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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

The ?Judicial Activism? Ploy

Posted on February 09, 2011
Who?s the real activist judge? Now that two different federal courts have declared Obamacare unconstitutional, the administration's answer is to call the courts guilty of 'judicial activism.' Barack Obama has a rhetorical solution for every problem...

The U.S., the U.N., and a $180 Million Debt

Posted on February 09, 2011
The Obama administration refuses to let the United Nations pay us back. The United Nations' Tax Equalization Fund (TEF) owes the United States nearly $180 million. Don't blame the U.N. -- the organization reported last summer that it was ready to remit the overpayment...

Republicans Are Weak on Farm Subsidies

Posted on February 09, 2011
Congressional red-staters must take on their own constituents. Last month, when the conservative Republican Study Committee released its plan for $2.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next ten years, one enormous item of wasteful government spending was conspicuously missing -- farm subsidies...

Do the Protesters Want Democracy?

Posted on February 09, 2011
If one factor unites them, it is not Mubarak?s brutality but his cupidity. Between Twitter, Facebook, and the 24/7 news cycle (which seems to have a built-in 18/7 opinion cycle), we in the U.S...

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Cairo Ironies

Posted on February 09, 2011
Same cast of American characters, different play The United States' public position on Egypt is 'flexible.' That in and of itself is not surprising, given the ambiguities surrounding the Cairo uprising...

Multiculturalism ? Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

Posted on February 09, 2011
Multiculturalism has gone from universal piety to subversive nonsense in the blink of a European eye. Last year, Thilo Sazzarin was maneuvered into resigning from the Bundesbank because he had written a book questioning the pieties of multiculturalism and diversity...

Scalia and the Commerce Clause

Posted on February 09, 2011
Could a conservative judge vote to uphold Obamacare? As the challenge to Obamacare's constitutionality approaches the Supreme Court, the question on everyone's mind is: How will Anthony Kennedy vote? But perhaps we should also ask: How will Antonin Scalia vote? Scalia is known as one of the Court's most conservative justices, but a concurrence he wrote in a 2005 case should give opponents of the health-care law pause...

Budget Showdown

Posted on February 09, 2011
Republicans fight among themselves to cut spending. Republicans launched their opening salvo last week in what promises to be an epic standoff over the federal budget. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R...

Fast Train to Nowhere

Posted on February 09, 2011
Who?s policing ?Amtrak Joe? Biden?s rail boondoggles? At Philadelphia's 30th Street Station on Tuesday, lifelong government-rail promoter Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a $53 billion high-speed train initiative and half-joked: 'I'm like the ombudsman for Amtrak...

The Real ?Realism? on Israel

Posted on February 09, 2011
A Palestinian state won?t solve our problems in the Middle East. HERZLIYA, ISRAEL -- Finally, I can put the rumors to rest: The land of Zion isn't merely an abstraction, it's an actual country...

Huntsman: Weak-Kneed or Rock-Ribbed?

Posted on February 08, 2011
The former Utah governor?s record is a mix of centrism and conservatism. Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah turned ambassador to China turned (almost certainly) 2012 presidential contender, has quickly been labeled the 'moderate' GOP candidate...

Are Health-Care Waivers Unconstitutional?

Posted on February 08, 2011
The president cannot simply decide who does and does not have to follow the law. The constitutional dispute over the health-care law has thus far centered on the lawfulness of the statute itself -- most dramatically when, last week in Florida, a federal judge held the act to be void...

The Economy and National Security

Posted on February 08, 2011
If we don?t get our economic house in order, we risk a new era of multi-polarity. Today, economic and fiscal trends pose the most severe long-term threat to the United States' position as global leader...

First Blood

Posted on February 08, 2011
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) has proposed a budget under which Congress would cut federal spending. Let us repeat that: U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan has proposed a budget under which Congress would cut federal spending -- not the rate of growth in federal spending, not future federal spending at some distant date, not federal spending vs...

Dictators and Hedgehogs

Posted on February 08, 2011
America could use a proper strategy for promoting reform in the Arab world. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin categorized political leaders as either foxes or hedgehogs. The fox, he explained, knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing...

The First $58 Billion

Posted on February 08, 2011
Congressional spendthrifts, meet the minus sign. There is a complicated mathematical symbol practically unknown to the House Appropriations Committee. It's called the minus sign. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is making a long-overdue introduction between appropriators and the symbol that first caught on in 16th-century Europe...

Beware cynicism, &c.

Posted on February 08, 2011
An article by Bill Kristol has garnered attention, and rightly so. Called 'Stand for Freedom,' it concerns Egypt, and the response of American conservatives to the upheaval there. The concluding words of the article are, 'The Egyptian people want to exercise their capacity for self-government...

America and Autocrats

Posted on February 08, 2011
We don?t prefer to back dictators, but the business of reforming allies is tricky. As Egypt staggers toward an uncertain future, a familiar complaint is making the opinion rounds in the United States -- namely that Egypt's current predicament is at least in part traceable to the supposed American fondness for propping up corrupt dictators around the globe...

Undermining Allies

Posted on February 08, 2011
America?s international commitments should not be contingent on the whims of each new administration. While everyone's attention seems to be focused on the crisis in Egypt, a bombshell revelation about the administration's foreign policy in Europe has largely gone unnoticed...

On Visiting My Hundredth Country

Posted on February 08, 2011
The traveled life is one worth living. A few days after this column appears, I will visit my 100th country: Cambodia. I am writing this column aboard a ship on the South China Sea along with 200 of my radio listeners...

An Inconvenient Sphinx

Posted on February 07, 2011
Egypt?s constitution poses a vexing diplomatic riddle. When my Arab friends talk about 'the humiliation of the street' and express their earnest support for the protesters' demand that Mubarak step down, I empathize with them...

The Charnel House of Blackmun

Posted on February 07, 2011
The right to choose in the City of Brotherly Love. It was the great moral struggle of my father's generation. When they started out, few gave them a snowball's chance in hell of accomplishing their noble and selfless goals of making this a better, happier, fairer, more tolerant, more compassionate world...

Bush 2012

Posted on February 07, 2011
Jeb Bush should run now, for at least eight reasons. John J. Miller has a cover story in the new issue of National Review that's a compelling portrait of the accomplishments of Jeb Bush. Four years after leaving the Florida governor's mansion, he remains one of the most impressive Republican politicians in the country, a formidable policy mind with the political chops to drive conservative reforms even out of office...

The Oil-Spill Endgame

Posted on February 07, 2011
Victims and their lawyers have a chance to settle their cases now. Now maybe the Gulf-oil-spill circus can finally end. The attorneys are settling. At the same time, Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of the victim-compensation fund, has proposed final terms that would govern all cases, including those involving victims who don't have lawyers...

Why Wall Street Collapsed

Posted on February 07, 2011
Searching for the roots of the 2008 financial crisis. At long last, the ten-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) has issued its gargantuan report on the credit meltdown that pulverized Wall Street and triggered the worst U...

An Obamacare Roadblock

Posted on February 07, 2011
Does the Florida court ruling shut down implementation? It's a safe assumption that eventually the Supreme Court will take on the issue of Obamacare's constitutionality, and of course the Obama administration will comply with its decision...

Bush Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Posted on February 07, 2011
A heritage isn?t a liability. When Indiana congressman Mike Pence decided to announce recently that he wasn't going to run for the Republican nomination for president -- but possibly for governor of his state -- you would have thought, from the reaction in some quarters, that he had committed the ultimate act of betrayal...

The Egyptian Bargain

Posted on February 07, 2011
As with other fallen allies, Egypt will vex the U.S. Most campaign rhetoric and political punditry is underpinned by an assumption that perfect solutions are possible, if only people would have the good sense to adopt the candidate's or the pundit's course of action...

What Set Reagan Apart

Posted on February 05, 2011
The tension in Egypt has swiftly differentiated Obama from the Gipper. We are witnessing a pivotal moment in Pres. Barack Obama's first term with the deteriorating situation in Egypt. At the same time, we're seeing an attempt by some -- mostly his supporters in the media -- to align Obama with President Reagan, whose 100th birthday we celebrate this Sunday...

Don?t Count on Egypt?s Army

Posted on February 05, 2011
We cannot trust Egypt?s military to combat Islamists. ‘My name is Khalid Islambouli,' the assassin thundered. 'I have slain Pharaoh, and I do not fear death!' This was at an annual state parade in Cairo on October 6, 1981...

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