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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

Defending the Tea Party

Posted on January 12, 2011
The Right calculates its response to the Left?s smears. GOP strategist Mary Matalin calls the Left's reaction to the Tucson shootings a symptom of Palin Derangement Syndrome. '[It] is a longtime byproduct of the inability to defend or advocate an agenda,' she says...

Gender Discrimination in Science Is a Myth

Posted on January 12, 2011
Statistics show that women are treated fairly in technical fields. In the prestigious scientific journal Nature, my fellow University of Washington graduate, Dr. Jennifer Rohn, recently accused the entire scientific community of being "inherently sexist...

Massacre, Followed by Libel

Posted on January 12, 2011
The origins of Jared Loughner?s delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Paul Krugman?s? Washingto -- The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the 'climate of hate' created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents, and sundry other liberal bêtes noires...

The Worst Sheriff in America

Posted on January 12, 2011
We have seen this kind of political Keystone Koppery before ? notably in the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002. There are many heroes who showed indomitable courage and grace under fire during this weekend's horrific Tucson massacre...

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The Exploitative Rhetoric of Tragedy

Posted on January 12, 2011
If rhetoric is to blame, then what shall we do about it? In the wake of the horrendous shooting rampage in Tucson, why isn't anyone talking about banning Mein Kampf? Or The Communist Manifesto? Or for that matter, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth? After all, unlike Sarah Palin's absurdly infamous Facebook map with crosshairs on congressional districts that some pundits have blamed for the violence, we have some evidence -- suspect Jared Lee Loughner's own words -- that these books were a direct influence on him...

Talk Radio, Ghoul Politics

Posted on January 12, 2011
From the Krauthammer archives: April 28, 1995. Fewer than half the dead had been recovered from their bombed-out tomb in Oklahoma City before the political exploitation of their tragedy had begun...

Azerbaijan, Armenia, and America

Posted on January 11, 2011
Why the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh matters to the U.S. Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous area in the South Caucasus, has a troubled history. In 1923, Stalin made the region a part of Azerbaijan, despite the fact that most of the population was Armenian...

Welcome to the Machine

Posted on January 11, 2011
From the December 31, 2010, issue of NR. Welcome to Washington, Mr. Smith, and welcome to the Agency. I salute your determination to apply common sense in Washington, to fix what's broken in order to serve the public interest and the common good...

A Horrid Crime, a Dishonest Debate

Posted on January 11, 2011
The same Left that embraces terrorist Bill Ayers seeks a tactical victory in Tucson. On June 5, 1968, a deranged 25-year-old Jordanian named Sirhan Sirhan slithered through a crowd toward Sen...

Travesty in Texas

Posted on January 11, 2011
With Texas judge Pat Priest imposing a sentence of three years in prison on former House majority leader Tom DeLay, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is the culmination of an undeserved, unjustified, and unconscionable act of political persecution...

Nothing Sacred

Posted on January 11, 2011
For the Left, every text is ?living? A number of well-known spokesmen on the left have voiced reservations, not only about the Republican decision to have members of Congress -- both Republicans and Democrats -- read the Constitution aloud at the opening of the latest session of Congress, but also about Americans' veneration of the Constitution...

Comradeship in Miami

Posted on January 11, 2011
Last month, just before Christmas, I attended an event in Miami -- Greater Miami, I should say. Coral Gables. May I scribble you a few notes about this? This was the annual luncheon of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. A good portion of Miami's Cuban-American community, and therefore of the Cuban-American community in general, was there...

The Abuse of Tucson

Posted on January 11, 2011
A tragedy is being exploited for a fresh slur against the Tea Party. Almost instantaneously the horrific shooting in Tucson, Ariz., became the occasion for partisan hatred. It's one thing to charge your opponents with increasing the debt or serving the interests of the rich; it's quite another to say they are accomplices to mass murder...

A Republican Showdown?

Posted on January 11, 2011
Often, in politics, it doesn?t matter what the facts are. They say that, in politics, "overnight is a lifetime." In other words, the journey from triumphant hero to discredited scapegoat can be very brief...

Contemptible Opportunists Obscure Actual Problem

Posted on January 11, 2011
The solution is treating the ill, not policing our ?rhetoric.? It doesn't require actual violence for leftists in America to malign the Right as bloodthirsty. So fertile are their imaginations -- or so flexible their ethical constraints -- that even the most orderly and irenic gathering can be twisted into something sinister...

Senseless Violence, Senseless Lawmaking

Posted on January 11, 2011
A gun-free zone wouldn?t have prevented Saturday?s tragedy. Judging by the information that's currently available, there is virtually no gun-control law that could have stopped Jared Lee Loughner from killing six and wounding 14 on Saturday...

The Most Cynical Campaign

Posted on January 10, 2011
The Tucson shooting was an unspeakable horror, a characteristic exercise in American democracy -- a townhall meeting outside a Safeway store -- interrupted by gunshots and bloodshed. The gunman targeted Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot through the head but survived, and killed six and wounded thirteen others...

MEK Is Not a Terrorist Group

Posted on January 10, 2011
The material-support statute is fine; the designation is the problem. The moral of this story may be that sometimes it's better not to have friends, especially the sort with easy access to the op-ed page of the New York Times, or 'The Newspaper of Record,' as it sometimes bills itself...

Conservatives in the Crosshairs

Posted on January 10, 2011
The Left is wrong to tie metaphorical violence to literal violence. It's been only two days since a murderous rampage left six dead -- including a nine-year-old child and federal judge John Roll -- and 14 wounded, including Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot point-blank in the head and who, as of this writing, is still in critical condition but (all things considered) 'doing well...

Se�or Rubio Goes to Washington

Posted on January 10, 2011
But he doesn?t talk as if he?s hot stuff. ‘You didn't fly here to celebrate me,' Marco Rubio announced from the stage of the Ronald Reagan Building (naturally) in Washington, D.C. The comment could have been a bit jarring coming from Rubio...

Dealmaker Daley

Posted on January 10, 2011
Is the new chief of staff Obama?s emissary to Boehner? ‘He possesses a deep understanding of how jobs are created and how to grow our economy.' That's what Barack Obama said as he announced the appointment of his new chief of staff, William Daley, before a crowd of admiring White House staffers...

Katie Couric: Koranic Scholar

Posted on January 10, 2011
The hostess is not anchored in reality. Amid late 2010's snowstorms and champagne toasts, most folks likely missed a truly stunning comment by a high-profile U.S. journalist. Katie Couric's words epitomize the ignorance and politically correct blindness that befall too many of America's media elite...

Dorwan Stoddard, RIP

Posted on January 10, 2011
An overlooked story of heroism Dorwan Stoddard and his wife, Mavanell, grew up together as friends in Tucson, and were high-school sweethearts in the 1950s. The two parted, moved away, and married others...

This Is Not War

Posted on January 10, 2011
A voluntary rhetorical cold shower. As after any violent attack, there is great temptation to posture politically, from both sides and even among law enforcement. It is wrong. Not every moment is political, and those who rush where angels fear to tread are fools...

Mr. Civility

Posted on January 10, 2011
The worst peacemaker in the world MSNBC host Keith Olbermann announced Saturday that all Americans must abandon rhetoric with violent imagery, saying that 'the [political] rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous...

Political Vultures

Posted on January 09, 2011
The sick art of turning insanity into politics Very few Americans are fans of both The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kamp, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. Fewer still post on the Internet fears about 'brain washing,' 'mind control,' and 'conscience dreaming'; have a long record of public disruption and aberrant behavior; were expelled from community college; or were summarily rejected for military service...

The Constitution Fetish

Posted on January 08, 2011
Progressives are hot for <i>Wickard v. Filburn</i>, not the Constitution. Is there anything richer than a gaggle of smarmy progressives snickering at the conservative 'Constitution fetish'? 'Fetish' is the fashionable Left's latest suggestive imagery turned talking point, a dig at the new Republican majority in the House, which began its session this week by reading the Constitution aloud...

The NFL?s Dickensian Moment

Posted on January 08, 2011
Pro football reigns as the undisputed king of American sports. But its labor woes are a ticking time bomb. In so many ways, these are the best of times for the National Football League. As TV reporter Bill Carter recently affirmed, its games are 'by far the most popular form of programming on American television...

Obama?s Vacation Reading

Posted on January 07, 2011
Is the president trying to become a man of the people? President Obama's vacation reading was announced recently, and the three authors likely to get sales boosts from the announcement are Lou Cannon, David Mitchell, and John Le Carré, authors of President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, and Our Kind of Traitor, respectively...

Hitting the Ceiling

Posted on January 07, 2011
Republicans debate whether and how to raise the federal debt limit. What happens when you get close to the limit on your credit card? Well, if you're the United States Congress, you can just vote to increase that limit and carry on spending -- and Congress has done just that five times in the past four years...

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