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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

Obamacare's Avalanche of Paperwork -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on May 17, 2010
Pres. Barack Obama promised Americans ?health-care reform.? So far, ?health-care form? is more like it.Obamacare is devolving into the Paper Industry Salvation Act of 2010. This new law spans 2,562 tree-killing pages. Far worse, it will force Americans to spend countless irritating hours completing, transmitting, and filing endless reams of federal paperwork...

Nicking Our Public Discourse -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on May 15, 2010
What with the Fort Hood mass murderer, the Christmas Pantybomber, and now the Times Square bomber, you may have noticed a little uptick in attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland in the last few months.Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents...

The Cameron-Clegg Challenge -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on May 14, 2010
Undismayed by my unsuccessful prediction of a narrow Conservative majority in the British election last week, I return intrepidly to forecast the consequences of the actual result of the election. At the risk of seeming to be motivated by sour grapes, I assert that what has befallen post-Thatcher Britain has been a cataract of disasters, and the late election result could be one of the heaviest of them...

The Other European Volcano -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on May 14, 2010
Five years ago, the European Union?s account of itself resonated with end-of history triumphalism. In organic fashion, democratic socialism would spread eastward and southward, recivilizing the old Warsaw Pact and the Balkans through cradle-to-grave entitlements, state unionism, radical environmentalism, and utopian pacifism...

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Obama vs. the iPad -- By: Mike Gonzalez

Posted on May 14, 2010
President Obama?s disdain for new media has become so consistent that it is hard to dismiss as mere posturing. This is all the more ironic because Obama?s political movement supposedly mastered the new art of communication. During the 2008 campaign, the Obamistas let the world know they were cool by, among other things, speaking digital as a first language...

Politicizing Graduation -- By: Charlotte Allen

Posted on May 14, 2010
It?s shades of the 1960s at Syracuse University in upstate New York, as graduating seniors protest the school?s invitation to James Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., to speak at commencement on May 16. Leading the ?Take Back Commencement? protests is Students for a Democratic Society, that Sixties warhorse group responsible for disrupting campuses across the country in the name of getting us out of Vietnam...

The Philadelphia Art Museum's Revolutionary Exhibit -- By: W. Barksdale Maynard

Posted on May 14, 2010
As today?s tea partiers wave the lemon-yellow ?Don?t Tread on Me? flag from the American Revolution, it?s instructive to remember the real age of tea parties. ?Art in Revolutionary Philadelphia,? now on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, shows how the British takeover in 1777 of what was then America?s largest city brought wrenching upheavals and confiscation of property -- plus one wild night of partying that has never been forgotten...

Slipping a Mickey to California Dems -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on May 14, 2010
After Lyndon Johnson was elected to Congress in 1937, he got word that a liberal magazine, The New Republic, was going to profile him alongside other New Deal stalwarts. Johnson was horrified. He called a friend from the International Labor Organization and begged her to find some prominent labor figure to repudiate him...

Yes, Save the Whales -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on May 14, 2010
Editor?s note: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, kfsreprint@hearstsc.com or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.When�it comes to whaling, Japan is a rogue state...

Our Busted Deportation System Strikes Again -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on May 14, 2010
Wouldn?t it be grand if the Obama administration cared more about policing our borders than about policing our refrigerators? How about fixing our deportation system instead of fixing our junk-food diets?First lady Michelle Obama argued this week that obesity is a ?national security? issue...

Modernizing Miranda: A New Consensus? -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on May 14, 2010
It?s not often that I agree with Attorney General Eric Holder. But, then again, it?s not often that Holder publicly embraces an anti-terrorism measure I proposed 48 hours earlier. In last week?s column, I suggested that the 1984 ?public safety? exception to issuing Miranda warnings be significantly modified for terrorists such as confessed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad...

The First Lady and Fat Government -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on May 14, 2010
?The closest thing on this earth to immortality,? Ronald Reagan once said, ?is a federal program.? We still have a Rural Electrification Commission, for Heaven?s sake (though it?s been renamed) -- FDR?s program to bring electrical power to rural areas...

Good Cop, Bad Cop -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on May 14, 2010
We?ve all seen the routine in movies. Two cops take turns interrogating a suspect. One comes across as brutal and perhaps just a little psychotic: You don?t want to be left alone with him. The other is more sympathetic. ?Look, my partner?s crazy -- I can?t control him -- but if you work with me, maybe we can cut a deal...

Yes, Even Orrin -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on May 14, 2010
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, has served in the upper chamber for 34 years. But he?s up for reelection in 2012, and with voters eagerly tossing out incumbents, his ?safe seat? may be anything but. ?He?s toast,? says Utah GOP delegate Saima Leon to Politico...

Watch All the Judges -- By: James R. Copland

Posted on May 13, 2010
As NRO?s Greg Pollowitz pointed out on Tuesday, in 1986, the Democrats in the Senate were so focused on attacking William Rehnquist -- whom Ronald Reagan had chosen to elevate to chief justice of the Supreme Court -- that they made nary a noise about Reagan?s pick to succeed Rehnquist as an associate justice...

Hello Supply Side -- By: Alan Reynolds

Posted on May 13, 2010
In ?Goodbye Supply Side,? Kevin D. Williamson writes, ?Properly understood, there were no Reagan tax cuts. In 1980 federal spending was $590 billion and in 1989 it was $1.14 trillion; you don?t get Reagan tax cuts without Tip O?Neill spending cuts. Looked at from the proper perspective, we haven?t really had any tax cuts to speak of -- we?ve had tax deferrals...

Terror Charge Upheld Despite 'Torture' Claims -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on May 13, 2010
Anti-anti-terrorists don?t much care what happens to al-Qaeda so long as we?re treated to the ?reckoning? against Bush-administration officials promised by Eric Holder during the 2008 Obama campaign. These deranged souls have just suffered a black Monday...

The NRA and the Blue Dogs -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on May 13, 2010
As the National Rifle Association?s annual convention opens Thursday in Charlotte, N.C., the organization finds itself in strong shape -- but facing some difficult decisions. In the eyes of most conservative organizations, the Obama administration has already enacted a cornucopia of bad legislation, but the president and his team have been relatively quiet on gun issues...

Resolve and Repeal -- By: The Editors

Posted on May 13, 2010
On Tuesday, West Virginia Democratic primary voters ousted an incumbent who has been in the House since 1983 -- partly because of his vote for Obamacare. That legislation is also at issue in a special election this month for a Pennsylvania House seat the Democrats have held since 1974...

The Long and Foggy War -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on May 13, 2010
We Americans are uncomfortable with such ideas as holy war and religiously motivated mass murder. Raised to believe in equality, tolerance, and diversity, we cannot imagine slaughtering fellow human beings so that adherents of the ?true faith? might prevail over ?enemies of God...

Profiling, Diversity, and Arizona's New Law -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on May 13, 2010
Profiling is considered among the worst of American sins. Not long ago, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by the Cambridge, Mass., police for trying to enter his own locked home after misplacing his key. Almost immediately, President Obama rushed to condemn what he thought was racial profiling...

Obama and Kagan Whisper in the Faculty Lounge -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on May 13, 2010
Professor chooses professor. That?s one headline you could write about Barack Obama?s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, Kagan in 1986. Kagan joined the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School in 1991 and became a full professor there in 1995...

Coalition Blues -- By: The Editors

Posted on May 13, 2010
?With one bound Jack leapt free!? That is supposedly how one episode in a penny dreadful serial began, when the previous episode had left the hero at the bottom of a deep well under attack from snapping crocodiles. It is also, broadly, how the threatened hero of the 2010 British election campaign escaped from the deep well of election defeat -- except that in this case two Jacks leapt free in a single bound...

Short on Tankers, Short on Time -- By: Thomas C. Pinckney

Posted on May 12, 2010
The military?s current aerial-refueling capacity is as much as 20 percent short of what it would need if faced with any of three potential scenarios, Air Force Brig. Gen. Michelle Johnson testified at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. She cited the U...

Lee Edwards on His WFB Biography -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on May 12, 2010
In William F. Buckley: The Maker of a Movement (excerpt here), Lee Edwards writes: ?William F. Buckley was the St. Paul of the conservative movement, proselytizing tirelessly across America, fighting the good fight against liberal heretics, exhorting and, when necessary, warning the conservative faithful to mend their ways, knowing the race was not over, even with the coming of the Reagan presidency...

Al-Qaeda's Global Reach -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on May 12, 2010
How dangerous does a group have to be to get included on the State Department?s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list? In the wake of the Times Square attack, the omission of the Pakistani Taliban from the FTO list revealed a gap in understanding of the threat posed by a violent Islamist network that consists of al-Qaeda franchises and affiliates...

Reviving the Catholic Schools -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on May 12, 2010
New York -- ?When the invitation first came in to come to the Manhattan Institute, being new in this great city, I didn?t know what it was,? confided Archbishop Timothy Dolan, in his opening remarks last week at the University Club, a few blocks from Saint Patrick?s Cathedral...

Illegal Immigrants and the Arizona Law -- By: Jack Dunphy

Posted on May 12, 2010
If Arizona?s new immigration law survives the many court challenges now facing it -- a dubious prospect, given the Ninth Circuit?s eventual role in the process -- it will take effect on July 29. And on that day, as police officers settle into their Crown Victorias, crank up the air conditioning, and drive out onto the streets of their cities and towns, they will be asking themselves, ?What am I supposed to do now??The law signed by Gov...

New Orleans: Food, Music, and Resilience -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on May 12, 2010
New Orleans�-- It?s so unfair!Not even five years since Hurricane Katrina shoved America?s most relaxed city flat onto its back, the Big Easy has rallied strongly. Tourist bookings are up. A major medical convention recently sent Jazz Fest aficionadi scrambling for hotel rooms...

The Lesson of Robert Bennett -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on May 12, 2010
Sen. Robert Bennett, an honorable and sincere politician, was brought down by the rank and file of the Utah Republican party over the weekend. Bennett, visibly shaken by his loss, seemed as stunned as anybody that he didn?t pass muster with his own party...

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