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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

A Tackle Box Full of Race Bait -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on September 18, 2009
Of all the poisonous, ugly, and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus? Dance over the ?racist? opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious.Al Sharpton tells CNN?s Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn?t let a small minority make health care into a ?racial issue...

A Masterstroke of Weakness -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on September 18, 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.If diplomatic pusillanimity was the aim, Pres...

Does He Lie? -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on September 18, 2009
You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn?t lie. He?s too subtle for that. He#...#well, you judge.Herewith three examples within a single speech -- the now-famous Obama-Wilson ?you lie? address to Congress on health care -- of Obama?s relationship with truth. (1) ?I will not sign (a plan),? he solemnly pledged, ?if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future...

U.N. Disgraces Itself Again; Obama Helps -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on September 18, 2009
The United Nations Human Rights Council, a putrid perversion of every high ideal upon which it was founded, has issued a report calling the Israelis war criminals. The HRC has also, in obedience to the wishes of Chávez and Castro, ejected the representative from Honduras...

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The Undoing of American Constitutionalism -- By: Richard M. Reinsch

Posted on September 18, 2009
Those who were desperately confused, if not enraged, by candidate Barack Obama?s contention that the ideal federal judge should fashion his opinion in empathy with the more downtrodden and oppressed party in a case should consult Bradley Watson?s Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence to understand how the man who has become president could assert the primacy of personal opinion over law...

Defenseless -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on September 17, 2009
Missile defense -- as the term might suggest -- is defensive, not offensive. Brilliant American scientists have developed sophisticated technologies to prevent missiles -- including those armed with nuclear warheads -- from reaching their intended victims...

Health Care and an Educated Citizenry -- By: Chester E. Finn Jr.

Posted on September 17, 2009
What kind of education would one need to make sense of the current health-care debate? As the U.S. rethinks its academic standards and international competitiveness, this is not a bad time to ask what American citizens, voters, and taxpayers need by way of knowledge and skills to form reasonable conclusions about the hottest domestic policy issue of the day...

Baucus's Take on the Takeover -- By: The Editors

Posted on September 17, 2009
The health-care proposal unveiled yesterday by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus is fundamentally flawed because -- like the other flavors of Obamacare -- it tries to expand coverage through coercion and hidden taxes instead of through consumer choice and price competition in a free market...

Where's the Evidence? -- By: Neal McCluskey

Posted on September 17, 2009
If you listen to advocates of national education standards -- from the Obama administration to the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute -- you?ll seldom hear anything about ?evidence? or ?research.? You?ll get plenty of assertions about the craziness of having 50 state standards, and how a modern nation must have one bar for all, but zilch about actual, empirical evidence...

No Rules in the Arena? -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on September 17, 2009
It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) to scream, ?You lie!? at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama?s recent health-care speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn?t have an authentic U...

The Dream Palace of Education Theorists -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on September 17, 2009
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt from John Derbyshire?s upcoming We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be released Sept. 29, 2009. As a single specimen of sunbeams-from-cucumbers education theorizing -- I could equally well have chosen a thousand others -- here is a long article from the New York Times Sunday magazine of Nov...

Indefensible -- By: The Editors

Posted on September 17, 2009
President Obama knows how to put a smile on faces in Tehran and Moscow: This morning, he announced the abandonment of plans to develop a small missile-defense system in Eastern Europe. This overturns one of the major diplomatic and national-security achievements of the Bush years...

Wilson and WFB -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on September 17, 2009
On the desk of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), you?ll find a copy of a book he?s owned since the Nixon administration. While a bit frayed at the edges -- its pages well-thumbed -- it?s in good condition. It?s signed by the author, and has been treasured by its owner of over 40 years...

The Case against Boies-Olson -- By: Nelson Lund

Posted on September 17, 2009
High-profile litigators Ted Olson (a Republican) and David Boies (a Democrat) famously squared off against each other in Bush v. Gore. They have now joined forces in a federal lawsuit challenging California?s definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman -- a definition California voters added to their constitution after an activist state court struck down the statutory definition...

Georgia Pharisee -- By: The Editors

Posted on September 16, 2009
Jimmy Carter now has done to his ex-presidency what he did to his presidency, which is to say that he has, through his incessant moral preening, converted mere incompetence into something more unseemly. Mr. Carter thunders that those who oppose President Obama?s plans to nationalize the health-care industry, and those who oppose other elements of the president?s agenda, are doing so for reasons of racism...

Spreading the Wealth -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on September 16, 2009
When Barack Obama said he wanted to ?spread the wealth around,? he meant it. A new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation estimates that Obama?s policies would spend $10.3 trillion on welfare programs over the next decade. Obama started increasing welfare spending immediately after assuming office...

Grading Teachers -- By: Marcus A. Winters

Posted on September 16, 2009
In 2007, only 57 percent of fourth graders in New York City and 44 percent of fourth graders in Chicago could claim even basic literacy according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Yet, in the same year, less than 2 percent of New York?s teachers and less than 1 percent of Chicago?s teachers were deemed ?unsatisfactory? in their official evaluations...

No Joke -- By: The Editors

Posted on September 16, 2009
James O?Keefe and Hannah Giles, two guerilla documentarians, have accomplished what neither the Republican party?s sense of outrage nor the Democratic party?s sense of decency could: They have inspired the federal government to begin cutting its ties with ACORN, the shady ?community activist? organization that helped bring Barack Obama to power...

The Blackmun Myth -- By: Clarke D. Forsythe

Posted on September 16, 2009
Last month, a federal court upheld South Dakota?s law that women seeking abortion be informed ?that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.? This is good news for people who believe women should have full information about abortion...

Reform Now -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on September 16, 2009
For a moment on Monday, the Senate was mostly empty: a few staffers haggling by the door, a handful of senators milling about. Then Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) took the floor to speak in support of his amendment to H.R. 3288, a housing and transportation spending bill...

The Other Catholic Higher Education -- By: Gerard V. Bradley

Posted on September 16, 2009
There are about 225 Catholic colleges and universities listed in The Official Catholic Directory. More than a hundred others have gone out of business over the last generation. I am confident that scores more will disappear -- close their doors, merge, or officially declare themselves to be secular -- over the next couple of decades...

The Money Pit -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on September 16, 2009
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an excerpt from John Derbyshire?s upcoming We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be released Sept. 29, 2009.Where I live, in New York?s Suffolk County, we are pretty well protected from law-breakers. In the opinion of some county residents, in fact, we are too well protected...

A Lesson Unlearned -- By: The Editors

Posted on September 15, 2009
At several points during his Monday sermon to Wall Street, President Obama referred to the ?lessons we?ve learned? from the financial crisis. But to judge from the speech, it?s clear that he failed to learn the most important lesson: Regulations, no matter how well designed, cannot prevent the formation of speculative bubbles -- particularly those inflated by government policies...

Maybe Rain, Maybe Category Five -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on September 15, 2009
When discussing the outlook for the Republican party in the 2010 election cycle, Tom Davis, former congressman from Virginia, makes sure to give all the proper caveats about predictions: ?Nobody knows.? ?A year in politics is an eternity, and this is even longer...

The Ugly Face of Student Resistance -- By: David French

Posted on September 15, 2009
After a generation-long attempt at social engineering on college campuses, it appears that leftist thought reformers have met with a rather decisive student response. Mandatory ?civility? and ?tolerance? codes have been derided and rejected in practice...

A New Declaration of Independence -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on September 15, 2009
It?s time for a new Declaration of Independence -- a declaration of national-security independence from the U.S. court system. Without a new declaration of our determination to make democratically the life-and-death decisions that a self-governing body politic must make -- a declaration of our refusal to be dictated to by unaccountable judges -- catastrophe beckons...

The E. F. Hutton of Prostitution -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on September 15, 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 radical activist group ACORN is the E...

Democrats Failed on Digital Divide, Too -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on September 15, 2009
The Democrats have never seen a problem they didn?t think could be fixed with a government program. And they sometimes discern crises crying out for government solutions where there are none. Remember the ?digital divide?? It was, we heard from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D...

Fables for Adults -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on September 15, 2009
Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth -- and it seemed to him that the other dog?s bone was bigger than his...

The Making of a Mayor -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on September 15, 2009
Friends, there is a very interesting mayor in San Ramon, Calif., some 40 miles east of San Francisco. His name is H. Abram Wilson. I talked to him the other day -- by phone (from New York), not in the Bay Area, alas. Not every American is entitled to perfect weather and beautiful surroundings...

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