Bench Memos - National Review Online: Federal Judiciary

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

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

Your Negro, My Macaca -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on January 12, 2010
Welcome to America?s longest running hit show -- the race farce, in which feigned shock and outrage lead to fawning apologies and bumbling explanations to all the wrong people. Taking offense has been reduced to low comedy in America, as hypocrites play out their assigned parts...

Notional Security -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on January 12, 2010
The latest ?screw-up? that let a man with explosives get on a plane on Christmas Day is only part of a larger laxness and irresponsibility when it comes to national security. This administration pays lip service to national security and gives out with a lot of rhetorical notions that makes it notional security instead of national security...

Politicizing the Law -- By: Hans A. von Spakovsky

Posted on January 12, 2010
Eric Holder?s Justice Department has exiled Christopher Coates to South Carolina. Coates, you may recall, is a career attorney at Justice, the chief of the Civil Rights Division?s (CRD) Voting Section. More to the point, Coates recommended that the CRD file a lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther party and several of its members, who were in paramilitary uniforms (one of them waving a nightstick) threatening elderly white voters at a polling station in Philadelphia during last year?s elections...

Somewhere Short of a V -- By: David Malpass

Posted on January 11, 2010
Are we in the midst of a V-shaped recovery, where the economy rockets back to robustness following a painful downturn? Are we witnessing the short-lived acceleration that precedes an economic double-dip, otherwise known as a W-shaped recovery? Or are we entering a ?new normal,? where the economy expands, but at levels that are well below those of previous decades?These questions are paramount in the investment community, and my answer is somewhat in between...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Stupid Like a Fox -- By: Fred Schwarz

Posted on January 11, 2010
Kevin Williamson, my esteemed fellow deputy managing editor and occasional drinking buddy (coffee for him, ginger ale for me), thinks today?s Republicans are ?the Stupid Party.? He presents as evidence the following: (1) Some of the GOP?s positions are not those of Kevin Williamson; (2) parts of Rep...

The Browning of Massachusetts -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on January 11, 2010
Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Edward Kennedy?s old U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, has become a somewhat unlikely national candidate. In liberal Massachusetts, after a Camelot-worthy sendoff for Senator Kennedy, and in an age of ?hope and change? that was ushered in in no small part by Kennedy-family endorsements, this seat has been considered a safe Democratic hold...

Yes We Can Lose Our Health Insurance -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on January 11, 2010
?No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise,? President Obama told the American Medical Association last June. ?If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away...

But We're Still Gonna Kill You -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on January 09, 2010
Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he?d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn?t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that...

Sober Thinking? -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on January 08, 2010
American politics is in for one heckuva hangover. One party is drunk with power, the other led by a man who makes his arguments in the parlance of Alcoholics Anonymous. That man, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, has a new book out, Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda...

Beating the Dead Terrorist Horse -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on January 08, 2010
Most of the current acrimony over counterterrorism is stale. The debate is simply a rehash of issues that were discussed and, in fact, resolved early last decade. Let us review them one more time.MOST TERRORISTS ARE NOT POOR AND DOWNTRODDEN September 11 taught us that a Mohammed Atta or a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed does not commit mass murder out of hunger, want, illiteracy, or Western oppression...

Technological Morality -- By: Wesley J. Smith

Posted on January 08, 2010
As we come to the end of the first tenth of the 21st century, pundits are making lists about the decade just past: the biggest stories, the worst movies. In that spirit, here?s a list of the top ten stories in bioethics. This isn?t an idle exercise...

The Talented Mr. Nelson -- By: Daniel Foster

Posted on January 08, 2010
Sen. Ben Nelson?s (D., Neb.) home-state Medicaid racket is, it appears, not long for this earth. Senate Democrats on both the progressive and moderate ends have signaled at town-hall meetings that the ?Cornhusker Kickback? will be stripped from whatever health-care bill emerges from the Democrats? closed-door negotiations...

A Bitter Pill for Entrepreneurs -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on January 08, 2010
During the latest stop on the Ben Nelson Excuse Tour (an interview with the Fremont Tribune, which Nelson himself requested), the Nebraska senator said, ?I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy...

What the GOP Can Learn from a Pizza Chain -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on January 08, 2010
This is one of those rare moments when the conventional wisdom in Washington is right. The Democrats are poised to have a bad year; the only argument is over how bad it will be. And that question rests on whether or not the Republican party crafts an agenda voters will support...

Transparent Insincerity -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on January 08, 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.Barack Obama couldn?t possibly have meant his campaign promise to hold negotiations on major legislation in public, broadcast live on C-SPAN...

It's Freezing: Must Be Global Warming -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on January 08, 2010
Great swaths of Britain are buried under more than a foot of snow as the country shivers through�its coldest winter since 1981. Airports have been shut down, trains have been canceled, and the army had to be called out to rescue more than 1,000 motorists stranded in Hampshire...

Tools 'n' fools, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on January 08, 2010
Our president keeps calling Guantanamo Bay a ?recruiting tool,? something that causes Muslims to join up with the jihad. The other day, he said, ?Make no mistake: We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national-security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda...

The Gitmo Obsession -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on January 08, 2010
On Wednesday, Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indicted by a Michigan grand jury for attempted murder and sundry other criminal charges. The previous day, the State Department announced that his visa had been revoked. The system worked...

Interpol Immunity -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on January 08, 2010
Finally, today, we get at least an attempt at an explanation of President Obama?s dead-of-night decision on December 16 to grant Interpol -- the international police force -- immunity from American law. (See here and here.) Unfortunately, in the habit to which we?ve grown accustomed, the Obama administration itself didn?t provide the explanation...

De-stimulate -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on January 08, 2010
After the arrival of a disappointing December jobs report, my thought on putting America back to work is simple: de-stimulate. That?s right. Get rid of the Obama stimulus monster, including the government takeover of health care, cap-and-trade, and all this nonsensical talk of creating green jobs...

Don't It Make a Blue State Red? -- By: Michael Graham

Posted on January 07, 2010
Talk about a Massachusetts Miracle.On Tuesday, Rasmussen released a poll showing Republican state senator Scott Brown within�9 points of Democratic attorney general Martha Coakley in the race to fill Ted Kennedy?s Senate seat. Among voters most committed to turning out, Coakley?s lead is a slim 2 percent...

The Man Who Can Stop Obamacare -- By: The Editors

Posted on January 07, 2010
The Democrats have gotten to the precipice -- to borrow President Obama?s word -- of victory on health-care reform for one reason above all others: 60 votes.Their supermajority in the Senate empowered them to muscle through a sprawling mess of a bill by partisan fiat...

Chartering Diversity -- By: RiShawn Biddle

Posted on January 07, 2010
It?s no longer surprising to see Al Sharpton team up with New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to cheer on the growth of the charter-school movement. After all, it is one of the few innovations that have improved the quality of education for minority students in America?s urban communities...

Still the Stupid Party -- By: Kevin Williamson

Posted on January 07, 2010
Guy Benson?s recent report about a lifelong New Jersey Democrat who already is so fed up with Obama-Pelosi-Reid shenanigans that she pulled the lever for Chris Christie is one pebble in the avalanche of opinion holding that Republicans are due for a big year in 2010...

For Liberalism, It's Hangover Time -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on January 07, 2010
A year ago this month, the air over American liberalism was thick with champagne corks. Barack Obama, the newly elected president, was poised to be inaugurated, and he in turn would inaugurate the long-prophesied new progressive era. A year later, the champagne corks are hardly flying, and if this is to be morning in America for American liberalism, it seems to have come with a pretty nasty hangover...

Nineteen-Thirty-Something -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on January 07, 2010
A few days of vacation in the Rocky Mountains is a good time to catch up on one?s reading. But if I was looking for escape from the issues on which I spend most of my time, I didn?t find it in Churchill, the brief but penetrating biography by Paul Johnson, who is among the world?s greatest living historians...

Our Year of Decision -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on January 07, 2010
Sometimes long-festering problems collide -- and explode -- in a single memorable year. We can go as far back as the fifth century B.C. to see this phenomenon -- and we may see it again in 2010. In 480 B.C., a decade of Aegean tension culminated in the Persian invasion of Greece...

Holder's Haste Makes Waste of Intel -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on January 07, 2010
Eric Holder?s Justice Department rushed to file an indictment Wednesday against Flight 253 terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The telling document is a monument to lost opportunity. Come hell or high water, the Obama administration will press ahead with its commitment to treat al-Qaeda?s war against the United States as a crime wave best managed by the federal courts...

Sensibly Selective Screening -- By: Heather Mac Donald

Posted on January 06, 2010
President Obama?s bold and unexpected decision to subject travelers from 14 mostly Muslim countries to increased physical scrutiny at airports has brought forth the usual denunciations, well represented in a collection of responses solicited by the New York Times...

Racing to National Tests? -- By: Chester E. Finn Jr.

Posted on January 06, 2010
While everyone in educatorland obsesses over the $4 bilion competition among the states for Race to the Top (RTT) funding, the Education Department (ED) is readying a separate competition for less than one-tenth as much money that may nonetheless prove far more consequential for American education over the long term...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Relaxed Standard of Review Applies to Density Variances
The Appellate Division extended to applications for development se...

Review of Charles Fried
Here's my review, in Commonweal, of Charles Fried's recent book, M...

NSEERS - National Security Entry-Exit Registration System
NSEERS - NATIONAL SECURITY ENTRY-EXIT REGISTRATION SYSTEM Special ...

National Episcopal Church Gets Only Limited Intervention In Property Dispute
In Diocese of Central New York v. St. Andrews Episcopal Church, (N...