National Politics

Massachusetts Senatorial Race: The Taliban May or May not Still Be in Afghanistan

By Monique Chartier | January 13, 2010 |

… according to the Democrat candidate, but they clearly have a presence on her campaign. On a slightly more serious note, is the mood in Coakley’s campaign so pessimistic that they feel they must resort to stonewalling very reasonable questions and physical intimidation?

Electing Somebody Other than Ted Kennedy

By Justin Katz | January 13, 2010 |

Jeff Jacoby takes the unique tack of emphasizing policy differences between the candidates in Massachusetts’s special election: Coakley supports ObamaCare, opposes the war in Afghanistan, and favors higher taxes on the wealthy. Brown is against the health care legislation, backs the president’s surge in Afghanistan, and wants across-the-board tax cuts a la JFK. Coakley is…

Intellectuals

By Donald B. Hawthorne | January 7, 2010 |

Thomas Sowell: …It may seem strange that so many people of great intellect have said and done so many things whose consequences ranged from counterproductive to catastrophic. Yet it is not so surprising when we consider whether anybody has ever had the range of knowledge required to make the sweeping kinds of decisions that so…

Mr. Sweetheart Mortgage Will not Seek Reelection

By Monique Chartier | January 6, 2010 |

From the Wall Street Journal today. The departure of [Senator Chris] Dodd, first elected to the Senate in 1980, carried the most symbolic value because of his seniority and his close association with the financial system bailout and other economic policies. He has drawn criticism for backing a measure that allowed the embattled insurance giant…

Whitehouse Gets Things Backwards

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2010 |

Of all the letters that have appeared decrying or endorsing Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s recent screed against those who oppose Obamacare, one by Pamela Burdon, of Warwick, was especially poignant: The Nazis took my parents from their families when they were teenagers. My parents miraculously survived under impossible conditions. They then fled communism, coming here to…

A Way to Affect National Politics Quickly

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2010 |

Turning his Tennessean eyes to our neighbor to the north, Glenn Reynolds offers a useful suggestion: MASSACHUSETTS SENATE RACE HEATS UP: Rasmussen Shows Brown Within 9 Percent. This is huge given that it’s Massachusetts, and a [Scott Brown (R)] win would probably kill healthcare. I don’t know how his online fundraising is going, but so…

Really? Health Care is an Inalienable Right?

By Monique Chartier | January 4, 2010 |

Glenn Beck this morning dissected remarks that Senator Tom Harkin made following upon the passage of a health care reform bill in the Senate. [Emphasis added in both quotes.] What this bill does is we finally take that step. As our leader said earlier, we take that step from healthcare as a privilege to healthcare…

The Man Behind the Tendrils

By Justin Katz | December 30, 2009 |

Andrew McCarthy’s takedown of Attorney General Eric Holder is relevant for a number of topical reasons — the war on terror, generally, the strategy of treating the war like a criminal action, the decision to give terrorist masterminds access to the American civil courts, even as an international police organizations are freed from accountability. On…

The Noose Tightens

By Justin Katz | December 29, 2009 |

It seems so innocuous, like a little book-keeping, this executive order from President Obama: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions,…

Are key portions of Obamacare going to be unrepealable?

By Donald B. Hawthorne | December 22, 2009 |

It is worthwhile to listen to Senator Jim DeMint discuss one critical aspect of the Senate Obamacare bill: Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) has thumbed through Harry Reid’s manager’s amendment and discovered some “particularly troubling” rule-change provisions, especially with regards to the proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board, which he finds could be unrepealable John McCormack:…