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

Middle East Chaos Demands U.S. Oil Production

Posted on February 25, 2011
Our economy requires energy, and we could find more at home. May we drill now, please? At this writing, circumstances in the Middle East may change between this sentence and my last paragraph...

The Anti-Reform Party

Posted on February 25, 2011
Democrats seem to respect the results of elections only when they favor Democrats. It's hard to imagine the level of outrage that would be flowing in the direction of the Republican party today if Republicans had behaved the way the Democrats have over the past week...

Hate-A-Rama: The Vulgar, Sexist, Racist, Homophobic Rage of the Left

Posted on February 25, 2011
It is not the tea partiers who lack civility. Barack Obama's new era of civility was over before it began. You wouldn't know it from reading the New York Times, watching Katie Couric, or listening to the Democratic manners police...

Throwing in the Towel on the Constitution

Posted on February 25, 2011
Obama violates his oath of office Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that each new president take the following oath: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States...

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

The Rubicon of Wisconsin

Posted on February 25, 2011
Recklessly principled Republicans are tackling our fiscal crisis. The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics has yielded a singular clarity...

Winning the Government-Shutdown Fight

Posted on February 25, 2011
Why Republicans can?t back down With the GOP-led House and the Democratic Senate and White House far apart on a measure to pay the federal government's bills past March 4, Washington is rumbling toward a repeat of the 1995 government-shutdown fight (actually two shutdown fights, one in mid-November of that year and the other in mid-December)...

Libya?s Future

Posted on February 24, 2011
The dictator may well be on the way out. The bloody upheavals in Libya and the bumbling of the opposition in Bahrain illustrate that these disturbances in the Arab world are much less homogeneous than has been widely thought...

Obama?s Gay-Marriage Striptease

Posted on February 24, 2011
The Obama administration's announcement today that it regards the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional and will not defend it in court is the latest act in a striptease. President Obama favors same-sex marriage -- favors its judicial imposition -- and is casting off the disguises that have hidden that position one by one...

Budget 101

Posted on February 24, 2011
Paul Ryan conducts ?listening sessions? for new GOP members. Before being elected to office in November, freshman representative Alan Nunnelee (R., Miss.) knew that the ballooning cost of entitlement spending was threatening the financial future of the United States...

Follow the Money

Posted on February 24, 2011
Who benefits from public-employee unions? Everyone has priorities. During the past week, Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi has launched on the Libyan people...

A lady?s rib, &c.

Posted on February 24, 2011
In the press not long ago, I read that Michelle Obama had had some ribs, and that made me feel good. She is not just a tofu-and-sprouts woman (not that I don't love tofu and sprouts). (Seriously.) Years ago, William Safire referred to Michael Dukakis as an 'eat-your-peas' politician...

Nations United Against Israel

Posted on February 24, 2011
The U.N. responds to multiple crises in Arab and Muslim countries just as you?d expect. Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen are in turmoil. In Libya, Col. Moammar Gaddafi is using mercenaries to slaughter peaceful protestors...

Wisconsin?s Cowardly Democrats

Posted on February 24, 2011
Public employees and Democratic lawmakers haven?t exactly offered conservatives a lesson in civility. Politically, Americans often use the word 'coward' loosely and inaccurately. On Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush condemned al-Qaeda's attack as the work of 'a faceless coward...

After Obama, the Deluge

Posted on February 24, 2011
A less eloquent president will have to balance budgets. President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission -- and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts...

Wisconsin Democrats: Union Yes!

Posted on February 24, 2011
Wisconsin?s Democrats know on which side their bread is buttered. For Wisconsin's Democratic state senators, it's simply bad business to offend labor unions. Thirteen of the fourteen have received generous contributions from unions over the years; their cumulative donations range from $5,750 to $113,603...

Wisconsin Myths and Facts

Posted on February 24, 2011
Rent-seeking spin vs. the truth With all the interests, political grandstanding, and cheap punditry surrounding the union demonstrations in Wisconsin, it's no surprise that a mythology has developed around Gov...

Koch Executives Speak Out on Wisconsin

Posted on February 24, 2011
?We will not step back at all.? Madison, Wis. — Earlier this week, a blogger impersonating industrialist David Koch spoke with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is attempting to pass a budget-repair bill...

Chris Christie, Round Two

Posted on February 24, 2011
He?s tackling problems that are truly national. For New Jersey governor Chris Christie, 2010 was a big first year. He closed not one but two multi-billion-dollar budget holes without raising taxes; he defied his state's federal legislators and the Obama administration by canceling the ARC tunnel, a bloated transit project he says would have left New Jersey taxpayers on the hook for billions in cost overruns; and he won a game of chicken with teachers' unions on education spending, driving a wedge between Trenton Democrats and what is perhaps their most powerful constituency while laying the groundwork for fundamental reforms across the public sector...

Stay Unreasonable

Posted on February 23, 2011
The budget cuts of 2011 have to be defended if the real work of 2012 is to have any chance. Last week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to reduce FY2011 federal spending by $61 billion...

?Free? Public Radio Is Anything But

Posted on February 23, 2011
For all NPR?s vaunted private donations, it is raising the battle cry to avoid losing a dime of taxpayer money. National Public Radio listeners are being inundated with warnings that they soon may have to drive to work every morning without the sonorous intonations of Morning Edition's Corey Flintoff, Steve Inskeep, and Renée Montagne, and may be forced to drive home without the narrative drone of All Things Considered's Robert Siegel, Michele Norris, and Melissa Block...

Voices of Moderation

Posted on February 23, 2011
History shows that muffling your message can mean forfeiting many a battle to extremists. Moderation -- at least verbal moderation -- is suddenly in vogue. President Obama's rhetoric has moderated, even if his policies and practices have not...

Abusing the Voting Rights Act

Posted on February 23, 2011
Thanks to the Obama Justice Department, redistricting may touch off contentious court battles over the rule of law. The redistricting process for congressional and state-legislative seats will soon begin in earnest...

Fleebaggers

Posted on February 23, 2011
The new cut-and-run Democrats. First lady Michelle Obama said, "Let's Move!" Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally? Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions, and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states -- paralyzing Republican fiscal-reform efforts...

Public Unions Must Go

Posted on February 23, 2011
A death knell for government unions? If only. The protesting public-school teachers with fake doctor's notes swarming the capitol building in Madison, Wis., insist that Gov. Scott Walker is hell-bent on 'union busting...

Gov. Scott Walker: No Stranger to Budget Battles

Posted on February 23, 2011
This proven fiscal hawk has tangled with unions before. Madison, Wis. — His high-ceilinged, wood-paneled office is chapel-quiet. His navy jacket is off; his desk a sea of family photos and legislative memos...

China Is No Egypt

Posted on February 22, 2011
While it may be comforting to read in Hosni Mubarak's resignation the universal forces of people power and democratization, pundits who are beginning to contemplate breathlessly whether Egypt's revolution presages the fall of the Chinese Communist party need to rein in their enthusiasm...

Social Security?s No Afterthought

Posted on February 22, 2011
In his recent press conference, which was dominated by discussion of the administration's budget proposal and its failure to address rising entitlement costs, President Obama was careful to distinguish Social Security from the other main entitlement programs...

Who Attacked Lara Logan, and Why?

Posted on February 22, 2011
For the world's billion-plus Sunni Muslims, al-Azhar University in Cairo is the center of the theological universe, its faculty and scholars the most authoritative voice on the meaning of Islam. It is not very far from Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt's revolution...

Killing Owls to Save Owls

Posted on February 22, 2011
First they came for the loggers, destroying 30,000 jobs and countless lives. Now they're coming for the Barred Owl. Anyone remember the Great Spotted Owl Controversy? Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was the first major instance of the environmental movement (with the cooperation of Al Gore and the Clinton administration) using the Endangered Species Act to accomplish their stealth goal -- in this case driving productive mankind out of millions of acres of federally owned old-growth forest...

Castro?s key to Madison, &c.

Posted on February 22, 2011
I realize the heading over this column is a little ambiguous. Do I mean that Castro is key to Madison? Key to understanding what the Left is doing there, in Wisconsin's capital? No. I'll explain in a second. Last week, a reader wrote me to say that the demonstrators and marauders reminded her of Venezuela: what Chávez and his goons do there...

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...