trip to Asia, President Obama found China, Japan, and South Korea -- like many nations these days -- in no mood to hear more American lectures. Beijing is worried about owning so much American debt. Tokyo is tiring of an American military base in Okinawa, and wants to redefine its relationship with us...
Obama twitters, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on November 19, 2009In China, a student asked President Obama, ?Should we be able to use Twitter freely?? You and I might have said, ?Yes.? President Obama began, ?Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone...
Lessons of Fort Hood -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on November 19, 2009When a military officer participates in a war against his own country, that is high treason, and that is the charge that ought to be brought against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. But it?s not going to happen. Hasan should have been weeded out of the military long ago...
Four Measures to Remake America -- By: Michael G. Franc
Posted on November 18, 2009The Pelosi-Reid Congress, it?s clear, fancies itself among the most consequential Congresses ever. In the House these last ten months, four votes stand out for the historians and political scientists to ponder and dissect -- the final votes on the $787 billion economic stimulus plan, the fiscal-year 2010 budget resolution, the cap-and-trade legislation, and, of course, health reform...
Obama's Prissy America -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on November 18, 2009The liberal writ was that a strutting ?bring ?em on? George W. Bush for eight years did what he pleased on the international scene. His ?unilateral? America supposedly did not consult with either allies or international organizations, as he rammed through democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan...
Delicate China -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 18, 2009As the president winds down his China trip, National Review Online asked experts on China and foreign policy: What should we do with and how should we regard China?PETER BROOKESNo country or issue will shape the course of the 21st century -- for good or ill -- more than China...
Leave It to the Generals -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on November 18, 2009As the debate over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan intensifies, our war efforts could be hindered by an unlikely source: the U.S. judicial branch. Federal judges are considering whether foreign al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters captured by the U...
It's No Way to Fight a War on Terror -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 18, 2009I get where President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are coming from. They think that if we change our way of life, the terrorists will have won.In principle, I agree. If upholding our values makes fighting the War on Terror harder, then it should be harder...
The Right Role for Sarah Palin -- By: Reihan Salam
Posted on November 18, 2009When Sarah Palin resigned on July 4th weekend, it certainly looked as though she had decided to abandon politics, or at the very least given up on running for president in 2012. And despite the saturation coverage of Palin?s Going Rogue book tour, it?s not obvious that she hasn?t...
The Little Red Hen Syndrome -- By: Jack Fowler
Posted on November 18, 2009You know the story of the famous rosy chicken. She finds grain, she asks her buddies for help to bake bread, no one lifts a finger -- it?s like High Noon starring Rachael Ray. So LRH does it all solo, and then, when the bread is baked, all her excuse-mongering barnyard paisans are suddenly ready to help -- mangia...
Franken's Craven 'Anti-Rape' Amendment -- By: Michael M. Rosen
Posted on November 17, 2009When it comes to Sen. Al Franken, sometimes it?s hard to tell if the joke?s on him or on all of us.In early October, Franken ? a former Saturday Night Live comic and now the junior senator from Minnesota ? presented legislation designed to paint Republicans into an uncomfortable corner, to let him claim the moral high ground of standing up for women?s rights, and to enrich some of his biggest campaign donors...
Justice Delayed -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on November 17, 2009Of all the infuriating aspects of the decision to transfer five 9/11 war criminals to civilian federal court, the one that grates most is the contention that the Obama administration is finally moving forward after ?eight years of delay? -- as Attorney General Eric Holder put it at his Friday press conference -- during which the Bush administration managed to complete only three military-commission trials...
In Her Own Words -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on November 17, 2009Sarah Palin?s Going Rogue goes on sale today. There are tons of excerpts and reviews already out there. But for a quick tour of the book, here is a compendium of Sarah Palin in her own words.Palin says she tried to change the statement that went out about Bristol?s pregnancy because it suggested she and Todd were happy about the pregnancy...
9/10 again, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on November 17, 2009I will echo what Andy McCarthy and others have been saying on this site: The Obama administration?s decision to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters a civilian trial in New York is both alarming and depressing. We sometimes speak of ?the 9/10 mentality?: and this is a perfect expression of that mentality...
Sarah Palin's Roguish Charm -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 17, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Harry Truman gave them hell...
How Low Can He Go? -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 17, 2009President Obama, who nearly prostrated himself before the king of Saudi Arabia last April, has once again bowed low to a monarch -- this time, to the emperor of Japan. What to make of this obsequious body language? After the presidential frame went perpendicular before the Saudi royal, the White House at first denied that the president had bowed...
Bowing to 'World Opinion' -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on November 17, 2009In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes...
The Rogue, on the Record -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 17, 2009Former Alaska governor and Going Rogue author Sarah Palin talked to NRO this afternoon in a wide-ranging and frank interview. She thinks President Obama?s bow to the emperor of Japan reflects an attitude that America should be ?subservient to other countries?; characterizes Newt Gingrich?s thinking on NY-23 as reflective of a ?political machine?; thinks that South Carolina voters should consider sending Sen...
President Zero Sum Goes to Asia -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on November 17, 2009President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America?s economy. His big message? Don?t count on American consumers to lead the world from recession to recovery and beyond...
Depending on the Kindness of Friends -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 17, 2009I?m one of those guys who would rather wander around in a car lost for 45 minutes if it means I don?t have to stop and ask someone for directions. So it doesn?t come easy to ask for your help, but that?s what I?m here to do. If you enjoy what you read here, if it inspires, outrages, moves, or informs you -- or even if it?s merely one of your routine clicks in the morning -- please consider contributing to our fundraising drive...
Trial and Terror -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on November 16, 2009The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other top al-Qaeda terrorists to New York City for a civilian trial is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration. That it is motivated by politics could not be more obvious...
The Making of an American Terrorist -- By: Alex Alexiev
Posted on November 16, 2009Much has been written already about what happened at Fort Hood last week. But to understand why it happened, it may be useful to start by reminding ourselves that the shooting was the first act of suicide terrorism on American soil by a homegrown Islamic extremist...
Honestly! -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on November 16, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. Where have all the feminists gone? Sure, they?re everywhere to be seen when it comes to the matter of Nancy Pelosi?s health-care legislation in the U...
Corruption in Afghanistan -- By: Brock Dahl
Posted on November 16, 2009In his congratulatory phone call to Hamid Karzai, President Obama emphasized the importance of fighting corruption and noted that ?the proof is not going to be in words; it?s going to be in deeds.? He would do well to heed his own advice.Since the beginning of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U...
Fumbling on Afghanistan -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 16, 2009President Obama?s deliberations on Afghanistan have begun to take on an element of farce.It?s understandable that he wants to think carefully before almost doubling our force in Afghanistan as requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. But let?s remember: McChrystal is Obama?s hand-picked general, sent to Afghanistan to carry out the ?comprehensive? strategy Obama announced in the spring...
Dede Scozzafava Is No GOP Moderate -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on November 16, 2009Re-canvassed votes in upstate New York?s 23rd Congressional District foreshadow the second coming of third-party candidate Doug Hoffman. As Mark Weiner of the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Thursday morning, Conservative nominee Hoffman?s 5,335-vote deficit behind Democrat Bill Owens has shrunk to just 3,026 after Election Night tabulation errors were corrected...
That Corruptin' Town -- By: Conrad Black
Posted on November 16, 2009American politics is suffering acutely from the gridlock of entrenched officeholders and election financing controlled by special interests. Over 300 of the 435 congressional districts almost never change partisan hands. Most congressmen have safely gerrymandered districts, receive the bulk of their financial support from one or a few sources, and are reliable legislative supporters of those sources...
Teamwork -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on November 16, 2009Thank you! Some National Review readers have already contributed to our Fall 2009 Fundraising Drive. We?re grateful. We don?t do this -- take over part of our homepage and The Corner for a week -- lightly, or for lack of need: National Review has always operated on the generosity of our readers...
Sarah the Rule Breaker -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on November 16, 2009The list of ?don?ts? for rising political stars is long and varied. You?re not supposed to offer Thanksgiving greetings before a group of turkeys meeting a noisy end. You?re not supposed to quit your job as governor before finishing three years in office...
Tragedy or Scandal? -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on November 14, 2009Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again -- not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U...
Bringing al-Qaeda to New York -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 14, 2009Candidate Barack Obama urged a return to pre-9/11 counterterrorism-by-courts. President Obama?s Justice Department overflows with lawyers who spent the last eight years representing America?s enemies. Thus, Friday?s announcement that top al-Qaeda terrorists will be brought to New York City for a civilian trial is no surprise...
The Politics of Fort Hood -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 13, 2009Let me say up front, I don?t think President Obama is to blame for the Fort Hood shootings, and I don?t think it?s fair to say otherwise.But (you knew there had to be a ?but?) that doesn?t mean Obama won?t pay a political price for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan?s rampage...
'Hey, Barack, It's Your Heart' -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 13, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.?Hey, Barack. It?s me, your heart...
Democrats May Regret 'Pass Anything' Strategy -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 13, 2009Former president Bill Clinton visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver a pep talk to Senate Democrats. ?It?s not important to be perfect here. It?s important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling,? he reportedly told senators. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel sounded a similar theme in an interview with the New York Times...
Medicalizing Mass Murder -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on November 13, 2009What a surprise -- that someone who shouts ?Allahu Akbar? (the ?God is great? jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan?s religious beliefs...
1989 and All That -- By: Duncan Currie
Posted on November 13, 2009In retrospect, the ending of the Cold War may seem inevitable. Of course the Berlin Wall eventually came down. Of course the long-subjugated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe eventually threw off the shackles of totalitarianism. Of course the chronically dysfunctional Soviet economy eventually plunged into a terminal crisis...
September 10? It's Worse Than That -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on November 13, 2009?September 10 America.? The phrase signifies a reprise of the ?terrorism is just a crime? mindset that reigned in the years before the 9/11 attacks. Like other observers, I?ve groused in recent months that we are back to that self-destructive ethos. I was wrong...
Let It Snowe -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 13, 2009Forget about asking Santa Claus. Members of Congress already can guess what they?re getting for Christmas: a nice, long working holiday in Washington, D.C. -- at least if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gets his way. According the U.S. Senate website, the ?tentative schedule? (italics theirs) for the remainder of the legislative year is one big ?T...
Keep Abortion Out -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 13, 2009Liberals are giddy over passage of Nancy Pelosi?s Saturday-night-special health-care bill in the House of Representatives. And why shouldn?t they be? The bill is a big-government dream come true: expanding entitlements, fattening the federal government, and making the middle class dependent on politicians for access to medical care...
'Hate Groups, Nativists, and Vigilantes' -- By: Mark Krikorian
Posted on November 13, 2009It?s not clear why Lou Dobbs resigned from CNN Wednesday. Fox said he?s not headed there, and from his comments it sounds to me like he?s going to run for office in New Jersey (though Bob Menendez?s seat, the next Senate opening, isn?t up until 2012)...
Publius vs. Obamacare -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 12, 2009Supporters of Obamacare have their next target for obloquy and shame. It?s the United States Senate, an institution whose villainy will almost match that of the insurers and Fox News if the health-care bill sinks there.The anti-senatorial campaign is already revving up...
Education Reforms . . . or Union Jobs? -- By: Chester E. Finn Jr.
Posted on November 12, 2009The Department of Education reported the other day that, of the $97.4 billion in economic-stimulus funding that Congress steered its way, 69 percent was ?obligated? by September 30. (The balance -- including Secretary Arne Duncan?s much-discussed ?Race to the Top? money -- must get out the door by September 2010...
Brother, Can You Spare the Yuan? -- By: Therese Shaheen
Posted on November 12, 2009The watchwords for next week?s meeting between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, are ?balanced? and ?sustainable? when it comes to economic relations between the U.S. and the PRC. Senior administration officials are already laying the groundwork...
Bitter Pills -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 12, 2009This summer, just when the health-care debate grew sour, Big Pharma struck a sweet deal. Or so they thought. By agreeing to pony up $80 billion to support Obamacare, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, assumed that they dodged a bullet...
The Wrong Financial Fix -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 12, 2009Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) has overseen the compilation of another dictionary-sized piece of impenetrable legislation, this one intended to reform our bank regulators and thereby prevent a repeat of the recent financial crises. His approach is the wrong one, undermining the institutions that have performed relatively well, such as the FDIC, politicizing the Federal Reserve, and creating a raft of new regulators with disconsonant mandates...
Five Promises -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on November 12, 2009GMAC, the company that finances car purchases for GM, has already received two infusions of taxpayer assistance totaling $12.5 billion. Now, the feds say it needs up to $5.6 billion more. Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was among the first to break the news...
Same Old, Same Old at Fort Hood -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on November 12, 2009Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of murdering last week 13 people (12 of whom were soldiers) and wounding another 30 at Fort Hood, Texas. It was not the first, nor will it be the last, domestic terrorist incident since Sept. 11, 2001. We now see that authorities had, or should have had, reason to be suspicious of Hasan -- including his contact with a radical cleric and a bizarre ?medical? presentation he once gave to Army doctors that focused on Islam and the military...
Media Mush -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on November 12, 2009Imagine if, in 1942, the son of German immigrants from the Sudetenland had yelled ?Heil Hitler!? and then gunned down several dozen of his fellow soldiers on an American military base. Most reporters probably would not have expressed bewilderment as to the perpetrator?s motive...
A Beard Too Far -- By: Elaine Donnelly
Posted on November 11, 2009Some ironies are more than cruel. On the day that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan approached Fort Hood armed with two handguns, he may have passed a newsstand selling copies of the November 9 edition of Army Times. On the front page was a photograph of a Sikh soldier wearing a beard, mustache, and turban with his uniform, accompanied by the headline, ?Regs Make Way for Religion -- Sikh, Muslim Allowed to Incorporate Customs into Army Dress...
Survival of the Most Pious? -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on November 11, 2009With his new book, New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade positions himself as a serious challenger to Steven Pinker for the title Best Living Popularizer of the Human Sciences. Wade?s 2006 book Before the Dawn was a masterly survey of current knowledge about our deep ancestry, informed by recent discoveries in genetics and archeology...
Snowe in the Spotlight -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 11, 2009A month ago, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Me.) was the lone Republican to vote in support of the Senate Finance Committee?s health-care bill. At the time, liberals cheered, though Snowe cautioned that her vote then did not ?forecast what my vote will be tomorrow...
The Home Front -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on November 11, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: On July 18, 1965, Adm. Jeremiah Denton of the U.S. Navy was shot down during a combat mission over North Vietnam. A prisoner of war for seven and a half years, Denton provided the first direct evidence of torture by the North Vietnamese...
Mocking Civil Society -- By: Anna Borshchevskaya
Posted on November 11, 2009While in Russia for meetings with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev last July, Pres. Barack Obama sought to highlight the importance of democracy. Speaking at Moscow?s New Economic School, he returned to the subject, noting that freedom of speech, competitive elections, and a free media ensure that societies improve...
Sometimes an Extremist Really Is an Extremist -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 11, 2009Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan demonstrated many things when he allegedly committed treason in the war on terror. For starters, he showed -- gratuitously, alas -- that evil is still thriving.He demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others...
Blogging brave, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on November 11, 2009Who is more admirable than people under dictatorship who stick their necks out for freedom and decency? Not many, you will agree. I have taken special note, over the years, of people in Cuba who stick their necks out, and who often suffer horrible consequences for their efforts...
Connecting the Dots -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 10, 2009Does anyone remember the days when ?connecting the dots? was considered vital to national security? After the September 11 attacks, we had the 9/11 Commission and countless knock-off studies, committees, investigations, hearings, journalistic exposés, and outings of fact-finders...
Dazed and Confused -- By: Elliott Abrams
Posted on November 10, 2009When I visited Israel in late October, not long before the latest visits of U.S. envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israelis of all political hues confessed that they were amazed, perplexed, and confused by the policy those two diplomats and President Obama are following...
Dare to Call It Terrorism -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on November 10, 2009So it turns out that the worst Islamist terrorist strike since 9/11 -- an attack that killed twice as many Americans as were slain in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- was not a terrorist attack at all. Just ask the FBI.The initial hurried reports of thirteen people (including twelve U...
Living in Terror -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 10, 2009Is the Fort Hood massacre a deadly example of political correctness run amok? National Review Online asked a few of our contributors for their observations on how the shooting happened and what we can do to prevent similar incidents in the future. PETER BROOKES This story is still unraveling, but it seems to me that it?s a lot worse than the possibility of political correctness run amok...
Jihad in Texas -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 10, 2009What was the craziest reaction to the attack at Ft. Hood by Major Hasan, the crazed jihadist? It could be Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano?s saying that what we most have to fear now is a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment. Or it could be journalist Michael Tomasky?s saying that we should not draw any inferences from ?Allahu akbar,? the murderer?s battle cry, because it?s just something that votaries of the religion of peace say in moments of stress...
The Road Ahead -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 10, 2009After passing in the U.S. House of Representatives by a 220-215 vote on Saturday, Obamacare heads to the U.S. Senate this week, where it faces five major obstacles. NRO spoke with Republican senators and numerous aides on Monday about potential roadblocks in the Democrats? way as they try to cobble together 60 votes...
The PTSD Evasion -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 10, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood, is a most unlikely victim of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...
Odds & Ends -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on November 10, 2009Random thoughts on the passing scene:If politicians stopped meddling with things they didn?t understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.It was fascinating to see Barack Obama warning us not to leap to conclusions about the killings at Fort Hood, Texas -- after the way he leaped to conclusions over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, when he knew less about the facts than we already know about the massacre at Fort Hood...
Backlash Hogwash -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 10, 2009?U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around the United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.?The Department of Homeland Security is in good company in its confusion. Gen...
Held by the Past -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on November 10, 2009?So, who are you supposed to be?? a man asks Don Draper on Halloween night as he and his wife, Betty, take their children trick-or-treating. That of course is the abiding question of the critically acclaimed AMC series Mad Men, whose satisfying third-season finale aired on Sunday night...
From Point A to Point B -- By: Mary Peters
Posted on November 09, 2009Much has been written about the ?pragmatic? platform of Virginia governor-elect Bob McDonnell. The common wisdom is true as far as it goes -- McDonnell ran on ?kitchen table? issues that were of special concern to suburban voters -- but the media has paid too little attention to one of the election?s most important topics: transportation...
Nanny with a Nightstick -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 09, 2009?Whatever happened to Saturday night?? asked the poet. Most Americans, we hope, had more diverting business than staying up near unto the witching hour to watch Nancy Pelosi?s Democrats vote to make meatloaf of the insurance business and a good chunk of the overall health-care system with it...
Wedded to Victory -- By: Interview
Posted on November 09, 2009Marriage won a 31st victory last week with Maine?s Question 1, a referendum to repeal the state?s same-sex-marriage legalization law. Brian S. Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, talked about the win with National Review Online?s Kathryn Jean Lopez...
Who Are 'They'? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on November 09, 2009Barack Obama ran a healing campaign. He offered sonorous themes of a country no longer to be divided by blue-state/red-state animosities, by race, by income -- or by much of anything. In turn, we were to suspend disbelief over his past hardball campaigns for the state senate and sthe U...
Where responsibility lies, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on November 09, 2009Just want to say a word about the passage of ?national health care? -- maybe not a very welcome word. There comes a time, I think, when you have to point to the American electorate, who put those Democrats in place: in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House...
Winning with Marriage -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on November 09, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. Opposing gay marriage is a loser of a position. That, at least, is what everyone seems to say, all along the political spectrum...
Mission Remission -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 09, 2009Pelosicare may have passed the House, but the debate on health care is far from over. What should conservatives be doing to influence the next phase? We contacted a few of National Review Online?s health-care experts and asked them for their recommendations...
Centuries in the Making -- By: Conrad Black
Posted on November 07, 2009Twenty years ago, like scores of millions of others, I watched in delight as the Berlin Wall came down. A huge crowd stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate, waving the flag of the Federal Republic and singing the current words of the country?s stirring national anthem, composed by Haydn...
The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on November 07, 2009Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a ?tragedy? (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the ?War on Terror...
A Few Good Democrats -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 07, 2009Republicans have made a good case against the Democrats? health-care bill, and they have offered a decent alternative. But given the majorities enjoyed by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate, Republicans can do only so much. The minority whip, Rep...
The Party at the Wall -- By: Flashback
Posted on November 06, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This piece by Bennett Owen appeared in the December 22, 1989, issue of National Review. (You can dig into NR?s archives anytime here.) West Berlin -- It began as a trickle. On East German TV, a government spokesman had ended an evening press conference by saying that citizens of the GDR could travel freely, and by 9:30 p...
Painting the Gulag -- By: Hans A. von Spakovsky
Posted on November 06, 2009My Russian father and German mother, who survived some of the worst wars and atrocities of the last century, came close to death many times. But I recently experienced a visual reminder of just how lucky they were, despite the many hardships they endured...
Health-Care U -- By: Father Thomas D. Williams
Posted on November 06, 2009If you were to ask the proverbial person on the street what the Catholic Church thinks about health-care reform, the answer would sound pretty much like this: Catholics have serious problems with the surreptitious inclusion of abortion in the current health-care proposal, as well as with the absence of serious protection for conscientious objection among health-care workers...
Inverse Reaction -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on November 06, 2009The Tea Party movement in all its myriad forms -- free-market groups, little old ladies, crusty in flag hats, fans of Beck?s 9/12 Project -- have done everything one could possibly ask to derail a government takeover of the health-care system. It will be a perverse irony if their high-visibility protests end up persuading Democrats to damn the torpedoes in the face of near-certain electoral doom...
Three Strikes against Obamacare -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 06, 2009Barack Obama promises that if the Democrats? health-care plan is passed, Americans will enjoy wider and better insurance coverage without: 1. being forced out of their current insurance; 2. being subject to government rationing, including the outright denial of life-saving care; 3...
The $1.5 Trillion Fraud -- By: Michael F. Cannon
Posted on November 06, 2009If House Democrats hold a vote on their health-care overhaul this weekend, they might as well vote on abolishing the Congressional Budget Office too. It would be no more audacious -- and much more honest -- than their current strategy for hiding the true cost of their legislation...
Forgetting the Fall -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 06, 2009President Barack Obama has RSVPed ?nein? to Chancellor Merkel?s invitation to Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. National Review Online asked a few experts what this snub reveals about our current president. DINESH D?SOUZA I?m glad Obama is not going...
The End of an Era That Never Began -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on November 06, 2009It?s all so terribly sad.To listen to liberals and the White House spin election results, you?d think all was well with the world. Barack Obama is still personally popular! The evil right-wing extremists lost in New York?s 23rd congressional district and a Democrat (who was arguably more conservative than the Republican nominee) won...
Barack Obama's Mandate Gap -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 06, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.On November 3, the fairy tale died...
The Myth of '08, Demolished -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on November 06, 2009Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday?s elections is historical...
Are You with Us or with Them? -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 06, 2009President Obama likes to preen himself on his supposed moral superiority to his predecessor. He announced the closing of Guantanamo in his first week on the job (though, ten months on, it remains open) to advertise the new administration?s disdain for George Bush?s war-fighting tactics...
Two More Reasons to Oppose Pelosicare -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on November 06, 2009H.R. 3692, the monstrous health-care-reform bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) unleashed on October 30, comprises 1,990 pages of dense, nearly impenetrable prose. This legislation is precisely ten sheets shy of four reams of paper. Just ten pages after completing its third full ream, this bill reveals on page 1,510 yet another reason to reject Obamacare: an unfunded federal mandate for nutrition labeling at chain restaurants and even on vending machines...
Better or Worse? -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on November 06, 2009What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the senators and representatives have a chance to read it?Among the things that people complain about under the present medical-care system are the costs, insurance-company bureaucrats? denials of reimbursements for some treatments, and the freeloaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others...
A Healthy Reaction -- By: Michael G. Franc
Posted on November 05, 2009?Contain the scope of the debate?: This has been a key element of the Democratic strategy to enact Big Government health reform. As long as voters perceive the issue as a nice, neat, four-cornered proposal to expand health coverage, the liberals who control Congress will win...
No Public Money for Abortion -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 05, 2009It is easy to forget that there are pro-life Democrats, and even pro-life Democrats committed enough on the issue to stand athwart health-care legislation coveted by President Obama. But Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) threatens to do exactly that, while Nancy Pelosi and her circle are retreating behind closed doors to frustrate his efforts...
Cosmic Justice -- By: Dinesh D'Souza
Posted on November 05, 2009All evolutionary attempts to explain morality ultimately miss the point. They seek to explain morality, but even at their best what they explain is not morality at all. Imagine a shopkeeper who routinely increases his profits by cheating his customers...
Republican Civil War? -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 05, 2009The NY-23 race has political commentators abuzz: Is there a Republican civil war going on? If so, who started it, and can there be a truce? If not, why is everyone saying there is one? National Review Online asked a few close observers of the Right to report in on these rumors of war...
More 'Work' for the President -- By: Patrick J. Michaels
Posted on November 05, 2009In the blame game, the Obama administration isn?t about to stop with Fox News. Instead, it?s moving on to lowly scientists.Last month, President Obama gave a somewhat chilling, if somewhat ignored, speech on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Same Old, Same Old -- By: Michael Knox Beran
Posted on November 05, 2009Barack Obama won the White House promising a politics of change, yet he presides over an administration that has become a mortuary for dead ideas. In the year since his election, he has given the country not novelty, but the same old, same old, serving up policies that might have been arresting in the time of McKinley but have long since lost their luster...
No Free Lunches in Medical Care -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on November 05, 2009One of the strongest talking points of those who want a government-run medical-care system is that we simply cannot afford the high and rising costs of medical care under the current system.First of all, what we can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything...
Afghan Mythologies -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on November 05, 2009As President Obama decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, we should remember that most of the conventional pessimism about Afghanistan is only half-truth. Remember the mantra that the region is the ?graveyard of empires,? where Alexander the Great, the British in the 19th century, and the Soviets only three decades ago inevitably met their doom?In fact, Alexander conquered most of Bactria and its environs (which included present-day Afghanistan)...
Small Miracle -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on November 05, 2009People forget how small Israel is. Its entire population is a little more than 7 million -- smaller than Lima, Peru. Its land area is about 8,000 square miles, smaller than New Jersey or Belize. By comparison, Jordan, its neighbor to the east, occupies 35,000 square miles; Egypt, its neighbor to the West, covers 386,000 square miles...
What Do Women Want? -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on November 04, 2009Everything you need to know about sex and politics begins with reading the results of the Virginia gubernatorial race.As any Washington Post reader knows, Governor-elect Bob McDonnell wrote in a 1989 thesis that ?every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators...
Glory Days -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 04, 2009Parsippany, N.J. Now this was a Jersey party. A Bruce Springsteen cover band blasted riffs by the stage. The open bar was mobbed. Ties were loose, and the Seton Hall College Republicans couldn?t stop dancing. The polls had closed hours before, and the crowd milling by the empty podium in the hotel ballroom was electric...
Lessons of NY-23 -- By: Michael Graham
Posted on November 04, 2009Losing NY-23 may be the first step toward victory for Northeastern Republicans.Doug Hoffman?s congressional race was watched very closely by conservatives across the region, people like Jennifer Horn of New Hampshire?s 2nd District.Horn, an outspoken conservative and a tea-party Republican, ran for the seat last year against Democrat Paul Hodes, and lost...
Lake Placid Revisited -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 03, 2009Last night, the upstate wind was cool, with just a hint of the winter chill to come -- the season when thoughts turn toward hockey. Doug Hoffman, the Conservative party candidate in New York?s 23rd congressional district, agreed. As the hour grew late and he made his final rounds of handshakes and hugs, something about the moment, and the cold air, stirred a memory...
The Right Returns? -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on November 03, 2009Will this be a victory day that signals the comeback of the Right? Will today?s results signal anything? We asked friends of National Review Online to predict the outcome -- and impact -- of today?s elections. DAN CASEYMy very edgy predictions: New Jersey: Chris Daggett will lose...
The Impartial Spectator -- By: Dinesh D'Souza
Posted on November 03, 2009To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfish and indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature. -- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments...
Can This State Be Saved? -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on November 03, 2009I lived in the Garden State for the first 18 years of my life, so it?s strange to cover and read about the governor?s race there today. The place names in the news articles are the same, but the descriptions are different, as if an H-bomb of gloom had detonated some years back and the fallout continued to plague the residents...
Why Obama Won't Go to Berlin -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on November 03, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.In his first year in office, Barack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president...
Health-Care Overhaul IV: This Time It's Personal -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on November 03, 2009I labeled it ?Health-Care Overhaul IV? for convenience. In fact, a new 2,000-page behemoth seems to emerge more than once a week from the maw of Congress, so it?s becoming impossible to keep track.Until now, my reasons for opposing this fright mask were entirely dispassionate and flowed from 1) common sense (how are they going to provide more care for less money, and can we afford another huge entitlement when existing ones are going bankrupt?), 2) experience (government entitlements always cost far more than projections and government is far less efficient at providing services than the private sector), and 3) philosophy (the way to reduce prices is to increase competition -- not reduce it)...
The 'Costs' of Medical Care -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on November 03, 2009We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is ?too high? -- either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs...
The Right Man -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on November 02, 2009Almost every high-school girl has a backup prom date. He?s reliable and an old friend, but lacks the flash of the hotshot quarterback, the class president, or the Zac Efron lookalike. Often enough, these quiet Charlie Browns oblige, smiling through the fickleness, appreciated but seldom chosen...
Hoffman and the GOP -- By: The Editors
Posted on November 02, 2009If there had remained any doubt that Dede Scozzafava was the wrong candidate for Republicans in New York?s 23rd Congressional District, her decision to endorse Democrat Bill Owens after leaving the race closes the book on that question. Ms. Scozzafava, the liberal nominee forced on voters by New York?s feckless GOP establishment, was not much of a Republican, in theory or in practice...
October Diary -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on November 02, 2009Majesty and importance Halfway through reading the article on Hillary Clinton?s workday in my Sunday Parade supplement, I suffered a nasty attack of saeva indignatio and had to stop reading.Looking at the thing now, with some soothing medication coursing through my veins, I?m surprised I even made it past the first section: September 156:45 p...
A New Isolationism? -- By: Conrad Black
Posted on November 02, 2009The Obama administration?s shilly-shallying in Afghanistan is a textbook case of how not to conduct a war, and how not to lead an alliance.In the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, the Democrats demanded the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and accused the Bush administration of conducting an unnecessary war in that country while ignoring the original campaign in Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned...
Sister Maureen Gets It Wrong -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on November 02, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com.Where is Tom Hanks when you need him? Something sinister is happening in the Catholic Church, at least according to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd...
Beyond McDonnell -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on November 02, 2009Based on voter projections, the news-network decision desks can call a winner in Virginia?s governor?s race -- oh, right about now, really.While everyone knows not to count chickens before they hatch, it would require an epic, nearly unprecedented turn of events for Democrat Creigh Deeds to defeat Republican Bob McDonnell in the Virginia governor?s race...
The Rediscovery of America -- By: Matthew Spalding
Posted on November 02, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: In his new book, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future (ISI Books), Matthew Spalding defines America?s foundational principles, shows how they have come under assault by modern progressive-liberalism and lays out a strategy to recover them in American society...
Obamacare's Medical-Device Tax -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on November 02, 2009Obamacare promises to make medicine cheaper by making it costlier. Case in point: The Senate Finance Committee proposes a brand-new tax on medical devices.Manufacturers of pacemakers, stents, heart valves, artificial hips, motorized wheelchairs, and other therapeutic instruments may have lobbied this tax in half...
'Black' is beautiful, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on November 02, 2009As I often, maybe too often, point out, we Americans are seldom more ridiculous than in our language, and we are never more ridiculous than when our language is racial. You may remember an instance from the 2002 Winter Olympics. I have written about it more than once...
'Truth to Power' -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on October 31, 2009Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that ?we?re going to speak truth to power.? Who?s Valerie Jarrett? She?s ?Senior Advisor? to the president of the United States -- i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to ?speak truth to power? to...
The New Brett Favre -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on October 30, 2009There was Judas, and now there?s Brett Favre. Okay, the betrayal is not quite biblical. But it is indeed epic. This Sunday, Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre will step onto Lambeau Field in Green Bay to play against the Green Bay Packers, the team that employed him for 16 years...
Counterterrorism, Obama Style -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on October 30, 2009Five months ago, when al-Qaeda jihadist Ali Saleh Kallah al-Marri pleaded guilty, it was obvious that the Justice Department had given him a sweetheart deal. On Thursday, a federal judge in Illinois dutifully finished the job. Al-Marri, a committed sleeper operative sent by our enemies to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of mass-murder attacks inside the United States, was given an appalling sentence: He?ll be eligible for release in about six years...
Halloween Etiquette -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on October 30, 2009For those of us disinclined toward glitter, face paint, and costume stores, Halloween can be complicated. For kids, dressing up is simple: a superhero, a ghost, or whatever Miley Cyrus recommends. Teens usually take a sabbatical -- too young for pumpkin beer, too old to be begging neighbors for Snickers bars...
Books of the Un-Dead -- By: S. T. Karnick
Posted on October 30, 2009Although the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker, has surely been one of the most influential works of genre fiction ever written, ironically the central point of the book has nearly always been missed. Fortunately, a new novel co-written by Stoker?s great-grandnephew brings that aspect of the Dracula myth back to its appropriate place of primacy...
The Borgomeister -- By: Andrew Stuttaford
Posted on October 30, 2009There?s a long, unrespectable tradition of vampires? being unable to decide whether we humans are lunch, lovers, or a bite of both. My irritation at coming across a pile of Twilights and their no-less-sensitive kin heaped under the heading ?undying love? in a neighborhood Barnes & Noble was thus curmudgeonly and somewhat unfair...
The Inevitable Debacle -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 30, 2009The latest health-care bill, offered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is more of the same. Like every other Democratic bill before Congress, this ?comprehensive reform? has two major features: First, it transforms insurance into a product that few rational people would buy...
Reid the Survivor? -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on October 30, 2009If you?ve been reading the papers lately you?ve probably concluded that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?s political future doesn?t look good. The headlines speak for themselves: ?Poll: Reid?s re-election numbers don?t add up?; ?Harry Reid Seen Losing 2010 Reelection, Poll Shows?; ?Senate Leader Harry Reid faces tough re-election? -- just to name a few...
The Scooter Standard -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on October 30, 2009While the most transparent administration in history continues to stonewall Congress on its legal theories for supporting a would-be dictator in Honduras, dismissing a civil-rights case against nightstick-wielding Black Panthers, and flouting the plain language of the Constitution on the D...
Not Dead Yet -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 30, 2009EDITOR'S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246).The Republican party has no national leaders...
He Came, He Saw, He Kowtowed -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on October 30, 2009It seems Rocco Landesman, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, didn?t get the memo, literally.On September 22, stung by controversy over the administration?s effort to turn the arts community into proselytizers of its very special brand of hope and change, the White House issued a stern warning to all government agencies: Keep politics out of the arts...
The Benefit of Doubt -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on October 30, 2009Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent.I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other...
Fighting the Lies Harder Than Fighting the War -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on October 30, 2009The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest-profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.?s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation...
The Medicaid Expansion -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on October 30, 2009New research predicts that Obamacare will swell America?s Medicaid population by nearly 16 million individuals. All told, health-reform legislation currently before Congress would welcome nearly one in five Americans into government-run medical welfare...
Three Envelopes -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on October 30, 2009Old Soviet joke:Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. ?Niki, I?m dying. Don?t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.?A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: ?Blame everything on me...
Losing Ground -- By: Heather Mac Donald
Posted on October 29, 2009A forthcoming study on Hispanic children?s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic ?children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,? reports the New York Times...
Takeover on Campus -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on October 29, 2009The Obama administration is trying to strong-arm America?s colleges and universities into complying with a bill that hasn?t been signed into law yet. The bill, which would replace current subsidized-student-loan programs with a government-run system, passed the House last month, but its fate in the Senate is far from clear...
Voting Present on Illegal Immigration -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on October 29, 2009Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform.Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as ?un-American...
Where Rohde Leads -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on October 29, 2009Almost a year ago, New York Times correspondent David Rohde was abducted by the Taliban. I was in Afghanistan at the time and, like many Westerners in the country, I heard about it but agreed not to write about it. Publicity, it was thought, could increase the danger Rohde faced...
An all-too-modern homecoming, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on October 29, 2009Got a letter from Corona, Calif., the home of Centennial High School. My correspondent began, ?I thought you might be interested in hearing this, because it will remind you of Ann Arbor? -- Ann Arbor, Mich., my hometown. ?Friday night,? said the correspondent, ?was our homecoming game...
Kerry Does Afghanistan -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on October 28, 2009?What America needs today,? Sen. John Kerry insisted, ?is a smarter, more comprehensive and far-sighted strategy for modernizing the Middle East.? We have to ?draw on all of our nation?s strengths,? including ?military might? and ?the immense moral prestige of freedom and democracy...
Economic Freedom Fighters, Unite -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on October 28, 2009It must be something in the water. The ruling Democrats know that their tax-hiking, re-regulating, and big-spending policies have failed to rejuvenate job-creation or reduce the unemployment rate. And yet they persist in trying more of the same.A recent New York Times editorial acknowledges that the economy is weak, but it pleads for yet another federal stimulus package...
Can Obamacare Be Stopped? -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on October 28, 2009Based on the media coverage of health-care reform, one might think that Obamacare is inevitable. National Review Online wanted a second opinion, so we consulted some of our health-care experts to ask: Can Obamacare be beaten, and how can we beat it? JEFFREY H...
Colors -- By: Michael Yon
Posted on October 28, 2009Some things are not as they seem. Many people, for instance, seem to think Stars & Stripes is a military lapdog, but this is untrue. If Washington had a yearbook, Stars & Stripes might be voted ?most apt to slam the military.? Stars & Stripes is a watchdog...
Guantanamo Laureate -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on October 28, 2009Over the last decade Barack Obama -- in campaign mode for various state and federal offices -- repeatedly denounced the Bush-era security protocols as either unlawful or of little utility. Indeed, few political figures made the case so unremittingly that the United States had gone rogue in its zealotry to fight terror...
Fido, a.k.a. the Climate Criminal -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on October 28, 2009The government cannot have my dog.Don?t tell that to the authors of the new book Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living. They calculate that dog owning is much worse than SUV driving for the planet. So when you see a car heading to the dog park with some happy labs drooling out the window, you should think ?climate criminals...
A Military Can Do Wonders for an Economy -- By: Interview
Posted on October 28, 2009Why is Israel so economically successful? Dan Senor and Saul Singer go beyond stereotypes and beyond the continuing Mideast conflict to analyze this question in their new book, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel?s Economic Miracle. Senor, a former Bush-administration official in Iraq, took questions from National Review Online?s Kathryn Jean Lopez on what Israel?s done right, what stands in her way, and how we can learn a little from our ally...
Amelia of Atchison -- By: Tom Hoopes
Posted on October 27, 2009Atchison, Kan. -- Amelia, a biopic about the aviatrix who disappeared in 1937 trying to fly around the world, didn?t get very good box-office receipts. It didn?t matter that the acclaimed Mira Nair directed and two-time Academy Award winner Hillary Swank starred...
Scrap the Cap -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 27, 2009Hear that? It?s the sound of another 1,000-page bill hitting desks all over Washington. Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have introduced the ?Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,? which is the Senate equivalent of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House earlier this year...
Send Fewer Students to College -- By: Robert VerBruggen
Posted on October 27, 2009Marcus A. Winters says we should ?send more students to college.? He is responding, in part, to my NR piece making the opposite case. My argument is that when 40 percent of college students fail to graduate in six years, and when about a quarter of employed college graduates have jobs that don?t require degrees, it?s obvious we?re pushing too many kids into higher education...
Obamacare's False Dawn -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 27, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246. The public option is back. Its Lazarus act is hailed as a sign of how rosy the health-care debate looks for Democrats...
Dismantling America -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on October 27, 2009Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many ?czars? appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another ?czar? would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers -- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers? survival would depend on the government?s liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called ?experts? deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom...
Government by Holiday Inn Express -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on October 27, 2009You?ve seen those commercials in which an airline pilot, or surgeon, or nuclear engineer is giving expert advice only to acknowledge eventually to his nonplussed listeners that while he is not actually a fill-in-the-blank, he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...
Lies That Are Disputed -- By: Conrad Black
Posted on October 26, 2009Most thoughtful commentators bemoan the decline of bipartisanship and the coarsening of political discourse in the United States. The president promised to reach out to the opposition and hoped for 80 Senate votes for his stimulus bill. But he disregarded all Republican suggestions for the bill and acquiesced in its Pelosification into a groaning, creaking, Democratic gravy train...
Voices for Choice -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on October 26, 2009Kevin Chavous is an African American and former Democratic city council member from Washington, D.C. He says he?s an Obama supporter, but he is distinctly unhappy with the president. Elections may have consequences, but no one expected that the White House would be so brazenly petty as to allow poor minority children in the nation?s worst school district to become the victims of political score-settling...
Affordability Insurance We Can Afford -- By: Hanns Kuttner
Posted on October 26, 2009When someone with a six-figure income doesn?t have health insurance, it?s probably because he would rather spend the money on something else. When a single mom who works as a store cashier does not have health insurance, we?re more likely to say she can?t afford it...
A Closer Look at the Uninsured -- By: Duncan Currie
Posted on October 26, 2009The American health-care debate is a blizzard of numbers, but few get tossed around as frequently as ?46 million.? According to the Census Bureau?s Current Population Survey (CPS), that?s roughly how many people (the more precise figure was 45.7 million) lacked health insurance at a given moment in 2007 -- nearly one-sixth of the entire U...
Bright Prospects in the Old Dominion -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on October 26, 2009Arlington, Va. -- Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell faces a challenge pretty unfamiliar to Republicans lately: What do you do when things look good for your campaign?The polls showing McDonnell up by double digits over Democrat Creigh Deeds are starting to come in bunches -- 14 percentage points in the Virginian-Pilot poll, 12 points in the Public Policy Polling survey, a jaw-dropping 19 points in SurveyUSA...
Campaigns & Integrity -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on October 26, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com.I do not live in New York?s 23rd congressional district, and I?ve never hiked the Adirondacks, which run through it...
Mister Tough Guy -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on October 24, 2009Benjamin Disraeli?s most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: ?Never complain and never explain.? For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln, and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on Orating with the Stars, Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side...
Mary, Quite Contrary -- By: Ryan Sayre Patrico
Posted on October 23, 2009?Don?t burn hundreds of your subjects at the stake.? If a modern-day image consultant could offer advice to some of the past?s most notorious rulers, that nugget of wisdom would stand at the top of the list. ?As soon as modernity rolls around,? the consultant would explain, ?everyone will wonder what in the world you were thinking...
Remember the Silent Majority -- By: Interview
Posted on October 23, 2009Don?t believe what you?ve seen in the movies. Malcom X wasn?t friendly with Martin Luther King, most anti-war protesters were just looking ?to get laid,? and plenty of Americans lived through the whole decade without seeing a hippie, save on TV. Jonathan Leaf, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties, answers some questions from National Review Online?s Kathryn Jean Lopez to set our record straight on that infamous decade...
Feinberg's Folly -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 23, 2009Three things about the Obama administration?s publicity-seeking move to curb executives? pay at bailed-out companies: It is inevitable, it is stupid, and it is inevitably stupid.Even as President Obama was stumping to provide a bit of job security to former Goldman Sachs boss Jon Corzine, the president?s minion, Kenneth Feinberg, was preparing to ?collect scalps,? as Wall Street critic Yves Smith aptly put it...
America's Obama Obsession -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on October 23, 2009For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been...
Imprison Here, Release Here -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on October 23, 2009If Guantanamo Bay is closed, scores of trained jihadists, committed to killing Americans, will be released to dwell among us: It is that simple. Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder contend that America?s civilian federal prisons are secure...
Connaughton's Constellation -- By: Interview
Posted on October 23, 2009James L. Connaughton, who was chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the George W. Bush administration, has been demonized by the likes of Rolling Stone. But in an interview with National Review Online, the current executive vice president on public and environmental policy at Constellation Energy proves more complex than the caricature: supportive of nuclear, yes, while having complimentary things to say about both cap-and-trade (for fear of the EPA run wild) and the Obama administration...
Can Civility Be Lost If It Was Never Found? -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on October 23, 2009There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth these days about the death of civility.Apparently, like Cupid with his arrow or a pixie with fairy dust, some magical sprite used to enchant America?s political combatants, ensuring that all public discourse was full of beg-your-pardons and please-and-thank-yous...
Fox Wars -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on October 23, 2009Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he?s put a horse?s head in Roger Ailes?s bed.Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn?t scare easily. The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is ?opinion journalism masquerading as news...
The Bankers and the Bureaucrats -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 23, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Members of AIG?s financial-products unit should take heart...
Maria Shriver Misses the Point -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on October 23, 2009Maria Shriver?s new report, ?A Woman?s Nation Changes Everything,? has received a full-dress media rollout. We are invited to examine the changes in women?s lives over the past several decades and to deplore, as usual, the obstacles to full equality that women supposedly face...
For 'A Serious Man,' This Is It -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on October 22, 2009When you?re a Democrat in a 13-day crisis situation, it never hurts to call in a Kennedy and a president. New Jersey governor Jon Corzine did just that on Wednesday at a rally in Hackensack, a town straight out of a Bruce Springsteen song. Like a lot of the Boss?s tunes, Corzine?s hope-a-thon with Caroline Kennedy and President Obama featured plenty of head-bopping major chords that couldn?t quite overwhelm the melancholy motif...
Bob McDonnell, Conservative Pragmatist -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 22, 2009The p-word, pragmatist, has had a malodor in conservative circles since the Reagan years. Back then, it was a term of abuse that conservatives used against their moderate adversaries in intra-administration battles. It?s time to rehabilitate the word, and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell shows why...
Send More Students to College -- By: Marcus A. Winters
Posted on October 22, 2009A dangerous idea has been gaining momentum within education-reform circles: Too many young people are going to college. Since Charles Murray took up this line in a series of Wall Street Journal op-eds and then in last year?s book Real Education, the idea has neared the mainstream...
Hope and Change in New Jersey -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 22, 2009A decade of Democratic governance has left New Jersey in terrible shape. Incumbent governor Jon Corzine is in danger of losing, even though the state went 57-42 for Obama. Joe Biden and Bill Clinton have campaigned with Corzine this week -- and Obama himself visited the state yesterday -- in an effort to drag Corzine across the finish line...
Be a Good Victim -- By: David Rittgers
Posted on October 22, 2009In August, a man shot two people to death on a bridge near San Francisco. At the moment of the killings, two on-duty Marin County sheriff?s deputies were within 100 yards of the shooter. One was close enough to see the muzzle blast of the shotgun. The police officers, however, did not move against the culprit...
Disconnecting the Dots -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on October 22, 2009Don?t fault President Obama for reconsidering his strategy in Afghanistan. Fault him for reconsidering his strategy only in Afghanistan. Nearing the end of his first year in office, his administration has not yet developed a coherent and comprehensive plan to defend Americans from the movements, groups, and regimes that declare themselves our enemies, explicitly state their intentions -- e...
Throwing Granny Under the Bus -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on October 22, 2009As health-care reform lurches forward in Washington, proposed legislation would chop nearly half a trillion dollars from Medicare. This is yet another example of greedy, cold-hearted, racist Republicans slicing Medicare so they can laugh as Granny shivers on a subway grate and nibbles her cat food with a broken fork...
The Kitty-Cat Who Roared -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on October 22, 2009President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion -- only later to meow like a little kitty. Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year? The clock ticks -- and Guantanamo isn?t close to being shut down...
A Time For Choosing -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on October 21, 2009New York?s 23rd congressional district is thousands of miles from Ronald Reagan?s California, but I think the Gipper would find the sprawling upstate area to his liking. The district is famous for its clean mountain air, and its values have helped to elect a conservative to Congress since 1992...
On the Right, an Upstate Upstart -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 21, 2009The case for rallying around Dede Scozzafava, the liberal and nominal Republican seeking to represent New York?s conservative 23rd Congressional District, eludes us. Scozzafava was thrust imprudently into the nomination by upstate Republican grandees faced with a special election following Republican John McHugh?s leaving his seat to become secretary of the army...
Cap and Bribe -- By: Henry Sokolski
Posted on October 21, 2009Although bipartisan support for legislation generally constitutes a political Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, sometimes it?s little more than the residue of cynical logrolling at the public?s expense. A case in point is the emerging Senate ?consensus? in favor of cap-and-trade legislation, which will be the subject of Senate hearings October 26...
The Problem of Evil -- By: Interview
Posted on October 21, 2009Since 9/11, Michael Ledeen has been warning that this war against America was never about Afghanistan or Iraq, but has always been a regional war, with malefactors are up to no good around the world. In his book, Accomplice to Evil, he again focuses on Iran, but also on the historic nature and sources of the evil that drives America?s enemies...
Iran and the War Against the West -- By: Michael Ledeen
Posted on October 21, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Michael Ledeen?s newly released Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.Radical Islam inspires mass murder and individual martyrdom for its cause, just as fascism and Communism did in the last century...
The Wall and the One, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on October 21, 2009There has been some conservative commentary about President Obama?s non-attendance in Berlin -- his decision not to participate in events marking the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall. I will add just a little to that commentary. Remember that some of us conservatives were unhappy that President Bush -- 41, I mean -- didn?t show more pleasure, when Communism fell? Bush and his people replied that they were restraining themselves for reasons of state: It would be bad to rub it in, etc...
Perotistas on the March -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on October 21, 2009One of the most macabre images I?ve ever heard described came in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Before the tidal wave crashed on shore, beachgoers stood around and idly gaped as the water drastically receded. Bewildered, they didn?t realize they were looking at the prelude to a calamity...
Mao Lives -- By: Flashback
Posted on October 21, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This piece by William F. Buckley Jr. appeared in the June 30, 1989, issue of National Review. (You can dig into NR?s archives anytime here.)During the first ten days I found myself waiting. Waiting for the ultimate symbolic act. The television cameras over and over again showed, perched high above Tiananmen Square, the picture of Mao Tse-tung...
Obama's Moral-Leadership Balloon Crashes -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on October 20, 2009The world thinks better of the United States, we are told, because Barack Obama is in the White House. Maybe the world is wrong.It?s fanciful, of course, to speak of what ?the world? thinks about anything. It?s safe to say that among Norwegian prize-givers and Canadian avant-garde filmmakers, Obama is extremely popular...
Keeping a Safe Watch -- By: Interview
Posted on October 20, 2009On September 11, 2001, Debra Burlingame lost her brother, Charles ?Chic? Burlingame, who was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was forced to crash into the Pentagon. Now, with State Department official Liz Cheney and The Weekly Standard?s Bill Kristol, she?s leading a new organization devoted to keeping the public informed about national-security issues...
To Sue or Not -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on October 20, 2009To sue or not to sue? That is the question. After racist statements were made up out of thin air and then attributed to Rush Limbaugh, these were the options he had. It is easy for me to understand that these are not simple choices, because I have faced those options as well...
Obama the Graceless -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 20, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Republicans needn?t trouble themselves to nominate a presidential candidate in 2012...
What Is Victory? -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on October 20, 2009Rarely has there been such a dramatic disconnect between rhetoric and reality. On Afghanistan, the national-security Right talks about ?victory,? concerned Democrats talk about ?success,? and Obama allies such as Sen. John Kerry talk about the ?fulfillment of our mission...
Weak Dollar, Oblivious Treasury? -- By: Donald Luskin
Posted on October 20, 2009Many conservative commentators have expressed concern over the recent sharp decline of the U.S. dollar on world currency markets. On the face, there is cause for alarm. When pit against a representative basket of foreign currencies, the dollar is down an average of 15 percent in just over seven months...
Token Federalism -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 20, 2009The Obama administration has discovered federalism, at least a version of it, and it has therefore foresworn prosecuting medical-marijuana users and distributors who are acting in accord with state laws. This is good news for medical-marijuana users in the 14 states that allow cannabis to be prescribed for such purposes as mitigating the side effects of chemotherapy...
Hazardous Pathway -- By: Wesley J. Smith
Posted on October 20, 2009The United Kingdom continues to provide vivid warnings about the dangers of centralized health-care planning -- a real possibility under Obamacare. Within the last few years, the U.K.?s notorious rationing board, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), urged hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices to follow an end-of-life protocol known as the Liverpool Care Pathway...
The Power of the Plaintiffs' Bar -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on October 19, 2009The health-care bill the Senate Finance Committee approved makes a lot of promises. It will cost American taxpayers $829 billion, on top of an already out-of-control federal budget, as well as guarantee an increase in their individual medical expenditures...
Fast Times at Nashua High -- By: Craig Shirley
Posted on October 19, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: In his new book, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America (ISI Books), Craig Shirley provides the first inside look at the historic 1980 election, a race that even as late as election day was judged ?too close to call...
Taking Obamacare Off the Books -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 19, 2009You don?t have to be a Washington insider to understand what the Democrats are up to with their last-minute plan to run the ?doc fix? -- postponing scheduled cuts to doctors? Medicare payments -- on a separate legislative track. It?s all about Obamacare, as is so much this year...
Maximum Utility -- By: Daren Bakst
Posted on October 19, 2009Like the federal government, state governments have adopted policies that undermine efforts to secure low-cost and reliable energy sources. States have created numerous obstacles to developing low-cost energy, and even outright mandated the use of expensive and unreliable forms of energy...
The Triumph of Willful Ignorance -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on October 19, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. On a conference call with liberal religious leaders and activists this summer, President Obama said, ?I know there?s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness, but I want everyone to know what health-insurance reform is all about...
A Tale of Two Soundbites -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on October 17, 2009Here is a tale of two soundbites. First: ?Slavery built the South. I?m not saying we should bring it back; I?m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.? Second: ?The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa...
Wild Things -- By: Emily Karrs
Posted on October 16, 2009Where the Wild Things Are isn?t a kids? movie, it?s ?a movie about childhood.? That?s how director Spike Jonze describes his full-length screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak?s classic 1963 children?s book.Sendak?s roughly ten-sentence story tells the tale of a rambunctious little boy named Max whose mother sends him to bed without any supper for being an unmanageable ?wild thing...
Dining on the Faith of Our Fathers -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on October 16, 2009New York -- ?Neither pity us nor praise us. Stand by us,? the man in uniform said. The Alfred E. Smith dinner is traditionally the big Waldorf Astoria roast night for wealthy and high-ranking Catholics and other Big Apple stars. But on Thursday night on Park Avenue this year, it was a plea and a witness to keep with it...
As We Forgive -- By: Frederica Mathewes-Green
Posted on October 16, 2009I brought a handkerchief. The occasion was a screening of the documentary As We Forgive, slated to kick off American University?s Human Rights Film Series this fall. It is the first film by Laura Waters Hinson, an AU alumna, and in addition to numerous festival awards it won a Student Academy Award...
On Race, Rush Called It Right -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on October 16, 2009Full disclosure: I hate the Philadelphia Eagles. Always have. I grew up in Arlington, Texas, and even before Jerry Jones built a colossal monument to football (and to Jerry Jones) right in the middle of our town, my family worshipped the Dallas Cowboys...
Obama's Theorems -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on October 16, 2009Part of the problem with the president?s agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted, rather than proven. His experts and the elites assure us of a reality that most people in their own more mundane lives have not found to be true...
Rush Rammed -- By: The Editors
Posted on October 16, 2009It is telling that Rush Limbaugh?s enemies -- and they are enemies, not critics -- always avail themselves of the same three weapons: fat jokes, addiction jokes, and lies. There was a predictable surfeit of the first two in the Democratic media?s recent campaign to prevent Rush from becoming part-owner of a professional football team, but the lies reached a level that is remarkable even by the standards of the corrupt and incompetent American media...
Drill -- By: Sarah Palin
Posted on October 16, 2009Given that we?re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we?ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil...
Not dead yet, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on October 16, 2009Perhaps you saw an article from the Sunday Times of London, which made the rounds here in the U.S. the other day. The headline: ?Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve.? It is a horrifying story (find it here). The daughter ?says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks? before her mother was given artificial feeding...
Regime Is Iran's Disease; Nukes Are Just a Symptom -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on October 16, 2009The Nobel Peace Prize has renewed prestige in my book. No, not because Barack Obama won it for accomplishments to be determined later. It?s got new luster because Shirin Ebadi has, at great personal risk, effectively come out for regime change in her native Iran...
Debacle in Moscow -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on October 16, 2009About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama?s Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award ?premature,? as if the brilliance of Obama?s foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged...
Laws of the Universe vs. Obamacare -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on October 16, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.If only the laws of the universe didn?t make it impossible to conjure something out of nothing...
The Democrats' Coming Defeat -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on October 16, 2009?There is a tide in the affairs of men.? -- William ShakespeareYes, but undertows too. As Obama, Pelosi, and Reid rush to transform America into a European-style social-democratic state, they must be nervous; they must feel the sand sliding under their feet...
Dollar Suicide -- By: Jerry Bowyer
Posted on October 15, 2009It wasn?t Colonel Mustard in the library with the candelabra. And contrary to recent press reports, it wasn?t Prince Alwaleed in the desert with a cartel. It was, in fact, Dr. Bernanke in the temple with the printing press. And since Dr. Bernanke is, in effect, the dollar incarnate -- the walking embodiment of the soundness of our currency -- if the dollar does die, it will not have been murder...
Storm Clouds Gather as Dow Hits 10,000 -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on October 15, 2009Dow Jones 10,000 arrived on Wall Street on Wednesday for the first time in a year. It?s a milestone of sorts, and it certainly represents a vote for investor confidence in economic recovery. Blowout profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan helped fuel the day?s 145-point gain...
Reinventing the Wheel -- By: Frederick M. Hess
Posted on October 15, 2009While seeking to make college more accessible, the Obama administration has launched a largely unnoticed assault upon the nation?s vibrant market in online learning. As part of an ambitious bill designed to tighten federal control over student lending, the House of Representatives included a scant few sentences green-lighting a White House plan to spend $500 million on an ?Online Skills Laboratory,? in which the federal government would provide free online college courses in a variety of unspecified areas...
Sex Ed: Hazardous to Your Child's Health? -- By: Interview
Posted on October 15, 2009Is sex-ed hazardous to your child?s health? The industry line is, argues Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist who has worked on college campuses and seen too much pain and illness that the sexual revolution has wrought. She?s the author of the new book You're Teaching My Child What?: A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Ed and How They Harm Your Child, and took questions earlier this week from National Review Online?s Kathryn Jean Lopez...
It's Not Political, It's Personal -- By: Joseph Coletti
Posted on October 15, 2009I have spent a good part of the past few months reading and talking about health care. In the back of my mind is always the nagging question that many other Americans are asking themselves: ?What about me? What will all this mean for my health care?? I cannot answer these simple questions for my own family?s consumer-driven health plan...
Advisers, Not Advocates -- By: Mackubin Thomas Owens
Posted on October 15, 2009Americans have been aware of significant civil-military tensions since the early years of the Clinton administration. Although such tensions are not unprecedented, they have produced concerns about the health of civil-military relations. Most of the most highly publicized disputes between the uniformed military and the Clinton administration reflected cultural tensions between the military as an institution and liberal civilian society, mostly having to do with women in combat and open homosexuals in the military...
Pakistan Notebook -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on October 15, 2009Islamabad -- I picked an interesting moment to visit Pakistan: four terrorist attacks in less than a week. The first was at the World Food Programme office here in the capital: five killed. The second was in the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar: more than 50 killed...
The Trick -- By: Michael G. Franc
Posted on September 30, 2009President Obama has painted himself into a very tight corner with his promises on health-care reform.First, he has vowed repeatedly and unambiguously that no one with an annual family income of $250,000 or less will face a tax increase. He renewed the pledge in his September 9 speech before the joint session of Congress...
The Metamorphosis -- By: David Kahane
Posted on September 30, 2009I have a nightmare. I have a nightmare that sometime before the 2010 elections, the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see us as we really are. I have a nightmare that you will read C. S. Lewis?s The Screwtape Letters and realize that it is not fiction...
Goldstone, Are You God? -- By: Brett Joshpe
Posted on September 30, 2009?Are you God?? is an appropriate question to ask someone who takes on the role of judge, jury, and executioner. That is exactly what South African jurist Richard Goldstone -- who was chief prosecutor for the U.N.?s International Criminal Tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda -- did in leading an ?independent fact-finding mission? to investigate the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas last December and January...
A Pragmatic Look at Obama's Pragmatism -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 30, 2009?When John McCain said we could just ?muddle through? in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights,? Barack Obama thundered as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Denver last year...
A sickening light in the New York sky, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 30, 2009Several readers have asked me to comment on what the Empire State Building is doing: The people in charge are lighting up the building red and yellow, in honor of Communist China. The PRC is marking its 60th anniversary. This regime, of course, is responsible for the physical destruction of tens of millions of people...
Hollywood Burning -- By: Jack Dunphy
Posted on September 30, 2009So it has come to this: Drugging and raping a 13-year-old is now a ?so-called crime,? for which artistic talent, the approbation of peers, and the passage of time can coalesce to earn the rapist immunity from official sanction, if indeed any was called for in the first place...
What's Hiding in the Health-Care Bill? -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on September 29, 2009Congressional Democrats are proposing a sweeping overhaul of the American health-care system, which represents about 17 percent of the U.S. economy. You might think they would feel a responsibility to explain the precise implications of this legislation to the American people before it comes to a vote...
House Remodeling -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on September 29, 2009So how good could 2010 be for Republicans running for the House of Representatives?A phenomenal year is now in the cards, which is obviously not the same as saying that it will be a phenomenal year. In any off-year, discussion of the following year?s House races usually frames the battle for control of the chamber as a reflection of national mood...
The Iran Charade -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 29, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The revelation of an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried in a mountain at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base near the religious city of Qom might seem ominous...
The Brainy Bunch -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 29, 2009Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.It was, after all, Franklin D. Roosevelt?s brilliant ?brains trust? whose policies are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s, rather than ending it...
Who Needs Religion? -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 29, 2009Well, that?s one way to look at it. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Orna Coussin praised Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement that began Sunday night and ends Monday night) as the ?ultimate green holiday.? Coussin is a secular Israeli and was expressing her appreciation for the fact that everyone is obliged to travel by foot on Yom Kippur...
Oscars of Entrepreneurship -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on September 29, 2009Montego Bay, Jamaica -- As Americans debate bailouts, Washington?s assembly-line-to-junkyard automotive largesse, and its proposed annexation of our health clinics and surgical theaters, conversations on this island recently were as refreshing as the trade winds...
The Politics of (In)Justice -- By: Hans A. von Spakovsky
Posted on September 28, 2009Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act may not look like a political weapon. But in the hands of certain government lawyers, that?s exactly what it has become.It requires certain (mostly Southern) states to get ?pre-clearance? of their voting-rules changes from the Justice Department...
You Mislead! -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 28, 2009It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson?s lead. If they yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse. By our count, the president made more than 20 inaccurate claims in his speech to Congress...
Death Be Not Proud -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 28, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. Earlier this summer, former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was criticized for deploying hyperbole in her opposition to health-care-reform legislation...
Taming 'Animal Spirits' -- By: Kevin Williamson
Posted on September 28, 2009If you wish to sample conventional economic wisdom in its refined form, you could do worse than to consult the McKenzie Quarterly, a recent issue of which contains a curious meditation on the subject of ?Animal Spirits? by Yale?s Robert Shiller and Berkeley?s George Akerlof, professors of economics who together have written a book by that title...
Everything begins with O, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 28, 2009The Year Zero nonsense continues: Nothing counted, certainly nothing was praiseworthy, before the Obamas came along. Michelle had never been proud of her country. And, at the U.N., the president said this: ?For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months...
Dog-Feces Ice Cream -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on September 26, 2009Half a decade or so back, I wrote: ?It?s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ?em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That?s the problem with the U.N.? Absolutely right, if I do say so myself...
The G-20: Less Is More -- By: James M. Roberts
Posted on September 25, 2009Those who enjoy the endless rounds of televised high-level summitry that increasingly dominate the world of international diplomacy are in luck this week. First there was the confab of 192 heads of state or government at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York...
Rules for Counter-Radicals -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 25, 2009The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. That was Democrat Joe Trippi?s 2004 manifesto. Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era was the title of another guide, by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, issued last fall...
Afterthoughts from the U.N. Address -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 25, 2009It was the most Obamaesque address to date.?For those who question the character and cause of my nation,? the president pronounced Wednesday, ?I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.?America is 233 years old. Some think that there are ample accomplishments speaking to our character and cause that predate Obama?s ascension to the presidency...
Obama Triangulates His Country -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 25, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.In his address to the United Nations, Pres...
Obama's Great Chinese Bank Snobbery -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on September 25, 2009In one of today?s richest ironies, America?s fiscal health -- such as it is -- hinges on the generosity of the Chinese Communist party. Annoying Beijing?s mandarins could prompt them to skip our Treasury auctions. If China stops lending the Treasury money to underwrite Uncle Sam?s spendaholism, the Federal Reserve will need to print even more dollars to nudge the day of reckoning back over the horizon...
A Great Good Man -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on September 25, 2009After the plain pine box is lowered into the grave, the mourners are asked to come forward -- immediate family first -- and shovel dirt onto the casket. Only when it is fully covered, only when all that can be seen is dust, is the ceremony complete.Such is the Jewish way of burial...
Obama's Self-Worship -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 25, 2009President Obama?s speech to the U.N. has been called naïve and even ?post-American.? It was something else as well: the most extravagant excursion into self-worship we have yet seen in an American leader.Beware of politicians who claim to be ?humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me...
Iran's Not-So-Secret Secret -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 25, 2009The main thing to remember about Friday?s revelation that Iran has a secret uranium-enrichment facility is that it is not a revelation.Sure, the facts are new. They are these: In addition to a uranium-enrichment site at Natanz that international inspectors have monitored for years, Iran has been constructing a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qom...
Fame Fizzles -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on September 25, 2009In an early scene in Fame, director Kevin Tancharoen?s remake of the Oscar-winning film from 1980, students who have made the cut for entrance into the highly selective New York City High School of Performing Arts assemble for an orientation session. The school?s principal admonishes them to forget fame: What they need is to learn discipline and dedication to a craft...
Punting National Security to the Judiciary -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 25, 2009In a stunning display of political cowardice, the Obama administration has decided not to seek specific congressional authorization for a prolonged detention statute for Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed too dangerous to set free. It?s the latest troubling flip flop by the president, an utter abdication of the lofty promises he made during his much-heralded National Archives Speech just this May...
Kevin Warsh Is on the Money -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on September 25, 2009Attendees of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh and members of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington should carefully read a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Fed governor Kevin Warsh. In a piece titled ?The Fed?s Job Is Only Half Over,? the former Wall Street investment banker sends a shot across the global economic bow...
Hazardous to Your Health -- By: Angela Logomasini
Posted on September 24, 2009As U.S. lawmakers mull over whether to restructure the nation?s health-care system via a ?public option,? even the biggest advocates of government intervention should be careful what they wish for. Just look at Europe -- not only the widespread health-care rationing, but also the European Union?s new chemicals policy, which was first enacted in 2005...
Pinstripe Suits and Purple Pimp Hats -- By: Kevin Williamson
Posted on September 24, 2009Jamie Dimon has been described as ?Obama?s favorite banker? by the New York Times. He?s ACORN?s favorite banker, too, and with good reason. Mr. Dimon is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, which operates a charitable foundation that gave ACORN $1 million in 2007, along with a smaller grant to the ACORN Institute...
Authority Complex -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on September 24, 2009In 1996, Vice President Al Gore was named by Pres. Bill Clinton to chair the White House Commission on Aviation Safety. Over the months that followed, he and an impressive list of commissioners -- including senior law-enforcement and military officers, government officials, and academics -- conducted ?an intensive inquiry into civil aviation safety, security and air traffic control modernization...
A Fishy Tale -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 24, 2009Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms of the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. The water in large part is being diverted to the salty San Francisco Bay and the delta to improve marine ecology...
Obama's Confession -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 24, 2009To grasp what is either the bad faith or the dimwittedness of President Obama?s speech to the United Nations, read the following paragraph carefully: I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust...
The Silence of NOW -- By: Julie Gunlock
Posted on September 23, 2009By now, just about everyone has heard about the scandal involving ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), in which two twenty-somethings exposed the rank corruption of this powerful component of the Democratic party?s political machine...
The Dog Ate Global Warming -- By: Patrick J. Michaels
Posted on September 23, 2009Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U...
Barack Obama, College Administrator -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 23, 2009If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense...
Obama's Misguided Nuclear Triad -- By: Henry Sokolski
Posted on September 23, 2009On September 24, President Obama will be campaigning again, not on Jay Leno?s program or the Sunday talk shows, but at a UN Security Council summit on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Unfortunately, his UN Security Council appearance -- a first for a U...
Irving Kristol's Clear Thinking -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 23, 2009?I am so nostalgic.? That?s the phrase I associate most with Irving Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89.What piqued Irving?s nostalgia, at an American Enterprise Institute conference I worked on in 1992, was old-fashioned censorship. In the good old days, he explained, local communities were able to determine their own standards without inviting lawsuits from the ACLU and overwrought invocations of Fahrenheit 451...
Choosing the Right College -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 23, 2009There is so much for high-school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information.A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately, the best-known and most pretentious of these guides -- America?s Best Colleges -- is grossly misleading...
ACORN: Tax Cheats -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on September 23, 2009ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told Fox News Sunday on September 20 that her group ?absolutely pays its taxes.? But her claim crumbles before the $548,213.25 federal tax lien that the Internal Revenue Service filed against the embattled New Orleans-based activist organization...
Garbage In, Gospel Out -- By: Max Schulz
Posted on September 23, 2009There are two kinds of models that mean anything to most Americans. There are the models who pose for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or the cover of Vogue, date movie stars, host talk shows, and have their antics chronicled on Page Six of the New York Post...
The Reign of the Czars -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on September 22, 2009The education bill that Obama hit the stump to defend on Monday contains a provision that would create a new green-schools advisory council and, in all likelihood, a green-schools czar. The controversy over White House policy ?czars? -- the unconfirmed, largely unaccountable advisers with whom Obama has surrounded himself -- started before the resignation of green-jobs czar Van Jones, but the Jones episode has prompted Republicans in Congress to get involved...
The Truth about the Public Option -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on September 22, 2009When will the press notice President Obama?s hypocrisy when it comes to the ?public option??Speaking at a community college in Troy, N.Y., on Monday, Obama slammed the banking industry for opposing his education bill, which passed the House last week...
The First Lady's New Tactic -- By: Carrie Lukas
Posted on September 22, 2009They?ve tried citing exploding health-care costs, the millions of uninsured, and the harm to business competitiveness. Now Michelle Obama has a new explanation of why we need to radically remake our health-care system: The current one is unfair to the fairer sex...
Underdogs -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 22, 2009It is a good reflection on Americans that they tend to be on the side of the underdog. But it is often hard to tell who is in fact the underdog, or why. Many years ago, there was a big, lumbering catcher named Ernie Lombardi, whose slowness afoot was legendary...
On Afghanistan, Never Mind? -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 22, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.At the height of their anti-Iraq War fever, Democrats accused Pres...
Catholic Health Care in the Age of Obama -- By: Interview
Posted on September 22, 2009Democrat-sponsored health-care legislation currently before Congress could require violations of Catholic teaching in such areas as abortion, contraception, euthanasia, assisted suicide -- even infanticide. Leonard J. Nelson III, a professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, has been studying these issues for years and discusses them in his new book, Diagnosis Critical: The Urgent Threats Confronting Catholic Health Care (OSV 2009)...
Beware the body-snatchers, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 22, 2009I seem to be reading a lot about conservatism lately, especially with the publication of Sam Tanenhaus?s book, The Death of Conservatism. As the book title says, we?re supposed to be kaput. And what is conservatism supposed to be, in some minds? A philosophy or temper that basically accedes to liberalism, while perhaps tinkering around the edges...
Irreplaceable Irving -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 22, 2009Irving Kristol, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was like everyone?s favorite uncle -- if the uncle were a transformative intellectual of empyrean stature. He was both a warm and approachable human being and a penetrating social critic. He was, in a very American way, a practical man, and his approach to ideas was always firmly and refreshingly reality-based...
The Truth That Tells a Lie -- By: Alex Castellanos
Posted on September 21, 2009Let?s agree that the U.S. House of Representatives is not the place to use the word ?lie? to demean your political opponents. Joe Wilson?s outburst was shameful and uncivil. Just when you think no one could drag political discourse down any lower than it is, along comes Congressman Wilson to shout an insult at our president...
ACORN Scandal Has Deep Roots -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 21, 2009ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a scandal. Its story has become news lately thanks to some recent BigGovernment.com-sponsored guerrilla journalism. But the problems of ACORN represent a broader and even more scandalous idea: the conventional acceptance of the Left?s self-righteous claim to have a monopoly on all politics, policy, and lifestyles that are good...
We Need an Administrative-Detention Law -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on September 21, 2009It is received wisdom in the United States government that good law enforcement is good security. As we are seeing once again, it ain?t necessarily so. On Saturday, the Justice Department announced the arrests of three Muslim men in an ongoing terrorism investigation...
The Long Retreat -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on September 19, 2009Was it only April? There was President Obama, speaking (as is his wont) in Prague, about the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic-missile capability, and saluting America?s plucky allies: ?The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles,? he declared...
Dr. Barack and Mr. Obama -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 18, 2009No one imagined that Barack Obama, during his first nine months in office, would be falling in the polls even faster than George W. Bush did prior to 9/11. We all knew what Obama?s weaknesses were as he came into office -- a lack of experience in foreign affairs, little knowledge of how private business works, and poor judgment concerning the extremist company he had kept in the past...
Rebooting American Foreign Policy -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on September 18, 2009It has been a bad decade for America?s foreign-policy and intelligence establishment. We?ve seen a devastating terrorist attack in America?s largest city, followed by two protracted wars fraught with strategic missteps. Meanwhile, in the face of threats to our security, the country?s intelligence-gathering methods have been the subject sharp political and moral disagreement...
College Rerun -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on September 18, 2009College Park, Md. -- Before the Fourth of July, President Obama went to a community college in Annandale, Va., to make the case for his health-care-reform plan. Yesterday, Obama staged a similar event, on the other side of the Capitol Beltway, speaking before a full house at the University of Maryland in College Park...
A Four-Way Play for Terrorists -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on September 18, 2009Call it the grand slam. The Obama/Holder Justice Department is about to: (1) undermine a critical tool for prosecuting terrorists by military commission, (2) force more enemy-combatant cases into the civilian federal courts, (3) advance the transnationalist agenda to subordinate the Constitution to international law, and (4) provide what we might call ?material support? to a convicted terrorist...
Everything's up the Spout in Kansas City -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on September 18, 2009EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt from John Derbyshire?s upcoming We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be released Sept. 29, 2009.Okay, you?re probably thinking that when politicians and edbiz theorists talk about spending more money on education, they don?t have leafy suburbs and ivy-clad universities in mind...
A Tackle Box Full of Race Bait -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 18, 2009Of all the poisonous, ugly, and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus? Dance over the ?racist? opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious.Al Sharpton tells CNN?s Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn?t let a small minority make health care into a ?racial issue...
A Masterstroke of Weakness -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 18, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.If diplomatic pusillanimity was the aim, Pres...
Does He Lie? -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on September 18, 2009You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn?t lie. He?s too subtle for that. He#...#well, you judge.Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson ?you lie? address to Congress on health care -- of Obama?s relationship with truth. (1) ?I will not sign (a plan),? he solemnly pledged, ?if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future...
U.N. Disgraces Itself Again; Obama Helps -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 18, 2009The United Nations Human Rights Council, a putrid perversion of every high ideal upon which it was founded, has issued a report calling the Israelis war criminals. The HRC has also, in obedience to the wishes of Chávez and Castro, ejected the representative from Honduras...
The Undoing of American Constitutionalism -- By: Richard M. Reinsch
Posted on September 18, 2009Those who were desperately confused, if not enraged, by candidate Barack Obama?s contention that the ideal federal judge should fashion his opinion in empathy with the more downtrodden and oppressed party in a case should consult Bradley Watson?s Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence to understand how the man who has become president could assert the primacy of personal opinion over law...
Defenseless -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on September 17, 2009Missile defense -- as the term might suggest -- is defensive, not offensive. Brilliant American scientists have developed sophisticated technologies to prevent missiles -- including those armed with nuclear warheads -- from reaching their intended victims...
Health Care and an Educated Citizenry -- By: Chester E. Finn Jr.
Posted on September 17, 2009What kind of education would one need to make sense of the current health-care debate? As the U.S. rethinks its academic standards and international competitiveness, this is not a bad time to ask what American citizens, voters, and taxpayers need by way of knowledge and skills to form reasonable conclusions about the hottest domestic policy issue of the day...
Baucus's Take on the Takeover -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 17, 2009The health-care proposal unveiled yesterday by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus is fundamentally flawed because -- like the other flavors of Obamacare -- it tries to expand coverage through coercion and hidden taxes instead of through consumer choice and price competition in a free market...
Where's the Evidence? -- By: Neal McCluskey
Posted on September 17, 2009If you listen to advocates of national education standards -- from the Obama administration to the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute -- you?ll seldom hear anything about ?evidence? or ?research.? You?ll get plenty of assertions about the craziness of having 50 state standards, and how a modern nation must have one bar for all, but zilch about actual, empirical evidence...
No Rules in the Arena? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 17, 2009It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) to scream, ?You lie!? at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama?s recent health-care speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn?t have an authentic U...
The Dream Palace of Education Theorists -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on September 17, 2009EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt from John Derbyshire?s upcoming We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be released Sept. 29, 2009. As a single specimen of sunbeams-from-cucumbers education theorizing -- I could equally well have chosen a thousand others -- here is a long article from the New York Times Sunday magazine of Nov...
Indefensible -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 17, 2009President Obama knows how to put a smile on faces in Tehran and Moscow: This morning, he announced the abandonment of plans to develop a small missile-defense system in Eastern Europe. This overturns one of the major diplomatic and national-security achievements of the Bush years...
Wilson and WFB -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on September 17, 2009On the desk of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), you?ll find a copy of a book he?s owned since the Nixon administration. While a bit frayed at the edges -- its pages well-thumbed -- it?s in good condition. It?s signed by the author, and has been treasured by its owner of over 40 years...
The Case against Boies-Olson -- By: Nelson Lund
Posted on September 17, 2009High-profile litigators Ted Olson (a Republican) and David Boies (a Democrat) famously squared off against each other in Bush v. Gore. They have now joined forces in a federal lawsuit challenging California?s definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman -- a definition California voters added to their constitution after an activist state court struck down the statutory definition...
Georgia Pharisee -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 16, 2009Jimmy Carter now has done to his ex-presidency what he did to his presidency, which is to say that he has, through his incessant moral preening, converted mere incompetence into something more unseemly. Mr. Carter thunders that those who oppose President Obama?s plans to nationalize the health-care industry, and those who oppose other elements of the president?s agenda, are doing so for reasons of racism...
Spreading the Wealth -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on September 16, 2009When Barack Obama said he wanted to ?spread the wealth around,? he meant it. A new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation estimates that Obama?s policies would spend $10.3 trillion on welfare programs over the next decade. Obama started increasing welfare spending immediately after assuming office...
Grading Teachers -- By: Marcus A. Winters
Posted on September 16, 2009In 2007, only 57 percent of fourth graders in New York City and 44 percent of fourth graders in Chicago could claim even basic literacy according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Yet, in the same year, less than 2 percent of New York?s teachers and less than 1 percent of Chicago?s teachers were deemed ?unsatisfactory? in their official evaluations...
No Joke -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 16, 2009James O?Keefe and Hannah Giles, two guerilla documentarians, have accomplished what neither the Republican party?s sense of outrage nor the Democratic party?s sense of decency could: They have inspired the federal government to begin cutting its ties with ACORN, the shady ?community activist? organization that helped bring Barack Obama to power...
The Blackmun Myth -- By: Clarke D. Forsythe
Posted on September 16, 2009Last month, a federal court upheld South Dakota?s law that women seeking abortion be informed ?that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.? This is good news for people who believe women should have full information about abortion...
Reform Now -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on September 16, 2009For a moment on Monday, the Senate was mostly empty: a few staffers haggling by the door, a handful of senators milling about. Then Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) took the floor to speak in support of his amendment to H.R. 3288, a housing and transportation spending bill...
The Other Catholic Higher Education -- By: Gerard V. Bradley
Posted on September 16, 2009There are about 225 Catholic colleges and universities listed in The Official Catholic Directory. More than a hundred others have gone out of business over the last generation. I am confident that scores more will disappear -- close their doors, merge, or officially declare themselves to be secular -- over the next couple of decades...
The Money Pit -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on September 16, 2009EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt from John Derbyshire?s upcoming We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be released Sept. 29, 2009.Where I live, in New York?s Suffolk County, we are pretty well protected from law-breakers. In the opinion of some county residents, in fact, we are too well protected...
A Lesson Unlearned -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 15, 2009At several points during his Monday sermon to Wall Street, President Obama referred to the ?lessons we?ve learned? from the financial crisis. But to judge from the speech, it?s clear that he failed to learn the most important lesson: Regulations, no matter how well designed, cannot prevent the formation of speculative bubbles -- particularly those inflated by government policies...
Maybe Rain, Maybe Category Five -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on September 15, 2009When discussing the outlook for the Republican party in the 2010 election cycle, Tom Davis, former congressman from Virginia, makes sure to give all the proper caveats about predictions: ?Nobody knows.? ?A year in politics is an eternity, and this is even longer...
The Ugly Face of Student Resistance -- By: David French
Posted on September 15, 2009After a generation-long attempt at social engineering on college campuses, it appears that leftist thought reformers have met with a rather decisive student response. Mandatory ?civility? and ?tolerance? codes have been derided and rejected in practice...
A New Declaration of Independence -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on September 15, 2009It?s time for a new Declaration of Independence -- a declaration of national-security independence from the U.S. court system. Without a new declaration of our determination to make democratically the life-and-death decisions that a self-governing body politic must make -- a declaration of our refusal to be dictated to by unaccountable judges -- catastrophe beckons...
The E. F. Hutton of Prostitution -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 15, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The radical activist group ACORN is the E...
Democrats Failed on Digital Divide, Too -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 15, 2009The Democrats have never seen a problem they didn?t think could be fixed with a government program. And they sometimes discern crises crying out for government solutions where there are none. Remember the ?digital divide?? It was, we heard from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D...
Fables for Adults -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 15, 2009Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth -- and it seemed to him that the other dog?s bone was bigger than his...
The Making of a Mayor -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 15, 2009Friends, there is a very interesting mayor in San Ramon, Calif., some 40 miles east of San Francisco. His name is H. Abram Wilson. I talked to him the other day -- by phone (from New York), not in the Bay Area, alas. Not every American is entitled to perfect weather and beautiful surroundings...
Obama's Second Chance -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span class="drop">D</span>uring his first term, President Bush signed a protectionist farm bill and imposed tariffs on imported steel. Similarly, as a senator running for president, Barack Obama voted for the 2008 Farm Bill, and he has now decided to <a href="http://online...
Beyond Economics -- By: Kevin Williamson
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="drop">O</span>ne hopes Ben Bernanke and the Fed gang are reading the Drudge Report, where the top news items one day last week were: Enlarged U.S. deficits allow Switzerland to displace the United States as the world’s most competitive economy; Obama asks the Senate to raise the debt ceiling beyond its current $12...
Yet Another Washington Flop in the Making -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on September 14, 2009<span style="Old Style; "><span class="drop">A</span>s the health-care reform debate roars on, Uncle Sam resembles a restless college senior who is flunking economics, finance, and management. Despite a report card full of Fs, he suddenly announces: “I want to go to medical school!”<br /><br />Similarly, Pres...
The Problems with Special Ed -- By: Jay P. Greene
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span class="drop">O</span>fficially reported disability rates in public schools are entirely unreliable and are almost certainly inflated indicators of how many students are actually disabled...
Straight Outta Oakland -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span class="drop">T</span>ales of Dr. Ben Chavis have been drifting out of the Bay Area for a while now. However, there have been few high-profile media stories, and the educational apparatus in this country is no doubt doing its best to squelch reports of his accomplishments...
A Revealing Term -- By: Jonathan H. Adler
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="drop">N</span>ewly confirmed justice Sonia Sotomayor took her seat for the first time on Tuesday. Though she’s been at work on cases since taking the oath in August, and has already cast her first votes on motions before the Court, this was her first public sitting as a justice...
Compulsive Disorder -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="drop">D</span>uring the Democratic presidential primaries, Barack Obama argued against forcing people to buy health insurance. But on Wednesday night, he flip-flopped and endorsed the idea.<br /> <br /> President Obama argued that people who do not have insurance raise the premiums of those who do...
A Scandalous Affair -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="subhead"><strong>EDITOR’S NOTE</strong>: </span><em>This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at </em><a href="mailto:cpuello@unitedmedia...
The Wikipedia blues, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 14, 2009<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span class="drop">G</span>ot a note from a reader yesterday, saying, “Have you seen your Wikipedia page? FYI, there’s a little gotcha in there about your ignorance of ‘Monica Goodling...
Where Is Obama's 'Center'? -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on September 12, 2009So why can?t the silver-tongued post-partisan healer seal the deal on this health-care business? Surely it should be the work of moments for the greatest orator in American history to whip up a little medicinal Gettysburg, a touch of Henry V-in-the-Agincourt-casualty-tent, and put this thing away...
Our National 9/11 Schizophrenia -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 11, 2009Ninety-six months ago, 19 Islamic terrorists -- led by Mohamed Atta, organized by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and ordered by Osama bin Laden -- hijacked four American airliners. They destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and murdered 2,974 people...
Missing in Action -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 11, 2009It?s hard to believe, but nearly three weeks into a major crisis involving Syrian sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq, the United States is feigning neutrality. That?s a big mistake. Given that almost 130,000 U.S. troops remain in harm?s way trying to bolster Iraq?s stability, and given America?s longstanding concern with Syria?s role in fomenting violence in Iraq, the United States has a huge stake in supporting the Iraqi government?s efforts to pressure Syria out of the terrorism game...
Long Hot Summer in Konduz -- By: Vincent G. Heintz
Posted on September 11, 2009In 2008 I worked in the Konduz River Valley, known locally as the Valley of Four. The mayor, a former Taliban government minister, told me that the name (Chahar Darreh in Farsi) was a tribute to the four groups -- Tajik, Uzbek, Turkomen, and Pashtun -- that have lived together for decades in the valley, a floodplain dotted with mud-walled villages...
Hard Truths about End-of-Life Care -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 11, 2009The political process on health-care reform is stymied. Despite enjoying sizable Democratic majorities in Congress, President Obama has not yet devised a health-care reform that would attract sufficient votes. To be politically viable, a bill will need at least 70 percent support to provide Democratic leaders plausible political evidence of the bill?s bipartisan nature...
A Ring of Truth(ers) -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 11, 2009Herewith, two scenarios.Scenario A: The supposedly inept president of the United States carefully planned and orchestrated the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. Though ?only? 3,000 people died, the plan was to kill many more by simultaneously attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and either the U...
Obama's Trouble with Numbers -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 11, 2009Let?s stipulate that it was wrong of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) to shout ?You lie? during President Obama?s health-care speech. It was a violation of courtesy and etiquette. Wilson apologized -- which is more than the Democrats who booed President Bush?s State of the Union address in 2005 ever did...
An Obama Speech in 13 Easy Steps -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 11, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Everyone marvels at Barack Obama?s rhetorical prowess...
The Van Jones Matter -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on September 11, 2009So Van Jones, the defenestrated White House green-jobs czar, once called Republicans ?a--holes.? Big deal. I?ve said worse about Democrats. I?ve said worse about Republicans. I?ve said worse about members of my family (you know who you are).How prissy have we become? Are we allowed no salt in our linguistic diets? Having once written a column praising Vice President Cheney?s pithy deployment of the f-word -- on the floor of the Senate, no less -- I rise in defense of Jones...
Charlatan-in-Chief -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 11, 2009?Hubris-laden charlatans? was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to the joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud...
Eight Years Later -- By: Steven Stalinsky
Posted on September 11, 2009?We are patient.#...#Our patience will only end with the collapse of America#...#?-- Al-Qaeda?s Abu Salma Al-Hijazi, on Islamist internet forum Al-Qal?a, November 2003 In the days leading up to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans paid inadequate attention to what was being said in Arabic in the mosques and media of the Middle East...
Song of Loss -- By: Tim Graham
Posted on September 11, 2009Pop music today is almost all nightclub bump-and-grind, with little focus on what can happen on the morning after. But there are some exceptions.The popular all-girl Christian-rock trio BarlowGirl has a brand-new album out with a song about the emotional pain women frequently experience after an abortion...
Of Me I Sing -- By: David Kahane
Posted on September 11, 2009I woke up this morning with a song on my lips. Well, not exactly a song -- more like a tune, a song without words. I?m sure you know it. It goes something like this: ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-HUH#...#ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-huh#...#ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-huh-ha-HUH#...
We Don't Need a Public Option -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 10, 2009Health-care reformers who want a public health-insurance option to keep private health insurers competitive have a point: If there were ferocious competition in the private health-insurance markets, prices would be better controlled. In Switzerland, for example, competition among that country?s 85 private health insurers resulted in negative price increases since 2005 and considerable public support...
No Direction Home -- By: Robert Costa
Posted on September 10, 2009As he walked out of the Capitol last night, just after President Obama wrapped up his health-care speech, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah) was told by a security guard to head down another path, since the president?s visit had caused his usual route to be blocked...
What the President Should Have Said -- By: Tevi Troy
Posted on September 10, 2009[EDITOR?S NOTE: The material in italics actually appeared in President Obama?s speech of Sept. 9, 2009. The other material is an improvement suggested by health-care-policy expert Tevi Troy.] Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people: ...
Understanding Poverty in America -- By: Robert Rector
Posted on September 10, 2009Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual poverty report. The report is expected to show an increase in poverty in 2008 due to the onset of the recession. It is no surprise that poverty goes up in a recession. What is surprising is that every year for nearly three decades, in good economic times and bad, Census has reported more than 30 million Americans living in poverty...
Monetary Muddle -- By: David Gitlitz
Posted on September 10, 2009Brighter economic fortunes are usually met with expectations of less-easy monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. When recession sets in, the Fed loosens its stance to spur recovery. When recovery takes hold, the Fed tightens policy to stave off higher inflation...
You never really win, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 10, 2009It was in January 1996 -- the State of the Union address -- that President Clinton proclaimed, ?The era of big government is over.? (He then said, ?But we can?t go back to a time when our citizens were just left to fend for themselves.? Was there ever such a time? Really?) Obviously, the era of big government is back -- or there is a new, big-governmental era or something...
Would Obama Really Fight the War? -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on September 10, 2009They had me up until ?free Afghans from the chains of tyranny.? That is, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) had me. The group, founded by the excellent Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor, has assembled a number of similarly impressive people to submit a letter to President Obama, urging him to be steadfast in Afghanistan...
Rangel, Sign of the Times -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 10, 2009Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age.Let us count the ways.How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for illegally holding four rent-stabilized apartments in New York and not disclosing more than $75,000 in income from a rental villa he owns...
Eight Years and Counting -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on September 10, 2009Eight years ago this week, Osama bin Laden watched and then celebrated as a terrorist attack he had authorized brought down the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, slaughtering thousands of innocent Americans. Bin Laden was, at that time, in Afghanistan, which was, at that time, ruled by the Taliban...
The Government-Insurance Option Is Dead -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on September 10, 2009The day after President Obama?s impassioned speech for big-government health care, Wall Street bet heavily that the so-called government-insurance option he supports is dead.In a strong stock market on Thursday -- the market?s fifth-straight daily rise (so much for the September swoon) -- health-insurer shares advanced significantly...
Joe Wilson Is Rude But Right -- By: Kevin Williamson
Posted on September 10, 2009Set aside Joe Wilson?s bad manners -- what about the substance of his accusation? Mr. Wilson claims that various Democratic proposals wending their way through Congress will use U.S. taxpayer dollars to further subsidize health care for illegal immigrants...
Your Life Is Not Worth Living -- By: Jim Towey
Posted on September 09, 2009Pres. Barack Obama needs to ask the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) why its end-of-life planning tool, ?Your Life, Your Choices,? deserves circulation throughout its vast health-care system. Despite the controversy that has angered many veterans and enveloped the VA since the ?your life is not worth living? message in the document was exposed last month, the VA continues to make it available and has announced its plan to launch an online version of it in the spring of 2010...
Juice for Juicers -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on September 09, 2009Spend any time with the Left at heart and you are bound to hear some version of the following rant: Advertising is ruining this country. It?s convincing people to buy things they don?t need! The big corporations have convinced us that happiness equals material possessions...
The Trouble with Harry -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on September 09, 2009If you think Senate majority leader Harry Reid might lose his reelection bid in 2010, you?re not the first to envision that result. In fact, Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick predicted back in May 2006 that ?in 50-plus months, Nevada voters will march to the polls and replace Sen...
Lockerbie Families Deserve Answers -- By: Robert P. George
Posted on September 09, 2009The cat is out of the bag. British justice secretary Jack Straw has admitted that commercial issues ?played a very big part? in the decision of British authorities to release ailing Lockerbie mass murderer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. Straw?s admission falsifies claims by Prime Minister Gordon Brown that neither oil deals nor other commercial considerations were factors in the decision...
Green Is the New Red -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 09, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.Van Jones spent the 1990s as an avowed Communist...
Teacher Tenure Must Go -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 09, 2009Brandi Scheiner believes she is a political prisoner. Held against her will in what is euphemistically dubbed a ?rubber room,? Scheiner, 56, likens her two-year captivity to being imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Alas, it?s unlikely the Red Cross will hear her case...
The AP's Decision to Exploit a Marine's Death -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 09, 2009Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near-universal press practice since 9/11, and the express wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua ?Bernie? Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan...
Obama's Missed Opportunity -- By: Abigail Thernstrom
Posted on September 09, 2009The president gave an innocuous and useless speech on education yesterday. Some on the right charged politics-in-the-classroom, but, really, get a grip folks. The problem was not its offensiveness; it was screamingly boring. There was a message he could have delivered that would have been of real importance, but no chance...
Talking Cure, Again -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 09, 2009President Obama began his speech tonight by noting that liberals have been trying to foist ?comprehensive health reform? on this nation for nearly seven decades. (He did not use these exact words.) These decades of failure have not led liberals to reconsider their basic assumptions about the proper role of government in American health care...
Once Upon a Time . . . -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 08, 2009Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama -- black, young, eloquent, and hip -- soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. What a contrast with the tongue-tied outgoing president, George W. Bush, and his unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Presidential Candidate Obama sensed their ecstasy, and so he made two great promises: 1...
Public Ignorance on the Public Option -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on September 08, 2009With one eye on his plummeting approval ratings, the president is dropping his support for a government-run insurance plan, AKA the ?public option.? The White House says it wants to ?synthesize and harmonize? and that it?s ?going to approach [health-care reform] in a different way,? but it?s hard to see this as anything other than a significant retreat...
When protest is uncool, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 08, 2009Friends, I hope you had a good Labor Day Weekend, and aren?t too shaken up by the loss of Van Jones to the administration, and to America. And aren?t you excited to hear President Obama address Congress, and the schoolchildren? He has been absent from the scene for a while, and I miss the sound of his voice! Not to mention all the post-partisan, post-racial, well-nigh post-human wisdom...
Listening to a Liar -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 08, 2009The most important thing about what anyone says is not the words themselves but the credibility of the person saying them.The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated...
Obama's Propaganda Machine -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 07, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. ?Choose you this day whom ye will serve." That may be from the Bible?s Book of Joshua, but it could be from the Book of Barack Obama...
Rage Against Obama's Propaganda Machine -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 07, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. ?Choose you this day whom ye will serve." That may be from the Bible?s Book of Joshua, but it could be from the Book of Barack Obama...
The Omnipresent Leader -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on September 05, 2009On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama?s plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty...
Obama's UN Gambit: King of the Universe and the Polls -- By: Anne Bayefsky
Posted on September 05, 2009Looking for a quick and easy boost in the polls, President Obama has decided to go to the one place where merit bears no relationship to adulation: the United Nations. On September 24, the president will take the unprecedented step of presiding over a meeting of the UN Security Council...
Lasting Ramifications -- By: Pete Hegseth
Posted on September 04, 2009I wasn?t surprised to read George Will?s Tuesday column calling for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan. In fact, I?m more surprised that the recent Afghanistan debate (or lack thereof) progressed this far without a prominent conservative defector. I hope his column stimulates an exchange in which the best ideas (which rarely emanate from the Washington chattering class) reach the battlefield...
A Dangerous Delusion -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on September 04, 2009Right after 9/11, Pres. George W. Bush made a succinct demand of the Taliban: Hand over Osama bin Laden and his cohorts or face horrific consequences. The demand, the president emphasized, was non-negotiable. The Taliban refused, insisting that the U...
Stop Bullying Honduras -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 04, 2009Roughly a week after it suspended ?non-emergency, non-immigrant? visa services at the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, the State Department has formally suspended non-humanitarian U.S. aid to Honduras. Furthermore, Foggy Bottom has made clear that it will not support the outcome of the upcoming Honduran elections (scheduled for November) unless the country?s recently deposed and exiled leader, Manuel Zelaya, is first reinstalled as president...
Biden's Version -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 04, 2009There?s a line in the movie Dave in which a guy impersonating the president, looking for ways to cut the budget, asks his commerce secretary, ?So, we?re spending $47 million so that somebody can feel better about a car that they have already bought?? It doesn?t cost $47 million to get Joe Biden to give a speech -- he?ll talk anywhere, anytime, at great length, for free -- and his address to the Brookings Institute on Thursday was intended to prevent buyer?s remorse...
David Axelrod as Christopher Walken -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 04, 2009ABC News reports that Barack Obama has returned to Washington, only to step off the plane and ?into his next domestic crisis.? He ?planned to leave the details of health-care reform to Congress, but today the White House says he?ll play a much stronger role...
What Obama Could Say to Get Our Respect -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 04, 2009As Democratic congressmen limp back to D.C. after bruising town-hall meetings, and Obama and the Democrats in Congress sink fast in opinion polls, the political team in the West Wing has surveyed the landscape and decided that what we need is another big Obama speech...
What Would Bush Do? -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 04, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.If he wants to prevail in Afghanistan, Barack Obama needs a George W...
Obamacare Goes Primetime -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on September 04, 2009For Republicans, August was a dream -- Obamacare sinking by the day, angry protestors confronting befuddled or insulting Democratic politicians, Obama?s poll numbers sagging. But the calendar inevitably turns, and it?s on to September. This week, the president?s team signaled that it might finally be ready to shift away from Obamacare?s current malignant incarnation...
Obama, the Mortal -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on September 04, 2009What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down farther than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership...
Some Data for Mr. Biden -- By: Jerry Bowyer
Posted on September 04, 2009?Facts are stubborn things,? wrote John Adams; I?m tempted to add: ?But not as stubborn as Joe Biden.?The vice president recently told the Brookings Institution that he has no doubt that the Obama administration?s stimulus plan has been a success. In fact, it?s been so successful that it has moved us from the precipice of a second Great Depression to the safer ground on which we now discuss recovery...
A Hostile Interview -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on September 04, 2009Michael Walsh, who for years was the classical-music critic at Time magazine, began writing fiction in the waning days of the Cold War. His new novel, Hostile Intent, deals with issues that will be familiar to viewers of 24 -- and to all those who realize we?re at war...
Animals Before Birth -- By: Frederica Mathewes-Green
Posted on September 04, 2009What is life like in the womb? Thanks to National Geographic, we?ve been able to refresh our memories with a beautiful book (In the Womb: Witness the Journey from Conception to Birth through Astonishing 3D Images) as well as a TV mini-series that makes use of the most advanced video technology to reveal human prenatal development...
Not So Fast -- By: Mark R. Levin
Posted on September 04, 2009It is quite a challenge to disagree with my brother Andy McCarthy. Both the substance and length of his arguments are compelling. But let me address a few of the points in his excellent piece today. The decision to invade Iraq was not motivated exclusively or even primarily by the democracy project...
The Jobless Recovery -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on September 04, 2009The jobless-recovery theme re-emerged on Friday with the arrival of a disappointing employment report. The daunting number was the unemployment rate, which jumped from 9.4 percent in July to 9.7 percent in August. This is a big-versus-small-business issue...
An Exaggerated Death -- By: Peter Berkowitz
Posted on September 03, 2009In contrast to progressives, who converge in believing that the top priority of politics should be more equitable government distribution of opportunities and goods, conservatives differ, sometimes sharply, about the aims of politics. While almost all conservatives in America affirm the centrality of individual freedom, social conservatives concentrate on protecting religion and morality, economic conservatives on limiting government?s scope and size in accordance with free-market tenets, and neoconservatives on preserving the principles of sound government embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution...
Health Care and Freedom -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru
Posted on September 03, 2009Michael Cannon, a health-policy analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute and a co-author of Healthy Competition, recently agreed to answer a few questions of mine for the benefit of NRO readers.NRO: Is it fair to say that the Democratic legislation on health care amounts to a government takeover of the system? That it amounts to socialized medicine?CANNON: That?s not only fair to say -- it?s imperative to say...
A Cosby cause, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 03, 2009Here?s a pet theme of mine (I know, I have so many pet themes, I could fill a kennel, or zoo, or something): You should not have to sacrifice your children to some kind of educational-political ideology. You should not have to send your children to public schools, if those schools are failing -- or even if they?re not -- in order to prove your fealty to public education...
August Diary -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on September 03, 2009Uruguay I blogged somewhere or other about small, quiet countries you never hear about, where nothing much happens and the citizenry chug along in cheerful prosperity, enjoying as much happiness as the human condition will allow, minding their nation?s own business, and grateful for its obscurity...
The Second World War - 70 Years Later -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 03, 2009Seventy years ago this week, on Sept. 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out with the German invasion of Poland. Thousands of books have been written about the war. And by now revisionist historians of revisionist historians engage in an endless cycle of disagreement over why the war started, how it ended, and what it all meant...
What's Israel Got to Do with It? -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on September 03, 2009Bill Gates famously called George Gilder ?very stimulating even when I disagree with him, and most of the time I agree with him.? The issues on which Gilder has staked out stimulating positions over more than 30 years as a writer and public intellectual are wide-ranging...
Thesis Statement -- By: The Editors
Posted on September 03, 2009The revelation, if such it can be called, that the Republican candidate for Virginia wrote a socially conservative master?s thesis in 1989 brings up two questions. The less important is what it tells us about that candidate, Robert McDonnell. The thesis, in one much-cited passage, criticizes Eisenstadt v...
From Preparedness to Appeasement -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on September 02, 2009By 1930 Verdun had been transmogrified almost into a dirty word in French schools. Throughout the late 1920s, the First World War was increasingly reinterpreted in the West as a futile bloodletting. International ?Merchants of Death? and greedy capitalists, not the Kaiser?s aggressive Prussian militarism, were now seen as the true causes of that recent horrific war...
Checkpoint to Nowhere -- By: Travis Kavulla
Posted on September 02, 2009Over a century ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner laid out the conditions of his famous Frontier Thesis. The land in the American West could be considered ?settled,? and therefore no longer ?the frontier,? Professor Turner postulated, when it had at least two people per square mile...
The Customer Comes Where? -- By: Daniel Freedman
Posted on September 02, 2009JERRY: Well, [he] said he was waiting about two hours. Seemed a little put out.KRAMER: Oh, was he? Was he? I guess the cable man doesn?t like to be kept waiting.In the space of seven days I received approximately 21 phone calls that changed the way I view the world...
Judging By Theses, Not Deeds -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on September 02, 2009ALEXANDRIA, Va. Back in 2006, during the height of that year?s election campaign, a Virginia Republican observed that he found the Washington Post?s coverage of local politics much more infuriating than its coverage of national politics. He suspected that the average reporter or editor on the Post?s political beat -- either living in the northern Virginia suburbs, or having many friends who did -- could live with the idea of the country being represented by George W...
Global Warming and the Sun -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on September 02, 2009On the last day of August, scientists spotted a teeny-weeny sunspot, breaking a 51-day streak of blemish-free days for the sun. If it had gone just a bit longer, it would have broken a 96-year record of 53 days without any of the magnetic disruptions that cause solar flares...
A dating game, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on September 02, 2009The Associated Press tells us that, ?for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egyptian fruit sellers have named their best dates of the year after President Barack Obama in a sweet tribute to the American leader for his outreach to the Muslim world.? The article further explains that, ?in Egypt, shops have created a new tradition of naming their best and worst dates to catch attention and boost sales -- giving a little reflection of the political mood...
Does Obama Take Health Costs Seriously? -- By: James K. Glassman
Posted on September 01, 2009Revelations of an $80 billion bargain between the White House and PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) are upsetting many Democrats. ?We were never part of that deal,? said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of three panels that wrote the House bill...
Yes, Harsh Interrogations Work -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on September 01, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.If Dick Cheney had a fantasy scenario for how the Bush administration interrogation program worked, it might go like this: A top-level al-Qaeda operative is captured, but resists traditional interrogation...
The Bill for Truth -- By: Interview
Posted on September 01, 2009You may recognize William Donohue as the one-man Catholic anti-defamation league, in a state of perpetual outrage. He is notorious for his sound bites and press releases, fired off in response to any insult to the Catholic Church. But in a new book, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights gets in more than a few sound bites...
Suicide of the West? -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on September 01, 2009Britain?s release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people -- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in Western democracies in our time...
'God's Partners' -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on September 01, 2009Well, thank Heaven George W. Bush is no longer president! Gosh, all of that mixing of religion and politics darn near subverted our Constitution -- which, as all good liberals know enshrines the ?wall of separation? between church and state.What? That phrase doesn?t appear in the Constitution? No matter...
Hey Conservatives, We're Recovering -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on September 01, 2009Believe it or not, sometimes good news on the economy can be bad news for stocks.It?s a distant point, but one worth considering in view of conservative pessimism over Obama?s plans to spend, tax, borrow, and control the economy. I share these worries...
De Facto Parents -- By: William C. Duncan
Posted on August 31, 2009In his 1988 book Silent Revolution, Herbert Jacob described how one of the most significant changes to family law in the 20th century, no-fault divorce, began in California and spread through the states with very little public debate or controversy. This remarkable transformation was presented, and largely accepted, as routine policymaking in the domain of legal experts...
Marriage: What Matters -- By: Robert W. Patterson
Posted on August 31, 2009Fifteen years ago, in his first book, Dead Right, David Frum identified several challenges facing Republicans. He cited the ?fundamental contradiction? of William Weld, at the time governor of Massachusetts, who thought he could be a fiscal conservative and a social liberal...
A Path to Fiscal Sanity -- By: Jagadeesh Gokhale
Posted on August 31, 2009It has been known since the early 1980s that the U.S. federal budget embodies a large structural imbalance -- one that persists through the economy?s ups and downs. In 1980, Ted Kennedy referred to this during his campaign for the presidency; Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama commented on it during theirs...
Obama's Unholy Attack -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on August 31, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. The mix of politics and religion can be an intoxicating cocktail...
Airbrushing out Mary Jo Kopechne -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on August 29, 2009We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation -- or, at any rate, its ?mainstream? media culture -- declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen...
Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 28, 2009?This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.? It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known ?rule of law? devotee, was speaking to the German press...
Britain's Disgrace -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 28, 2009The release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is worse than a crime, it is a mistake, from any and every point of view. The terrorist who brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland is now back in his native Libya, happily ensconced with his admiring family in a most luxurious villa and treated as a national hero...
No Cause for Shame -- By: Marc A. Thiessen
Posted on August 28, 2009The release this week of the CIA inspector general?s report makes clear that the CIA interrogation program was both lawful and effective in stopping new attacks. But was it moral? I believe that Americans can be comfortable not only with the efficacy but also with the morality of this effort...
A Test of Kennedy Currency -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 28, 2009If you read the newspapers or watch the news, you will encounter a long list of accomplishments by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. One thing you?re less likely to hear, however, is that in his death, Kennedy proved Rush Limbaugh right.In March, the talk-show host and bête noir of progressives everywhere said that the health-care bill wending its way through Congress would eventually be dubbed the ?Ted Kennedy Memorial Health-Care Bill...
Obamacare: The Only Exit Strategy -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on August 28, 2009Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but at the mendacity with which it is being sold. You don?t need a Ph...
Kennedy by Proxy -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 28, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The Kennedys have always tended their family?s legacy tenderly and brilliantly...
Time for Health-Care Tax Cuts! -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on August 28, 2009Temecula, Calif. -- The raging national debate over Obamacare revolves largely around spending. Should Washington plunge itself $1.1 trillion deeper into medicine? While this conversation dominates the headlines, Americans also should consider how tax cuts could improve the delivery and payment of health care...
Remembering the Darker Side of Teddy Kennedy -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on August 28, 2009The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, we are being told, should strengthen our resolve to act in a bipartisan fashion. Many of the tributes from former presidents and Republican colleagues have stressed the late senator?s willingness to find ?common ground...
Our Father & My Father -- By: Rev. John J. McCartney
Posted on August 28, 2009?The greatest husband and father in the history of the world did not shower his family with material things. St. Joseph gave them something of much greater value: He gave them himself. Every moment of every day, through his love, his sacrifice, his labor, he gave them himself...
Ted Kennedy's Road to Serfdom -- By: Flashback
Posted on August 28, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This piece by Susan Mandel appeared in the May 28, 1990, issue of National Review. (You can dig into NR?s archives anytime here.)When Senator Edward Kennedy went to Georgetown University in April to deliver a major address on the state of the Democratic party, the auditorium was barely half full...
The Senator and the Symbol -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on August 28, 2009We?ve been told that he was the ?Lion of the Senate? and the conscience of American liberalism. And now we?re told that we should surrender on nationalizing health care, which Democrats propose to do in tribute to him. But what is Sen. Edward M. Kennedy?s actual political legacy? Several longtime Kennedy-watchers weigh in...
The Latest Profile in Courage -- By: Flashback
Posted on August 28, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This piece by William F. Buckley Jr. appeared in the May 22, 2001, issue of National Review. (You can dig into NR?s archives anytime here.)The event at the Kennedy Library in Boston was pretty heady historical stuff. There at the Windsor Castle of Camelot were the two most illustrious survivors, brother Edward Kennedy and daughter Caroline Kennedy...
Steady Teddy -- By: Flashback
Posted on August 28, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This piece by Dave Brudnoy appeared in the November 7, 1994, issue of National Review. (You can dig into NR?s archives anytime here.)Every six years, as he steps forward to let the masses know of his availability for continued occupancy of the governmental seat to which he is entitled by divine right, Edward Moore Kennedy, the Senior Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, hears a familiar refrain: this year things will be different; this year there will be an opponent of more than token significance; this year those irritating Republicans have managed to find somebody who?ll give him a run for his money...
What I Saw at the Retribution -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on August 27, 2009Reston, Va. -- In the hour before Democratic congressman Jim Moran?s lone town hall of the August recess, the line stretched from the door of South Lakes High School, down the street, around a corner to a parking lot, into the parking lot, and then took three more turns...
Kennedy, Unsentimentally -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 27, 2009He may have sometimes seemed like a gin-soaked anachronism from The Beautiful and the Damned who somehow wandered into 21st-century America, but Edward M. Kennedy is a permanent rebuke to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his assertion that there are no second acts in American lives...
Understanding Donald Rumsfeld -- By: Jamie M. Fly
Posted on August 27, 2009Despite continued disagreements on the left and the right about the legacy of George W. Bush, there is one Bush-administration official who still unites political observers: Donald Rumsfeld. On the left, Democratic members of Congress and activists vilified Rumsfeld for his handling of the war in Iraq, Guantanamo, and the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; on the right, commentators called for Rumsfeld?s resignation less than seven months into his tenure because of his perceived inability to manage the Pentagon...
Crisis Management -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on August 27, 2009During the 1990s, most of us thought we were living in a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. We even spent the ?peace dividend? -- cutting resources for intelligence and the military. The Cold War was over. We had no enemies worth worrying about...
War - What War? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on August 27, 2009The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed this week to Martha?s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC?s Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Tex...
When reality intrudes, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on August 27, 2009In recent days, I?ve been expressing dismay at Hillary Clinton: in this column, for instance, and in this Corner post. Can you stand some more quotation of her? In an interview, she said, ?There are some days when we?re dealing with very difficult security issues when you kind of wish, ?Oh man, I wish I didn?t know that...
Remember 'No Controlling Legal Authority'? -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 26, 2009It was a dozen years ago when Eric Holder began his first tour of duty at the Justice Department, as deputy attorney general. At the time, DOJ had a major hot potato on its hands: Al Gore, the vice president of the United States, had engaged in a clear, black-and-white felony violation of campaign-finance laws...
The Reagan Revolution and Its Discontents -- By: Steven F. Hayward
Posted on August 26, 2009Some years ago I had occasion to hear Sir Martin Gilbert, then in the midst of producing the official biography of Winston Churchill, discuss how he became interested in writing history. His answer was simple -- curiosity. As a small boy, he wondered why bombs were falling from the sky on London, why he was being packed aboard a ship and sent off to relatives in Canada, why his uncle in the army came back from captivity in Asia some years later weighing less than 100 pounds...
The Soviet Standard Returns -- By: Elliott Abrams
Posted on August 26, 2009At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human-rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready. When American officials denounced the lack of freedom of speech or press or religion, or the absence of free elections, they did not whimper...
Obama and 'Redistributive Change' -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on August 26, 2009The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt?Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence?Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious?But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making...
Once Upon a Time in North Africa -- By: David Kahane
Posted on August 26, 2009I don?t know about you, but I spent the weekend beaming with pride at the fierce moral example set by a compassionate Scottish government when it freed the long-suffering Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan ?terrorist? convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie man-caused disaster...
Portrait of the Artist in Afghanistan -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on August 26, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: Roman Genn, whose illustrations have long brightened the pages of National Review, embedded himself with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, at Forward Operating Base Gulistan in Farah Province, central Afghanistan. Genn reports that the Marines ?exhibited gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty by tolerating your humble doodler?s permanent bitching and whining...
The Slippery Slope of Health-Care Reform -- By: Michael G. Franc
Posted on August 26, 2009Each day brings another twist to the health-care-reform saga. Should the president heed the braying of his hard-left allies, manipulate Senate procedural rules, and push through a massive overhaul of our entire health-care system? Or should he scale back the ambition of the proposals already approved by four congressional committees and settle for a ?modest? set of reforms to protect consumers from the predations of those sinister health-insurance companies? And, of course, there?s that nettlesome ?public plan? option: Should it stay, or should it go?On some days the prognosticators see less health reform in our future...
Bernanke's Balance Sheet -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 26, 2009The Obama administration has two approaches to former Bush administration officials: Threaten them with prosecution (CIA interrogators, Justice Department lawyers) or reappoint them to office (the secretary of defense). Ben Bernanke, once known as ?Helicopter Ben? but destined to go down in history as ?Bailout Ben,? has been reappointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve, though there are critics, left and right, who might have dreamed in secret of the other approach...
Obama and Faith -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 26, 2009The fight over health care took the most interesting turn last week. President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side...
Who can believe them? &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on August 26, 2009I wonder what people, generations from now, will think about our current obsession with -- not to say hysteria over -- global warming. Paul Johnson, for one, thinks that people will think we underwent a bout of mass madness. I imagine they will. Senator Stabenow, from my home state of Michigan, has said, ?Climate change is very real...
The Lesson of the Kennedys -- By: Michael Knox Beran
Posted on August 26, 2009That Senator Kennedy?s death was imminent could have been guessed from the statement issued earlier in the week that President Obama had no plans to visit him during his vacation on Martha?s Vineyard. Had the senator been in a condition to receive him, the president would almost certainly have gone to Hyannis, from personal affection, certainly, as well as from gratitude, but also in the knowledge (surely forgivable in a practicing politician) that a torch-passing ceremony would be useful just now in the struggle to get a health-care bill...
Holding All the Cards and Still Losing -- By: John J. Pitney Jr.
Posted on August 25, 2009President Obama is plunging in the polls, and his health-care plans face an iffy future on Capitol Hill. His supporters blame right-wing muscle. ?I think it is very hard because [Democrats] don?t have the message machine the Republicans do,? says Democratic message guru George Lakoff...
Uncreative Destruction -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 25, 2009When we talk about government policies destroying wealth, we usually mean taxes that shift money from efficient to inefficient uses. Rarely do we mean the deliberate destruction of valuable assets. Yet, thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program, which ground to a halt yesterday, we now have a visual aid to help with this abstract concept...
Who can wave the Bible? &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger
Posted on August 25, 2009President Obama is not shy about using religious language and religious imagery. He has said that he hopes to be ?an instrument of God.? (Shouldn?t we all.) And, the other day, I saw a photo of him next to a neon cross (pretty garish). I also read what he said about critics of his health-care plans: They were ?bearing false witness...
Obama Screws Up Latin American Policy -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on August 25, 2009The lights are going out in Venezuela. The Chávez-controlled legislature passed an education bill on August 13 that will extinguish the last glimmers of free thought in the country?s classrooms. The law is such a caricature of revolutionary legislation that it almost seems like a joke, like something out of Woody Allen?s Bananas...
The Great Escape -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 25, 2009Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics, or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation -- that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved...
Leon Panetta's Agony -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 25, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246). Pity Leon Panetta. The CIA director counseled the Obama administration against releasing classified interrogation memos from the Bush years...
Holder's Political Interrogation -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 25, 2009More than one CIA officer quoted in the just-released 2004 CIA inspector general?s report worried that that the political climate would change and the CIA would be hung out to dry. And so it has come to pass. On the same day the IG report was made public -- with the media hyping its most disturbing passages -- Attorney General Eric Holder assigned a prosecutor to assess whether criminal cases should be re-opened against CIA officers and contractors...
Truth, Propaganda, or Both? -- By: Letters
Posted on August 25, 2009I was rather stunned to read Kevin Williamson?s puzzling review of Lines That Divide, the documentary about the embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) debate. I had nothing to do with the production of the DVD, but I was interviewed for it, am a talking head in it, and have seen it twice, and I can join with Ramesh Ponnuru in saying with confidence that Williamson got some very big things wrong:First: The person saying the other side was ignorant about stem-cell research was a proponent of ESCR...
Beautiful Losers -- By: John Derbyshire
Posted on August 24, 2009What is modern American conservatism? ?A movement without a social core,? complains one of its more penetrating observers, ?that latches on to temporarily usable constituencies#...#contrived#...#a media phenomenon.?He goes on: ?It has a viewing public and numerous publications, which can provide the Republican Party, when necessary, with PR...
See Rachel Calumniate -- By: Stephen Spruiell
Posted on August 24, 2009As protests at congressional town-hall meetings have heated up the health-care debate and turned public opinion against the Democrats? agenda, liberals have stepped up their efforts to delegitimize the protestors. ?AstroTurf? is a word that pops up a lot on liberal talk-radio shows, blogs, and MSNBC...
Yes, He Can -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on August 24, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. ?Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type...
Why the Stimulus Flopped -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on August 22, 2009The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several ?stimulus? projects -- every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said ?PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK? with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a ?PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT...
Unemployment You Can Believe In -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on August 21, 2009If Obamacare were a prescription drug, ads for it would say: ?Use with extreme caution. Side effects include regulatory headaches, irritated taxpayers, and swollen unemployment.?That?s right. Serious studies indicate that Obamacare would kill millions of jobs...
Killing Obamacare -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 21, 2009Earlier this week, some of my National Review colleagues recoiled from Sarah Palin?s bracing allegation that Obamacare would foist government ?death panels? on vulnerable Americans. I recoiled from the recoil, which I thought exemplified the same sort of ?hysteria? the editorial in question, ?Rationing and Rationality,? condemned...
A Deck Stacked with Race Cards -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 21, 2009What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn?t invited?The question comes to mind as cries of racism grow ever louder among Obama?s supporters.No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism...
Stop and Think -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 21, 2009The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical-care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it...
Stupid Nation -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 21, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy...
Let's Be Honest about Death Counseling -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on August 21, 2009Let?s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I?ve got nothing against her. She?s a remarkable political talent. But there are no ?death panels? in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate...
Can We Succeed in Afghanistan? -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on August 21, 2009He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That?s what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart?s The Places in Between, an account of the Scotsman?s 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That?s right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey...
Terrorists Go Scot Free -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 21, 2009There was precious outrage in some mainstream media quarters Friday over the Obama administration?s pusillanimous reaction to Scotland?s release of PanAm 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. But what were they expecting? Megrahi has been transferred home to Libya...
Friends in High Places -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on August 21, 2009It?s good to be David Axelrod.Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, left AKPD, the powerful Chicago-based media-consulting firm he founded, late last year for the West Wing. Why leave the private sector for a gig with the federal government? Why not? Axelrod could afford the downgrade...
Who Is Don Draper? -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on August 21, 2009?I keep going different places, and always winding up where I?ve already been.? That is a comment by Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the main character of the critically acclaimed AMC series Mad Men, in its hyped third-season opener, which aired last Sunday night...
Longest. Lives. Ever. -- By: Jerry Bowyer
Posted on August 21, 2009The Centers for Disease Control released its ?National Vital Statistics Report? this week, and BuzzCharts was especially interested in the latest figures for life expectancy. It turns out that Americans are living longer than they did at any time in the nation?s history...
Targeted Killings -- By: Nathan A. Sales
Posted on August 20, 2009Last month, the news that Obama?s CIA director, Leon Panetta, had canceled a Bush-era plan to slay key al-Qaeda figures unleashed a firestorm. Details about the so-called ?assassination? scheme remain murky. What we do know is that the plan was never implemented and that CIA failed to tell Congress about it -- perhaps on the personal orders of Vice President Cheney...
The Other Surge -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 20, 2009President Obama campaigned on Afghanistan as the good and essential war, in contrast to the war in Iraq. The politics were obvious: Since the Democrats, in effect, favored losing in Iraq, they had to support the other war to bolster their national-security bona fides...
Manufactured Objections -- By: Daniel Ikenson
Posted on August 20, 2009During the past few years, America has grown increasingly averse to trade. This trend is the product of myths perpetuated by campaigning politicians, captured policymakers, TV charlatans, and woefully ill-informed newspaper columnists. Harold Meyerson always comes to mind as emblematic of this last category, so his fallacy-laden diatribe about the decline of U...
Turning Uncle Sam into Peeping Tom -- By: Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Posted on August 20, 2009Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats? health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ?Administrative Simplification,? the bill sets new ?standards? for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers...
Obama's Bait and Switch -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 20, 2009Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical-care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured -- and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats...
Divine Debt Trumps All -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on August 20, 2009In Greek mythology, even Olympian gods and heroes were subject to a higher divine power known loosely as ?fate? -- an allotted moira, or destiny, that could not be changed even by thunderbolt-throwing Zeus. In modern America, debt -- whether national, state, or trade -- now plays the same overarching role as the ancient Greek notion of fate...
August Anniversaries -- By: Denis Boyles
Posted on August 19, 2009August, and golden oldies. Serious thought is forbidden this month, which is why every middle-aged pop critic in America is still waxing on Woodstock and talking about how Janis changed the world and Arlo shut down the New York State Thruway, man...
When Boulder Starts Rolling Away -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on August 19, 2009Boulder, Colo., is known as one of the most politically liberal communities in America. And yet here?s a man named Steve standing in the parking lot of a strip mall, holding up a bright-orange sign that reads, ?I?ll keep my freedom, you keep the change...
Kentucky's Scrappy Go-Getter -- By: Michael Warren
Posted on August 19, 2009He?s arguably the most powerful elected Republican in America. He?s certainly the most powerful Republican official in Washington since the departure of George W. Bush. That may not be saying much, given the GOP?s diminished influence, but if President Obama?s plans to nationalize health care fail, Sen...
Why 'Obamacare' Is Failing -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 19, 2009To listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to ?Obamacare? is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole Star Wars cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform...
That's Where the Money Is -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 19, 2009When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: ?Because that?s where the money is.?For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system...
Playing the Joker -- By: Andrew Stuttaford
Posted on August 18, 2009If the right to vote (or not vote) for our leaders is a sign of a healthy democracy, so is the right not just to criticize, but also to insult them. Jeering, heckling, and rude, impious laughter are no less a part of the democratic process than the force-fed ecstasy of a party convention, the cheers of the shining-eyed faithful, or the complacent applause at rubber-chicken dinners...
The Harder He Falls -- By: David Kahane
Posted on August 18, 2009I?m the world?s biggest fan of the great boxer Barry ?the Punahou Kid? Obama. I supported him throughout his grueling qualifying bouts with John ?Pretty Boy? Edwards and Chris ?Tammany? Dodd, and his classic 15-round heavyweight contest with Hillary ?the Beast? Clinton...
Whose Medical Decisions? -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 18, 2009There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first six months of a new administration. The fact that they got away with it before -- with the ?stimulus? bill -- may have led them to believe that they could get away with it again...
Obama's Option Play -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 18, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.One of the few strictly accurate things that Pres...
Up North -- By: Mona Charen
Posted on August 18, 2009A comedian once said that visiting Canada was like rummaging in your attic. ?You go up there and say ?Wow, there?s all this neat stuff up here! There are mountains and rivers and cities.? ? And a parliament and a television network.It is a fact of life -- whether sad or not I leave to readers -- that most Americans have no strong feelings about our northern neighbor because we often forget entirely that Canada exists...
Robert Novak, R.I.P. -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on August 18, 2009Now we say good-bye to Robert Novak, who passed away early Tuesday morning at the age of 78. Yet another conservative icon has left us. He was a good friend, and an amazing reporter. In fact, I believe he was the best reporter of his generation, which spans all the way back to the Eisenhower years...
Rationing and Rationality -- By: The Editors
Posted on August 17, 2009Defined at a high level of abstraction, rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient?s best interest can be done in a world of finite resources, and some constraint has to limit his treatment. Thus the left-wing jibe that the market features ?rationing by price...
Poisoned Water in Green Hell -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on August 17, 2009I like where I live, but I didn?t quite realize that it was turning into a green hell. At least not until I read Steven Milloy?s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. I live in one of the older neighborhoods in Washington, D...
Hillary Snaps -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on August 17, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com. Hillary Clinton snapped. It was unfortunate, because she is our secretary of state and she blew a fuse while abroad, but it?s only human to unload now and again...
Terrorists Get Appeals, Obamacare Patients Don't -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 17, 2009Remember when Congress tried to limit al-Qaeda?s access to our courts? There was hell to pay. That the nation was at war after a 9/11 was irrelevant. That the complainants at issue made no bones about their desire to kill Americans was beside the point...
Up, Up, and Away -- By: Deroy Murdock
Posted on August 17, 2009?Obama talks about $600 billion. The Congressional Budget Office talks about $1.1 trillion,? a gray-haired man in a striped shirt bluntly told Democratic senator Arlen Specter at a town hall meeting in Lebanon, Pa., last Tuesday. ?I have spent 40 years in government,? this vocal American continued...
What Went Wrong -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on August 17, 2009We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama?s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large...
You've Had a Good Innings -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on August 15, 2009Some years ago, when I was a slip of a lad, I found myself commiserating with a distinguished American songwriter about the death of one of his colleagues. My 23-year-old girlfriend found all the condolence talk a bit of a bummer and was anxious to cut to the chase and get outta there...
Grassley's 'Come to Grandma' Moment -- By: NRO Staff
Posted on August 14, 2009Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Finance Committee?s senior Republican, announced on Thursday that his committee will drop consideration of the end-of-life provisions outlined in the House?s health-care legislation, due to potentially controversial interpretation and implementation issues...
Obama's Bookshelf -- By: An NRO Symposium
Posted on August 14, 2009Our president has been spotted carrying an assortment of books, from FDR biographies to the collected poems of David Walcott. We asked some friends of NRO: What books would you recommend the president get on his nightstand and why? What might have a positive effect on him and history? HADLEY ARKES Obama has clearly shown, in several ways, that he doesn?t have the remotest understanding of Lincoln?s teachings, whether regarding Lincoln?s moral understanding of natural right, his view of the Constitution, or the precise sense of prudence that informed his statecraft...
Testing Obamacare's Meddle -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 14, 2009If I went to a Democratic town hall, I?d probably boo, too. Hence, according to various Democrats and supporters of Obamacare, I?m paranoid and just a bit unpatriotic.Well, let me dilate on my paranoid treachery for a moment.Under the plan discussed at President Obama?s infomercial-esqe town halls, America would cut costs and expand coverage while avoiding rationing...
On Health Care, a Populist Revolt -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 14, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The best moment of almost every YouTube video of the raucous town-hall meetings on health care is the same: It?s the nonplussed look on the face of the senators and congressmen who have rarely suffered such indignity...
The 'Preventive Care' Myth -- By: Charles Krauthammer
Posted on August 14, 2009In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health-care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee?s reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade...
Nazis for Me, but Not for Thee -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 14, 2009It?s this week?s fashion on the left, and among such fashionably contemplative moderates as Mort Kondracke, to blast Rush Limbaugh for comparing Democrats to the Nazis. It?s no surprise that the Obama hardcores are misrepresenting the sequence and substance of events, but I would have hoped that Kondracke would at least have noted that Rush?s comparison -- even if Kondracke thought it unwise -- was neither gratuitous nor demagogic...
High School Rock Musical -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on August 14, 2009The new Walden Media production, Bandslam, is for the most part an entertaining story about the new kid in town, Will Burton (Gaelan Connell), a classic-rock purist and typical loner who suddenly finds himself drawing the attention of two beautiful and musically gifted classmates (Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical and Alyson Michalka from the pop duo Aly and AJ)...
Bowling for Embryos -- By: Kevin Williamson
Posted on August 14, 2009Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate is a conservative propaganda film arguing that Americans should forgo embryonic-stem-cell research in favor of research using stem cells derived from adults and from other sources that do not require the destruction of a human organism...
Happy and Hungry -- By: Julie Gunlock
Posted on August 14, 2009Julie and Julia is a wonderfully lighthearted movie about food, love, and determination. Written and directed by well-known happy-movie doyenne Nora Ephron (the maker of such chick-flick blockbusters as When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You?ve Got Mail), Julie and Julia tells two stories...
Worst. Hires Rate. Ever. -- By: Jerry Bowyer
Posted on August 14, 2009It?s not enough for most people to know what the unemployment rate is and whether it?s going up or down. It?s not enough for investors and entrepreneurs living during some of the strangest times in American financial history. And it?s not enough for citizens trying to decide whether the policy proposals now in Washington are worthy of their support...
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Eyes on the Real Prize -- By: Jim Geraghty
Posted on August 13, 2009After years of journalistic, academic, and even medical tut-tutting about politically apathetic Americans, we are now witnessing a strongly motivated, fired-up populace eager to make its opinions known to its elected leaders.Needless to say, having finally gotten the widespread, passionate grassroots activism that they yearned for over so many years, our political and media elites are shrieking in horror and declaring it an abomination, with Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst for Time magazine, declaring himself ?embarrassed about what?s going on as an American...
The Meanings of Moderation -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru
Posted on August 13, 2009Reviewing Mark Levin?s Liberty and Tyranny in The Weekly Standard, Peter Berkowitz tries to make the case for moderation. The trouble is that this case is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible, to make. As William F. Buckley Jr. and Willi Schlamm wrote in the Fifties, ?Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically, intellectually, and morally repugnant...
What to Do with the Uninsured -- By: John McClaughry
Posted on August 13, 2009The version of Obamacare offered by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee has a number of controversial provisions. Conspicuous among them is a proposed fine of as much as $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to purchase health-insurance coverage as the bill mandates...
Tweaking the Census -- By: Michael Warren
Posted on August 13, 2009The integrity of the United States Census may be at risk. That?s certainly what some Republicans are concerned about in the Obama era. For years, liberals have rightly pointed out that the decennial census undercounts certain groups -- minorities, illegal immigrants, transients...
Our Road to Oceania -- By: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on August 13, 2009In George Orwell?s allegorical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the picture of ?Big Brother? appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere -- supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein...
Herzlinger: Health Cares Taxing Problem
Posted on August 12, 2009Fixing the unfair tax system should be one of Congresss top priorities when it comes to health reform.
Mamchur: The Benefits of Bartering
Posted on August 12, 2009Meet the economic mastermind whos helping Russians overcome their countrys lack of financial liquidity.
Kenneally: The Public Option
Posted on August 12, 2009Obama has embraced the tripartite formula for technocratic politics: the illusion of immanent crisis, the pretense of public consensus, and the suppression of open debate.
Goldberg: Dogs Dont Care about Dogma
Posted on August 12, 2009Dogss greatest gift is to remind us that love and loyalty exist outside the ephemeral pieties of contemporary life.
May: Fascism 101
Posted on August 12, 2009Town-hall protestors are not fascists, but Islamists are.
Obama's Hoof-in-Mouth Disease -- By: Larry Kudlow
Posted on August 12, 2009It?s hard to know why President Obama said what he said at Tuesday?s health-care town hall in New Hampshire. He actually stated, ?If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It?s the Post Office that?s always having problems.?Oops. Freudian slip? Subliminally speaking, was the president implying that private health insurers are doing just fine?Government insurance is what?s in trouble today...
Health Care's Taxing Problem -- By: Regina Herzlinger
Posted on August 12, 2009Mainstream economists generally agree that current U.S. tax policy for health insurance is fundamentally irrational, regressive, and ultimately destructive. Fixing this system should be one of Congress?s top priorities when it comes to health reform. Sadly, the current Congressional health-reform proposals would leave the worst feature of the current system in place and make a bad situation worse...
The Benefits of Bartering -- By: Yuri Mamchur
Posted on August 12, 2009MOSCOW -- German Sterligov is well known here, but unlike Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, and other publicly flamboyant Russian billionaires, he is little known abroad. Sterligov neither sails the Caribbean nor drinks in London?s Mayfair district; most of the time he lives a traditional peasant lifestyle deep in the Russian countryside with his wife and five children...
The Public Option -- By: Ivan Kenneally
Posted on August 12, 2009In the last few weeks, the debate over health care has taken an angry and contentious turn by any standard. Town-hall meetings and public rallies, not known for their docile tenor under normal circumstances, have been punctuated by unusually spirited opposition to Democrat proposals for sweeping reform...
Dogs Don't Care about Dogma -- By: Jonah Goldberg
Posted on August 12, 2009My wife and I took our dog to the neurologist the other day. Yes, the neurologist. For a dog.I?m sure it sounds extravagant, but Cosmo had been having unexplained seizures, so we took him in for an MRI and a spinal tap after a batch of the normal, cheaper tests...
Fascism 101 -- By: Clifford D. May
Posted on August 12, 2009In the heat of America?s many debates, ?Nazi? and ?fascist? are among the epithets too often hurled. Last week, for example, Rush Limbaugh compared Adolf Hitler to Pres. Barack Obama, saying each ?ruled by dictate? and claimed to represent ?the will of his people...
McCarthy: Drop the Investigation of CIA Interrogators
Posted on August 11, 2009The CIA interrogators are having a rougher time with prosecutors than did the Black Panthers. Why?
Marsico: Garden State Gubernatorial
Posted on August 11, 2009Recent polls show that Democratic dominance may be coming to an end in New Jersey.
Pitney: Virtual Town Halls
Posted on August 11, 2009With voters turning mutinous, congressmen are tempted to retreat to the safer, less revealing expedient of phone or Internet meetings.
Kahane: The Untouchables
Posted on August 11, 2009Yes, my friends, the great line of gangsters with the letter D after their names has now reached its apotheosis.
Lowry: A Backroom Drug Deal
Posted on August 11, 2009Obama has bought off an industry group in a secret deal to spare it the worst of a far-reaching government scheme.
Sowell: A Sowell Sampler
Posted on August 11, 2009Sowell on politics, boxing, and the prospect of an intoxicated Joe Biden.
Drop the Investigation of CIA Interrogators -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy
Posted on August 11, 2009?We?re going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us, follow the law wherever that takes us.? So decreed Attorney General Eric Holder in April when asked whether government officials would face prosecution over coercive interrogation tactics used against terrorist detainees...
Garden State Gubernatorial -- By: Jennifer Marsico
Posted on August 11, 2009It has been twelve years since a Republican won a statewide race in New Jersey -- a longer run of GOP losses than in any other state. But recent polls show that Democratic dominance may be coming to an end in the Garden State. New Jersey?s incumbent governor, Jon Corzine, is trailing Republican challenger Chris Christie by double digits in recent polls...
Virtual Town Halls -- By: John J. Pitney Jr.
Posted on August 11, 2009As voters start talking back -- first with the tea parties, now with protests against Democratic health-care proposals -- members of Congress are showing more interest in ?virtual town halls.? By ?meeting? constituents via phone or Internet, lawmakers can exercise more control and thus avoid the unpleasantness that can accompany face-to-face meetings...
The Untouchables -- By: David Kahane
Posted on August 11, 2009It?s too bad that Michael Mann?s latest film, Public Enemies, was more or less a flop at the box office -- budgeted at $100 million, it?s grossed about $93 mil domestically, which means that Johnny Depp or no Johnny Depp, it?s not going to earn out -- because if ever the time was right for a great gangster film, it?s now...
A Backroom Drug Deal -- By: Rich Lowry
Posted on August 11, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The White House has yet to entice any members of the Axis of Evil to the negotiating table, unless Billy Tauzin counts...
A Sowell Sampler -- By: Thomas Sowell
Posted on August 11, 2009Different people have very different reactions to Pres. Barack Obama. Those who listen to his rhetoric are often inspired, while those who follow what he actually does are often appalled.New York and Chicago have both recently had their coldest June in generations...
Coburn: Ten Questions Politicians Wont Answer
Posted on August 10, 2009The choice is not between the public option and nothing. The choice is between the public option and an option that can win the support of the public.
George: Not a Victimless Crime
Posted on August 10, 2009Too many libertarians and civil-rights organizations look on prostitution as a victimless crime. So it might be, if it were the prostitutes choice.
Hemingway: Missing John Hughes
Posted on August 10, 2009Gone from us too soon, the classic chronicler of the American teenage experience will have a lasting place in American culture.
Lopez: Thou Shalt Not Kill
Posted on August 10, 2009Right now, there is absolutely nothing keeping Obamacare from mandating abortion and violating the consciences of health-care providers who are opposed to it.
Ten Questions Politicians Won't Answer -- By: Tom Coburn
Posted on August 10, 2009The past week?s debate about health care has shown that in Washington the only things more stubborn than facts are politicians who evade them. In spite of a torrent of independent analyses showing that the so-called health-care ?reform? bills moving through Congress will dramatically increase the deficit and cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, the politicians leading the effort have steadfastly refused to consider that their ideas and policies, rather than the character of their critics, may be flawed...
The Secret Schools -- By: Dan Lips
Posted on August 10, 2009People across the world have been inspired by the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea -- the story of mountain climber Greg Mortenson?s personal journey to promote peace in remote Pakistan and Afghanistan, ?one school at a time.? But Mortenson?s heroic tale fails to offer a realistic solution to the challenge that has vexed the international-aid community: How can we ensure that even the world?s poorest children have a chance to go to school? University of New Castle professor James Tooley offers a surprising answer in his new book, The Beautiful Tree...
Not a Victimless Crime -- By: D. Hughes & R. P. George
Posted on August 10, 2009Tiny Rhode Island prides itself on its history and charm. But since it decriminalized prostitution in 1980, it has become a haven for something decidedly uncharming: the trafficking of girls and young women into the commercial sex industry. There is a lesson in this for the nation...
Town-Hall Trickery -- By: Andrew G. Biggs
Posted on August 10, 2009During the August congressional recess, elected officials conduct ?town hall? meetings to gauge their constituents? opinions on a range of issues. This month, the dominant subject is health-care reform -- and Democratic lawmakers aren?t happy about what they?re hearing...
Missing John Hughes -- By: Mark Hemingway
Posted on August 10, 2009Saying that John Hughes was a chronicler of the American teenage experience is quite an understatement. Even if the film writer/director/producer is remembered primarily for his unparalleled string of classic teen comedies in the 1980s, that misses the bigger picture...
Doing Harm -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez
Posted on August 10, 2009EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com.?Do no harm? is as vital a political principle as it is a medical maxim...
Steyn: The Community Is Restless
Posted on August 08, 2009When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell.
The Community Is Restless -- By: Mark Steyn
Posted on August 08, 2009DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI-#...#No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20. Under the stimulus bill, there?s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (?QUESTION AUTHORITY?), you can trade them in for a new ?CELEBRATE CONFORMITY? sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you...
Geraghty: Marco Solo
Posted on August 07, 2009If we keep going down the path that were on in Washington, then what we do in Tallahassee wont matter.
Spruiell: President Obama, Hawaii, and Dodgy Certificates
Posted on August 07, 2009Hawaiis government monopoly shut out new competitors.
Goldberg: Democrats Fear Is Showing on Health Care
Posted on August 07, 2009The worlds most famous community organizer is whining about community organizing.
Lowry: In Pursuit of a Silent Majority
Posted on August 07, 2009If engaged citizens shower Obama with adoration at stage-managed rallies, they are the very stuff of American democracy. If they boo their congressman, they are a scandalous eruption of fake or hateful sentiment.
Murdock: Government Medicine Kills
Posted on August 07, 2009Government medicine has proved an excruciating disaster in the U.K. and Canada.
Hibbs: Half Bad
Posted on August 07, 2009Funny People is a lost opportunity, for Adam Sandler and especially for Judd Apatow.
Gunlock: Eating Is No Fun Anymore
Posted on August 07, 2009Food Inc. shines a light on the dangers of farm subsidies. Lets hope a few politicians make it to the movies.
Editors: No on Sotomayor: A Sound Stand on Principle
Posted on August 07, 2009The easy path for Senate Republicans would have been to cave to political reality and to jump on the Sotomayor bandwagon.
Half Bad -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs
Posted on August 07, 2009Midway through the new Judd Apatow film, Funny People, Eminem in a cameo appearance admonishes a leukemia-suffering George Simmons (Adam Sandler): Your best move would simply be to die. Apatow might have applied that piece of advice to the film itself...
Smetters: Obama vs. Mathematics
Posted on August 06, 2009On health care, entitlements, and taxes, the administrations numbers just dont add up.
Editors: Insult and Injury
Posted on August 06, 2009So the American people are "the mob" now, Mr. President?
Franc: Phase II for Obamacare
Posted on August 06, 2009Once Democrats realized their health-care talking points weren't fooling anyone, they changed strategies.
Finn: A Constitutional Moment for American Education?
Posted on August 06, 2009We need some coming together of forward-looking leaders able to conceptualize and construct a new set of arrangements that will work better than the old.
Geraghty: Gordons Blue-Dog Blues
Posted on August 06, 2009A Democrat struggles to strike a balance between his partys goals and his districts conservative leanings.
May: Process This
Posted on August 06, 2009One American administration after another has embraced the same false premises and, from that starting point, set into motion a peace process that ineluctably fails.
Hanson: Obamas Great Race to Change America
Posted on August 06, 2009If he does not achieve his initiatives soon, he never will.
Petrilli: Failing to Learn Bushs Lessons
Posted on August 05, 2009On education, a touch of humility would have been helpful during the Bush years, and thats one lesson it would be good for the Obama team to learn sooner rather than later.
Hanson: The Great American Debt
Posted on August 05, 2009We congratulate ourselves on how brilliantly we have let the Chinese lend us money so that we can buy their cheap consumer goods. Someday the IOUs will come due.
Goldberg: How Much Is That Clunker in the Window?
Posted on August 05, 2009Washington can only see the economic activity it has created, not the activity it has destroyed.
Sowell: Care Versus Control
Posted on August 05, 2009Are decisions made by doctors who have treated the same patient for years to be overruled by bureaucrats sitting in front of computer screens in Washington, following guidelines drawn up with the idea of bringing down the cost of medical care?
Nordlinger: Shut up and guide, c.
Posted on August 05, 2009Jay Nordlinger on an un-safe zone, Obama in Arabia, they who guard the queen, and more.
Kudlow: A Vote for the Clunkers
Posted on August 05, 2009For once in our lives, Washington spending is giving us a good bang for the buck.
Derbyshire: July Diary
Posted on August 04, 2009A great downside of socialism is that its awfully hard to get from it to some other arrangement.
Editors: The Billion-Dollar Car Crash
Posted on August 04, 2009Smashing our used cars will not stimulate the economy.
Lowry: Barack Obamas Clunkernomics
Posted on August 04, 2009The Cash for Clunkers program is the ultimate expression of Obamanomics in all its spendthrift shortsightedness.
Charen: No Individual Initiative Please, Were Americans
Posted on August 04, 2009A nation of good witnesses is that what we aspire to be? Tame victims who hand over the money and file legible police reports?
Sowell: Utopia Versus Freedom
Posted on August 04, 2009If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode.
al-Ahmed: Hide and Seek
Posted on August 03, 2009Virginias Fairfax County should think twice before voting to let the Islamic Saudi Academy expand.
Bayefsky: Waiting to See
Posted on August 03, 2009Unless Israel exercises its right of self-defense and decides to risk the wrath of President Obama as the lesser of two evils, there will be an Iranian nuclear bomb.
Brownback: Dont Punish Seniors for Health-Care Reform
Posted on August 03, 2009Reform of our health-care system is needed, but not if it bankrupts us and rations care to seniors.
Pinckney: Is Obama Pressing the Reset Button on Defense?
Posted on August 03, 2009Coddling liberal fantasies of peace-through-defense-cuts instead of prudently maintaining a clear American edge in the ability to project power around the world is a mistake we will no doubt live to regret.
Lopez: Winds Shifting on Gay Marriage
Posted on August 03, 2009How a simple answer by a California beauty queen changed the political landscape.
Nordlinger: The color of cops, c.
Posted on August 03, 2009Jay Nordlinger on the Gates affair, an NPR outrage, the war in Iraq, and more.
Steyn: A Liberty Issue
Posted on August 01, 2009How did the health-care debate decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to spend on something as basic to individual liberty as their own bodie
Murdock: Down with Dog-Killer Michael Vick
Posted on August 01, 2009Vick does not deserve any prestigious position of visibility, glory, or adulation.
Bowyer: Obamas Magical Misery Tour
Posted on July 31, 2009High unemployment plus high inflation will be a tough sell for the president.
Kudlow: Its a New Bull Market
Posted on July 31, 2009This is more than a summer rally; its a new bull market in stocks. Resilient capitalism is pushing back against Obama.
Connell: Its Not about the Drama
Posted on July 31, 2009Cristina Nehring, author of A Vindication of Love, is looking for love in all the wrong places.
Quinn: Chappaquiddick Revisited
Posted on July 31, 2009Forty years ago, Ted Kennedy faced a stark choice: a young womans life or his own political career. The media dont want to recall which he chose.
Thomson: Three Cheers for Solid Bilateral Relations
Posted on July 31, 2009The relationship between Colombia and the United States has been growing ever since World War II.
Geraghty: Off the Charts
Posted on July 31, 2009A visual representation of Obamacare causes controversy.
Goldberg: The God Who Bleeds
Posted on July 31, 2009Obamas messianic hopey-changiness has been exposed for what it was, and what it could only be: a rich cocktail of pie-eyed idealism, campaign sloganeering, and profound arrogance.
Lowry: Wanted: A Modest Obama
Posted on July 31, 2009Its easy to imagine an alternative history of a more cautious Obama administration that wouldnt have stoked a voter backlash in all of six months.
Krauthammer: Not Waterloo, Just a Tactical Retreat
Posted on July 31, 2009In the end, Obama will have to settle for something very modest: health-insurance reform.
Charen: Gilder Throws Down a Gauntlet
Posted on July 31, 2009A society that is organized to permit individuals to flourish and to realize their potential, like the United States and post-1980s Israel, will broadly share in the increased prosperity those individuals help to create.
Editors: Incurable
Posted on July 30, 2009Dropping the public option wont fix whats wrong with Obamacare.
Geraghty: Humble Image, Sharp Elbows
Posted on July 30, 2009Can Creigh Deeds, a down-the-line liberal Democrat, successfully pose as a good ol' boy?
Nordlinger: Keep talkin, Barack, c.
Posted on July 30, 2009Jay Nordlinger on the presidential mouth, the revolution in health care, the Moroccan king, and more.
Interview: Choosing the Chosen People
Posted on July 30, 2009George Gilder explains the Israel Test.
Hanson: Our Angry Aristocracy
Posted on July 30, 2009Heres a little advice for all of Americas aristocratic critics: a little less hypocrisy, a little more appreciation of your good lives -- and then maybe the rest of us will listen to you a little more.
May: Friends and Foes
Posted on July 30, 2009Americas friends will grow colder while its enemies will grow bolder as a result of Obamas policies.
Editors: Angelos Ashes
Posted on July 29, 2009Senators Dodd, Conrad took favors from Countrywide, and should own up to it.
Cannon: Romneys Folly
Posted on July 29, 2009Massachusetts is a case study in the reforms that President Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to ram through Congress.
Spruiell: Obamas Blame-Game Gambit
Posted on July 29, 2009It wont be the COB or the GOPs fault if Obama is unable to get the health-care plan he wants,
Winters: Robots Dont Pay Dues
Posted on July 29, 2009Technology can improve teaching, but the forces standing in the way are difficult to overcome.
Gora: Better Parties, Better Goverment
Posted on July 29, 2009If freed from the current restrictions, parties could and, we believe, would become the primary source of campaign funds for their candidates.
Goldberg: Planet Bulls-Eye
Posted on July 29, 2009Global warming is a convenient truth for environmentalists.
Sowell: Disaster in the Making
Posted on July 29, 2009If the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief.
Wallison: Better Parties, Better Goverment
Posted on July 29, 2009If freed from the current restrictions, parties could and, we believe, would become the primary source of campaign funds for their candidates.
Bowyer: The Return of the Tax-Shelter President
Posted on July 28, 2009The Return of the Tax-Shelter President
Editors: Born in the U.S.A.
Posted on July 28, 2009Obama often seems alien, but he is a natural-born citizen of the United States.
Symposium: The Beginning of the End?
Posted on July 28, 2009Are we through the worst of this economic downturn? NRO we called on our financial experts and asked them what they make of this good news.
Geraghty: Melting Waxman
Posted on July 28, 2009Henry Waxman is no newcomer, and hes been fighting in the congressional trenches since the 1970s. But its an increasingly fair question whether Henry Waxman is the lawmaker that Democrats want shepherding the Obama administrations most sensitive legisl
Sowell: A Post-Racial President?
Posted on July 28, 2009Barack Obamas policies have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.
Lowry: Obama Leaves the Reality-Based Community
Posted on July 28, 2009Obamas plan is becoming one of the most implausible and thoroughly discredited free lunches in American history.
Charen: Mr. Oblivious to Evidence
Posted on July 28, 2009The presidents response to Gatesgate actually sheds a lot of light on his approach to health care and other issues, for this reason: Obama adopts his positions before knowing what he is talking about.
Symposium: The Prognosis for Obamacare
Posted on July 28, 2009Newt Gingrich, James C. Capretta, David Gratzer, and Amy Menefee examine the prospects of Obamas health-care plan.
Kudlow: Are Republicans the Economic Pessimists?
Posted on July 28, 2009Numerous signs are now pointing to economic recovery. Whats the GOPs strategy when Obama takes credit for it?
Hanson: What Happened to Our Postracial President?
Posted on July 27, 2009None of us gets a pass once we evoke racial identity, not even the president of the United States, not even one of mixed racial heritage.
Hemingway: Greening the Capitol
Posted on July 27, 2009Nancy Pelosi is trying to turn the House into an environmental oasis, with predictable results.
Lopez: Human Life Is More than a Distraction
Posted on July 27, 2009Obama's health-care plan will result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Any questions?
Nordlinger: Wrigleys with a kick? c.
Posted on July 27, 2009Jay Nordlinger on dangerous lunacy, Hillary in India, a WFB story, and more.
Taheri: End of Discussion
Posted on July 27, 2009The doctrine of walayat faqih (government of the theologian), the cornerstone of the Khomeinist system, is dead.
Kerpen: An Unsustainable Fiscal Path
Posted on July 27, 2009The long-term outlook for the U.S. is distressing, even before adding in nationalized health care.
Steyn: He Said/V.I.P. Said
Posted on July 25, 2009The V.I.P. was the author of his own misfortune but, with characteristic arrogance, chose to ascribe it to systemic racism.
Editors: Unfit for Office
Posted on July 24, 2009Manuel Zelaya broke the law and undermined his country's democracy; deposing him was the right thing to do.
Goldberg: The Folly of Obamacare
Posted on July 24, 2009Health care cannot be a right, because rights cannot come from government.
Sowell: Magician Politics
Posted on July 24, 2009The big trick for the president is to convince the public that he can add tens of millions of people to his government medical-care plan without raising the costs.
Lowry: Who was Stupid in the Gates Arrest?
Posted on July 24, 2009Henry Louis Gates Jr. finds the topic for his next documentary.
Charen: Gatesgate
Posted on July 24, 2009Last night, Obama showcased his reflexive hostility to and misunderstanding of business and his reliable resort to left-wing fables about race relations.
Krauthammer: Why Obamacare Is Sinking
Posted on July 24, 2009Blindingly obvious contradictions are causing the Democratic health plans to collapse under their own weight -- at the hands of Democrats.
Mac Donald: Promoting Racial Paranoia
Posted on July 24, 2009If arresting a man for an offense committed in the officers presence constitutes racial profiling, then the most legally unimpeachable aspect of police work has been discredited.
Weigel: Leszek Kolakowski, 19272009
Posted on July 24, 2009Remembering the great philosophical pathologist of Marxism.
Thernstrom: The Obama We Need
Posted on July 24, 2009The president needs to become the post-racial voice his campaign promised, even if a post-racial America remains largely an aspiration.
Patterson: History as Entertainment
Posted on July 24, 2009Can educational TV programming be fun to watch?
Novak: What on Earth Is Caritas?
Posted on July 23, 2009The popes own practical reflections on political economy and current perplexities help to sharpen the arguments.
Editors: Snake Oil
Posted on July 23, 2009Obama promises almost everything for almost nothing. Don't believe it.
Spakovsky: Campaign-Finance Ironies
Posted on July 23, 2009Senator McCain, who has been accused of violating his own campaign-finance law, is complaining that Republicans on the FEC -- who voted in his favor -- are failing to enforce it.
Calabria: Bernanke Must Go
Posted on July 23, 2009Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has lost the confidence of Congress, and likely also that of the American public.
Nordlinger: Sonia, Sonia! c.
Posted on July 23, 2009Jay Nordlinger on our new Supreme Court justice, our new surgeon general, National Reviews latest cruise, and more.
May: Rethinking the Long War
Posted on July 23, 2009A large part of our problems in the war on terror may stem from a failure of imagination.
Hanson: Big-Government Medicine
Posted on July 23, 2009The medicine of big government is even worse than the original disease on Wall Street.
Shea: Religious Cleansing in Iran
Posted on July 22, 2009Non-Muslims in Iran are persecuted as relentlessly as political dissidents. Why doesnt the West notice?
Greenwald: Obamas Foreign Non-Policy
Posted on July 22, 2009When it comes to foreign policy, an administration that believes ideology is so yesterday is likely to reverse tomorrow the decisions it makes today.
Warren: Doctors Orders
Posted on July 22, 2009Sen. (and Dr.) John Barrasso makes the case for market-based reform.
Hemingway: Obamamania
Posted on July 22, 2009In his new book Renegade: The Making of a President, Richard Wolffe tells us Who, What, Where, and When, relentlessly. But he forgets to ask: Why?
Anderson: Not Ready for the Big Leagues
Posted on July 22, 2009President Obamas proposed health-care system would look a lot like the pitch he threw out at the Major League All-Star Game: unsightly, slow, and fat.
Goldberg: Never Again in North Korea? Think Again
Posted on July 22, 2009North Korean nuclear brinkmanship and ballistic saber rattling guarantee that outside governments will not exert an ounce of effort on the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Kudlow: Is Bernanke Wise Enough to Exit?
Posted on July 22, 2009Fed head Ben Bernanke says he has the tools and wisdom for a carefully crafted liquidity-exit strategy that will prevent future inflation. Do we believe him?
Kahane: At Least They Have Health Care
Posted on July 21, 2009You see, for us on the Left, there is absolutely nothing more important than health care. Having long since cast off the shackles of the superstition known as organized religion, we need something to believe in, and health care is our principal article
Steinberg: From Gulag Liberators to Saudi Retainers
Posted on July 21, 2009Human Rights Watchs halo has been tarnished, perhaps beyond repair.
Editors: Card-Check Is a Trojan Horse
Posted on July 21, 2009The card-check provision may go, but compulsory union contracts are the real threat.
Lowry: An Ideologue in a Hurry
Posted on July 21, 2009Obama wants to put American government on a radically different path. And he wants to Do It Now.
Sowell: Unhealthy Political Habits
Posted on July 21, 2009Too few stop to think about how a government takeover could hope to cure what ails our medical-care system.
Abrams: An Unworkable Compromise
Posted on July 20, 2009The Obama settlement mania will end up damaging not only Netanyahu but Abbas as well.
George: The Grail Searchers
Posted on July 20, 2009Purported scientific evidence that an embryo is not a person does not stand up to scrutiny.
DeLong: The Problem with Zero
Posted on July 20, 2009Chris Andersons latest book is high-tech ADD, suited to those who itch to click a new link every two seconds.
Nordlinger: Maazel World
Posted on July 20, 2009An extensive talk with Lorin Maazel, famed and veteran orchestra conductor.
Murdock: Health-Care Reform: Why Not Try Ownership?
Posted on July 20, 2009Obamacare is too big a solution chasing too small a problem.
Lopez: Catholics Have to Handle the Truth
Posted on July 20, 2009Charity in Truth offers a view of todays world that is challenging for people of all political philosophies.
Steyn: The Gelded Age
Posted on July 18, 2009Surely nothing captures the essence of the pioneer spirit than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives.
Spruiell: Today Student Loans, Tomorrow Health Care
Posted on July 17, 2009The governments involvement in student lending has evolved from a simple loan-guarantee program to a public option to a union-staffed, government-run monopoly in 44 years.
Geraghty: Sonia the Judge Beats Sonia the Speech-Giver
Posted on July 17, 2009With confirmation confirmed, she still did her best John Roberts imitation.
McCarthy: The One That Got Away
Posted on July 17, 2009There are good reasons not to wage war against al-Qaeda in court: Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, for example.
Goldberg: Anger Over CIA Flap Is Misplaced
Posted on July 17, 2009Its bad enough to learn that our intelligence operatives havent been able to kill our enemies. But it compounds the outrage when you broadcast that fact to the world.
Lowry: The Arsenal of Soft Power
Posted on July 17, 2009The hostility of undemocratic governments is a testament to Radio Free Europe/Radio Libertys power.
Krauthammer: The Lunacy of Our Retreat from Space
Posted on July 17, 2009We went to the moon for the wonder and the glory of it. And then we stopped.
Hibbs: The Horcrux of the Matter
Posted on July 17, 2009Harry Potter unravels the riddle of the Dark Lords evil power.
Stuttaford: Destination Moon
Posted on July 17, 2009Forty years ago, man walked on the Moon. England rejoiced in the U.S.s triumph.
Bowyer: Were All Inflation Hawks Now
Posted on July 17, 2009The money flood is coming. Its only a matter of when.
Hanson: On Shearing Sheep
Posted on July 16, 2009In formuating economic policy, Obama has not considered the viewpoints of small-business owners.
Yon: Sangow Bar Village
Posted on July 16, 2009We and our allies cannot construct Afghanistan, but we certainly can nudge this caravan in a better direction.
May: The AfPak Front
Posted on July 16, 2009If the AfPak Theater reinforces the perception of the U.S. as the strongest tribe, it will be a victory.
Mac Donald: Law Schools Ward Churchill Moment
Posted on July 16, 2009Law schools should not be allowed to duck their responsibility for the ideas that Sotomayors nomination has brought belatedly into public consciousness.
Geraghty: The Nominees Evil Twin
Posted on July 15, 2009In her first day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor sounded nothing like the judge who caused all this controversy.
DeHaven: Bigger Than Madoff
Posted on July 15, 2009The vast magnitude of graft in Medicare and Medicaid should give every policymaker pause before pumping even more taxpayer money into the federal subsidy empire.
Edwards: Importing the Uninsured
Posted on July 15, 2009Its hard to envision how health reform can avoid tripping the immigration booby trap.
Currie: The Anti-Chávez
Posted on July 15, 2009Meet Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, the victim of a slow-motion coup at the hands of Hugo Chávez.
Adler: Judicial Bogeymen
Posted on July 15, 2009To paint Sotomayor as a moderate, Senate Democrats have conjured up an imaginary right-wing Roberts Court.
Goldberg: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Question of Eugenics
Posted on July 15, 2009I for one would like to know whether Ginsburg believes there were -- or are -- some populations in need of shrinking through abortion and whether she thinks such considerations have any place at the Supreme Court.
McCarthy: Sotomayor Shows the Way
Posted on July 15, 2009She has the votes behind her, so why does Sotomayor feel the need to pretend to be so ... conservative?
Spruiell: Lies, Damned Lies, and Economics
Posted on July 14, 2009As Guy Sorman demonstrates in Economics Does Not Lie, there is a science of economics. Unfortunately, many economists dont practice it.
Geraghty: Roberts Redux
Posted on July 14, 2009Why are Democrats talking about John Roberts instead of Sonia Sotomayor?
McCarthy: Another Phony Scandal
Posted on July 14, 2009Isn't planning to kill or capture bin Laden what we pay the CIA to do?
Lowry: Health Care: Obamas Make-or-Break
Posted on July 14, 2009More than any other issue, the fate of health-care reform will determine Obamas standing.
Charen: Ive Found Heaven . . . in Northern Michigan
Posted on July 14, 2009The Interlochen Center for the Arts is all about two unfashionable concepts that we conservatives revere: tradition and excellence.
Sowell: A Personal Inequity
Posted on July 14, 2009Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality: basketball, for instance.
Yon: Searching for Kuchi Finding Lizards
Posted on July 14, 2009The Lithuanians have been giving Americans a good name in Afghanistan.
Geraghty: A Goal Worth Pursuing
Posted on July 13, 2009But just because the nomination cant be defeated doesnt mean Republicans should stand idly by.
Editors: Sotomayor and the Search for Judicial Limits
Posted on July 13, 2009Is there a limit to judges' power or to their ability to inject their own preferences into rulings? Republicans should ask Sonia Sotomayor.
Williamson: Making the Drivetrains Run on Time
Posted on July 13, 2009Obama can strong-arm bondholders, but he cannot strong-arm Americans into buying GM cars.
Lopez: Hot in the Spotlight
Posted on July 13, 2009Michael Jackson should be a warning. Sarah Palin should be a cautionary tale -- maybe in a special way to young moms who are thinking of going into politics. And we should all -- whether consumers of People magazine or editors -- consider that Kate and Jo
Murdock: Global Cooling Chills Summer 2009
Posted on July 13, 2009Evidence of global cooling is piling up like snowdrifts.
Hatch: To Confirm or Not to Confirm
Posted on July 13, 2009The focus of the confirmation process must be on whether Judge Sotomayor is qualified, by legal experience and especially by judicial philosophy, to sit on the Supreme Court.
Weigel: Charity in Truth
Posted on July 13, 2009Last week, several developments took place that will affect Obamas relationship with Catholic doctrine.
Steyn: Gaias Right
Posted on July 11, 2009When it was just medieval dukes swanking about, the planet worked fine: That was sustainable consumerism. But now the masses want in.
Ledeen: Embedded and Unvarnished
Posted on July 10, 2009Embedded shows that Iraqis are not just Westerners in headscarves.
Freeman: The Catholic WFB
Posted on July 10, 2009William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of several parts. A writer. An editor. A controversialist. A fully formed Christian man.
Hanson: Growing Worries about Our Pied Piper
Posted on July 10, 2009Obamas shortcomings have the potential not only to diminish his own stature through unmet impossible expectations, but to take all those who signed on to his megalomania down with him.
Lowry: The Stimulus The Anatomy of a Failure
Posted on July 10, 2009The Obama stimulus is falling victim to the poor timing and inefficiencies of all such recession-fighting spending programs.
Krauthammer: Plumage But at a Price
Posted on July 10, 2009The prospective treaty is useless at best, detrimental at worst.
Charen: Help: They Are Talking about a New Stimulus!
Posted on July 10, 2009If this massive hemorrhage of tax dollars doesnt provoke second thoughts, people have forgotten how to think.
Kudlow: The Road to Economic Demoralization
Posted on July 10, 2009It is clear that Obamanomics is causing the U.S. to lose competitiveness in the global race for capital, prosperity, and growth.
Spakovsky: A Pattern and Practice
Posted on July 09, 2009The Justice Department division investigating an Arizona sheriff has a questionable history.
Herzlinger: Limited Choices
Posted on July 09, 2009Government-run health-insurance markets restrict competition, do not control costs, discourage entrepreneurial efforts, and thus cause consumer dissatisfaction.
Haun: Empathy for Big Government
Posted on July 09, 2009Sotomayors legal realism could undo the Rehnquist Courts good work on commerce-clause interpretation.
Goldberg: Spread Freedom? Not So Much
Posted on July 09, 2009It sure seems like Obama has an ideological problem with democracy.
May: An American Victory
Posted on July 09, 2009Two years ago at this time, few in the foreign-policy establishment considered that outcome possible in Iraq.
Hanson: Who Was Michael Jackson?
Posted on July 09, 2009In truth, almost everything about the Jackson persona proved to be fantasy.
Pitney: Curtains for the GOP?
Posted on July 08, 2009Every day, theres a new story about the leaderless GOP. In fact, its the same story the press has been writing, about Republicans and Democrats, for over a hundred years.
Goldberg: Posts Salon Mess Brazen, Not Shocking
Posted on July 08, 2009What the Post proposed is hardly radical. Lots of major publications and by lots, I mean pretty much all of them offer an array of meet-and-greet opportunities.
Symposium: Beach-Bag Books
Posted on July 08, 2009Terry Teachout, Orson Scott Card, Robert Ferrigno, and more offer their summer reading recommendations.
Sowell: What Constitutes Discrimination?
Posted on July 08, 2009The underlying dogma that different outcomes for different groups are evidence of discrimination is a source of unending controversy and polarization.
Kahane: I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin
Posted on July 07, 2009What the Left has done to Sarah Palin comes straight out of Saul Alinskys book. Republicans need their own Rules for Radicals, with a rightward slant.
Nordlinger: Exit Sarah (?), c.
Posted on July 07, 2009Jay Nordlinger on Palin, Nixon, Boxer, Saddam, Tiger, and more.
Sowell: Disparate-Impact Dogma
Posted on July 07, 2009Why do we lie to ourselves about race? Its true: White men usually cant jump.
Lowry: Sarah Palin: Up and Out
Posted on July 07, 2009Palins resignation was a calculated choice made in her personal self-interest.
Charen: Could the U.S. Ban the Burqa Too?
Posted on July 07, 2009You neednt approve of the slatternly attire so often found on Western women to stoutly and angrily resist the encroachment of the burqa -- and everything it represents -- into Western life.
McCarthy: Equality Under the Law
Posted on July 07, 2009The Constitution may not be colorblind, but it does prohibit racial discrimination.
Weigel: Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red
Posted on July 07, 2009Benedicts latest encyclical shows the marks of multiple -- and muddled -- authorship.
Beran: Obama in the Kremlin
Posted on July 06, 2009It is in our interest to curtail Russian ambitions in Europe.
Hanson: A Thugs Primer
Posted on July 06, 2009A tutorial for up-and-coming thugs abroad, who wish to ingratiate themselves with Western elites, not worry about legitimacy, and not have someone meddle in their affairs.
Symposium: Does Palin Have a Political Future?
Posted on July 06, 2009Sarah Palin is leaving the governorship. But what is she leaving it for?
Hemingway: Explosive Cinema
Posted on July 06, 2009After six years, dozens of attempts, and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, Hollywood has finally produced a decent film about the Iraq War.
Murdock: Supply-side Environmentalism
Posted on July 06, 2009Rather than rely on federal edicts to steer innovation with a whip, why not green-energy tax cuts?
Steyn: Behind the Times
Posted on July 04, 2009The Europeans have figured out you can be too European for your own good, and are trying to re-acquaint themselves with the real world. But not Obama.
Bean: The Party of Lincoln, and of Douglass
Posted on July 04, 2009Frederick Douglasss ideas are not the stuff of New New Deals but rather a brief for a New Independence Day based on small-government principles.
Kahane: Seven Days in June
Posted on July 03, 2009The Honduran coup was like some Telemundo remake of John Frankenheimers it-cant-happen-here, Rod Serling-scripted classic, Seven Days in May.
Goldberg: A Letter to Sarah
Posted on July 03, 2009If you cant surprise your detractors with your grasp of policy when you re-emerge on the national stage, you wont win the nomination. More important, you wont deserve to.
Charen: The Empirical President
Posted on July 03, 2009Waxman-Markey is not empiricism. It is fantasy.
Lowry: Our Founders the Realists
Posted on July 03, 2009The American Founders had a clear-eyed view of human nature.
Krauthammer: The Meaning of Ricci
Posted on July 03, 2009Ricci heads us once again toward the true colorblindness that was the original vision, and everlasting glory, of the civil-rights movement.
Editors: Missile-Defense Countdown
Posted on July 02, 2009The need for a sustained commitment to missile defense is urgent, and getting more so by the minute.
Nordlinger: Talkin Sarah, c.
Posted on July 02, 2009Jay Nordlinger on Palin, Obama, Cheney, Chesterton, a great dancer, and more.
Hanson: Missing Our Moment in Iran
Posted on July 02, 2009When thousands risked their lives for a better Iran, a better Middle East, and a better world, we, the land of the free, simply were not with them.
May: An Obama Doctrine?
Posted on July 02, 2009The successful use of leveraged engagement, coupled with the administrations muscular policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would constitute nothing less than an Obama Doctrine.
Kudlow: June Jobs Tell a Bad Story
Posted on July 02, 2009After nine months of explosive monetary and fiscal stimulus, youd think economic recovery would be upon us. But the June jobs report tells a much different story.
Williamson: A Garden of Piggish Delights
Posted on July 02, 2009Fifty reasons to oppose the Democrats new climate-change bill.
Bayefsky: Human Rights on the Backburner
Posted on July 01, 2009The Obama Iran plan is this: Speak loudly and dont carry any stick.
Ferrara: Medicaid and Medicare for All
Posted on July 01, 2009Obama says that if you like your current health insurance, you can keep it. In fact, under his reforms, private insurance -- and everything else in our health-care system -- would be altered beyond recognition.
Thomson: Ousting a Chávez Wannabe
Posted on July 01, 2009The United States should support the removal of Manuel Zelaya.
Goldberg: Pork -- Its for Everyone, Including Obama
Posted on July 01, 2009Only by investing in policies formulated years before toxic asset became household words could America get out of the financial crisis?
Sowell: Equality on Trial
Posted on July 01, 2009Anyone who cares about equal justice under law should oppose Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation.
Editors: Reckoning with Ricci
Posted on June 30, 2009A 5-4 split that agrees on one point: Sotomayor's panel was shoddy.
McCarthy: Justice Thomas, Originalist
Posted on June 30, 2009A recent voting-rights decision and Justice Thomass dissent do not support fears of right-wing judicial activism or an abandonment of originalism.
Nordlinger: Want a revolution? c.
Posted on June 30, 2009Jay Nordlinger on big, Obamite changes, Joan Baez, the glory of Arizona, and more.
Lowry: The Waxman-Markey Travesty
Posted on June 30, 2009The cap-and-trade bill passed the House of Representatives shrouded in a fog of willful ignorance and calculated irrationality.
Sowell: Health-care Policy in Wonderland
Posted on June 30, 2009The haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that politicians dont want us to stop and think.
Charen: Did Someone Say Coup?
Posted on June 30, 2009There was an attempted coup in Honduras, but it was Zelaya who initiated it, not his opponents.
Editors: The Honduran Counter-Coup
Posted on June 30, 2009Zelayas ouster was a protection of democracy, not an assault on it.
Hanson: Obama and the Noble Lie
Posted on June 29, 2009The Left accused the neo-cons around President Bush of embracing the Platonic notion of the noble lie. President Obama has embraced it with a vengeance.
Lopez: Criminal Activity
Posted on June 29, 2009Whether its perpetrated against someone whos never even jaywalked, a burglar, or a homicidal criminal, rape is never deserved.
Steyn: Lets Burst the Bubble
Posted on June 27, 2009A celebrified political culture will inevitably throw up its share of tatty karaoke versions of Britney and Jacko.
Murdock: Reading ObamaCare Bill Endangers Human Health
Posted on June 27, 2009The Senates version of ObamaCare is scarier than Stephen King.
Cantor: Obamas Conflicting Signals
Posted on June 26, 2009These decisions have severe consequences for national security. If President Obama grasps the importance of taking the North Korean missile threat seriously, it shouldnt be hard for him to see the folly in reducing our financial commitment to a robust mi
Bakst: The Renewable-Energy Scam
Posted on June 26, 2009We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot and instead be thankful that we have low-cost and reliable electricity.
Geraghty: Barack Obama Is a Big Fat Liar
Posted on June 26, 2009Obama's most oft-repeated statement of the 2008 campaign has become inoperative.
Goldberg: Endless Love
Posted on June 26, 2009How do a few tough questions make up for months of forehead-scraping obeisance to The One?
Lowry: On Health Care, Obamas Dirty Secret
Posted on June 26, 2009Obama wants to pretend that getting to universal coverage is an essentially costless, win-win proposition, when it will come at enormous expense and disrupt the insurance of millions of American happy with their health care.
Charen: Shame Is Deader Than Dead
Posted on June 26, 2009People will become dissatisfied with their spouses, and they will behave selfishly. But what about another solution that is only about 3,000 years old -- avoiding adultery?
Cole: Artists on the Dole
Posted on June 26, 2009Just in time for the New New Deal, the Smithsonian's exhibition of Depression-era art is depressing indeed.
McGinnis: In Praise of Supreme Court Filibusters
Posted on June 25, 2009A nonpartisan case for the filibuster.
Editors: Losing with ACES
Posted on June 25, 2009The cap-and-trade bill is a bad deal for the economy and the environment.
Nordlinger: The presidential arm, c.
Posted on June 25, 2009Jay Nordlinger on Obamas first pitch, Silvio and Bibi, Wal-Marts quickness, and more.
May: Hope and Change in Iran
Posted on June 25, 2009Just as the Russian Revolution and the social engineering of Lenin and Stalin did not create a New Soviet Man, so Irans Islamic Revolution has not succeeded in creating a new Islamist Man.
Rodman: Fall of the Shah
Posted on June 25, 2009Carter, in any event, took refuge in repeated public statements that we had no desire to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran. This was an evasion.
Hanson: Thuggery 101
Posted on June 25, 2009Obamas confusion about the worlds bad actors suggests that he needs a general refresher course in the world of thugs.