Federal Judiciary

Democrats Whistling Past Graveyard -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on December 11, 2009
The unexpected victory of Republican Jimmy Higdon in the Kentucky state-senate special election -- despite a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage -- is another fire bell in the night that national Democrats are going to ignore. Marking the 33rd Republican win in the 50 or so special elections since 2008, the Kentucky race was a referendum on health-care reform...

The New Socialism -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on December 11, 2009
In the 1970s and early ?80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a ?New International Economic Order...

Harry Reid: Racial Bomb Thrower -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on December 11, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) recently played the most shopworn trick in the liberal playbook. While debating health-care ?reform,? he ferociously deployed the race card.  Reid claimed last Monday that Obamacare?s opponents were like those who ?dug in their heels and said, ?Slow down, it?s too early...

The Most Boring Man in the World? -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on December 11, 2009
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?s vibe used to be a cross between JFK and Beatlemania...

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Deconstructing Harry -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on December 10, 2009
What a week#...#and weekend. After a torturous battle to get his $848 billion health-care bill onto the floor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) was finally able to begin debate on it last Monday. Since then, debate has hummed along at full Senate speed, which means lots of talk, lots of amendments, and lots of questions...

Abusing TARP -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on December 10, 2009
Amid talk that the Obama administration plans to use money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to fund a new stimulus package, it is important to understand what TARP actually accomplished, who benefited, and who paid the price. A major component of the administration?s new stimulus plan would eliminate fees and increase guarantees on loans offered through the Small Business Administration (SBA)...

Perez in Trouble -- By: Hans A. von Spakovsky

Posted on December 10, 2009
The Justice Department?s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Thomas Perez, testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week in an oversight hearing. He was sharply questioned about the department?s dismissal of the voter-intimidation lawsuit it had won by default against the New Black Panther Party (NBPP)...

The Highest Tax Increases Ever -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on December 10, 2009
State governments know we?re in a recession, and they know you?re hurting. That?s why they?re demanding more from you.We?ve seen a lot of anger about taxes at the tea parties and town-hall meetings this year, and observers might be forgiven for thinking that the federal government enacted income-tax increases the moment Obama was inaugurated...

Swiss, Cross -- By: Andrew Stuttaford

Posted on December 10, 2009
So far, so predictable. The now infamous referendum amending Switzerland?s constitution in a way that prohibits the construction of any more minarets in the land of Heidi (there are already, um, four) has been damned by the usual suspects, including a gaggle of Christian clergymen, a babble of media, crazy Colonel Qaddafi, Turkey?s thuggish Islamist prime minister (the one who once referred to minarets as ?our bayonets?), Iran?s thuggish Islamist foreign minister, Egypt?s Grand Mufti (try building a new church in Egypt), a collection of Saudi ?scholars? (don?t even think of building a church in Saudi Arabia), and, of course, Jon Stewart...

Tuesday Night Lights -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on December 10, 2009
Like a sports movie, the health-care debate has been stuffed with platitudes. The most nauseating have come from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who chatters endlessly about ?making history? to his colleagues. It?s getting old. Reid may fancy himself a master at the cloakroom pep talk, but his caucus coaching is dismal...

Has War Really Changed? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on December 10, 2009
Has war been reinvented in Iraq and Afghanistan? Sometimes it seems so, with the confusion that has come with the instant communication offered by the Internet, YouTube, and satellite television -- along with the new arts of precision destruction via high-tech weapons like drones and GPS-guided weapons...

CNN's chutzpah, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on December 10, 2009
I had a little jolt the other day when I clicked on the Drudge Report. There was an ad for CNN at the top, with a picture of Christiane Amanpour. And with her picture was the word ?Truth.? Actually, ?TRUTH.? That?s a pretty strong claim, don?t you think? Fox News took a lot of grief for saying that it was ?Fair and Balanced...

Through Our Enemies' Eyes -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on December 10, 2009
We?ve heard a lot in recent days about how conservatives and liberals are responding to President Obama?s plans for Afghanistan. But what does the enemy think?Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Afghan Taliban leader, clearly would have been happier had Obama taken Michael Moore?s advice and begun to withdraw, rather than increase troop levels in Afghanistan...

Going Neocon -- By: Abe Greenwald

Posted on December 10, 2009
During his Nobel Peace Prize-acceptance speech today, Barack Obama said, ?For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.? He cited the historical example of Adolf Hitler and the present-day example of the Taliban. This rounds out a year that has seen a succession of real-world object lessons that bear out the claims of the intellectual tendency known as neoconservatism: Iran has rejected a torrent of American obsequiousness and will not be charmed out of pursuing nuclear weapons; its population, meanwhile, is clamoring for a robust American defense of democracy; a far-left American president has determined that a significant surge of American troops is the only way to win a faltering war effort in a far-off Muslim land; that same president has acknowledged that ?we?ve achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq? and is using the basis of those achievements as the model for his new ramp-up strategy...

Obama's Path to Victory? -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on December 09, 2009
I am one of those who have been noisily and prayerfully hoping that President Obama?s inexhaustible deferences to America?s critics, and blandishments heaped on the world?s most antagonistic regimes, were just part of a coalition-building exercise before bringing appropriate pressure on them...

Moving forward in Afghanistan -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on December 09, 2009
In his heroic service to our country, Pete Hegseth has forgotten more about warfare than I could ever hope to know. But his NRO article on Monday, offering -- in rebuttal to my column from last week -- a defense of President Obama?s political decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, is ill-informed...

The Medicaid Nuclear Option -- By: Michael G. Franc

Posted on December 09, 2009
The legislative process inevitably fathers unintended consequences. The more complex and ambitious the legislative endeavor, the more numerous are its by-blows.Recently, Heritage analysts Dennis Smith (who ran the federal Medicaid program for seven years in the Bush administration) and Ed Haislmaier uncovered a doozy in the House?s health-care-reform bill: a previously unnoticed unintended consequence that could hike federal spending by well over half a trillion dollars in just the first few years after its enactment...

The Real Fat-Cat Party -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on December 09, 2009
One of the great frustrations of the libertarian-minded Right is how Republicans got stuck being ?the party of big business.?The quotation marks around the term are at least somewhat necessary, because in many respects, it?s not true.The notion that big business is ?right wing? has always been more sloppy agitprop than serious analysis...

Skip Copenhagen -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on December 09, 2009
President Obama flies to Copenhagen later this month for a fresh round of taxes and spending. To slay an imaginary beast called ?global warming,? Obama and other leaders will discuss a treaty that forces industrialized nations to shake themselves down and enrich the developing world...

A winning word, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on December 09, 2009
There is considerable unease over President Obama and his leadership in the Afghan War, particularly because he is not one to utter the V-word -- victory. He speaks of ?a path towards ending the war? and so on. Not exactly a Churchillian rouser. That is why it was somewhat comforting to hear Defense Secretary Gates say, ?We are in this thing to win...

The Job-Creation Snow Job -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on December 08, 2009
President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is ?creating,? but there are more people unemployed now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been ?created??Let?s go back to square one. What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use...

The Stupak Lessons -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on December 08, 2009
As Friday, November 6, faded into the early hours of Saturday, November 7, the Capitol was mostly empty. The statues of statesmen stood still in the silence. The night guards talked sports, quietly. The only footsteps were those of a handful of reporters loitering outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D...

What to Think about Global Warming -- By: Kevin Williamson

Posted on December 08, 2009
Given the stakes in the global-warming debate -- trillions of dollars in economic costs and/or climatic catastrophe -- conservatives should not simply dismiss the Copenhagen talks, even though the revelations of Climategate may tempt us to do so. The debate is polarized, and it is natural to throw one?s lot in with one camp or another -- The World Is Ending vs...

Comrade Lysenko in Copenhagen -- By: Alex Alexiev

Posted on December 08, 2009
As the illustrious conclave of global-warming true believers, led by Pres. Barack Obama, gathers in Copenhagen for yet another exercise in environmental doom and gloom, observing the proceedings with the sly smirk of somebody who?s ?been there, done that? is likely to be the ghost of one Trofim Denisovich Lysenko...

Three Strikes against Obamacare -- By: Paul Howard

Posted on December 08, 2009
Joseph Lieberman?s words, ?I?m going to be stubborn on this,? must be giving Harry Reid heartburn.Lieberman may caucus with the Democrats, but he?s more than willing to go his own way -- especially when it comes to his staunch opposition to the ?public option,? a proposed government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers...

Imaginary Savings, Imaginary Jobs -- By: The Editors

Posted on December 08, 2009
With a wary eye toward the 2010 elections, Democrats are starting to craft another stimulus package. This would seem incompatible with the administration?s reluctance to add to the deficit, but a rally in the stock market has enabled some banks to repay the money they took under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program)...

Climate of Doom -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on December 08, 2009
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.The phrase ?doomsday cult? entered our collective vocabulary after John Lofland published his 1966 study, ?Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith...

Torquemada in East Anglia -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on December 08, 2009
Though professional hysterics may seek to ?hide the decline,? there has been a noticeable drop in the number of Americans who believe that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. Pause on that for a moment. Though Americans have been harangued about global warming for more than a decade, only 35 percent told a recent Pew survey that global warming is a serious problem, compared with 44 percent the previous year...

Sweating the Fed -- By: The Editors

Posted on December 07, 2009
Ben Bernanke works at the main intersection of Wall Street and politics, which also happens to be the place where conservatives? hesitation about ?Change!? most deeply abrades the Democrats? mania for it. Bernanke, who is being sweated by senators soon to vote on retaining him as chairman of the Federal Reserve, is the principal architect of the government?s interventions in the banking industry during the financial crisis...

Obamacare Is Bad Medicine -- By: Soumi Eachempati

Posted on December 07, 2009
As a full-time practicing surgeon, I unequivocally can say that the American health-care system is among the world?s finest. For elective and emergency care, American hospitals boast the most modern equipment, the best training facilities for physicians, and the most fertile ground for the development of new products and technologies...

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