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

Who can wave the Bible? &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on August 25, 2009
President Obama is not shy about using religious language and religious imagery. He has said that he hopes to be ?an instrument of God.? (Shouldn?t we all.) And, the other day, I saw a photo of him next to a neon cross (pretty garish). I also read what he said about critics of his health-care plans: They were ?bearing false witness...

Obama Screws Up Latin American Policy -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on August 25, 2009
The lights are going out in Venezuela. The Chávez-controlled legislature passed an education bill on August 13 that will extinguish the last glimmers of free thought in the country?s classrooms. The law is such a caricature of revolutionary legislation that it almost seems like a joke, like something out of Woody Allen?s Bananas...

The Great Escape -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on August 25, 2009
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics, or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation -- that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved...

Leon Panetta's Agony -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on August 25, 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). Pity Leon Panetta. The CIA director counseled the Obama administration against releasing classified interrogation memos from the Bush years...

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

Holder's Political Interrogation -- By: The Editors

Posted on August 25, 2009
More than one CIA officer quoted in the just-released 2004 CIA inspector general?s report worried that that the political climate would change and the CIA would be hung out to dry. And so it has come to pass. On the same day the IG report was made public -- with the media hyping its most disturbing passages -- Attorney General Eric Holder assigned a prosecutor to assess whether criminal cases should be re-opened against CIA officers and contractors...

Truth, Propaganda, or Both? -- By: Letters

Posted on August 25, 2009
I was rather stunned to read Kevin Williamson?s puzzling review of Lines That Divide, the documentary about the embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) debate. I had nothing to do with the production of the DVD, but I was interviewed for it, am a talking head in it, and have seen it twice, and I can join with Ramesh Ponnuru in saying with confidence that Williamson got some very big things wrong:First: The person saying the other side was ignorant about stem-cell research was a proponent of ESCR...

Beautiful Losers -- By: John Derbyshire

Posted on August 24, 2009
What is modern American conservatism? ?A movement without a social core,? complains one of its more penetrating observers, ?that latches on to temporarily usable constituencies#...#contrived#...#a media phenomenon.?He goes on: ?It has a viewing public and numerous publications, which can provide the Republican Party, when necessary, with PR...

See Rachel Calumniate -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on August 24, 2009
As protests at congressional town-hall meetings have heated up the health-care debate and turned public opinion against the Democrats? agenda, liberals have stepped up their efforts to delegitimize the protestors. ?AstroTurf? is a word that pops up a lot on liberal talk-radio shows, blogs, and MSNBC...

Yes, He Can -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Posted on August 24, 2009
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. ?Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type...

Why the Stimulus Flopped -- By: Mark Steyn

Posted on August 22, 2009
The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several ?stimulus? projects -- every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said ?PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK? with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a ?PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT...

Unemployment You Can Believe In -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on August 21, 2009
If Obamacare were a prescription drug, ads for it would say: ?Use with extreme caution. Side effects include regulatory headaches, irritated taxpayers, and swollen unemployment.?That?s right. Serious studies indicate that Obamacare would kill millions of jobs...

Killing Obamacare -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on August 21, 2009
Earlier this week, some of my National Review colleagues recoiled from Sarah Palin?s bracing allegation that Obamacare would foist government ?death panels? on vulnerable Americans. I recoiled from the recoil, which I thought exemplified the same sort of ?hysteria? the editorial in question, ?Rationing and Rationality,? condemned...

A Deck Stacked with Race Cards -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on August 21, 2009
What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn?t invited?The question comes to mind as cries of racism grow ever louder among Obama?s supporters.No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism...

Stop and Think -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on August 21, 2009
The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical-care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it...

Stupid Nation -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on August 21, 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 Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy...

Let's Be Honest about Death Counseling -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on August 21, 2009
Let?s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I?ve got nothing against her. She?s a remarkable political talent. But there are no ?death panels? in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate...

Can We Succeed in Afghanistan? -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on August 21, 2009
He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That?s what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart?s The Places in Between, an account of the Scotsman?s 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That?s right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey...

Terrorists Go Scot Free -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on August 21, 2009
There was precious outrage in some mainstream media quarters Friday over the Obama administration?s pusillanimous reaction to Scotland?s release of PanAm 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. But what were they expecting? Megrahi has been transferred home to Libya...

Friends in High Places -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on August 21, 2009
It?s good to be David Axelrod.Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama, left AKPD, the powerful Chicago-based media-consulting firm he founded, late last year for the West Wing. Why leave the private sector for a gig with the federal government? Why not? Axelrod could afford the downgrade...

Who Is Don Draper? -- By: Thomas S. Hibbs

Posted on August 21, 2009
?I keep going different places, and always winding up where I?ve already been.? That is a comment by Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the main character of the critically acclaimed AMC series Mad Men, in its hyped third-season opener, which aired last Sunday night...

Longest. Lives. Ever. -- By: Jerry Bowyer

Posted on August 21, 2009
The Centers for Disease Control released its ?National Vital Statistics Report? this week, and BuzzCharts was especially interested in the latest figures for life expectancy. It turns out that Americans are living longer than they did at any time in the nation?s history...

Targeted Killings -- By: Nathan A. Sales

Posted on August 20, 2009
Last month, the news that Obama?s CIA director, Leon Panetta, had canceled a Bush-era plan to slay key al-Qaeda figures unleashed a firestorm. Details about the so-called ?assassination? scheme remain murky. What we do know is that the plan was never implemented and that CIA failed to tell Congress about it -- perhaps on the personal orders of Vice President Cheney...

The Other Surge -- By: The Editors

Posted on August 20, 2009
President Obama campaigned on Afghanistan as the good and essential war, in contrast to the war in Iraq. The politics were obvious: Since the Democrats, in effect, favored losing in Iraq, they had to support the other war to bolster their national-security bona fides...

Manufactured Objections -- By: Daniel Ikenson

Posted on August 20, 2009
During the past few years, America has grown increasingly averse to trade. This trend is the product of myths perpetuated by campaigning politicians, captured policymakers, TV charlatans, and woefully ill-informed newspaper columnists. Harold Meyerson always comes to mind as emblematic of this last category, so his fallacy-laden diatribe about the decline of U...

Turning Uncle Sam into Peeping Tom -- By: Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Posted on August 20, 2009
Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats? health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ?Administrative Simplification,? the bill sets new ?standards? for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers...

Obama's Bait and Switch -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on August 20, 2009
Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical-care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured -- and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats...

Divine Debt Trumps All -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on August 20, 2009
In Greek mythology, even Olympian gods and heroes were subject to a higher divine power known loosely as ?fate? -- an allotted moira, or destiny, that could not be changed even by thunderbolt-throwing Zeus. In modern America, debt -- whether national, state, or trade -- now plays the same overarching role as the ancient Greek notion of fate...

August Anniversaries -- By: Denis Boyles

Posted on August 19, 2009
August, and golden oldies. Serious thought is forbidden this month, which is why every middle-aged pop critic in America is still waxing on Woodstock and talking about how Janis changed the world and Arlo shut down the New York State Thruway, man...

When Boulder Starts Rolling Away -- By: Mark Hemingway

Posted on August 19, 2009
Boulder, Colo., is known as one of the most politically liberal communities in America. And yet here?s a man named Steve standing in the parking lot of a strip mall, holding up a bright-orange sign that reads, ?I?ll keep my freedom, you keep the change...

Kentucky's Scrappy Go-Getter -- By: Michael Warren

Posted on August 19, 2009
He?s arguably the most powerful elected Republican in America. He?s certainly the most powerful Republican official in Washington since the departure of George W. Bush. That may not be saying much, given the GOP?s diminished influence, but if President Obama?s plans to nationalize health care fail, Sen...

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...