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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

Burned Critz -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on March 16, 2010
In some ways, Mark Critz is exactly the right man to continue the work of the late John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who spent most of his last years in Congress surrounded by allegations that he traded earmarks for donations. Critz was Murtha?s district director, and he shares many habits with his old boss: malodorous deals, explanations to the public that don?t add up, conflicting political and public-office loyalties, and a cynical sensibility that ?the appearance of impropriety? ceased being a worry a long time ago...

Health-Care Reform for the Ages -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on March 16, 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.The finale of the health-care debate couldn?t be more fitting...

The Bigger the Government, the Less You Are Needed -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on March 16, 2010
Among the things on which Left and Right, religious and secular, can agree is that one of the few real needs that human beings have is to be needed.When we are not needed, life feels pointless.The need to be needed is universal. The sexes may feel needed in different ways, but the depth of the need is the same...

America's Shiny New Palestinian Militia -- By: Daniel Pipes

Posted on March 16, 2010
?The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken? -- last year that?s what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally...

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Two Terrible Ideas in One! -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on March 16, 2010
It?s interesting that the Democrats are attempting to roll two of their highest priorities into one bill this month. The labyrinthine legislative legerdemain called health-care reform now includes a reconciliation package that would fold in student-loan reform...

Talking Points vs. Realities -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on March 16, 2010
In a swindle that would make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur, Barack Obama has gotten a substantial segment of the population to believe that he can add millions of people to the government-insured rolls without increasing the already record-breaking federal deficit...

Updating the Price Tag -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on March 16, 2010
As Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., California) and the rest of the Democratic leadership attempt to ram the Senate?s Obamacare bill through the House of Representatives, they resemble frantic hospital administrators ordering medical supplies. Unfortunately, they are using last year?s price lists...

Exceptionally Yours -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on March 16, 2010
We at NR seem to have been talking a lot about exceptionalism this last couple of print issues. It started in the March 8 issue. The cover piece, by Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, was a spirited defense of American exceptionalism, with some warnings about how the current administration?s policies threaten it...

Is Dodd Ending Too Big to Fail? -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on March 16, 2010
Surprise, surprise. Sen. Chris Dodd?s financial-regulation proposal raises the possibility of substantial progress on the road to ending ?too big to fail? (TBTF) and bailout nation for banks and other financial institutions.How the Dodd bill will play out in the final details remains to be seen...

Taking His Measure -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on March 15, 2010
Observing anti-Americanism around the globe in 1967, Ronald Reagan lamented in a speech: ?We tried to buy love in the world when we should have been earning respect.? It is an admonition President Obama is predisposed not to heed -- and the American people have noticed...

The Majority Leader of the Lawsuit Lobby -- By: Jim Copland

Posted on March 15, 2010
The late Fred Baron -- the asbestos lawyer who paid to relocate John Edwards?s pregnant mistress -- was typically unabashed about the political influence of the trial bar. In 2002, he reacted to a Wall Street Journal editorial that had claimed the plaintiffs? bar was ?all but running the Senate? by saying: ?I really, strongly disagree with that...

Exorcising Toyota's Demons -- By: Walter Olson

Posted on March 15, 2010
You know those unseen and undetectable gremlins that hide in Toyota?s electronic throttle controls? Turns out they have it in for elderly drivers. The Los Angeles Times has compiled a list of 56 fatal incidents over 19 years purportedly involving unintended Toyota acceleration, and according to my Overlawyered co-blogger Ted Frank -- in a Thursday analysis refined and extended the next day by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic -- the age of the driver can be publicly ascertained in a little more than half the instances...

Popping the Higher-Education Bubble -- By: Dan Lips

Posted on March 15, 2010
President Obama has called for more Americans to attend college, setting a goal that the United States lead the world in its percentage of college graduates by 2020. The administration has called for dramatic increases in federal subsidies for student aid...

American Exceptionalism, Continued -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on March 15, 2010
I enjoyed Conrad?s critique of our piece -- as muscular as all the stuff he has been writing for NRO.Just a few points in reply.A number of points he raises do not involve disagreements with our main argument. Conrad calls the American Revolution a ?grubby contest about taxes...

Girl Scouts Gone Wild -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on March 15, 2010
I?ve seen more than a few boxes of Do-Si-Dos and Samoas around lately. It?s hard to look askance at the Girl Scouts when there?s so much sweetness in the air, but there is reason for keeping the Girl Scouts out of the ?mom and apple pie? pantheon. For one thing, the organization has a think tank, a nongovernmental organization, and a welcome mat out to Planned Parenthood...

Tea Party Tumult -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on March 15, 2010
The political commentariat doesn?t know what to make of those thousands of Americans who have spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town-hall meetings to oppose the big-government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders...

'Explaining' Obamacare . . . by Bashing Insurers -- By: Paul Howard

Posted on March 12, 2010
President Obama?s favorite explanation for why his health-care reform plan is unpopular is that he needs to explain it ?more clearly.?Explain it more clearly? After dozens of presidential health-care speeches and town halls, and even a bipartisan ?summit,? people understand Obamacare quite well...

The Death of the 'Iran Won' Myth -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on March 12, 2010
Did the fall of Saddam Hussein and the violent birth of Iraqi democracy really empower Iran?That conventional wisdom might have been true in the shorter term during the chaotic Iraqi insurrection, but it was never an accurate assessment over the longer haul -- as we are beginning to see, nearly seven years after the Iraq War began...

Cap and Tax -- By: The Editors

Posted on March 12, 2010
A tripartisan trio of senators -- John Kerry (D., Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.), and the New York Times?s favorite Republican environmentalist, Lindsey Graham (S.C.) -- is working overtime to build support for ?doing something? about climate change in the upper chamber of Congress...

1994 and 2010 -- By: John J. Pitney Jr.

Posted on March 12, 2010
Republicans hope that 2010 will be a rerun of 1994. There are some striking similarities, which should give them hope. But there are also key differences, which should give them pause. As was the case 16 years ago, big fiscal measures and a muddled health-care proposal have hurt the president?s standing...

The Boren Supremacy -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on March 12, 2010
Shortly before the February 25 health-care summit, President Obama unveiled his proposal for comprehensive reform, which was broadly similar to the Senate legislation that won approval on Christmas Eve but also borrowed some ideas from the House bill that passed on November 7...

Health-Care Hell -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on March 12, 2010
The time for talk is over.So proclaimed the most talkative president in modern memory. I can?t remember when Barack Obama said that. Maybe it was during the first ?final showdown? on health care. Or maybe it was the third. The fifth? It?s so hard to tell when pretty much every week since the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, either Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid has proclaimed that it is now Go Time for health-care reform...

Why Obama Needs a Republican Congress -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on March 12, 2010
The undertakers of Bill Clinton?s political doom showed up in Little Rock, Ark., in 1992 for a meeting with the president-elect two months before his inauguration. They were the leaders of the Democratic Congress, and they might as well have been draped in black crepe...

The Democrats Won't Talk About This Provision -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on March 12, 2010
On March 9, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: You?ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don?t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future.#...#We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy...

In Praise of the Rotation of Power -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on March 12, 2010
As the Afghanistan War intensifies -- Marja, soon Kandahar, and the steady arrival of 30,000 new American troops -- it has come to be seen as Obama?s war. Not so. It?s become America?s war. When the former opposition party -- habitually antiwar for the last four decades -- adopted, reaffirmed, and escalated a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship fell away, and the war became nationalized...

Our Subversive Founders -- By: Fred Schwarz

Posted on March 12, 2010
Recently my colleague Jay Nordlinger wrote about a new edition of the Federalist Papers that comes equipped with a disclaimer for unwary readers: This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today...

Yellen Is Spellin' Future Inflation -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on March 12, 2010
The new Obama Fed is going to be very dovish when it comes to fighting future inflation and defending the value of the dollar.The president has nominated Janet Yellen to be vice chair of the Federal Reserve. Ms. Yellen is a distinguished economist who unfortunately subscribes to the Phillips-curve model that trades off unemployment and inflation...

The Reconciliation Pickle -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on March 11, 2010
House Democrats have repeatedly been told that their concerns about the Senate health-care bill can be addressed via the reconciliation process. Speaking to reporters yesterday on Capitol Hill, Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) pointed to numerous problems with this strategy...

Obama's Rationing Plan -- By: The Editors

Posted on March 11, 2010
President Obama recoils when his adversaries call his health-care plan a ?government takeover? or suggest it will lead to bureaucratic rationing of care. He insists it would do nothing of the sort and dismisses such criticism as unfounded partisan rhetoric...

Countdown -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on March 11, 2010
There is a disconnect between the White House and congressional leaders. The former wants to pass a bill by the end of next week. The latter says a vote in late March or early April is more likely. Interpretations of the fierce urgency of now change daily...

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