Bench Memos - National Review Online: Federal Judiciary

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Federal Judiciary

Bench Memos - National Review Online

Covering The Supreme Court -- from National Review Online

Post Frequency: 91/day

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

Mr. Obama's Nowhere Discussions -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 14, 2010
Barack Obama has a marvelous way of sounding innovative, fresh, and novel while offering stale, predictable bromides. His policies at home are an extension of LBJ?s old Great Society. Abroad we?ve been getting a more sonorous version of Jimmy Carter?s global self-righteous sermonizing...

Dysfunctional -- By: Frederick M. Hess

Posted on April 14, 2010
It?s one thing for unions to be dominated by veteran teachers skeptical of change; it?s a problem of a whole different kind when they?re dominated by non-teachers and retirees. Yet, in New York City?s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) elections last week, just 40 percent of votes were cast by active classroom teachers...

Oh, to Be a Righty in Old Blighty -- By: Iain Murray

Posted on April 14, 2010
The announcement of the general election in Britain comes at a time when more and more Americans, and especially conservatives, are getting their news from British sources, because of the inadequacy of the U.S. mainstream media. They are likely, therefore, to be more interested in this British election than any previous one...

Jane Mayer's Disaster -- By: Marc A. Thiessen

Posted on April 14, 2010
With her recent review of my book, Courting Disaster, Jane Mayer may have done a service to future generations of public servants. The week her article appeared in The New Yorker, former CIA director Mike Hayden handed it out in his class at George Mason University?s School of Public Policy as an example of all that is wrong with intelligence journalism today...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Empathy and the Supreme Court -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on April 14, 2010
If you don?t mind, I?m going to skip the preliminary bouts over which party is more hypocritical for switching its views on Supreme Court nominees. Democrats now insist that decency and precedent require Republicans to green-light anyone President Obama nominates to replace John Paul Stevens, and Republicans insist that there?s nothing wrong with their adopting the tactics and standards advocated by Democrats -- including then-senator Obama -- when George W...

Clear and present danger, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on April 14, 2010
Benjamin Netanyahu is of course not a perfect politician or leader, but I?m glad he is Israel?s prime minister at this hour, if only for this reason: He puts things as they are. Listen to this, in case you haven?t heard it yet:?Iran?s leaders are barreling toward developing a nuclear weapon, and openly declaring their desire to destroy Israel...

No More Profiles in Caution -- By: Tony Blankley

Posted on April 14, 2010
The Republican party must break with its long-established instinct for caution and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government -- from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits...

Tea-Party Saboteurs -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on April 14, 2010
One of the popular signs spotted at tea-party protests across the country over the past year goes like this: ?It doesn?t matter what this sign says. You?ll call it racism, anyway!? It?s a pithy, perfect rejoinder to the fusillade of attacks that limited-government activists have weathered from their Democratic detractors and a hostile national media...

The U.N. Love Boat -- By: Brett D. Schaefer

Posted on April 13, 2010
In a story posted last week on Fox News?s website, George Russell laid out one of the most outrageous examples of poor judgment and profligacy seen in recent years from a U.N. organization. As Russell reports, two passenger ships (the Ola Esmeralda and the Sea Voyager) have been rented by the World Food Program -- a U...

Tax Complexity Adds Pain to Cash Drain -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on April 13, 2010
As April 15 approaches like an incoming monsoon, millions of Americans brace for the pain of writing checks to the IRS. Even worse, this annual discomfort begins even earlier, as taxpayers generate a cyclone of documents just to calculate their tax liability...

Obama's Waterloo -- By: Adam Hume

Posted on April 13, 2010
Since Obamacare moved unsteadily over the first finishing line, liberals have been jubilant and conservatives wracked by variations on depression, including existential despair. This is a rare emotion on the right, and even when experienced, it tends to be expressed inappropriately...

The Preemptive Tax Revolt -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on April 13, 2010
Editor?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.Most people understand that their taxes just went up...

The Solace of Poor U.S.-Israel Relations -- By: Daniel Pipes

Posted on April 13, 2010
Things are not always as simple as they seem; the current crisis in U.S.-Israel relations has a silver lining. Four observations, all derived from historical patterns, prompt this conclusion.First, the ?peace process? is in actuality a ?war process.? Diplomatic negotiations through the 1990s led to a parade of Israeli retreats that had the perverse effect of turning the middling-bad situation of 1993 into the awful one of 2000...

Good Riddance! -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on April 13, 2010
When Supreme Court Justices retire, there is usually some pious talk about their ?service,? especially when it has been a long ?service.? But the careers of all too many of these retiring jurists, including currently retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, have been an enormous disservice to this country...

Squashing Life's Little Pleasures -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on April 13, 2010
Reading the onslaught of angry denunciations of Burger King by mental-health organizations and mainstream-media reporters this past week reminded me of a characteristic of the Left not often commented on: a certain joylessness, even an antipathy to the little joys that contribute more than almost anything else to most people?s ability to endure life?s difficulties...

Journalism as Rubbernecking -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on April 13, 2010
As one who does not play or follow golf and who doesn?t know a birdie from a chickadee, I was pleased to see Phil Mickelson win the Masters. His long embrace of his ailing wife -- she has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer -- was a moving moment...

March Diary -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on April 13, 2010
The Left in power�� Watching the president?s strutting and preening after the passing of the health-care bill, I found myself thinking that the Left in power have a very characteristic kind of arrogant triumphalism.?I?m in this race not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation,? announced Obama when declaring his candidacy in 2007...

The Father of Big Government? -- By: Allen Carl Guelzo

Posted on April 12, 2010
There is a persistent rumor in the ether of talking heads that runs something like this: If we want to know who the ?father? of big government in the United States is, point the finger at#...#Abraham Lincoln. Of course, it has been a long time since Abraham Lincoln was headline news, and most Americans will meet this with little more than a shrug of the shoulders...

Understanding Illegitimacy -- By: Robert Rector

Posted on April 12, 2010
The press has rushed to report a minuscule drop in ?teen births? based on data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As usual, the mainstream media are focusing on a trivial, politically correct story while ignoring the real story buried in the data...

Putting Obamacare on Trial -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on April 12, 2010
The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens means that in coming months we?ll have another hearing on a Supreme Court nominee. But it?s not likely to be the sort of hearing we got used to in the two decades after Edward Kennedy declared war on Robert Bork in 1987...

How Did Iran Go So Wrong? -- By: Arthur Herman

Posted on April 12, 2010
They humiliated Carter. They nearly brought down Reagan?s presidency. They perplexed Bush Senior and defied Bush Junior, while beguiling and then betraying President Clinton in between. Now they have run complete circles around President Obama, as their two-decade-long quest for nuclear weapons bids fair to become a reality...

Making Lemonade -- By: Rob Witwer

Posted on April 12, 2010
In 2004, Colorado Republicans controlled the governor?s mansion, both U.S. Senate seats, five of the state?s seven congressional seats, and both houses of the state legislature. Only 48 months later, the state?s Democrats found themselves in that very same position...

Will Reality Rock the Youth Vote? -- By: Michael G. Franc

Posted on April 12, 2010
What happens when the Millennial Generation -- members of which are between the ages of 18 and 29 -- sees its high expectations for ?change? dashed? The new health-reform law may let us find out.The Millennials received a jolt last week, and it wasn?t from their morning cups of mocha latt�...

A Very Polish Conservative -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on April 12, 2010
In 2005 I attended a smart Warsaw dinner party not long after the Kaczynski twins and their Law and Justice party (PiS) had triumphed in the Polish elections. The assembled Poles, distinguished Warsaw intellectuals, united in noisy disgust: The Kaczynskis were pathological extremists, and Poland was hurtling to ruin, even dictatorship...

The Descent of Liberalism -- By: Michael Knox Beran

Posted on April 12, 2010
In his 1950 book The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling said that ?in the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.? Liberalism was no less the dominant political tradition; a coherent conservative opposition had yet to emerge...

Don't Get Distracted -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on April 12, 2010
EDITOR?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.?November, November, November? is the song many right-of-center voters, activists, and politicians are singing, but although the socialization of health care is highly unpopular, the road to November won?t be a cakewalk for those who voted against it or would have done so...

Tax Season -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on April 10, 2010
We are nearing the climax of ?tax season.? That?s the problem right there, by the way: Summer should have a season, and baseball should have a season, but not tax. Happily, like candy canes and Christmas-tree lights on December 26th, the TurboTax boxes will soon be disappearing from the display racks until the nights start drawing in and the leaves fall from the trees and tax season begins anew in seven or eight months? time...

Obama's Next Justice -- By: NRO Symposium

Posted on April 10, 2010
Justice John Paul Stevens has announced his retirement, which means that President Obama gets to make another Supreme Court appointment. Whom will he nominate, and what will be his choice?s effects on the near future (i.e. the November midterms) and the long-term ideological trajectory of the Court? National Review Online asked the experts...

Unconstitutional Mandate -- By: Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II

Posted on April 09, 2010
There are very good reasons that the federal government has never, in the last 221 years, used the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as a vehicle for requiring citizens to purchase goods or services from other citizens. The first is textual. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that ?the Congress shall have Power#...

Our American Catharsis -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 09, 2010
For years conservatives have railed about the creeping welfare state. They have tried to tag liberals with being soft on national security, both for courting those who faulted America and for faulting others who courted it. The parameters of all these fights were well known, as talk radio, the blogs, and cable news hourly took up hammer and tongs against the creeping ?liberal agenda...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Relaxed Standard of Review Applies to Density Variances
The Appellate Division extended to applications for development se...

Review of Charles Fried
Here's my review, in Commonweal, of Charles Fried's recent book, M...

NSEERS - National Security Entry-Exit Registration System
NSEERS - NATIONAL SECURITY ENTRY-EXIT REGISTRATION SYSTEM Special ...

National Episcopal Church Gets Only Limited Intervention In Property Dispute
In Diocese of Central New York v. St. Andrews Episcopal Church, (N...