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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

Innate Superiority: An Inferior Idea -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on February 12, 2010
Mixed up with the question of fairness to individuals and groups has been the explosive question of whether individuals and groups have the innate ability to perform at the same levels, if they are all treated alike or even given the same objective opportunities...

Obamacare vs. the U.S. Constitution -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on February 12, 2010
Public support for Obamacare is dismal. According to a February 2-3 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, among the 900 registered voters surveyed, only 23 percent wanted it enacted. Fully 70 percent disagreed. Among them, 47 percent would start over, and 23 percent would do nothing...

Liberals and the Scientific Method -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on February 12, 2010
True to their mission as the organs of the liberal establishment, Time magazine and the New York Times ran stories in the midst of the great snowmageddon warning us against drawing any politically incorrect conclusions. ?Skeptics of global warming,? cautioned the Times, ?are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change -- this looks more like global cooling, they taunt...

Obama's Reality Gap -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on February 12, 2010
Editor?s note: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246.It might have been the most revelatory moment of the Obama presidency...

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Closing the New Frontier -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on February 12, 2010
?We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this,? says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. ?But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!?The Russians may be new at capitalism, but they know how it works...

Taking Obesity Too Much to Heart -- By: Jennifer Graham

Posted on February 12, 2010
We have in our house a Valentine tree, under which I have been told to place all incoming missives from Cupid.It?s actually a ragged little poinsettia left over from the last gift-giving holiday, which was -- may I growl? -- a mere seven weeks ago. But when Katherine, who is seven, announced that we needed a Valentine tree, the poinsettia was called into service...

The Washington, D.C., Disconnect -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on February 12, 2010
The disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country has never been greater. Why can?t the political class in D.C. produce a fiscal product that voters, taxpayers, and investors are willing to consume?According to the Washington Post, voters want smaller government and fewer government services by a large 58 to 38 percent margin...

No Compromise on Enemy Combatants -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on February 12, 2010
Imagine the Yanks are beating the Mets 12-0 in the eighth inning (I know -- not hard to imagine). Now, imagine if the Mets approach the Yanks and say, ?How ?bout we give you a new Gatorade barrel, and we call this thing a draw?? Joe Girardi would laugh them out of the dugout and say, ?Hey, you want to forfeit, go ahead and forfeit...

Obama's U.N. State of Mind -- By: Anne Bayefsky

Posted on February 11, 2010
The Obama administration and top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan are casting around for scapegoats after botching the treatment of al-Qaeda bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But their decision to treat him not as an enemy combatant but to accord him American constitutional rights, as well as their plan to entitle Osama bin Laden henchman Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his day(s) in a New York City court, were well-scripted...

The Liberal Temper Tantrum -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on February 11, 2010
The great temper tantrum has begun. It involves as much red-faced foot-stomping, breath-holding, and chair-pounding as you?d expect from a five-year-old who didn?t get a Zhu Zhu for Christmas last year.Liberal pundits are beginning to grapple with the fact that President Obama?s ?transformational? agenda may be dead, and are lashing out at the American public and our institutions of government...

Beauty for Tehran -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on February 11, 2010
I first encountered Nazanin Afshin-Jam -- a former Miss Canada and runner-up in the Miss World pageant, singer, model, and co-founder of Stop Child Executions -- when she was fighting for the life of another Nazanin, Nazanin Fatehi, a teenager who was sentenced to death in Afshin-Jam?s native Iran ...

The Trojan Horse Meets the Vampire Squid -- By: Kevin Williamson

Posted on February 11, 2010
You want to see something that makes a trailer-load of dodgy mortgage derivatives look like an old-fashioned savings bond? Look at the Greek government?s crafty technique for borrowing money without having to put any new debt on the books. It?s a fascinating financial instrument dreamed up by our old buddies at Goldman Sachs -- and the debt goes right back to Greek banks...

A Very Special Anniversary -- By: NRO Symposium

Posted on February 11, 2010
As protesters prepare to gather and the regime flexes its muscle, where does Iran stand? National Review Online asked our experts to assess the situation in Iran and how the international community should react.PETER BROOKESHey, Mr. President, how?s that engagement policy with Iran working out for you? Not so well, from what I can tell...

National Security Goes Green -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on February 11, 2010
The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review report gives unprecedented attention to the issue of climate change. Previous QDR reports did not identify climate change, global warming, or other environmental issues as major concerns for U.S. security. The 2010 QDR, by contrast, dedicates three of its 105 pages (plus executive summary) to the issue, highlighting it (along with energy) in a section dedicated to its impact on the ?future security environment...

The Trouble with Elitist Theories -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on February 11, 2010
What?s behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media, and unease with experts in the Obama administration? In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America?s elites. We see this specifically, for example, in the debate over global warming, which a year ago was accepted as gospel...

Sleighs and sleds, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on February 11, 2010
Is there a subject more boring than the weather? Maybe not, but I?ll try to make this first item here as painless as possible. I was reading a Corner posting by my colleague Bob Costa two days ago. It concerns Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leader of the environmentalist movement in America...

Rawls and Fairness -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on February 11, 2010
Most of us want to be fair, in the sense of treating everyone equally. We want laws to be applied the same to everyone. We want educational, economic, or other criteria for rewards to be the same as well. But this concept of fairness is not only different from prevailing ideas of fairness among many of the intelligentsia, it contradicts their idea of fairness...

Iran's Unhappy Anniversary -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on February 11, 2010
Iran?s Islamic Revolution took place 31 years ago today. The country?s monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, missed it. He had gone abroad in mid-January promising that, when he returned, he would only reign -- not govern.� That wasn?t good enough for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni, then living in exile in France...

A Mistake, Not a Precedent -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on February 11, 2010
Cooking the books on the number of terrorists convicted in the civilian-justice system hasn?t worked for the Obama administration. So now we?re on to the next red herring: the civilian prosecution of shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Once again, the Obama team has learned the wrong lesson from the past while setting the wrong course for the future...

It's Not the Kennedy Seat, Take II -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on February 10, 2010
No seat belongs to the Kennedys, not even in the House of Representatives. Announcing his candidacy on the same day that Sen. Scott Brown took his oath as successor to Edward M. Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, John Loughlin, a former lieutenant colonel in the U...

Ryan Gets Serious -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on February 10, 2010
The Democrats are having trouble finding enough votes to pass their health-care bill -- maybe you?ve heard? The trouble stems from the bill?s many unpopular provisions: It would raise taxes, force people to buy government-approved coverage, and cut Medicare...

Climate G�tterd�mmerung -- By: The Editors

Posted on February 10, 2010
Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the ?limits to growth? fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness...

Victory - How Quaint an Idea! -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on February 10, 2010
There is a common -- and understandable -- perception in the postmodern age of nuclear proliferation that victory is an obsolete concept. Is it that too many nuclear players have provided too many eleventh-hour reprieves to the losing sides in conventional wars?Or is it the non-uniformed status of our increasingly common terrorist enemies? Or perhaps the ?ends? of wars seem inconsequential because of the ubiquity of terrorism and unconventional tactics, the mess of post-battle reconstruction and nation-building, and the power of instant global communications that bring us unedited and unrepresentative soundbites from the front...

A Usurpation of National Sovereignty -- By: Peter Berkowitz

Posted on February 10, 2010
Tel Aviv -- The controversy sparked by the Sept. 15, 2009, publication of the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, otherwise known as the Goldstone Report, may appear to exclusively concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

After Murtha -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on February 10, 2010
With the death of longtime congressman John Murtha, there is an open House seat in Pennsylvania?s twelfth congressional district. The state?s regular primary is scheduled for May 18, and Gov. Ed Rendell is expected to set the twelfth district?s special election for that date as well...

Audi's Gorewellian Super Bowl Ad -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on February 10, 2010
I watched the Super Bowl in the chilled air of the G.F.I.S.Z. (that?s Goldberg Family Ice Station Zebra). Here in Washington, we haven?t seen this much snow since at least 1922. The blizzard of 2010 took out our electricity for a day. Digging out from ?snowmageddon? was nothing less than an Augean challenge, though my lower back is, alas, less than Herculean...

'Fairness' in Education -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on February 10, 2010
A recent flap in a Berkeley high school reveals what a farce ?fairness? can be. Because this is ultra-liberal Berkeley, perhaps we should not be surprised that a proposal has been made to eliminate four jobs as science teachers and use the money saved for programs to help low achievers...

Defending 'Don't Ask' -- By: Mackubin Thomas Owens

Posted on February 09, 2010
In a February 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed, I argued that the current law forbidding homosexual military members to discuss their sexual orientation ought to remain in place. I based my contention on the importance of non-sexual bonding as the glue of unit cohesion, which is an important contributor to military effectiveness...

Federalizing Fat -- By: Julie Gunlock

Posted on February 09, 2010
Michelle Obama has recently taken up childhood obesity as one of her major policy priorities. Interviewed about this ?epidemic,? the first lady discussed in some detail her own children?s supposed weight problems as an illustration of her personal experience with her new signature issue...

Frank Rich and the State of Liberal Commentary -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on February 09, 2010
If one had to read one columnist to appreciate the state of contemporary left-wing commentary, my nomination would be Frank Rich of the Sunday New York Times. No well-known columnist better exemplifies the worst aspects of today?s Left. Virtually every piece is filled with anger, filled with ad hominem responses to arguments, filled with insults of opponents, and at the same time devoid of arguments...

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