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June 29, 2009

No Excuse for Dems' Sticker Shock on Health Care By Michael Barone

Democrats' plans to pass major health care legislation have been stymied, at least for the moment, by the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimates. To the consternation and apparent surprise of leading Democrats, the CBO scored Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus' latest offering at $1.6 trillion over 10 years, while it scored the completed sections of Sen. Christopher Dodd's bill at $1 trillion. Presumably, the incomplete sections would cost more.

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June 28, 2009

Disability, Inc. By Debra J. Saunders

This is not a joke. Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision that required an Oregon public school district to pay a $5,200 monthly tuition (plus fees) for a private boarding school for a high-school senior whose psychologist had diagnosed him with ADHD, depression, math disorder and cannabis abuse.

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June 26, 2009

We Don't Need Big-Bang Health-Care Reform By Lawrence Kudlow

Why do we need President Obama's big-bang health-care reform at all? What's the real agenda here? If it's really to cover the truly uninsured, a much cheaper, targeted, small-ball approach would do the trick.

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June 25, 2009

The Adolescent Angst of Barack Obama By Michael Barone

There is a tendency for newly installed presidents, like adolescents suddenly liberated from adult supervision, to do the exact opposite of what their predecessors did. Presidents of both parties indulge in this behavior, though Democrats who campaign as candidates of hope and change are more likely to do so.

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June 25, 2009

The Sickening Addiction That May Kill Reform By Joe Conason

If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year -- or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the "public option" -- then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption. The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives -- or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.

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June 25, 2009

Helping Borrowers Save Themselves By Froma Harrop

An 11th Commandment could read: Thou shalt not cheat the meek.

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June 24, 2009

Radical Prescription By Peter Weiss

There are two schools of thought on this nation’s health care dilemma. One asserts that the primary issue is the 47 million uninsured.

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June 24, 2009

The Confused American By Susan Estrich

I always love it when politicians start talking about "the American people" believing this or that, as if we all do and they know it.

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June 23, 2009

Bad Times for Whistle-blowers By Debra J. Saunders

As recent AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin tells the story, when a White House aide called him on June 10, Walpin thought the administration was calling him to enlist his support -- as a prominent Republican member of the New York bar -- for the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, Special Counsel to the President Norm Eisen informed Walpin that President Obama wanted Walpin out of his job.

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June 23, 2009

Act Fast on Health Care, Obama By Froma Harrop

President Obama has a green light and open eight-lane highway for health-care reform. But somehow the guy can't put his foot on the gas.

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June 21, 2009

Oil and Water Mix in Ecuador By Debra J. Saunders

"We certainly recognize that Chevron does not make a sympathetic victim here," company spokesman Kent Robertson told me over the telephone.

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June 19, 2009

How To Become a Civil Libertarian By Debra J. Saunders

There are no legal grounds for prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who supported the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to thwart planned terrorist attacks, so civil libertarians have the tort system to try to ruin Bush lawyers.

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June 19, 2009

The AMA's Unhealthy Obsession By Joe Conason

Campaigning to build the widest possible consensus for reform of the nation's health care system, Barack Obama told the delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA) that he wants their support, too.

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June 19, 2009

Gay Rights By Susan Estrich

Rep. Barney Frank, the first member of Congress to be re-elected after coming out, is right in telling gays not to abandon the president.

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June 18, 2009

All Politics Is Turnout -- and Enthusiasm Is Key By Michael Barone

Many psephologists -- derived from the word for pebbles, which the ancient Greeks used as ballots -- study who wins and loses elections. Lately, I've been looking more closely at turnout. For we live, though most psephologists haven't stopped to notice it lately, in a decade of vastly increased voter turnout.

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June 18, 2009

Timid Obama Succumbs to Old Politics By Froma Harrop

This has been a tough week for the hopeful ones who believed President Obama's vow to break with the old politics. Every day, it seems, the president caved in to another Democratic interest group working against the public weal.

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June 18, 2009

The Fed in Charge of Systemic Risk? What a Mess By Lawrence Kudlow

The big winner of the Obama financial-regulation plan appears to be the Federal Reserve, which becomes the consolidated supervisor of large, systemically important banks.

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June 17, 2009

Healthcare: Obama's Waterloo? By Dick Morris

To quote the esteemed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the chickens that were hatched in the stimulus package are coming home to roost in the healthcare proposal.

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June 17, 2009

The Fourth Estate By Susan Estrich

Matt Drudge is obviously not happy: "ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE," his headline screams, in even bigger type than that.

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June 17, 2009

A Fine Madness in the Washington Air By Tony Blankley

To borrow Niall Ferguson's metaphor, if finance is an evolutionary process, then regulation is its intelligent design -- which, I would add, is a cognate of faith, not science.

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