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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 05:00:54

A Secret Alliance Between Israel and South Africa -- By: Anthony Paletta

Posted on June 14, 2010
Those alarmed by the prevalent anti-Israeli bias might worry that a new volume, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel?s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, is yet another attempt to expose Israeli skullduggery. But while the title is politically charged, the book, by Sasha Polokow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, is a deft and fair study of the moral compromises that undergirded these two states? close association...

If Mama Ain't Happy, She May Just Run . . . for Office -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on June 14, 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.Women can be completely irrational. They can be over-emotional...

The Other National Debt -- By: Kevin Williamson

Posted on June 14, 2010
About that $14 trillion national debt: Get ready to tack some zeroes onto it. Taken alone, the amount of debt issued by the federal government -- that $14 trillion figure that shows up on the national ledger -- is a terrifying, awesome, hellacious number: Fourteen trillion seconds ago, Greenland was covered by lush and verdant forests, and the Neanderthals had not yet been outwitted and driven into extinction by Homo sapiens sapiens, because we did not yet exist...

The Unions' Little Big Horn -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on June 14, 2010
How bad a defeat did labor unions suffer when Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated their candidate and won the Arkansas Democratic runoff last week? That?s like asking how Custer fared at Little Big Horn. Like Custer the unions bet heavily, putting something like $10 million into Arkansas to support Lincoln?s challenger, Lt...

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Elton John, Egypt, and Rush Limbaugh Reveal Liberal Hypocrisy -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on June 14, 2010
Five-time Grammy-winner Sir Elton John performed at the June 5 wedding of radio star Rush Limbaugh and Kathryn Rogers. Significant controversy surrounds the fact that the openly gay Sir Elton serenaded the openly conservative Limbaugh. But while this hubbub is as loud as one of Sir Elton?s 1970s rock-and-roll anthems, a ?Tiny Dancer?-like hush greeted his recent adventure in Islamofascist homophobia...

The Beauty of Alvin Greene -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on June 14, 2010
How the heck did Alvin Greene, an unemployed veteran who lives with his parents and who had no discernable campaign activity, not only win the South Carolina Democratic Senate primary, but win by a wide margin?So unexpected is this result that official Washington is shaking off its stunned shock and throwing a mild tantrum...

The Very Model of a Modern Major Generalist -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on June 12, 2010
So a man swept into office on an unprecedented tide of delirious fawning is now watching his presidency sink in an unstoppable gush. That?s almost too apt.Unfortunately, in the real world, a disastrous president has consequences. So let me begin by citing the Leader of Her Majesty?s Loyal Opposition in Canada...

Helen Thomas, Turkey, and the Liberation of Israel -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on June 11, 2010
It is hard to become much more influential than the doyen of the White House press corps, who is given a ceremonial front-rows seat at press briefings and press conferences. So when Helen Thomas suggested that the Israelis should leave their country and ?go home? to Poland and Germany, this was not some obscure, eccentric anti-Semite, but a liberal insider who has come to enjoy iconic status and a sense of exemption from criticism...

Crist's Indy Bid Hurting Meek More than Rubio -- By: Michael M. Rosen

Posted on June 11, 2010
Republicans furrowing their brows over the Florida Senate race should try smiling instead.For weeks, the GOP approached Gov. Charlie Crist?s potential party-switch with something like dread. Bravado and (justified) indignation aside, Republican activists despaired in their heart of hearts that an independent bid by Crist could thwart Marco Rubio?s meteoric rise and jeopardize GOP control over the Senate seat...

A New Angle in Nevada -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on June 11, 2010
Nevada?s newly minted Republican Senate nominee, Sharron Angle, is of, by, and from the conservative grass roots. She has an army of ?lick ?n? stickers.? In this electoral cycle, you couldn?t ask for better compatriots. As the New York Times reported on Thursday, they meet each week in her Reno living room to run the campaign of this ...

Gun Control and Mass Murders -- By: John R. Lott Jr.

Posted on June 11, 2010
It wasn?t supposed to happen in England, with its very strict gun-control laws. And yet last week, Derrick Bird shot twelve people to death and wounded eleven others in the northwestern county of Cumbria. A headline in the London Times read: ?Toughest laws in the world could not stop Cumbria tragedy...

Obama's Tough Talk Is a Real Kick -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on June 11, 2010
In the movie The Andromeda Strain, scientists discover an alien bacteria with the potential to destroy humanity. Immediately, government protocols snap into place. The nation?s greatest experts drop everything and race to their lab to work on the problem...

Please, Mr. President, Don't Feel Our Pain -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on June 11, 2010
EDITOR?S NOTE:�This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material,�kfsreprint@hearstsc.com�or phone 800-708-7311, ext. 246.If nothing else, Pres. Barack Obama has made the presidency a bulwark against the emotionalism that has seeped into every corner of our national life...

Wanting to Abolish the Department of Education Is Not Radical -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on June 11, 2010
Newly minted Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle is a kook: That?s what Sen. Harry Reid?s people are telling reporters. ABC, CNN, and other outlets seem to agree, noting that Mrs. Angle wants to shutter the federal Department of Education, get the U...

The Myth of Iran's 'Isolation' -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on June 11, 2010
In announcing the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, President Obama stressed not once but twice Iran?s increasing ?isolation? from the world. This claim is not surprising considering that after 16 months of an ?extended hand? policy, in response to which Iran actually accelerated its nuclear program -- more centrifuges, more enrichment sites, higher enrichment levels -- Iranian ?isolation? is about the only achievement to which the administration can even plausibly lay claim...

Curbing an EPA Power Grab -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on June 10, 2010
With oil still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and partisan recriminations flying on Capitol Hill, the Senate today will vote on a measure to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act...

Implementation Hiccups for Obamacare -- By: Tevi Troy

Posted on June 10, 2010
On May 27, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called a press conference to declare victory in the implementation of President Obama?s massive health-care plan. She told reporters that ?two months in, it?s clear we?re heading in the right direction...

The U.N.'s Iran Dead End -- By: The Editors

Posted on June 10, 2010
The latest round of U.N. sanctions against Iran will not stop that nation?s rulers from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. It could in fact help them acquire one. That is the likely outcome if President Obama does not revise his Iran policy. The resolution, approved yesterday, achieved the following...

Is the Turkey Fiasco an Opening for Mideast Peace? -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on June 10, 2010
Lost in the latest Middle Eastern controversy is the fact that the prospects for Israeli-Arab peace are steadily improving, and that the apparently impending defection of Turkey from the Western camp is a great opportunity. The predictable consequence of Europe?s treating Turkey like a shabby, swarthy mendicant knocking at its back door for 30 years -- embracing it when an ally in the region was needed, but rebuffing it at other times -- is the defeat of the Kemalist Western emulators by the Muslim Turkish nativists...

Barney Frank Ducks C-SPAN -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on June 10, 2010
President Obama?s promise to televise health-care negotiations between the House and Senate ?on C-SPAN? went famously unfulfilled, but House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank has adopted it for the upcoming conference-committee hearings on financial reform -- at least that?s what he wants you to think...

The New Wannabe Ottomans -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on June 10, 2010
A Turkish Islamic group ? the ?Humanitarian Relief Foundation,? often associated by Western intelligence agencies with terrorist sponsorship ? orchestrated the recent Gaza flotilla. It was hoping for the sort of violent, well-publicized confrontation with the Israeli navy that later followed...

Beyond Bigotry -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on June 10, 2010
Israel is at war, and if Israel were to be defeated, much of the world would not shed wet tears. What would happen after such a defeat? No one can seriously doubt that Hamas has genocidal intentions.Abdallah Jarbu, Hamas?s deputy minister of religion, recently asserted that Jews ?want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria -- a microbe unparalleled in the world...

Tobacco Taxes Finance Terrorism -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on June 10, 2010
The next terror attack on America could be a self-inflicted wound�-- specifically, a cigarette burn.Politicians expand tobacco taxes to discourage smoking and to feed their own nicotine-like addiction to public spending. Like so many others, this government action smolders with unintended consequences...

The Transformative Power of Rick Santelli's Rant -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on June 10, 2010
After the latest round of primaries, some lessons can already be drawn from this political year. Incumbents are not popular, especially Democratic incumbents. Democrats? big-government programs are hugely unpopular. Economic distress has made Americans yearn not for more government but for less...

Reducing the Achievement Gap -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on June 09, 2010
A few weeks ago, 2009 reading results were released for ?The Nation?s Report Card? -- the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. And the news was very good for Florida.After a decade of K-12 education reform, Florida?s minority students -- both Hispanics and blacks -- have outscored the average student (minority and non-minority) in many other states...

Palinistas Party -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on June 09, 2010
Oh, those ?mama grizzlies, they rise up.? So says Sarah Palin, rightfully, and it bears repeating after two high-flying lady Republicans she championed swept to victory on Tuesday. In South Carolina, Nikki Haley outdistanced three rivals in the GOP gubernatorial primary (falling just short of a majority, but she is heavily favored to win the runoff on June 22), while in California, Carly Fiorina held off four Republicans in a crowded Senate primary...

The Dartmouth Atlas and Obamacare -- By: Avik Roy

Posted on June 09, 2010
The liberal end of the blogosphere is aflame with criticism of press coverage of a health-care database at Dartmouth College. While the debate may seem arcane, it is worth a closer look. For it relates to one of the key justifications for Obamacare: that the rising cost of health care is largely due to the greed and incompetence of physicians, and that government alone can fix this problem...

Tipping Points -- By: Michael G. Franc

Posted on June 09, 2010
Some have been sounding the alarm about our government?s mounting debt for decades. In the past, they were generally dismissed as alarmists crying wolf. Today, however, most Americans clearly hear the lupine claws of national debt scraping at the door...

Bipartisan Price Controls -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru

Posted on June 09, 2010
A coalition of merchants ? ranging from convenience stores to Home Depot ? want the government to impose price controls for their benefit. It?s a sticking point in the negotiations over the financial-regulation bill. The Senate bill directs the Federal Reserve to set a cap on the prices that debit-card issuers can charge to merchants for the use of their cards...

Educational Reductionism -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on June 09, 2010
Front-page headline in my�New York Post�this morning:2�+�2�=�5NY passes students who get wrong answers on testsThe accompanying story�describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods:�?A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12#...

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