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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

Obama's Healthy Habit -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on January 21, 2010
Well, how?re you feeling, Brown fans? (No, I?m not talking about the Cleveland football team.) Happy about Tuesday?s big victory? Happy about that 41st seat? No doubt. And to those who were for Coakley, and not Brown: I?m sorry. Losing can be a bitter pill...

Message? What Message? -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on January 21, 2010
You cannot lead solely by following election returns. But some members of the Democratic party are now testing the proposition that you can ignore them.A year ago, they luxuriated in victory. On Jan. 23, 2009, newly minted president Barack Obama, in a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, indicated that bipartisanship (campaign rhetoric notwithstanding) was not on the agenda...

The War Against the Infidels -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on January 21, 2010
In 2001, the monumental 6th-century buddhas of Bamiyan were dynamited on orders from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. The United States and other Western governments issued protests. Afghanistan?s Islamist rulers shrugged them off.In 2010, Al-Kifl, the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel, near Baghdad, is being desecrated...

Our Philosopher-King Obama -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on January 21, 2010
In Plato?s ideal society, philosopher kings and elite Guardians shepherded the rabble to force them to do the ?right? thing. To prevent the unwashed from doing anything stupid, the all-powerful, all-wise Guardians often had to tell a few ?noble? lies...

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Could Obey Be Coakley'd? -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on January 21, 2010
Goliath has been known to win, or he wouldn?t be Goliath. But he didn?t win this time. And that could significantly affect what happens in November. Scott Brown?s victory in the Massachusetts special election for the seat formerly considered by too many to be Ted Kennedy?s seat, is many varieties of good news...

Rightward, How? -- By: An NRO Symposium

Posted on January 21, 2010
How should conservatives make use of the opportunity presented by the ?Massachusetts miracle?? We asked a few politics experts on the right. GERARD ALEXANDER The Massachusetts Miracle is first and foremost an opportunity to put the Democrats on defense in policy debates...

Are Republicans Listening to the Scott Brown Message? -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on January 21, 2010
Sen. Scott Brown?s epic victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday night dealt a crushing blow to Obamacare, cap-and-trade, card check (and other union favors), and most importantly, all the tax hikes that are lingering on the table. But does Washington really understand the Scott Brown message?President Obama thinks his ?remoteness and detachment? are the problems...

Why the Great and Growing Backlash? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on January 20, 2010
Dream up a gargantuan backlash against Barack Obama?s left-wing gospel, and you still could not invent the notion of a relatively unknown, conservative Scott Brown knocking off an Obama-endorsed, liberal, female attorney in liberal Massachusetts -- in a race to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy...

It's the Enemy, Stupid -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on January 20, 2010
It was health care that nationalized the special election for what we now know is the people?s Senate seat. But it was national security that put real distance between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. ?People talk about the potency of the health-care issue,? Brown?s top strategist, Eric Fehrnstrom, told National Review?s Robert Costa, ?but from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants...

Obama's Blessing in Disguise -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on January 20, 2010
President Obama doesn?t know it yet, but Scott Brown did him a huge favor. If, as expected, he becomes the next senator from Massachusetts; and if, as expected, his election dooms the Pelosi-Reid health-care-reform bill, Obama will have an opportunity to lay the entire fiasco at the feet of that troublesome Democratic duo...

Tough Love Needed for Haiti -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on January 20, 2010
The images from Haiti are, if anything, only getting worse. What was left of an already fragile society is starting to break down, as violence and chaos take over. Despite the heroic efforts of aid workers and the battered Haitian government, it looks as if Haiti?s problems will persist well into the 21st century, long after the debris is cleared and the houses are rebuilt...

What the GOP Needs -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on January 20, 2010
Some people say that there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. Whether that is said because of being too lazy to examine the differences or because it makes some people feel exalted to say, in effect, ?a plague on both your houses,? it is a dangerous self-indulgence...

The Perfect Storm Hits -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on January 19, 2010
Back on January 4, as Scott Brown was driving his beat-up truck through Massachusetts TV ads, I noted, ?The bad news is that Brown needs almost a perfect storm -- unbelievably fired-up Republicans, immensely depressed Democrats, and a heavy skew among independents -- to make up the traditional 30-percentage-point deficit and win this race...

The Authoritarian Temptation -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on January 19, 2010
Thomas Friedman has been to China again, and seems to have experienced another Lincoln Steffens moment. More than one such moment, in fact. In his January 10 New York Times column, Tom was swooning over the new high-speed rail link between Peking and Shanghai -- five hours to cover 700 miles...

Are Republicans 'Due'? -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on January 19, 2010
When a baseball player has come to bat after failing to get a hit 20 times in a row, some fans say he is ?due? for a hit. But statisticians say he is no more likely to get a hit in this at-bat than at any other time. In other words, there is no such thing as being ?due...

The New Black Panthers and the White House -- By: Hans A. von Spakovsky

Posted on January 19, 2010
The more the Obama administration fights the subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and denies congressmen?s requests for answers concerning the inexplicable dismissal of the voter-intimidation case in Philadelphia against the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), the more reasonable people wonder what the administration has to hide...

Democrats and Double Standards -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on January 19, 2010
Oh, how different the world would look if Martha Coakley were a Republican! As it is, she gets the sort of gentle rebukes the press reserves for Democrats. Her campaign was too ?lackadaisical,? we are told. She was ?overconfident,? and too ?buttoned down...

Mass.-teria, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on January 19, 2010
I had to smile at this headline: ?Coakley hopes for historic win in Kennedy seat bid.? (Article here.) Historic win? If a Democrat in Massachusetts is elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Ted Kennedy, that is historic? Uh, no. That is normal. That is routine...

Obama's Anti�Wall Street Jag -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on January 19, 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. ?We want our money back? is a battle cry you?d expect from a tea-party rally...

Why I Stand with Geert Wilders -- By: Daniel Pipes

Posted on January 19, 2010
Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure.That Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous population?s withering Christian faith, inadequate birthrate, and cultural diffidence, and on the other an influx of devout, prolific, and culturally assertive Muslim immigrants...

Brown In -- By: The Editors

Posted on January 19, 2010
Scott Brown didn?t just defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race. He also defeated a hardy band of political clich�s. That Republicans can?t win Senate races in deep-blue Massachusetts. That the state is devoted to ?the Kennedy legacy.? That the Republican party has become hostage to extremists who would rather lose than support a pro-choice candidate...

Abominable Economics -- By: Daniel T. Griswold

Posted on January 18, 2010
With friends like Jerome R. Corsi, the American free-enterprise system is in more trouble than we feared.Corsi should be on the right side of the battle to defend economic freedom. Before the 2008 election, he wrote a popular book with a great title, The Obama Nation, warning that Barack Obama was not the man we needed in the White House...

Coakley's Eleventh-Hour Slanders -- By: Daniel Foster

Posted on January 18, 2010
The frenzied Coakley campaign and its proxies, sluggishly waking up to the reality that they are losing in Massachusetts, have resorted to a kitchen-sink attack strategy in the final days of the special election, inundating Bay State voters with motley smears, half-truths, and straight-out lies about Republican candidate Scott Brown...

Precision Prediction -- By: Keith B. Payne

Posted on January 18, 2010
A noted journal, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, hosts a ?Doomsday Clock? that symbolically counts down the minutes to nuclear doomsday; the editors occasionally adjust it with worldwide fanfare to show that the planet is a few minutes closer to or further from midnight, which represents the point of nuclear catastrophe...

Meet the Real Jack Bauers -- By: Marc A. Thiessen

Posted on January 18, 2010
This week saw the premiere of a new season of 24, with CTU agent Jack Bauer preparing to leave the world of counterterrorism for a quiet life as a grandfather in Los Angeles.�But he is pulled back into the fight to stop the attempted assassination of a Middle Eastern leader in New York...

Have Faith in Massachusetts -- By: Shawn Macomber

Posted on January 18, 2010
Upon learning that Calvin Coolidge had been nominated at the 1920 Republican Convention to run for the vice presidency, Woodrow Wilson?s vice president, Thomas Marshall, sent a pithy wire to the Massachusetts governor: ?Please accept my sincere sympathy...

The Amazing Randi -- By: Marcus A. Winters

Posted on January 18, 2010
In what could prove a turning point in favor of education reform, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten came out in favor of considering student performance on standardized tests as one part of teacher evaluations. If Weingarten turns her words into real actions, and if the teachers? unions follow Weingarten?s lead, it will improve teacher quality across the country...

Game Changer -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on January 18, 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.Washington has been abuzz about a book with the title ?Game Change,? in which two political reporters provide all kinds of hot details about the last presidential campaign...

The Bank Tax and the Bay State -- By: John Berlau

Posted on January 18, 2010
As the race for the late Ted Kennedy?s seat goes into the home stretch, financial-services policy has suddenly emerged as a top issue in a special election contest previously dominated by health care. In an attempt to bolster the campaign of Martha Coakley, Democrats from Vice President Joe Biden to Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine have seized on Republican candidate Scott Brown?s opposition to the tax on large financial firms that President Obama proposed on Thursday...

The Obama Agenda on the Precipice -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on January 16, 2010
I?ve been out of the country for a couple of days, so let me see if I?ve got this right:America is preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of Good King Barack the Hopeychanger?s reign by electing a Republican?In Massachusetts?In what the tin-eared plonkers of the Democrat machine still insist on calling ?Ted Kennedy?s seat??Remember the good old days when the glossy magazine covers competed for the most worshipful image of the new global colossus? If you were at the Hopeychange inaugural ball on Jan...

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