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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

Egypt?s Days of Decision

Posted on February 02, 2011
The U.S. shouldn?t try to force Mubarak out. There are only three ways to deal with the sort of uprising that has occurred in the last week in Egypt: smash it, face it down more or less peacefully, or yield to it...

CPAC?s Culture Club

Posted on February 01, 2011
Sex and the boycott ‘Is conservatism a three-legged stool or not?' In his question, Princeton politics professor Robert P. George hearkens back to the Ronald Reagan–era metaphor for the concept of the Right as an integrated whole of foreign-policy, economic, and social conservatism...

?The Patience of Politics?

Posted on February 01, 2011
George Will reflects on the 112th Congress. House Republicans invited a slew of speakers -- talk-show hosts, messaging maestros, and aging ex-pols -- to their annual retreat last month. They tapped George F...

A taste for democracy, &c.

Posted on February 01, 2011
Once upon a time, many Westerners said that Asians had no taste for democracy, no aptitude for it. Democracy was something that Westerners did, and valued; Asians -- why, they had their own values. They basically liked to be ruled; they were not so interested in self-government or individual freedom...

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A ?Crusade? for Liberty

Posted on February 01, 2011
Put left-wing speech control in the crosshairs. The most common left-wing objection to the Right is that it wants to control others' lives. But in America and elsewhere, the threat to personal liberty has emanated far more often from the left...

After the Revolution

Posted on February 01, 2011
The Islamist threat in Egypt is real. Do we sympathize with the tens of thousands of Egyptians marching to topple the regime of Hosni Mubarak? It would be churlish not to. Poverty, insecurity, lack of basic services (the tap water in Cairo is reportedly unsafe to drink), endemic corruption, and political repression have characterized life there for as long as anyone can remember...

Spilled Milk

Posted on February 01, 2011
Even 'useful' regulations may be unjustified. Despite the old saying, 'Don't cry over spilled milk,' the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that. We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico...

Egypt?s Ambiguous Revolution

Posted on February 01, 2011
We don?t know how it?s going to turn out. Every revolution against autocracy is initially stirring. Who wouldn't have cheered when Louis XVI was forced to convene the Estates General, or when a liberal provisional government took over from Czar Nicholas, or when the rank and file of the Shah's army refused to fire on protesters in the streets? All these inspiring events were mere prelude to catastrophe, making the years 1789, 1917, and 1979 synonymous with the onset of tyranny and bloodshed...

The Duty to Bear Arms

Posted on February 01, 2011
A South Dakotan state representative challenges Obamacare. South Dakota state representative Hal Wick made waves Monday by introducing a bill to require every citizen of his state to purchase a firearm...

Obamacare: A Pivot Point

Posted on January 31, 2011
It must be repealed, and replaced with a patient-centered approach. The U.S. House of Representatives recently cast two critical votes that will help create jobs and move our country toward a 21st-century health-care system...

High-Speed Rail, Budget Buster

Posted on January 31, 2011
Virtually everywhere it has been constructed, taxpayers have lost out. If the nation is going to reduce its out-of-control spending, the first step is to stop spending money on things we do not need...

Fear the Muslim Brotherhood

Posted on January 31, 2011
At the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel has posted an essay called 'Don't fear Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood,' the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, he'd have you believe, no need to worry. After all, the Brothers have even renounced violence! #ad#One might wonder how an organization can be thought to have renounced violence when it has inspired more jihadists than any other, and when its Palestinian branch, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is probably more familiar to you by the name Hamas -- a terrorist organization committed by charter to the violent destruction of Israel...

Postcard from Florida

Posted on January 31, 2011
Great news, high praise, and a lost opportunity at Ave Maria University First the great news. On January 14, the last block of Carrara marble -- from the same vein from which Michelangelo carved David -- was lifted into place by huge cranes (cost: $300 per hour, over three weeks of herculean overtime work) onto the façade of the Oratory at Ave Maria University in Florida...

Obama?s Bipartisan Opportunity

Posted on January 31, 2011
From the February 7, 2011, issue of NR The liberal storyline of the last two years of politics goes something like this: President Obama is really a very moderate fellow, but Republicans have lurched so far to the right that they are incapable of working with him...

Politics by the Numbers

Posted on January 31, 2011
Good omens for the GOP in 2012 Numbers can tell a story. Looking back on Barack Obama's second State of the Union message, and looking forward to the congressional session and the 2012 elections, they tell a story that should leave Democrats uneasy...

Aborting the Race Card

Posted on January 31, 2011
Getting beyond what impedes true civil-rights progress. Is the party of Lincoln the contemporary party of civil rights? Are American conservatives the new civil-rights leaders? These are far from the most frequently asked questions in American politics, but they're worth raising...

Bernanke and Ethanol Sink Egypt

Posted on January 31, 2011
U.S. monetary and energy policy can share in the blame. Decades of autocratic government and a lack of free elections are, of course, the main drivers of the political upheaval in Egypt. But did the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices trigger the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt -- or the greater Arab world for that matter? In addition to Egypt, the people have taken to the streets to varying degrees in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen...

Untangling Ghailani

Posted on January 29, 2011
An ugly but just ending to a terrorist?s trial In Manhattan on Tuesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan gave al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani a sentence of life imprisonment after his conviction on a single count of conspiring to bomb American embassies in 1998...

Evil-Man Economics

Posted on January 28, 2011
Chairman Phil Angelides and the Democratic majority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have released their report, a textbook-worthy example of the 'Evil Man School of Economics.' Something went wrong, and a villain must be identified. This is tediously familiar territory for those who have followed the political establishment's years-long attempt to evade responsibility for the crisis of which it was a cause...

A Sputnik Moment?

Posted on January 28, 2011
Who does the president think he is kidding? Democrats should be careful when they invoke Sputnik. Their party's response to the Soviet Union's achievement may have helped win them three elections, in 1958, 1960, and 1962, but it also helped bring about the Cuban missile crisis and durably poisoned the political atmosphere around national-security issues...

Can We Save the Music Business?

Posted on January 28, 2011
A new industry report suggests an effective way to combat piracy. Since the advent of the Web, nearly every industry that sells intellectual property has faced a turning point: the point at which everyone finally concedes that the Internet has put the industry in serious jeopardy...

Proteus-in-Chief

Posted on January 28, 2011
Obama?s rhetoric has swung from hard-left to moderate to hard-left to conciliatory. The problem is, his policies were real, not rhetorical. Barack Obama 1.0 had a solid record of hard-left governance as an Illinois state representative and U...

The Old Obama in New Clothing

Posted on January 28, 2011
Obama tries to cast more-of-the-same as a call to national greatness. The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it...

Waivers for Favors

Posted on January 28, 2011
Big Labor?s Obamacare escape hatch. President Obama's storytellers recently launched a White House blog series called 'Voices of Health Reform,' where 'readers can meet average Americans already benefiting from the health reform law...

The Sputnik Fallacy

Posted on January 28, 2011
False analogies can be costly. Pres. Barack Obama made the 'Sputnik moment' the organizing theme of his State of the Union address, and he chose wisely. Not because the tiny Soviet satellite and the ensuing space race have any bearing on the challenges of today...

Kennedyitis

Posted on January 28, 2011
President Obama has come too late for the sort of government he wishes to lead. ‘This is our generation's Sputnik moment,' President Obama declared in his State of the Union address. It was the first of several references -- some oblique, some direct -- to the Kennedy presidency...

President Leaves Obama Behind

Posted on January 28, 2011
Obama has rhetorically disavowed the far Left. Will his actions match his words? Like a molting iguana freshly liberated from his old skin, the president of the United States seemingly left behind the left-wing incarnation of Barack Obama on Tuesday night...

Mubarak Should Go -- But Not Yet

Posted on January 27, 2011
Pres. Hosni Mubarak has the stink of political death about him. He's an aging dictator trying to hold on to power long enough to pass the presidency on to his son, even as the tectonic plates of the region shift beneath him. #ad#If he's scared right now, with protesters inspired by the Tunisian revolution out in the streets, he should be -- he has much to answer for...

False Imprisonment

Posted on January 27, 2011
New Jersey?s gun laws aren?t merely restrictive, they are gratuitously punitive. Up until the point that they infringe on the Second Amendment, New Jersey's lawmakers have every right to pass restrictive gun laws...

The Disastrous SOTU

Posted on January 27, 2011
A groaning farrago of clich�s and unlikely undertakings. President Obama's State of the Union address and the Republican and Tea Party responses to it were a dismal occasion. From the terminal platitude that all are 'part of the American family,' to the likelihood that a girl in Tucson may 'have dreams like the rest of us,' which 'is what sets us apart as a nation,' it was a groaning farrago of clichés and unlikely undertakings, followed by replies that had been written before the contents of the president's address were known and had almost nothing to do with what he said...

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