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Bench Memos - National Review Online

Covering The Supreme Court -- from National Review Online

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 05:00:54

King Barack the Verbose -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on May 29, 2010
One of the chief characteristics of Barack Obama?s speechifying is its contempt for words as anything other than props of self-puffery. Consider, for example, his recent remarks to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy: ?America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation -- we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice...

The Lighter Side of Sarah Palin -- By: Daniel Foster

Posted on May 28, 2010
Sarah Palin?s post-gubernatorial career has been shaped, and misshaped, by a media strategy heavy on knee-jerk combativeness, with a not insignificant dose of victim?s complex thrown in. Her ceaseless campaign against the perceived distortions of the mainstream media routinely crosses from defensiveness into confrontation, and even paranoia...

Unsustainable Energy -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on May 28, 2010
President Obama?s visit to a California solar plant on Wednesday provided another reminder that the only jobs he seems truly passionate about are ?green jobs.? It?s been this way for a long time. Shortly after Election Day, Time reported that, ?With the possible exception of Barack Obama?s puppy-anticipating daughters, no one is more eagerly awaiting the incoming Administration than the leaders of the renewable-energy industries...

Extending the Deficit -- By: The Editors

Posted on May 28, 2010
The $145 billion ?extenders? package that the Obama administration and its allies in Congress are attempting to pass has revealed most of what they told us publicly over the last 18 months -- about the stimulus, the health-care bill, the budget deficit, and taxes -- to be a gusher of lies...

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Cantor's Uppercut -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on May 28, 2010
In 2006, with a flashy, YouTube-mimicking cover, Time magazine declared you -- ?Yes, you,? they wrote -- their Person of the Year. Frank Rich of the New York Times called it a ?cover stunt,? one that revealed the dead-tree weekly?s ?desperation? to ?appear relevant and hip...

Joe Biden's Brussels Spout -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on May 28, 2010
?Joe Biden.? With the exception of ?broken teleprompter,? these are the scariest two words in the White House communications shop. One advantage Biden has over Obama is he can always claim he was ?just being Joe? whenever he says something controversial...

He's Not Our Daddy -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on May 28, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, e-mail kfsreprint@hearstsc.com or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246. � President Obama said at his BP press conference that when he was shaving the other day, his daughter Malia asked him, ?Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?? If Obama wanted to give her a quick lesson in how the world works, he might have said: ?No, dear, that?s beyond my capacity...

The Private Sector Already Provides Health-Care 'Exchanges' -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on May 28, 2010
Pres. Barack Obama is twelve years late and $7 billion over budget when it comes to health-care ?exchanges.? This keystone of Obamacare already exists in the private sector. There is no need for taxpayers to recreate something that is thriving in today?s free market...

Whose Blowout Is It, Anyway? -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on May 28, 2010
Here?s my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production...

New Jersey, Little Greece -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on May 28, 2010
At a New Jersey town meeting, Gov. Chris Christie, the newest YouTube star for the limited-government set, was reproached by an unhappy teacher. The governor, facing a budget shortfall of $11 billion, has proposed, among other economies, a one-year salary freeze for New Jersey teachers...

Up in Norway, Part IV -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on May 28, 2010
Well, let?s wrap this baby up -- these jottings from Oslo, handsome, stately, interesting capital of Norway. For Part I, go here. For Part II, go here. And for III, here.A friend takes me into a Muslim neighborhood, saying, ?This is a part of Oslo that many people don?t want you to know about, and that many people pretend doesn?t exist...

Obama: Crisis Bores Him -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on May 28, 2010
President Bush?s harshest critics often described his look during moments of crisis as ?deer in the headlights.? After two years of Hope and Change, America has grown accustomed to President Obama?s crisis face: eyes glazed over.At his first press conference in 308 days, Obama fielded questions about the Gulf oil spill, immigration, the war in Afghanistan, and the mounting outrage over Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Joe Sestak?s job-trading allegations with a sluggishness bordering on geriatric...

The Eternal Energy Crisis -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on May 27, 2010
The imperishability of the energy crisis is one of the howling mysteries of American political science. It has been�nearly 40 years since President Nixon founded Project Independence, an effort to regain energy self-sufficiency and stop unreliable oil-exporting states from inconveniencing U...

Against STEMinars -- By: Christina Hoff Sommers

Posted on May 27, 2010
?If there?s one word that sums up everything that?s gone wrong since the war, it?s ?workshop,?? quipped a character in a 1978 Kingsley Amis novel. What would Amis make of ?STEMinars? -- a term sometimes used by gender activists to describe their workshops on how to overcome bias in the science, technology, engineering, and math professions? This Friday, as it happens, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act...

The 'Second Israel' -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on May 27, 2010
Halabja, Iraq -- Twenty-two years ago, in this dusty town hard up against the mountainous border with Iran, Saddam Hussein?s military used chemical weapons to murder 5,000 Kurdish men, women, and children. �The Halabja massacre was only the most infamous atrocity of Operation Anfal, a name Saddam took from a sura of the Koran that details permissible conduct against enemies of Islam...

Our Chief Confessor -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on May 27, 2010
The first duty of national leaders is to worry about the interests of their own countries; utopian internationalism can come later. German chancellor Angela Merkel, despite her soaring European Union rhetoric, is relearning that lesson.German voters in a recent parliamentary election rebuked her for bailing out the spendthrift Greeks with hard-earned German money...

Down in the Polls, Dems at War with Themselves -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on May 27, 2010
Intraparty civil war. It?s a storyline journalists often employ, though usually about only one party, the Republicans. Thus when three-term senator Bob Bennett failed to get enough votes at the Utah Republican convention, we were told that he was the victim of a purge by right-wing activists, despite his largely conservative record...

Up in Norway, Part III -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on May 27, 2010
Thanks for joining me for the third round of these notes from Oslo -- for the first two rounds, go here and here. Where were we? Can?t remember, so I?ll just wade in: wade back in.Speaking of wading: In the ponds on the grounds of the royal palace, people actually wade...

Greek Disease in the House -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on May 27, 2010
One day Team Obama announces a plan for enhanced rescission authority to impound wasteful spending, and the next day the House surfaces a plan for $200 billion in ?stimulus? spending on transfer payments for welfare, even more unemployment compensation, still more Medicaid, and a bunch of special-interest subsidies...

Obama Omerta -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on May 26, 2010
Character won him the nomination. Now a lack of it has him in hot water. � Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired three-star admiral and former Clinton White House aide, earned the Senate nod from Pennsylvania Democrats last week by playing up his integrity. He reckoned that if voters saw him as an independent, Kennedy-quoting ?vision guy,? as their upright neighbor, then he?d be able to defeat Sen...

Troubles in Ukraine -- By: George Weigel

Posted on May 26, 2010
Shortly before the first round of voting in Ukraine?s hotly contested presidential election, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the Greek Catholic major archbishop of L?viv and a man widely admired throughout Ukrainian society, received an emissary representing presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who would go on to win the election...

Torpedoing North Korean Aggression -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on May 26, 2010
This week, South Korea asked the U.N. Security Council to punish North Korea for sinking one of its navy vessels, killing 46 sailors -- the latest in a string of escalating North Korean provocations. It is all but certain that China, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, will hamper South Korea?s efforts...

Death of the Postmodernist Dream -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on May 26, 2010
In just a few months the brave new dream world as we knew it has died -- but with a whimper, not a bang. There will be no more lectures on soft power and a Baltic-to-Mediterranean postmodern culture. Suddenly European Union expansion is dead in its tracks...

Climategate and the Scientific Elite -- By: Iain Murray

Posted on May 26, 2010
The news that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who popularized the idea of a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism, has been struck off the register of general practitioners in the United Kingdom testifies to the fact that, in many scientific fields, objectivity still reigns...

God and Man in the World -- By: Interview

Posted on May 26, 2010
Leonard Leo is chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which late last month issued�its annual report�on the state of religious freedom in the world. With recommendations to Congress, they singled out Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam as countries of ?particular concern? because of their treatment of human rights...

Kim Jong Il Goes to China -- By: Reuben F. Johnson

Posted on May 26, 2010
Beijing -- At the beginning of May, North Korea?s Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, made a long-anticipated trip to China -- his first in more than four years -- for talks with Chinese president Hu Jintao.More than a month prior, a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, had been sunk in the Yellow Sea...

Rand Paul's Civil Rights Act Comments Revisited -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on May 26, 2010
It has already become a clich� on the right to tut-tut at U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul?s ?rookie? mistake of trying to conduct a ?libertarian seminar? during the campaign.I?m not so sure. For starters, if you?re not invested in Paul?s political career, why not seize this rare opportunity for one of those eternally sought but never achieved ?national conversations? on race?Besides, Paul?s not going to lose because of his reservations about some aspects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...

Look Who's Behind the White House/Sestak Stonewall -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on May 26, 2010
After three months of zipped lips and feigned ignorance, the Obama White House is finally taking real heat over Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Joe Sestak?s consistent claims that the administration offered him a job to drop his Senate bid. Now it?s time to redirect the spotlight where it belongs: on the top counsel behind the Washington stonewall, Bob ?The Silencer? Bauer...

Up in Norway, Part II -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on May 26, 2010
Welcome to the second installment of these notes from Oslo. For the first, go here. I was talking about the 17th of May, I think. Why is this day a big deal? It is National Day, Constitution Day -- the Norwegians? Fourth of July. (I realize that our Fourth celebrates the Declaration, not the Constitution -- but we won?t pick nits, right?) The Norwegian constitution was signed on May 17, 1814, in the town of Eidsvoll...

West of the Potomac, GOP Hopes Rise -- By: Tony Blankley

Posted on May 26, 2010
Historically, the American public -- confident, independent, and undemanding -- has not expected much out of Washington. Live your silver lives of limousines, private jets, power, and celebrity, they have said. Just do no permanent damage to the nation...

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