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Federal Judiciary

Bench Memos - National Review Online

Covering The Supreme Court -- from National Review Online

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 05:00:54

Dismantling America

Posted on August 17, 2010
The Constitution has been a continuing challenge to those who think ordinary people should be ruled by their betters. ‘We the people' are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States -- the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers...

Making Gender Irrelevant

Posted on August 17, 2010
By allowing same-sex marriage, we are declaring that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. The Left passionately supports the most remarkable and radical change in modern social history -- the redefinition of marriage from male-female to include male-male and female-female...

Bill McCollum?s Ground Game

Posted on August 17, 2010
In a gubernatorial primary that?s more marathon than sprint, this Florida candidate is relying on grassroots organization. When the debates, press conferences, and stump speeches wind down, the only thing that matters is whether voters go out and pull the lever for your candidate...

Lessons of the Summer Swoon

Posted on August 16, 2010
Lower inflation is a good thing, but lower growth is not. The economy is suffering from something like a summer swoon. In the words of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis, the recovery summer has gone bust...

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Flaws Aside, Rosty and Stevens Put Public First

Posted on August 16, 2010
These much-maligned politicians had their shining moments. The deaths this week of two political Old Bulls have inspired some harsh commentary. Writers have noted that Dan Rostenkowski, longtime chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, went to 'Club Fed' (as he called it) on minor corruption charges...

The Road to Charikar

Posted on August 16, 2010
Where we are in Afghanistan. Bamiyan, Afghanistan ‘The Soviets wouldn't come up here with less than a battalion,' says Tim Lynch, a retired Marine Corps officer driving us down the two-lane blacktop that crosses the Shomali Plain, one of the largest and most fertile agricultural regions in Afghanistan...

Obama Fumbles Mosque Question

Posted on August 16, 2010
The president is perfectly unclear about the real question at hand. ‘Let me be clear,' Pres. Barack Obama said at Friday night's iftar dinner at the White House before making what nearly everyone took to be a deeply felt endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque...

Jennifer Aniston in the No Spin Zone

Posted on August 16, 2010
Romantic comedies go sperm for the summer. Bill O'Reilly was fully occupied with Barack Obama and other familiar 'Friends,' but then along came Jennifer Aniston, making comments about modern motherhood that didn't score well in the 'No Spin Zone...

American Taxpayer, Financial Jihadist

Posted on August 14, 2010
Thanks to our takeover of AIG, we now are involved in Islamic finance. It is 'financial jihad,' explained Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood's sharia compass -- and the man Feisal Rauf, the brains behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque, admires as 'the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today...

Obama: Fighting the Yuppie Factor -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on August 13, 2010
In October 1987, Newsweek ran a cover story on would-be presidential candidate George H. W. Bush with the blaring headline 'Fighting the Wimp Factor.' That Bush was a World War II combat pilot, well over six feet, athletic, and a genuinely nice guy mattered little...

Priest Walks among the Dead -- By: Interview

Posted on August 13, 2010
Fr. George W. Rutler is a Roman Catholic priest of the archdiocese of New York and a former Anglican. He's a familiar character at National Review, a longtime friend to our late William F. Buckley Jr., and a frequent writer here and elsewhere. (He is also pastor of a parish neighboring National Review World Headquarters in Manhattan, Our Saviour...

Race Card Payment Coming Due -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on August 13, 2010
‘The race card is maxed out.'That was the punch line for a recent hilarious exchange on The Daily Show in which Larry Wilmore, the faux news program's 'senior black correspondent,' reported that the race card is not only over its credit limit but is in fact 'void during a black presidency...

Steven Slater, the Anti-Sully -- By: Rich Lowry

Posted on August 13, 2010
Even Steven Slater's employer must appreciate the gesture of taking the beer. Nabbing an adult beverage or two prior to his instantly iconic exit down a JetBlue emergency chute was an act of panache and foresight amounting to a kind of genius. The flight attendant had hardly completed his take-this-job-and-shove-it moment when commentators began hailing him as a hero who had acted out the fantasy of every flight attendant, or everyone who had ever boarded a plane, for that matter...

Harlem?s Great Right Hope -- By: Deroy Murdock

Posted on August 13, 2010
New York — 'I am not going away,' 40-year veteran Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) told his House colleagues on Tuesday. 'You're not going to tell me to resign to make you feel comfortable,' the 80-year-old lawmaker added in an unfocused half-hour jeremiad in which he defended himself against the House Ethics Committee's 13 charges against him...

Sacrilege at Ground Zero -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on August 13, 2010
A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz)...

Bean-Counters and Baloney -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on August 13, 2010
The bean-counters have struck again -- this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches...

Did He Spy for Nothing? -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on August 13, 2010
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old Iranian mother of two whose death by stoning was commuted to death by hanging (so generous) after an international outcry, appeared on Iranian television this week. Speaking unsteadily in her native Azeri, Ashtiani admitted to being an accomplice to her husband's murder and to committing adultery with her husband's cousin...

How Obama Is Locking Up Our Land

Posted on August 13, 2010
Why the administration?s ?Great Outdoors Initiative? threatens private-property rights. Have you heard of the 'Great Outdoors Initiative'? Chances are, you haven't. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land...

The Prop 8 Proponents' Emergency Motion

Posted on August 13, 2010
editor's note: Proponents of Proposition 8 have filed an emergency motion for a stay of Judge Walkers gay-marriage ruling, pending appeal. This is the text of their motion for a Ninth Circuit stay. Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 8(a)(2), Appellants respectfully seek a stay of the district court's judgment invalidating Proposition 8 pending resolution of their appeal...

Obama: Fighting the Yuppie Factor

Posted on August 13, 2010
From the price of arugula to vacations in Marbella, the Obamas are the perfect yuppie couple. In October 1987, Newsweek ran a cover story on would-be presidential candidate George H. W. Bush with the blaring headline 'Fighting the Wimp Factor...

Priest Walks among the Dead

Posted on August 13, 2010
Life as the best drama there is. Fr. George W. Rutler is a Roman Catholic priest of the archdiocese of New York and a former Anglican. He's a familiar character at National Review, a longtime friend to our late William F...

Race Card Payment Coming Due

Posted on August 13, 2010
Predictably, racial gerrymandering has led to corruption. ‘The race card is maxed out.' That was the punch line for a recent hilarious exchange on The Daily Show in which Larry Wilmore, the faux news program's 'senior black correspondent,' reported that the race card is not only over its credit limit but is in fact 'void during a black presidency...

Steven Slater, the Anti-Sully

Posted on August 13, 2010
Where's the emergency slide to escape overwrought interpreters of the JetBlue incident? Even Steven Slater's employer must appreciate the gesture of taking the beer. Nabbing an adult beverage or two prior to his instantly iconic exit down a JetBlue emergency chute was an act of panache and foresight amounting to a kind of genius...

The Strategic Angle -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on August 12, 2010
This week, the campaign for Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle will run 1,000 to 1,600 points' -- about $575,000 -- worth of television advertising. Normally, an advertising onslaught such as this one would be well-suited to the final weeks of a campaign -- and a bit much for the dog days of August...

The Food-Stamp Farce -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Posted on August 12, 2010
Democrats are facing some blowback for cutting food stamps to pay for two recent spending bills, one a child-nutrition measure and the other a bailout for cash-strapped state governments. Rep. Rosa DeLauro's (D., Conn.) response was typical: 'I fought very hard for the food-assistance money in the Recovery Act,' she said, 'but I know that states across the nation and my own state of Connecticut also desperately need these resources to save jobs and avoid Draconian cuts to essential services for low-income families...

The Taboo of the Intellectuals -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on August 12, 2010
The controversy over plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan has taken an odd twist. On one side are those making arguments in opposition to the project, along with those who merely have questions they would like answered so they can decide for themselves whether this project will honor the victims of 9/11, or mock them...

Replicating the Success of Prop C -- By: Benjamin Evans

Posted on August 12, 2010
Contrary to popular media memes, the success of Missouri's Proposition C -- which blocks the enforcement of Obamacare in the state -- was not the product of moneyed interests, insurance-company perfidy, or an uninformed citizenry. And it was not solely the product of Republican primary voters...

Crisis of Confidence -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on August 12, 2010
We are in an era of no confidence in any people or institutions, extreme incivility in public discourse and even in respectable journalism, whiplash changes in public attitudes and the status of public personalities, and an addiction to magnifying every problem to an epochal crisis of terrifying proportions...

Taking the Sex Out of Texting -- By: Interview

Posted on August 12, 2010
Bill Bennett -- former education secretary, former drug czar, best-selling author, and radio host, among other things -- has recently become a senior adviser to a new company, Safe Communications, whose first product, MouseMail.com, is designed to help combat the problems of cyberbullying and sexting...

Obama?s State Capitalism: A Failure of Modesty -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on August 12, 2010
‘The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated.' Those were the carefully chosen words of the Federal Reserve Board after its meeting Tuesday. Translation into English: We wuz wrong.So were a lot of people, including departing White House economics adviser Christina Romer, who wrote that the Obama Democrats' February 2009 stimulus package would hold unemployment below 8 percent...

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