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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

Rethinking Political Virtue -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on February 19, 2010
Asked by a radio host about the Supreme Court?s decision in Citizens United v. FCC, Newt Gingrich said something that I imagine many conservatives have always believed -- that political contributions are a form of speech and as such should be unlimited, provided they are immediately disclosed on the Internet...

Ungovernable? Nonsense. -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on February 19, 2010
In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president?s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control...

NRI's 2010 Challenge Winners -- By: Kate O'Beirne

Posted on February 19, 2010
Over 300 public-spirited individuals submitted ideas for National Review Institute?s 2010 Challenge. In launching the contest, we were confident that worthy ideas would flood in from beyond the Beltway -- and we were right. Constitutional amendments were proposed, the growth of the administrative state was addressed, agencies were recommended for elimination, and clever rhetorical arguments were made...

Tea-Party Power to Solve the Debt Problem -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on February 19, 2010
The New York Times ran a front-page story this week called ?Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis.? As usual, they got it wrong. Instead, the headline should have read, ?After Scott Brown?s Astonishing Senate Win in Massachusetts, New Political Gridlock in Washington Could Spell the End of the Liberal Crack-Up We Have Witnessed over the Past Year...

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The Mac Is Back, Again -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on February 18, 2010
The day after Valentine?s Day, Evan Bayh, Indiana?s weary Democratic prince, broke up with the U.S. Senate. ?There are better ways to serve my fellow citizens,? Bayh sighed. ?I do not love Congress.? Bayh isn?t the only Democrat getting cold feet at the reelection altar...

Kill or Capture? -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on February 18, 2010
A few years ago, I got into an argument with an expert on military operations. I had written a white paper proposing the creation of a national-security court for terrorism cases. In the paper I criticized the trend to ?judicialize? warfare, arguing that, in our system, judgments about the detention and treatment of alien enemy combatants are the preserve of the political branches, not the politically unaccountable courts...

Our Faltering Rivals -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on February 18, 2010
It has become a cliché to say that the U.S. is in decline. It is certainly true, but need not be irreversible, and the country has been there before. It was in decline when the Watergate debacle destroyed a successful presidency and the long and costly enterprise in Vietnam ended terribly on the helipad on the roof of the U...

Elusive Libertarians -- By: John Zogby & Zeljka Buturovic

Posted on February 18, 2010
A number of commentators have recently taken up the notion that libertarianism has become a significant force in contemporary American politics. This conviction is partly based on the assumption that, by being different from both liberals and conservatives, libertarians can enter coalitions with both, thus boosting their political power beyond their numbers...

Who's Losing Iraq? -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on February 18, 2010
?I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.?Vice President Joseph Biden?s comments to CNN?s Larry King sparked a brouhaha for an obvious reason: When they were senators, Biden and Barack Obama opposed the ?surge? that averted America?s defeat in Iraq...

Beware of 'Comprehensive' Anything -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on February 18, 2010
Before attempting dramatic change, the Roman emperor Augustus is said to have warned, ?make haste slowly.? The reformer Augustus was eager for radical social transformation. But he also knew he had to deal with generations of Roman tradition and habit -- and thousands of entrenched special interests...

Global Warming? LOL! -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on February 18, 2010
Forty-nine of these 50 United States simultaneously laughed at ?global warming.? Absent Hawaii, every state in the Union had measurable snow on Saturday, February 13. An average eight inches covered 68.1 percent of the continental U.S., well above January?s more typical 51...

Obama's Nuclear Winter? -- By: The Editors

Posted on February 17, 2010
On a frigid February day in Washington, Barack Obama became the first president in many years to back the nuclear industry with more than vague promises. In committing $8.3 billion worth of federal loan guarantees to the construction of two new nuclear units at Southern Company?s facility in Georgia, the president has sent a clear message to the country -- and to environmentalists -- that nuclear will be part of the country?s future energy mix...

The Tragic Truth of War -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on February 17, 2010
Victory has usually been defined throughout the ages as forcing the enemy to accept certain political objectives. ?Forcing? usually meant killing, capturing, or wounding men at arms. In today?s polite and politically correct society we seem to have forgotten that nasty but eternal truth in the confusing struggle to defeat radical Islamic terrorism...

The Trouble with Beijing -- By: Gordon G. Chang

Posted on February 17, 2010
Last Thursday, the White House announced that President Obama would meet with the Dalai Lama in Washington on February 18. China reacted swiftly, demanding that the event be cancelled. Earlier, Beijing had hinted that it would injure the American economy if the meeting went ahead...

All Writers Are Avatars -- By: Interview

Posted on February 17, 2010
NASA may be putting its shuttle program to bed, but the adventure of traveling to a galaxy far, far away is far from taking a rest. Boys and girls may not know Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin like they used to, but these men live vividly in the imaginations of Boomers like Frank Cottrell Boyce...

Cut Costs and Improve Care? That's True Reform -- By: Regina Herzlinger

Posted on February 17, 2010
The ParadoxIt?s the great American health-care paradox. Yes, we have excellent doctors, hospitals, and technology, but the cost of our care vastly outstrips that of countries that provide universal coverage, and we leave millions uninsured. Although we clearly lead the world in many areas, such as advances in transformational personalized medicine, in other ways our health-care quality is not obviously better than that of other countries...

Brennan, Politics, and National Security -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on February 17, 2010
?Politics should never get in the way of national security,? wrote John Brennan, the White House?s shockingly political deputy national security adviser. His USA Today op-ed last week set off a firestorm inside the Beltway by essentially accusing critics of administration policy of deliberately lying -- ?misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe? -- and aiding and abetting al-Qaeda: ?Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda...

Goodbayh, Evan -- By: RiShawn Biddle

Posted on February 16, 2010
By the time Birch Evans (Evan) Bayh III announced yesterday afternoon that he would not seek a third term in the U.S. Senate, he had fallen far from his position as one of the Democrats? safest reelection bets. Although he declared that his decision was motivated by his desire to escape the ?strident partisanship? of the present-day Senate and his interest in finding ?better ways to serve my fellow citizens,? he faced the prospect of losing the seat in the same fashion his legendary father did 30 years ago...

Cuomo's Questionable Case -- By: Marie Gryphon

Posted on February 16, 2010
Andrew Cuomo has filed his long-awaited civil suit against Bank of America, its former CEO, Kenneth Lewis, and its former chief financial officer, Joseph Price. Cuomo?s 86-page complaint alleges that the bankers defrauded both shareholders and federal officials during the controversial merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis...

Climate Alarmism Acknowledges Doubt -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on February 16, 2010
Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes, and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed ?deniers,? a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial...

Palin endures, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on February 16, 2010
Interesting about Sarah Palin: She simply refuses to go away and die. She refuses to get out of politics. She refuses to accept the view of the political establishment, or much of it, that she?s a joke, a moron, a laughingstock. I think she has a keen sense of her own worth: of her talents and abilities, which are considerable...

Selling Freedom Cheap -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on February 16, 2010
If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever-increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom...

The Doritos Ad Wasn't Funny -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on February 16, 2010
By far the most popular ad shown during the latest Super Bowl (the trademarked name ?Super Bowl? is used here without the expressed written consent of the National Football League) was the Doritos ?House Rules? ad. Tens of millions of Americans saw it as hilarious...

In Mideast, Bet on a Strong Horse -- By: Daniel Pipes

Posted on February 16, 2010
The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners.Not only does the leader of Hezbollah proclaim ?We love death,? but so too does, for example, the 24-year-old man who last month yelled ?We love death more than you love life? as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City...

Unpacking Obama's Rationale on Terrorists -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on February 16, 2010
Is there an organizing principle behind the Obama administration?s decisions on how to deal with accused terrorists? Announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, mastermind of 9/11, and four of his co-conspirators would be granted a civilian trial in Manhattan while the U...

In Miami, the Son Also Rises -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on February 15, 2010
?Don?t you live for that moment right there?? That was former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason?s take on the final scene of Super Bowl XLIV: The Most Valuable Player, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, was holding his young son in his arms while his wife, young Baylan?s mother, looked on with a face full of joy -- a loving family sharing a momentous personal, cultural, and historic moment...

The New Conformo-radicalism -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on February 13, 2010
A man asks for a plastic bag at the supermarket checkout. Next thing you know, his head?s slammed against the counter, and he?s being cuffed by the Green Police. ?You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy,? sneers the enviro-cop, as the perp is led away...

Obama's Very Weak Hand -- By: James C. Capretta

Posted on February 12, 2010
Suddenly, bipartisanship is all the rage at the Obama White House.The president has announced that he will hold a bipartisan gathering on February 25 at Blair House, across the street from the White House, in an effort to get the health-care legislative effort out of the political ditch it is now in...

Abstinence and the Left -- By: Robert Rector

Posted on February 12, 2010
Alarmed by a recent well-publicized study showing that abstinence education succeeded while ?safe sex? and ?comprehensive? sex-ed programs failed, the Left has abandoned its ?abstinence doesn?t work? claim and drawn up a new line of defense.Consider what the New York Times had to say...

Planned Summit Is Just an Infomercial in Disguise -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on February 12, 2010
The president has invited congressional Republicans to sit down and talk through health care at a big ?bipartisan summit? on February 25. Some think it?s a little late for such a conversation. After all, the Democrats have built their health-care palace from the ground up, using only Democratic labor and Democratic input; they just can?t get it to pass inspection...

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