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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

There Oughta Be a Law -- By: Shannen W. Coffin

Posted on April 09, 2010
Bleary-eyed, I crawl out of bed, shuffle into the bathroom, and flip on the lights, but the bulb is out. I remind myself to get to Home Depot and stockpile a few cases of good, old-fashioned incandescent bulbs while I still can. After my morning business, I flush an extra time, since 1...

If We Europeanize, Europe Is in Trouble -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on April 09, 2010
By now you may have heard: America is on its way to becoming another European country. Now, by that I do not mean that we?re moving our tectonic plate off the coast of France or anything, but rather that a century-long dream of American progressives is finally looking like it might become a reality...

Pflegerizing Catholicism -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on April 09, 2010
So much that you need to know about the Catholic Church?s social-policy problems can be summed up in one word: Chicago. On race, abortion, guns, immigration, and ?community organizing,? Catholic Church officials in the Windy City have forged unholy alliances with radical left-wingers and enablers who undermine the faith -- and the faithful...

Obamacare's Disastrous Preview -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on April 09, 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.Pres. Barack Obama has an unsettling defense of his health-care reform -- it?s merely a version of the plan implemented by Massachusetts...

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A plank for '12, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on April 09, 2010
Devotees�of National Review -- and who?s not? (!) -- may remember a piece in our December 29, 2008, issue. This was our Farewell to the GWB Administration issue. I had a piece called ?Diplomatic Health: On Bush, our allies, and varied perceptions.? It began,?If there?s one thing everyone knows, it?s this: America?s alliances are in tatters and the American image abroad is terrible...

Nuclear Posturing, Obama Style -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on April 09, 2010
Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place. During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive U...

The Sins-and-Grievances Approach -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on April 09, 2010
One of the most ominous developments of our time has been the multicultural dogma that all cultures are equal. It is one of the many unsubstantiated assertions that have become fashionable among self-congratulatory elites, with hard evidence being neither asked for nor offered...

What the Euphemisms Tell Us -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on April 09, 2010
In the latest installment of politically correct (not to say Orwellian) language emanating from the Obama administration, the term ?rogue states? has been sidelined in favor of ?outliers.? The switch was unveiled as part of the just-released Nuclear Posture Review...

Victory Bound -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on April 09, 2010
Everywhere I go, I encounter optimism. At first it took me aback. After all, the Right-minded seem to be losing right now. But the optimism makes perfect sense if you believe in American exceptionalism. On the heartbreaking weekend last month when the White House and the speaker of the House twisted enough Democratic arms to get their health-care socialization plan passed, I was nevertheless drowning in a sea of that exceptional optimism: I was on Capitol Hill, among people protesting the health-care legislation...

Replacing Justice Stevens -- By: The Editors

Posted on April 09, 2010
We already miss Justice John Paul Stevens -- the Justice Stevens of the 1970s, that is: the Stevens whose opinion on why racial preferences in college admissions violate the Civil Rights Act has never been refuted, the Stevens who was skeptical of judicial micromanagement of local law enforcement...

Pledging to Repeal -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on April 09, 2010
The same day that President Obama signed health-care reform, Sen. Jim DeMint introduced legislation to repeal it. ?This fight isn?t over yet,? vowed the South Carolina Republican. ?The American people cherish their freedom and will defend it this November...

A V-Shaped Boom Is Coming -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on April 09, 2010
Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound following a very deep downturn could actually be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped, recovery boom between now and year-end...

Tim for Governor? -- By: Michael Graham

Posted on April 08, 2010
?Is Tim Cahill the real deal??That?s the question I started getting asked last week after the Massachusetts treasurer, who is running for governor as an independent, launched his high-profile attack on our local version of Obamacare. ?If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health-insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level,? Cahill declared, ?they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years...

After Health Care, Amnesty? -- By: Mark Krikorian

Posted on April 08, 2010
Many on the left are demanding that the president take up amnesty for illegal immigrants as his next major goal. But it?s just not going to happen. There has certainly been a lot of talk about moving on to immigration reform. Some 60,000 illegal aliens and their supporters staged a protest in Washington in March demanding amnesty...

Net Neutrality Is Anti-Consumer -- By: The Editors

Posted on April 08, 2010
Turn on your TV these days and within minutes you are likely to see several commercials from your local cable, satellite, or telecommunications company trying to convince you that their cable, DSL, or mobile broadband services are superior to those of their competitors...

Petraeus's Israel Problem -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on April 08, 2010
Max Boot is a good historian. On Islam, I often disagree with him, finding in his work the wishful thinking common among Islamic Democracy Project enthusiasts. Still, he is thoughtful and civil, so one always expects to learn something from reading him...

Losing the Stomach for Humanitarian Interventions -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on April 08, 2010
Over the last two decades, the United States has intervened militarily in several countries to protect human rights. Now, writes historian Mark Mazower in World Affairs, ?the concept of humanitarian intervention is dying if not dead.? And a good thing, too, he concludes...

Two States, No Solution? -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on April 08, 2010
Could Barack Obama be the American president who makes history by settling the Palestinian/Israel conflict once and for all? He and his closest advisers seem to think so.And why not? The received wisdom is that the outlines of a settlement have long been apparent: a ?two-state solution? similar to what then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak offered then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000 and what then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2008...

Culture, Causation, and Catastrophe -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on April 08, 2010
The blatant and undeniable fact that different racial, ethnic, and other groups have had radically different economic and intellectual achievements for centuries, in countries around the world, has led to widely varying theories and widely varying political and other reactions...

The Ongoing Melodrama of Victims and Oppressors -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 08, 2010
President Obama, in the tradition of progressive Democratic leaders, believes governments should ask their countries? more economically fortunate citizens to be responsible for helping the less well-off.But the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of ?less fortunate...

From Revolution to Indispensability -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on April 07, 2010
Thanks to Rich Lowry for his very gracious and effective response to my comments on his and Ramesh Ponnuru?s strong National Review�cover piece on American exceptionalism. With his clarifications, especially on the deterioration of some qualities of current American life that are no longer exceptional, such disagreement as there was between us is down to very marginal points...

The BPA Myth -- By: Iain Murray

Posted on April 07, 2010
On Thursday, April 1, Time published a list of the ?ten most common household toxins,? focused on plastics. It claimed, ?Chemicals in plastics and other products seem harmless, but mounting evidence links them to health problems -- and Washington lacks the power to protect us...

Poll-Driven Policy -- By: John C. Goodman

Posted on April 07, 2010
Revolutionary. There?s no word that more aptly describes the health reform that was just enacted. It will affect everyone. Every employee. Everyone on Medicare. Everyone on Medicaid. It will even affect those who choose to remain uninsured. It will give the federal government enormous control over a sector in which one out of every six dollars in our economy is spent...

Disarmament Danger -- By: Keith B. Payne

Posted on April 07, 2010
The Obama administration has placed nuclear disarmament at the top of its foreign-policy agenda. Other possible goals, such as modernizing U.S. nuclear forces for deterrence purposes, are now considered either transitory or subordinate to taking steps toward ?nuclear zero...

Nuclear Posturing -- By: NRO Symposium

Posted on April 07, 2010
Yesterday, the Obama administration announced its official policy on the use of nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Posture Review contained new restrictions on the use of our nuclear arsenal and an expression of the president?s commitment to the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons...

The Monster-Victim Mix-Up -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on April 07, 2010
I?ve seen How to Train Your Dragon twice. My daughter loves it (the lead dragon reminds us of her cat). And I think it?s pretty great too. (Note: Some pretty obvious spoilers heading your way.)Perhaps I?m mellowing in my middle years, but I don?t much mind what Entertainment Weekly calls the movie?s ?layer of age-of-terror allegory about the ignorance bred by jingoism...

Politicized Counting -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on April 07, 2010
President Obama?s politicized, profligate U.S. Census drive is so desperate for positive press that it has now recruited former Bush senior adviser Karl Rove to do public-service announcements. Rove pleads on video: ?Please answer the ten easy questions...

Compared to What? -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on April 07, 2010
No dogma has caused more mischief -- and, in some countries, tragedies -- than the notion that there is something strange and wrong when some groups are ?over-represented? or ?under-represented? in some occupations or institutions.This dogma is so widely accepted, and so deeply entrenched, that no one asks for evidence and no speck of evidence is offered...

A Sinking Ship of State -- By: Tony Blankley

Posted on April 07, 2010
Last summer, President Obama spent several months publicly anguishing over what he would or wouldn?t do in Afghanistan. Finally, he agreed to ramp up troop levels but warned that he intended to start getting American troops out in 18 months. After anguishing in several columns over the president?s anguishing, I concluded in November 2009: If the Taliban and al Qaeda retake Afghanistan, the world (and America) will have hell to pay for the consequences...

The Roots of Violence -- By: Michael Knox Beran

Posted on April 06, 2010
Norman Podhoretz was once asked ?whether they had special typewriters in the Partisan Review office with entire words like ?alienation? stamped on each key.? Presumably there are keys stamped ?right-wing extremism? at the Washington Post and the New York Times today...

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