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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

Roberts Rules -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on June 22, 2010
For a dozen years, leftist organizations styling themselves as proponents of international humanitarian law have campaigned to undermine the laws prohibiting material support to terrorism. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court finally swept aside this challenge, forcefully upholding one of our nation?s most crucial counterterrorism tools...

Obama and the War against Israel, Part II -- By: David Horowitz & Jacob Laksin

Posted on June 22, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE: Part I of ?Obama and the War against Israel? can be read here. Even as the new Obama policies were igniting tinderboxes in the Palestinian territories, their most dangerous effects were being felt in Iran. From the beginning of his presidency, Obama had made ?reaching out? to the Iranian police state a major part of his approach to the Middle East...

The Utah Senate Primary: Tea Party vs. Tea Party -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on June 22, 2010
At first blush, Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater have a lot in common. Both are graduates of Brigham Young University, both are self-described tea-party conservatives, and both beat three-term senator Bob Bennett at last month?s Republican convention. During their final debate, they even agreed that soccer is boring...

An Old Strategy, a New Election -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on June 22, 2010
In an above-the-fold story on Sunday, the Washington Post couldn?t hide its skepticism: ?As political gambles go, it?s a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party?s outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot...

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The Left's New Enemy: 'Empire' -- By: Daniel Pipes

Posted on June 22, 2010
We know what Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao wanted (state control of everything) and how they achieved this goal (brutal totalitarianism); but what do their successors today want and how do they hope to achieve it? It?s a curiously unexamined subject. Ernest Sternberg of the University at Buffalo offers answers in an eye-opening article in a recent issue of Orbis, ?Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For...

The Trouble with World Opinion -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on June 22, 2010
Do we care what the world thinks of us? Should we? A new survey of global opinion is getting the usual respectful attention. The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed people in 57 countries and found that President Obama?s approval ratings have slipped a bit among Europeans, Latin Americans, and Asians -- though he remains quite a bit more popular than George W...

The Degeneration of Democracy -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on June 22, 2010
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler?s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions...

The BP Racket -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on June 22, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this material, contact kfsreprint@hearstsc.com or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The Brits are upset that Pres. Barack Obama has been referring to disgraced oil giant BP as ?British Petroleum,? a name it shed long ago...

New Jersey to Beijing and Back Again -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on June 22, 2010
Here are some thoughts on a few recent and important money-politics headlines.Garden State Millionaire Tax Defeated. Some late-breaking news was delivered in New Jersey Monday afternoon on the tax front. Democrats there failed in their efforts to override Gov...

McChrystal Is Not the Problem -- By: The Editors

Posted on June 22, 2010
We?ve defined insubordination down. When Douglas MacArthur was cashiered by President Truman in 1951, Secretary of Defense George Marshall explained to Congress that the dismissal resulted from ?the wholly unprecedented position of a local theater commander publicly expressing his displeasure at and his disagreement with the foreign and military policy of the United States...

Hatch a Plan to Repeal Obamacare -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on June 21, 2010
In a perfect world, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) would like to ?fully repeal? Obamacare. ?That?s what I voted for earlier this year,? he says, alluding to the Senate GOP?s repeal amendment from March, which failed by a vote of 58 to 39. ?But, for now, full repeal is very tough...

Meek's Changing Fortunes -- By: Neal B. Freeman

Posted on June 21, 2010
Unlike his neighbors along the mean streets of inner-city Miami, Kendrick Meek was born sucking on a silver spoon, at least politically speaking. He was the son of the legendary Carrie Meek, who built a political career from the ground up, picking her way from door to door across the cracked-window desolation of Liberty City...

Deval Patrick: The Proto-Obama -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on June 21, 2010
Gov. Deval Patrick, the proto-Barack Obama, is up for reelection in Massachusetts. Republicans hoping to defeat Obama would do well to study Patrick?s political fortunes -- if only to see how poorly Massachusetts Republicans have done against one of the most unpopular governors in the country...

Obama and the War against Israel -- By: David Horowitz & Jacob Laksin

Posted on June 21, 2010
No other country in the world faces an array of existential threats such as the nation of Israel confronts daily. The world?s only Jewish state is also its most precarious. Geographically tiny, Israel is surrounded by theocracies that reject its very existence as a ?nakba? -- a catastrophe -- and call for its destruction...

Obama's Thuggery Is Useless in Fighting Spill -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on June 21, 2010
Thuggery is unattractive, ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Pres. Barack Obama and his administration to BP?s gulf oil spill.Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar?s remark that he would keep his ?boot on the neck? of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell?s definition of totalitarianism as ?a boot stamping on a human face -- forever...

The Obamites v. Arizona, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on June 21, 2010
About a month ago, the United States, in the person of assistant secretary of state Michael Posner, expressed guilt to the People?s Republic of China over Arizona?s new immigration law. Now the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has informed Arizona of the administration?s intention to sue the state while speaking to Ecuadorian television...

How's That Rhetoric Working for You, Louisiana? -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on June 21, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com.Gulf Coast water may not all be clear, but the difference between talk and action, between inexperience in a well-scripted package and actual leadership, is...

Why Has Holder Indicted the Times Square Bomber? -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on June 21, 2010
After the initial spate of chest-beating, we hadn?t heard much from the Justice Department about the case of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and the many ways it illustrates how splendidly the criminal justice system performs in terrorism cases -- even the cases of enemy combatants who could otherwise be held indefinitely and interrogated for intelligence purposes...

Hijacking the Marriage Debate -- By: Thomas M. Messner

Posted on June 19, 2010
The federal district court in San Francisco heard closing arguments Wednesday in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the lawsuit seeking to overturn California?s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. Activists hope that federal courts will use this case to impose same-sex marriage nationwide...

Gulf War Three -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on June 19, 2010
I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, ?Only the mediocre are always at their best.?Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race...

Etheridge, Unglued -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on June 18, 2010
On paper, Bob Etheridge should be feeling a lot like George Allen and Martha Coakley right now. Like Allen, a Virginia GOP senator who called a videographer ?macaca? in 2006, and Coakley, the Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate who capped a series of gaffes by calling a Boston Red Sox legend a ?Yankee fan? earlier this year, Etheridge has attracted national attention by making a politically unwise outburst within range of a camera...

The Great Anglo-American Spat -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on June 18, 2010
Various irate British observers -- from columnists like Peter Hitchens and Geoffrey Wheatcroft to parliamentarians and former cabinet officials -- have recently declared the ?special relationship? with America to be over. The Anglo animus, perhaps brought to a boil by the World Cup soccer match and by President Obama?s handling of the BP spill, has now reached comical levels...

He Blinded Me with Science -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on June 18, 2010
A little over a year ago, Pres. Barack Obama reversed George W. Bush?s restrictions on embryonic-stem-cell research. Just for the record, Bush didn?t ?ban? embryonic-stem-cell research, as so many critics claimed, and he didn?t restrict non-embryonic-stem-cell research at all...

The Great Disenchantment -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on June 18, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this material, contact kfsreprint@hearstsc.com or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.The BP spill won?t destroy Barack Obama?s presidency...

Misplaced Sensitivity to Islam -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on June 18, 2010
When the New York Times covered a party in honor of Ayaan Hirsi Ali?s new book, Nomad, they placed it on the same page as a sympathetic story about American Muslim women who choose to wear the full cover. The placement was telling.The Times story about women who cover their entire bodies, including their faces, spoke of the challenges they face in America -- the stares, the insults, the discomfort...

Club Fed for Illegal Aliens -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on June 18, 2010
Thanks to their international ?human rights? advocates, Gitmo detainees receive art therapy, movie nights, and video games at their U.S.-taxpayer-funded camp in Cuba. Now, the Left?s bleeding-heart lobby wants to provide similar taxpayer-sponsored perks to illegal-alien detainees on American soil...

Keeping Up with the Jones Act -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on June 18, 2010
As a self-proclaimed citizen of the world, Pres. Barack Obama should have welcomed rather than spurned international assistance to prevent BP?s underwater oil geyser from wrecking the Gulf Coast. But spurn he did. Obama?s failure to waive the Jones Act still maintains a sea wall that blocks potentially helpful foreign ships from this tear-inducing mess...

A Mind-Changing Page -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on June 18, 2010
Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue. Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely held belief. But there is such a page -- page 77 of the book Out of Work, by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway...

Barack Obama, Dreamer in Chief -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on June 18, 2010
Pres. Barack Obama doesn?t do the mundane. He was sent to us to do larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian ?I feel your pain,? a bit of recovery and economic-mitigation accounting...

Return of the Speech Police -- By: The Editors

Posted on June 18, 2010
Only in the Through the Looking-Glass world inside the Beltway could the DISCLOSE Act -- a piece of legislation meticulously crafted to protect Washington?s two most powerful special-interest groups -- be presented to the public as a courageous stand against special-interest groups...

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