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Covering The Supreme Court -- from National Review Online

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

To Be a Fan of the Washington Nationals -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on April 23, 2010
Among my various idiosyncrasies, such as (twice) driving from Washington to New York to watch a world championship chess match, the most baffling to my friends is my steadfast devotion to the Washington Nationals. When I wax lyrical about having discovered my own private paradise at Nationals Park, eyes begin to roll and it is patiently explained to me that my Nats have been not just bad, but prodigiously -- epically -- bad...

California Pension Reform -- By: Meg Whitman

Posted on April 23, 2010
To get spending under control in Sacramento, the next California governor must have the courage to confront the public-employee unions and reform the state pension system. Short of raising taxes or cutting education to the bone, there is no other way to dry up the red ink in the budget...

Crist, Rubio, and Credit Cards -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on April 22, 2010
Gov. Charlie Crist has been pushing an investigation of the Florida GOP credit-card mess. It may end up working as well as the rest of his campaign tacks -- in other words, it may backfire.Since February, Crist has flogged Marco Rubio, his opponent in Florida?s GOP Senate primary, for charging more than $100,000, including thousands in personal expenses, on party-issued plastic...

A Republican Financial Reform -- By: Duncan Currie

Posted on April 22, 2010
Democrats view financial reform as a winning issue, and with good reason. Though Americans remain divided over whom or what to blame for the post-2007 credit crisis, anti-Wall Street sentiment transcends partisan lines. While liberals have been demanding stronger consumer protections, many conservative tea-partiers have been railing against the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) -- which, lest we forget, was signed by President Bush...

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The Global-Warming Tax -- By: Patrick J. Michaels

Posted on April 22, 2010
Climategate, Copenhagen, Snowmageddon in the nation?s capital, the EPA ruling that CO2 endangers us all, and Senate Republicans pushing for a global-warming tax. Has it been a great run-up to Earth Day, or what? Never has a public-policy agenda been pursued with so little regard for scientific fact or public opinion...

Avatar on Earth Day -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs

Posted on April 22, 2010
James Cameron?s record-shattering film Avatar is being released on DVD today. Today is not a Tuesday, the day DVDs normally hit the stores, but a Thursday, to coincide with the 40th annual Earth Day: Avatar highlights the threats posed by an advanced, war-mongering, and artificial society to a primitive, pacific, and organic culture...

Paterson to NY-29: Drop Dead -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on April 22, 2010
Remember Rep. Eric Massa (D., N.Y.)? It?s understandable that you may not want to remember the Tickle-Me Congressman, and his scandalous departure is receding further into history; it has been a full six weeks since he resigned from Congress. His former seat in the House of Representatives has remained vacant since March 8, and while it?s not uncommon for a district to have no representation for a few weeks after a death or unexpected resignation, Gov...

It's Not Just the Usual Suspects Taking Potshots at Israel -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on April 22, 2010
It really is open season on Israel, isn?t it? While Iran?s jihadi rulers continue their drive for nuclear weapons, while Syria transfers thousands of missiles to Hezbollah, while leaders of the Palestinian Authority glorify Islamist terrorists, the New York Times finds President Obama?s ?willingness to challenge Israel#...

American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites Violence -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 22, 2010
American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years. The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel's mortal enemies...

Gangster Government Becomes a Long-Running Series -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on April 22, 2010
Almost a year ago, in a Washington Examiner column on the Chrysler bailout, I reflected on the Obama administration?s decision to force bondholders to accept 33 cents on the dollar on secured debts while giving United Auto Workers retirees 50 cents on the dollar on unsecured debts...

EPA's New CO2 Rules: Bad News for Racial Minorities -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on April 22, 2010
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to curtail greenhouse gases. Black Americans should be afraid. Very afraid.Five civil-rights organizations recently condemned the EPA?s plans to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions as part of its war on so-called ?global warming...

Earth Day Turns 40 -- By: Roy Spencer

Posted on April 22, 2010
When Earth Day was first celebrated 40 years ago, there were many good reasons to be concerned about the environment. Not only did trash litter the landscape, but rivers were catching fire and massive numbers of fish were dying due to unrestricted pollution from factories...

Corker vs. the Real Bailouts -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on April 22, 2010
Will the financial-reform bill before Congress -- the Dodd bill, named for Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) -- put an end to bailouts, as Democrats claim? Or does it create a permanent bailout authority, as Republicans have argued? There is an answer, and there is a complication...

'Conditional Cash Transfer' Flops in NYC -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on April 21, 2010
Michael Bloomberg, New York City?s mayor-for-life, has announced that the city will not go ahead with a publicly funded CCT program.A what? ?CCT? stands for ?Conditional Cash Transfer,? the current fad among anti-poverty campaigners. The name, unusually for social-policy onomastics, clearly describes the program...

Obama's Space Program: More Conservative than Bush's -- By: Rand Simberg

Posted on April 21, 2010
I find the current debate over President Obama?s new space policy mind-bendingly ironic. We have a radical president bent on socializing and nationalizing everything from the auto industry to hospitals, but when he comes up with a policy that actually harnesses free enterprise, we hear from conservatives nothing but complaints...

Obama and the New Civility -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 21, 2010
It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse -- another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our new bipartisan protocols, which will go something like the following...

Hot Senate Race in Indiana -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on April 21, 2010
It?s easy to conclude that Barack Obama?s political career is driven by a combination of good luck, hapless opponents, flowery speeches, and generous press coverage. But every once in a while, he has achieved something pretty astounding -- like winning Indiana...

Larry Kissell's Health-Care Tightrope -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on April 21, 2010
?No man can serve two masters,? Jesus said. The Lord was speaking about choosing between God and money, but this year moderate House Democrats face an analogous choice. With a midterm electoral bloodbath looming, swing-district lawmakers are having a thorny time trying to please the conservative sensibilities of their constituents without neglecting their duty to kiss Madam Pelosi?s pinky ring (not to mention genuflecting to President Obama)...

A Delayed Bush Backlash -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on April 21, 2010
I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day tea-party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer.First, here?s what I didn?t see. I didn?t see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of ?homegrown fascism...

Obama and Goldman Sachs -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on April 21, 2010
While President Obama assails the culture of greed and recklessness practiced by the men of Goldman Sachs, his administration is infested with them. The White House can no more disown Government Sachs than Da Boss-in-chief can disown Chicago politics...

Clinton Maligns the Tea Parties -- By: Tony Blankley

Posted on April 21, 2010
Former president Bill Clinton last week inadvertently demonstrated Karl Marx?s shrewd observation that ?history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.? The historical event in question is the attempt to deter a broad-based, popular, American anti-high-tax, anti-big-central-government movement by smearing it as likely to induce seditious violence against the government...

Obama's bad round, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on April 21, 2010
As regular readers know, I?m not a critic of President Obama?s golf habit -- of his liking for the game, and indulgence in it. Quite the opposite. In January, after he had taken some heat for his golf-playing ways, I wrote an essay for National Review called ?Hail to the Golfer-in-Chief...

George LeMieux's Endorsement Dilemma -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on April 21, 2010
One hot August day, George LeMieux was a little-known 40-year-old political consultant. The next afternoon, he was appointed to represent 18 million Floridians in the United States Senate by Gov. Charlie Crist, his former boss. ?I?d describe myself as a Charlie Crist Republican,? LeMieux said then...

Obamacare: The Next Battles -- By: Ramesh Ponnuru

Posted on April 20, 2010
The first steps toward the repeal of Obamacare have already occurred. First, the legislation passed without leading to a lasting improvement in the president?s or the Democrats? approval ratings. Second, in part as a result, it has quickly become Republican-party orthodoxy that the new health-care legislation needs to be repealed and replaced with conservative reforms...

In Search of a Villain -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on April 20, 2010
When the Securities and Exchange Commission threw down the gauntlet against Goldman Sachs on Friday, Henry Kissinger?s bon mot on the brutal 1980s war between Iran and Iraq sprang to mind: ?Too bad they can?t both lose.?Succinctly summing up the allegations, SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami quipped that the financial ?product? at the heart of the suit ?was new and complex, but the deception is old and simple...

Big Week for the NEA -- By: Frederick M. Hess

Posted on April 20, 2010
Last week had two red-letter days for the National Education Association, as Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opted, at crucial moments, to forsake reform and preen for easy applause from the cheap seats.The result: two substantial setbacks for those who believe we need to rethink teacher tenure, evaluation, and pay, and who believe K-12 schooling needs to stop mortgaging the future of the kids it?s supposed to serve...

The Taxing Power of Obamacare -- By: Robert A. Levy

Posted on April 20, 2010
The litigation battle has begun. While the legal arguments are technical, the basic issue is straightforward: Can the federal government force people to buy a product -- in this instance, health insurance -- from a private company? Advocates of Obamacare claim that the mandate to purchase health insurance is authorized under the Commerce Clause...

The Problem with Romneycare -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on April 20, 2010
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney must be tired of answering questions about his position on Obamacare, yet questions remain. We know he?s against it, but how does he square his opposition to it with his support for a similar plan in Massachusetts? His answer -- what?s good for the states is not always good for the country -- looks increasingly weak now that flaws in the Massachusetts model are coming to light...

Democrats Hate that Tea Parties Are Peaceful -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on April 20, 2010
Former president Clinton reminds us, on the 15th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, to police our discourse so as not to incite the ?delirious? and ?unhinged.? Timothy McVeigh, he notes, ?took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated#...#by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government...

The Limits of Power -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on April 20, 2010
When, many years ago, I first began to study the history of slavery around the world, one of the oddities that puzzled me was the practice of paying certain slaves, which existed in ancient Rome and in America?s antebellum South, among other places.In both places, slave owners or their overseers whipped slaves to force them to work, and in neither place was whipping a slave literally to death likely to bring any serious consequences...

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