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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

Measuring Force

Posted on March 29, 2011
Our policy in Libya is incoherent. But we shouldn?t be surprised. You don't just walk up to the local bully and slap him across the face. If you are determined to confront him, then you try to knock the living daylights out of him...

Bag the Plastic Ban

Posted on March 29, 2011
Banning or taxing plastic bags causes more problems than it solves. Before they came for our light bulbs, they targeted our plastic bags. And they're still after them. It all began in 2002, when Ireland enacted a plastic-bag tax for the clearly stated purpose of lowering the amount of litter in the country...

What Is Samantha Power Thinking?

Posted on March 29, 2011
The charismatic Obama adviser believes that stopping ?genocide? is the United States? top foreign-policy priority. On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya...

Rooting for the Underdog

Posted on March 29, 2011
Self-styled ?experts? are rarely right. Sometimes I wonder why a conservative such as myself so often roots for the underdog in sports. Aren't we supposed to be for the big, rich, and successful? (The first two factors usually result in the third, whether you're talking about major universities or professional sports teams in major markets...

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The Arab Spring

Posted on March 29, 2011
Which monarchies will succeed at reform? Which will be swept away by the new revolution of rising expectations? The fake republics are goners; the monarchies have a fighting chance. That's my conclusion after a short visit to the Middle East and discussions with officials and analysts there...

The Triumph of the Green Eyeshade

Posted on March 29, 2011
There are good arguments against the Libya war, but cost isn?t one of them. A Tomahawk missile costs $1.4 million. If you don't know that, you haven't paid attention to the debate over the Libya war...

Another mensch from Nazareth, &c.

Posted on March 29, 2011
Let me lead with something happy -- very happy indeed. I wish to quote a news article: On Wednesday the Iranian embassy in Prague organized an event at a well-known hotel in the Czech capital. Prior to the event, a senior embassy official was shocked to see an Israeli flag flying high at the head of a line of flags situated near the entrance to the hotel...

Voting with Their Feet

Posted on March 29, 2011
The census data are clear: Americans migrate away from liberal policies. The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States...

GE Avoids Taxes?

Posted on March 29, 2011
Shocker: Corporations try to avoid taxes. April 15 looms like a specter at this time of year, casting a pall over the forsythia and daffodils coaxing us to be cheerful. Like a sick child who longs to play outside on a sunny day but must remain confined, we itemizers are chained to desks or dining-room tables littered with receipts, calendars, checkbook registers, and credit-card statements for the annual spring ordeal...

Four Middle Eastern Upheavals

Posted on March 29, 2011
Islamists have an opening in newly threatened regimes. After decades of stasis, the Middle East is in uproar. Too much is happening to focus on a single place, so here's a review of developments in four key countries...

Michele Bachmann 2012?

Posted on March 28, 2011
Iowa eyes the Tea Party darling from Minnesota. If Michele Bachmann decides to run for president, a likely possibility considering she will form an exploratory committee this summer, she could be a game-changer in Iowa -- and possibly win the caucuses...

The Scandal of 'Gun-Walking'

Posted on March 28, 2011
Why did the Justice Department allow Mexican cartels to purchase 2,500 U.S.-made guns? Why did the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives stand by and watch as guns were transported across our southern border to Mexico, to be used by violent drug cartels? The phenomenon of 'gunwalking' appears to be a standard sting-operation tactic that in this case has gone wildly awry...

Restore Our Border

Posted on March 28, 2011
A year after Arizona rancher Rob Krentz?s murder, it?s time to implement a blueprint for border control. Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the murder of Arizona rancher Rob Krentz by an illegal alien...

Luck as America?s Foreign Policy

Posted on March 28, 2011
America?s leaders ? of both parties ? bounce from one impulse to another instead of formulating a coherent foreign policy. The United States is in another war for the purpose of changing another regime...

Wisconsin Fight Goes to Court

Posted on March 28, 2011
And Walker?s big win could ride on a single judicial election. As the dust settles in Madison, Wisconsin Republicans face a troubling coda: Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill is being tripped up in the courts...

Pushing Back against a Decree

Posted on March 28, 2011
Since taking office, Pres. Barack Obama has shown a remarkable penchant for changing the law by fiat. From Citizenship and Immigration Services' debating how best to let the maximum number of illegal aliens off the hook to the EPA's declaring it would treat carbon-dioxide emissions as a pollutant, the administration has taken the stance that votes in Congress aren't really necessary, even for dramatically contentious subjects...

Home Is Where the Growth Is

Posted on March 28, 2011
Why Texas and the Rocky Mountain states are outpacing the others. The Census Bureau last week released county and city populations for the last of the 50 states from the 2010 Census last week, ahead of schedule...

The AmExed Sexing Up of the American Tween

Posted on March 28, 2011
Regrets ? but getting a clue. ‘Dad may try to ruin your style, but dry stains won't.' The revealing dress code of the American tween may be best dramatized by yet another popular-culture slap in the face of fatherhood: a Tide commercial...

The Art of Inconclusive War

Posted on March 26, 2011
Why is it that the United States no longer wins wars? It is tempting and certainly very easy to point out that Obama's war (or Obama's 'kinetic military action,' or 'time-limited, scope-limited military action,' or whatever the latest ever more preposterous evasion is) is at odds with everything candidate Obama said about U...

Decoding Libya

Posted on March 26, 2011
Sharia can tell us how this story ends. For nearly 20 years, we've willfully blinded ourselves to the Rosetta Stone that decodes our enemy's war doctrine. But the jihad (or shall we call it 'kinetic Islam'?) is catalyzed not by al-Qaeda but by sharia -- by Muslim law...

A (Cautionary) Tale of Two
Budget Wars

Posted on March 25, 2011
Comparing the shutdowns in the mid-Nineties with today?s situation These days there are two types of people on Capitol Hill: those who believe little or nothing has changed since the last round of government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, and those who think everything has changed...

Worsening Our Fiscal Nightmare

Posted on March 25, 2011
We need honest, fact-based budgeting. Last Friday, the Congressional Budget Office scored President Obama's ten-year budget plan. Their findings underscore a painful truth: The president is failing to engage in the kind of honest dialogue necessary to rally the country behind needed action...

Libya and Public Opinion

Posted on March 25, 2011
New polls show a dramatic increase in support for American intervention. Or do they? According to a Rasmussen Reports survey taken at the beginning of this week, 34 percent of likely voters think the United States should get 'more directly involved' in the Libyan crisis...

Dude, Be a Man!

Posted on March 25, 2011
How our culture encourages men to remain boys, and why they should grow up The book is called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys. The author is Kay Hymowitz, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal...

The Weiner Waiver Wormhole

Posted on March 25, 2011
An Obamacare waiver for New York City would only be the first step. New York Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner toasted the anniversary of Obamacare this week -- and accidentally spilled his champagne glass all over the disastrous, one-size-fits-all mandate...

The Professor?s War

Posted on March 25, 2011
America is led by a man determined that it should not lead. President Obama is proud of how he put together the Libyan operation. A model of international cooperation. All the necessary paperwork...

Leave Our Bulbs Alone

Posted on March 25, 2011
Is no household object safe? It is one of the magical moments in American history: On Sept. 4, 1882, Thomas Edison threw a ceremonial switch at the offices of J. P. Morgan in New York City, and there was light...

Biden Rails On

Posted on March 25, 2011
He?s always been a buffoon. The new danger is that people start taking him seriously. What do Yasser Arafat, Jon Stewart, and Joe Biden have in common? Well, let's see. Yasser Arafat, the carbuncle who used to run the Palestinian Authority, had a gift for saying what Americans wanted to hear in English and what his own murderous constituents wanted to hear in Arabic...

Off to Mecca She Goes

Posted on March 25, 2011
With Eric Holder?s blessing The village of Berkeley, Ill., 15 miles west of Chicago, is small enough to proclaim its population (5,245) on its welcome sign. It is also small enough to escape mention in the national news -- most of the time...

Praise the Lord and Pass the Potassium Iodide

Posted on March 25, 2011
It?s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Japan's Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant still reels from the aftermath of the March 11 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the 46-foot-high wall of water that smashed into it 15 minutes later...

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