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.
Political Commentary
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June 23, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
June 16, 2009
Deficit Worry Is the Greenest Shoot By Froma Harrop
Never mind firmer retail sales, rising stock prices and moderating job losses. The greenest shoot is Americans' changing economic fixation. There's less panic over collapsing banks, home foreclosures and the prospect of another Great Depression. Attention has moved to budget deficits and the resulting federal debt. These are worries of a more stable time, when people had the luxury of looking at the long-term.
June 16, 2009
When Detainees Get Rights They Don't Deserve By Michael Barone
It shouldn't come as a complete surprise that, as Stephen Hayes reported in The Weekly Standard, detainees in Afghanistan are now being advised of their Miranda rights by American interrogators -- that they have a right to be silent, a right to a lawyer, a right to have that lawyer paid for, etc.
June 15, 2009
Defending America’s First Amendment By Howard Rich
As limited government advocates fight to preserve individual liberties amid the onrush of President Barack Obama’s “Era of Obscenely Big Government,” one fundamental American freedom that we must be increasingly vigilant in protecting is the freedom of speech.
June 14, 2009
Armed and Extreme, but Buried in Briefs By Debra J. Saunders
After the shooting deaths of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller last month and security guard Stephen T. Johns at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last week, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would receive an e-mail like one sent from Ann Pinkerton of Oakland:
June 12, 2009
Worrying About Israel By Susan Estrich
Am I concerned, friends ask me quietly, after we all publicly praise President Obama's monumental Cairo speech. The friends are usually, but not always, Jewish. They are all, like me, strong supporters of the state of Israel. The answer is that of course I'm concerned. I'm very concerned. But since when has a supporter of the state of Israel not been concerned?
June 12, 2009
Sotomayor, the New Yorker By Froma Harrop
While walking recently on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk, I suddenly saw a wall of water crash down from somewhere over our heads. The source was a truck from which a fat hose was pouring water on the flower baskets hanging from posts. The baskets were intended to add some charm to the urban streetscape. Nice try.
June 12, 2009
Back to the Future for Obama By Alan I. Abramowitz
Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election represented one of the most dramatic shifts in political power in American history. In terms of both style and substance, the contrast between Obama and George W. Bush is perhaps as great as that between any incoming and outgoing presidents in the modern era. Yet the historic nature of this election should not blind us to the high degree of consistency between the results of the 2008 election and previous elections. New evidence on the results of the 2008 presidential election at the congressional district level reinforces this point.
June 11, 2009
Inflation Looms: O's Deficit Dilemma By Dick Morris
It's increasingly looking like President Obama may be sunk by his own deficit.
