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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

Reassessing Warren G. Harding

Posted on March 04, 2011
And a call for normalcy. Change isn't all that it's cracked up to be. That's what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement...

Mitch Daniels?s Obamacare Problem

Posted on March 04, 2011
His state?s health-care plan promotes dependence on government. Mitt Romney isn't the only Republican presidential hopeful with an Obamacare problem: Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, were he to become the GOP's nominee, could also undermine the repeal campaign that has united the party's base and independent voters...

The Sci-Fi as Rom-Com

Posted on March 04, 2011
A review of <I>The Adjustment Bureau</I>. The new film The Adjustment Bureau, written and directed by George Nolfi, features Matt Damon as David Norris, a politician whose chance encounter with Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) complicates not only his career ambitions but his naïve assumptions about freedom and destiny...

Vinson to White House: Stop Stalling

Posted on March 04, 2011
When he declared Obamacare unconsitutional, it wasn?t just ?friendly advice.? If you've been following the news regarding the constitutional challenges to Obamacare, you'll know that the biggest case of all is Florida v...

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America?s College Obsession

Posted on March 04, 2011
The layers of folly surrounding the quest for college Andy Ferguson, one of America's most engaging and perspicacious journalists, has not -- as André Malraux said of Whittaker Chambers -- returned from the hell of college admissions with empty hands...

We, the Unhyphenated Americans

Posted on March 04, 2011
Meet my people. My fellow Americans, who are 'your people'? I ask because U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase 'my people' in congressional testimony this week. It was an unmistakably color-coded and exclusionary reference intended to deflect criticism of the Obama Justice Department's selective enforcement policies...

Between Garbage and Gold

Posted on March 04, 2011
We can draw a line. Fred Phelps, the deranged pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church -- which is more like a family entourage of psychos -- has devised a scheme for getting attention: He desecrates military funerals...

Hands off My Mental Activity

Posted on March 04, 2011
In upholding Obamacare, Judge Kessler undermines its supporters? case. ‘I can take care of my enemies all right,' Warren Harding once said. 'But my friends, my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!' In the sense that so irked Harding, Judge Gladys Kessler is a great good friend of Obamacare...

From Baghdad to Benghazi

Posted on March 04, 2011
Several factors catalyzed the Arab spring. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise. Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Qaddafi...

Government Shutdown? So What?

Posted on March 04, 2011
It?s a minuscule price to be paid for financial solvency and economic growth. According to news reports, Team Obama and House Republicans are at least $50 billion apart in the budget negotiations for FY2011...

Secretary Gates Looks Ahead

Posted on March 03, 2011
Fighting the wars of today, and tomorrow. In an unusually revealing speech at West Point last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates effectively wrote off much of the country's recent effort to prepare the weaponry and military configurations of the future; lamented that the armed forces spent too much time planning war and not enough in conducting useful activities; dismissed the possibility of war or major confrontations with other leading powers; and told the brass and officer candidates of the U...

Setting the Record Straight

Posted on March 03, 2011
Sen. Jeff Sessions keeps Obama honest on the budget. It's been a frustrating couple of weeks for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.). As ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, he's had to sit through hours of testimony and listen to endless amounts of spin regarding President Obama's 2012 budget...

Moshing for Labor

Posted on March 03, 2011
A ?review? of IfIHadAHiFi?s pro-union punk insta-classic ?Imperial Walker.? In the realm of politicized rock 'n' roll, IfIHadAHiFi has some big shoes to fill. Woodstock ended the Vietnam War. Live Aid eradicated hunger in Africa...

Time to Kill HAMP

Posted on March 03, 2011
It?s a rip-off, perpetuated by the very same people who have been ripping us off for years. President Obama's beloved foreclosure-prevention scheme, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), was a fraud from Day One: It is designed to do nothing but camouflage the effects of the housing meltdown...

True-Life Grit

Posted on March 03, 2011
Marine-to-Marine reporting from Bing West in Afghanistan Bing West is the author of the new book The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. West is a combat vet himself, and the book is an on-the-scene chronicle of the war we're in...

The Revolution?s Morning After

Posted on March 03, 2011
A new power structure is taking shape in the Middle East. The dust is already settling in Tahrir Square, allowing us a glimpse of the political realities beginning to emerge in the new Middle East...

Government-Shutdown Blame Game

Posted on March 03, 2011
Public opinion is not where it was during the Clinton?Gingrich struggle. Sometimes you get an idea of the way opinion is headed by the phrases you don't hear. A case in point: In all the discussion and debate these past weeks about a possible government shutdown if Congress and President Obama fail to agree on funding bills, I don't recall having heard the phrase 'train wreck...

?You?re [expletive deleted] dead!? &c.

Posted on March 03, 2011
On the floor of the Wisconsin assembly, a Democrat threatened a Republican, obscenely. The Democrat was a man named Gordon Hintz; the Republican was a woman named Michelle Litjens. He pointed his finger at her and shouted, 'You're f***ing dead!' He did not use asterisks...

Caught in the Middle East Minefield

Posted on March 03, 2011
The administration is pursuing a confused Middle East policy. America seems trapped in an exploding Middle East minefield. Revolts are breaking out amid the choke points of world commerce. Shiite populations are now restive in the Gulf monarchies...

The Pirates of Somalia

Posted on March 03, 2011
We have the weapons to defeat them. All we lack is the will. Not long after achieving independence, the United States faced its first foreign threat: pirates off the coast of Africa seizing American merchant ships...

He?s Back!

Posted on March 03, 2011
Meet Newt Gingrich, the ?Mitt Romney alternative.? Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has his eye on the White House. After months of speculation, he told a Georgia talk-radio program Thursday that he intends to form a presidential exploratory committee in coming weeks...

Stocks Diss Oil, for Now

Posted on March 03, 2011
Barring a Saudi blow-up, the economy will survive. Big economic-growth stats are trumping oil prices and the Mideast tinderbox. In optimistic trading on Thursday, stocks soared nearly 200 Dow points...

A New Strategy for Wisconsin

Posted on March 03, 2011
Split out the union provisions and pass them by a simple majority. On February 17, the 14 Democratic members of the Wisconsin senate fled across the state line to the Best Western Clock Tower Resort in Rockford, Ill...

There Are Worse Things Than Government Shutdowns

Posted on March 02, 2011
Like continuing down our ruinous spending path, for instance. It appears that the government is not going to shut down this Friday after all. Republicans backed down just enough to get Democrats to agree to a two-week extension of government funding...

Our Schizoid Foreign Policy

Posted on March 02, 2011
There are two possible diagnoses ? neither of them very reassuring. Are we stupid abroad by accident or design? In the manner of a doctor, let us review the symptoms of our present foreign policy and then offer a diagnosis: Autocratic and dictatorial Russia has become a veritable friend...

The Inquisition of General Caldwell

Posted on March 02, 2011
How a soldier without honor and a sleazy journalist cooked up a story against one of our finest generals. It is rarely a good idea to get ahead of an official investigation. However, before the mainstream press destroys the reputation of one of America's best and most effective generals, someone should speak up in his defense, particularly as the officers who work with him night and day are probably forbidden to do so until the investigation ordered by General Petraeus is complete...

Libya's Makeover

Posted on March 02, 2011
The Libyan people are no more our ally than Qadaffi. ‘The relationship has been moving in a good direction for a number of years now, and I think tonight does mark a new phase,' said Condoleezza Rice...

Obama?s Unionization Push

Posted on March 02, 2011
As private-sector unions struggle, the NLRB proposes to lay a large thumb on the scale. Could 2011 be the year of the protest and the beginning of the end for the excessive political power of Big Labor? President Obama appears ready to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening...

Don?t Rush to Ban Chemicals

Posted on March 02, 2011
Oftentimes, government regulations do more harm than good. The health-scare headline of the week: 'Americans found to have twice as much bisphenol A in their bodies as Canadians.' BPA, as it is known, is a widely used chemical found in baby bottles, containers, CDs, car dashboards, and even dental sealants...

School Reform: Goodbye to Bush

Posted on March 02, 2011
The Midwestern Republican governors? efforts mark a resurgence of principled conservatism in education reform. For those engaged in school-reform debates, the most significant development to come out of Wisconsin is the return of principled conservatism to the education arena...

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