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Covering The Supreme Court -- from National Review Online

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

Bawd and Man at Yale -- By: Nathan Harden

Posted on March 25, 2010
It sounds like the opening of a pornographic movie: An attractive young teacher saunters up to the blackboard. Next, she ducks behind the podium to slip off her tights. Before you know it, she?s standing topless and bare-chested in front of the entire class, calling for a few student ?volunteers...

Unfair Tax -- By: Letters

Posted on March 24, 2010
Ken Hoagland claims that the FairTax can raise as much revenue as existing federal taxes while the poor, the middle class, and the rich will all pay less. Taxing the underground economy will make up the difference. No. Drug dealers will simply evade the FairTax on their sales instead of the income tax on their proceeds...

Defending the FairTax -- By: Letters

Posted on March 24, 2010
Ramesh Ponnuru takes on the FairTax with a good deal more heat than light. He has obscured the issue rather than illuminating what could arguably do more to shift power from the federal government to individual citizens than any other single piece of legislation in the history of the nation...

The Attorney Generals' Initiative -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on March 24, 2010
With Joe Biden?s joyous f-bombs still echoing through the White House?s East Room, the attorneys general from 13 states filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare. (A 14th, Virginia?s Ken Cuccinelli, filed a separate suit...

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Unsound and Unfit -- By: Edward Whelan

Posted on March 24, 2010
This afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to conduct its confirmation hearing for Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. Liu, who�was nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, presents a volatile mix of aggressive left-wing ideology and raw inexperience...

A Titanic Mess -- By: Jim Talent

Posted on March 24, 2010
The most dangerous mistakes in government occur when leaders allow their ideology to trump their perception of reality. In its most extreme form, this kind of blindness can approach insanity, by which I mean the leaders live in a world of their own, unable to recognize and act upon basic facts...

Endangered Findings -- By: Patrick J. Michaels

Posted on March 24, 2010
Now that health care is done (for the time being), expect global warming to be high on the Obama administration?s ?to do? list. But cap-and-trade legislation and its alternative, a direct tax on carbon-based fuels, can?t be passed via ?reconciliation? and are far short of the needed 60 Senate votes...

The Reality of Obamacare -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on March 24, 2010
First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You?ve definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us, too...

Heartless in Brazil, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on March 24, 2010
Do you mind if I dump on Lula da Silva for a second? I thought you wouldn?t. He is the president of Brazil, and one of the most lionized leaders in the world. Indeed, a couple of months ago, my friends in Davos gave him their first-ever Global Statesmanship Award...

An Off-Budget Office? -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on March 24, 2010
Under the headline ?Costly Bill Seen as Saving Money,? the San Francisco Chronicle last week began a front-page story with these words: ?Many people find it hard to understand how the health care legislation heading for a decisive vote Sunday can cost $940 billion and cut the horrendous federal deficit at the same time...

Sunday's Socialist Triumph -- By: Tony Blankley

Posted on March 24, 2010
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats? argument for the health-care bill, claiming, ?This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country.? Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the American traditions that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the ?right? of all Americans to government-assured health-care services...

Unfair Tax -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru

Tattered Liberty -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on March 23, 2010
Sometimes you do live to see it. In my book America Alone, I point out that, to a five-year-old boy waving his flag as Queen Victoria?s Diamond Jubilee procession marched down the Mall in 1897, it would have been inconceivable that by the time of his 80th birthday the greatest empire the world had ever known would have shriveled to an economically moribund strike-bound socialist slough of despond, one in which (stop me if this sounds familiar) the government ran the hospitals, the automobile industry, and much of the housing stock, and, partly as a consequence thereof, had permanent high unemployment and confiscatory tax rates that drove its best talents to seek refuge abroad...

The Hoosier Three -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on March 23, 2010
Call them the Hoosier Three. Four years ago, Indiana Democrats Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, and Baron Hill won election to Congress as part of a Democratic tidal wave. They are all avowedly pro-life Blue Dogs who represent conservative-leaning areas...

A Referendum on Repeal -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on March 23, 2010
Barack Obama rose to prominence after his thunderously unifying message at the 2004 Democratic Convention. The theme of effacing the political and cultural differences between red and blue states carried him through the 2008 election.It turned out to be as unrepresentative a campaign as FDR running on balancing the budget in 1932 or George W...

It's a Civil War: What We Do Now -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on March 23, 2010
A terrible thing happened to America on Sunday, March 21, 2010. The country took its biggest step ever down a road diametrically opposed to its original intent of keeping the state small so that the individual can be free and great.In this unprecedented crisis of values, this is what needs to be done:1...

Pro-Israel, Except When It Counts -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on March 23, 2010
The special election in Florida?s 19th congressional district hasn?t gotten as much attention as some other special elections in the past year, and perhaps this shouldn?t be surprising. Both Obama and Kerry carried 66 percent of the vote in this district, and the last congressman to represent this area, Democrat Robert Wexler, always finished with at least 66 percent of the vote...

Monday Morning Coming Down -- By: Kevin Williamson

Posted on March 23, 2010
Who has better credit than Uncle Sam? If you ask the bond market, that elite list includes Berkshire Hathaway, Procter & Gamble, Lowe?s, Johnson & Johnson, and a host of other blue-chip corporate borrowers. The U.S. government has the ability to levy taxes on the largest national economy in the world, a vast and fearsome revenue-collection apparatus, and more than two centuries of constitutional government under its belt...

Fundamental transformation, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on March 23, 2010
During the general election campaign of 2008, Barack Obama talked a very moderate game -- even a conservative game. This was especially true in the debates versus McCain. He sounded like, oh, David Boren, or Sam Nunn. At times, he sounded like Richard Lugar, the Republican, whom he cited favorably...

To Democrats, It's Monopoly Money -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on March 23, 2010
It is America?s misfortune that at a moment in history that required sober, grown-up stewardship and a realistic appraisal of our fiscal trajectory, we elected (by large margins) the party of supplicants and whiners. How appropriate that one of the selling points of Obamacare was the guarantee that children up to the age of 26 can remain on their parents? insurance plans -- because the Democrats? whole program is about extending adolescence...

Point of No Return? -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on March 23, 2010
With the passage of the legislation allowing the federal government to take control of the medical-care system of the United States, a major turning point has been reached in the dismantling of the values and institutions of America.Even the massive transfer of crucial decisions from millions of doctors and patients to Washington bureaucrats and advisory panels -- as momentous as that is -- does not measure the full impact of this largely unread and certainly unscrutinized legislation...

The End of Euphemism -- By: George Weigel

Posted on March 22, 2010
In a March 20 pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI vigorously condemned the physical and sexual abuse of ?children and vulnerable young people? in which Irish priests and religious women had engaged for decades, and mandated an Apostolic Visitation of various segments of the Irish Church...

Paul Ryan Is Not Ready to Give Up on Health Care -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on March 22, 2010
?This is the closing of the first chapter of America?s health-care saga,? Rep. Paul Ryan says from his office, which is adorned with reminders of contests of the non-political kind: hunting mementos and a Green Bay Packers helmet. ?We are witnessing the beginning of a whole new kind of health-care politics, the likes of which we have never seen before...

Obamacare Isn't Inevitable -- By: The Editors

Posted on March 22, 2010
?Nil desperandum? -- never despair. That is a sentiment that conservatives need to take to heart now that Congress has narrowly passed a bill that simultaneously undermines life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.It takes some ingenuity to add to the costs, inefficiency, and dysfunctions that government has already bequeathed to our health-care system, but the Democrats have proven themselves up to the challenge...

Health Plan Means Bigger Deficits and Higher Taxes -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on March 22, 2010
As this is written, the lobbying of House Democrats on the health-care bill is going on apace, and every hour brings news of another no vote converted to yes, or a yes vote switching to no. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership are expressing confidence that the jerry-built bill they?ve put together will pass -- which is evidence either that they have the 216-vote majority pretty well in hand or that, like any party?s House leadership, they?re professing confidence to prevent a stampede against them...

Michigan's Cheap Date -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on March 22, 2010
?Don?t wait for Bart Stupak to save the day.? I said that three weeks ago, over and over again. I did it in part to encourage listeners to the radio show I was co-hosting to keep communicating with their congressmen. I said it too, of course, because I believed it...

Five Reasons Not to Despair -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on March 22, 2010
If your heart didn?t sink when the Senate bill went over the top in the House last night and Democrats began chanting ?Yes, we can? on the floor, you?re either not a conservative or inured to all disappointment. Conservatives will be temped to despair in the weeks ahead, as the magnitude of this defeat and its potential consequences sink in...

What Now? -- By: NRO Symposium

Posted on March 21, 2010
With the Democrats? health-care legislation having cleared the last legislative hurdle, it is all but inevitable that President Obama will be signing it into law. Is this the end of the road for the debate, or is there a way forward for real reform that puts decisions into the hands of health-care consumers rather than the government? National Review?s panel of health-care watchers weighs in...

Predictions -- By: Michael Tanner

Posted on March 20, 2010
The crystal ball is still far too cloudy to predict whether or not Obamacare will pass, but it is not too soon to make some predictions about what the future will look like if it does pass. The bill will cost more than advertised. It won?t be long before Congress is shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that health-care reform is going to cost a lot more than expected...

Media Duped by Phony Savings Estimate -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on March 20, 2010
For Democrats to persuade swing Blue Dogs to vote for one of the largest expansions of government in American history, it was crucial that the media focus on the Congressional Budget Office?s bottom line -- and ignore how it got there. Blue Dogs need to be able to tell their conservative constituents that they had voted for a bill that reduces the deficit, and it would help if that bill?s cost came in at under $1 trillion...

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