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

Obama: Not the Great Stone Face -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on August 06, 2010
In 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an allegory about a series of small-town would-be heroes who the gullible public claimed resembled the Great Stone Face on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. The citizens assumed that these men would have a granite-like ability to stand firm against whatever dangers the people faced...

Case Closed: Embarrass Them -- By: Mona Charen

Posted on August 06, 2010
For now, the Iranian government has suspended the death-by-stoning sentence meted out to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old mother of two who was convicted of adultery. There is a lesson here.There is often debate in free countries about whether it is counterproductive to protest human-rights outrages committed by repressive countries...

Who Makes the Laws, Anyway? -- By: Charles Krauthammer

Posted on August 06, 2010
Last week, a draft memo surfaced from the Homeland Security Department suggesting ways to administratively circumvent existing law to allow several categories of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation and, indeed, for some to be granted permanent residency...

No Shady Banking Buddy Left Behind -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on August 06, 2010
First lady Michelle Obama's latest overseas jaunt is getting all the headlines, but President Obama's money-grubbing junket to Chicago may cost taxpayers far more in the long run. With his Gaultier-clad wife sashaying around the Spanish seaside, the lonely fundraiser-in-chief returned to Illinois to take care of some birthday-week business...

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

A Democratic Panic Attack? -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on August 06, 2010
With the disappointingly soft jobs report for July, and a faltering recovery overall, is Team Obama getting ready for some sort of new, liberal-left, Keynesian, big-bang stimulus package? Will they be desperate to 'do something'?Already there are rumors of an August surprise (to use the phrase of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis) where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forgive underwater mortgages held by millions of Americans...

No on Kagan -- By: Newt Gingrich

Posted on August 05, 2010
Last fall, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain delivered a lecture at Princeton in which he said that some of his colleagues on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—the same court that ruled in 2002 that the inclusion of the words 'Under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional—saw themselves as social workers...

Getting Serious on South Asia -- By: Conrad Black

Posted on August 05, 2010
The greatest menace to American foreign-policy success is impatience. Terribly intractable regions, especially the Middle East and South Asia, cannot be reconfigured quickly. The indigenous peoples do not like or understand swift change and their regimes have rarely been capable of rapid movement, much less motivated to attempt it...

Oil-State Rebellion -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on August 05, 2010
As the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak continues to evaporate in the Gulf of Mexico, the Democrats' chances of using it to grease the passage of a new energy bill are evaporating, too.Last week, House and Senate Democratic leaders rolled out what Politico called their 'big spill bills...

Nuclear Nonproliferation Games -- By: Henry Sokolski

Posted on August 05, 2010
Sometimes generosity just doesn't pay. Consider the Obama administration's desire to lead the world toward restraint on nuclear weapons. It is pushing an agreement with Russia that will reduce America's nuclear arsenal, and it is offering less-developed states access to nuclear-power technology to persuade as many of them as possible to help control the further spread of nuclear weapons...

Bay State Health-Care Blues -- By: Paul Howard

Posted on August 05, 2010
It's no secret that the template for President Obama's health-reform legislation was the Massachusetts health-care plan enacted in 2006. And it's likely that many of the problems now cropping up in the Bay State will reappear at the national level when key provisions of Obamacare go into effect over the next several years...

Illogical Immigration -- By: Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on August 05, 2010
Some 11 million to 15 million illegal aliens are now residing in America, most after crossing into America unlawfully. Once a federal law is arbitrarily not enforced, all sorts of bizarre paradoxes arise from that original contradiction. As proof, examine the following illogical policies and contradictions involving illegal immigration...

Midterms: Route 66 for the GOP? -- By: Michael Barone

Posted on August 05, 2010
Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that the Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year. The disagreement is about how many.Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades...

Sanctions Plus? -- By: Clifford D. May

Posted on August 05, 2010
Suppose the tough, new sanctions passed into law by the U.S., the E.U., Canada, and Australia do not cause Iran's Islamist rulers to halt their illicit development of nuclear weapons, curb their sponsorship of terrorism, and reduce their brutalization of their own population...

?The line,? &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Posted on August 05, 2010
I know that 'Journolist' has been mightily picked over -- and picked on -- but I have done very little of it. And would like to do some picking now, if you can bear with me. 'Journolist,' you remember, is -- was -- an e-mail community of hundreds of liberal or left-wing or whatever journalists...

Judge Walker?s Phony Facts -- By: The Editors

Posted on August 05, 2010
It has been clear since before the beginning of the year that Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco was on a mission to establish a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage and thereby to overturn California's Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment passed by the people of the state in 2008...

The Washington War on Investment -- By: Larry Kudlow

Posted on August 05, 2010
Will higher tax penalties on investment really spur jobs and faster economic growth? Most commentators would say no. It's really a matter of economic common sense. But Tim Geithner says, Yes!Speaking to a group in Washington this week, the Treasury secretary said that extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would imperil the fragile economic recovery...

The DCCC on Your TV -- By: Jim Geraghty

Posted on August 04, 2010
The first thing that jumps out at a reader examining the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's list of reserved advertising for this fall's midterm elections is the organization's consistency with Democrats' recent record on deficit spending. The DCCC finished June with $33...

Not at Ground Zero -- By: The Editors

Posted on August 04, 2010
The story of the proposed mosque at the site of the World Trade Center has been thoroughly misrepresented, as have the parties behind the project. They present themselves as ambassadors of moderate Islam. Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, says the project aims to put the Muslim community 'at the front and center to start the healing...

The Testing Mess -- By: NRO Staff

Posted on August 04, 2010
The only thing surprising about last week's revelation that the fraction of New York City students passing the state's reading and math tests had dropped by an average of 25 percentage points is that anyone was surprised at all. Student pass rates dropped precipitously all across New York State for one reason, and one reason only: State education commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch decided to make the tests less predictable this year, and to raise the 'cut scores' required for students to reach each of four designated achievement levels -- below basic, basic, proficient (i...

Chris Christie: The Scourge of Trenton -- By: Daniel Foster

Posted on August 04, 2010
It was supposed to have been the biggest fight of Chris Christie's young administration: a May showdown over what Democrats in Trenton were calling the 'millionaires' tax,' designed, like each of the 115 statewide tax increases of the last decade, to paper over a small part of a yawning structural deficit by soaking the rich, one last time...

Disappointed in Panama -- By: Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Posted on August 04, 2010
Ricardo Martinelli's May 2009 election as president of Panama seemed to bode well for the country's development prospects. During his campaign, he promised to implement bold market-oriented reforms, such as a flat tax (which would have been the first of its kind in the Americas), freer trade, an end to some government subsidies, and less bureaucratic red tape...

Conservative Nostalgia Is Misplaced -- By: Jonah Goldberg

Posted on August 04, 2010
Conservatives, being conservatives, have a soft spot for the good old days, but this is getting ridiculous. It seems every day another colleague on the right wants to click his ruby-red slippers (or Topsiders) and proclaim, 'There's no place like home' -- 'home' being the days when conservatism was top-heavy with generals but short on troops...

The Obama Administration?s Real Bottom Line -- By: Thomas Sowell

Posted on August 04, 2010
Rumors of congressional Democrats privately expressing disapproval of the Obama administration's actions and policies have been given more credence by such things as Speaker Nancy Pelosi's public criticism of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. But when two longtime Democratic pollsters, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, called President Obama 'cynical' and 'racially divisive,' that was a dramatic statement...

Saying No Is Not Nihilism -- By: Michael Tanner

Posted on August 04, 2010
It was shortly after Rand Paul won the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky, and MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell was mystified. Why would anyone want to be a senator, she wondered, if he opposed most government programs? 'After all,' she mused, 'isn't that what [legislators] do? They legislate...

Mad Maxine?s Minority Fat-Cat Bankers -- By: Michelle Malkin

Posted on August 04, 2010
Rep. Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, is notorious for her high-decibel rants against corporate executives and her career exploitation of identity politics. Class warfare and racial division are her two-decade-long stock-in-trade. She would normally be first in line (and in front of the cameras) to lambaste the very kind of Porsche-driving, luxury-beach-house-partying bank officials who recently begged her for a government handout...

Five Days in Pyongyang -- Part II -- By: Reggie Gibbs

Posted on August 04, 2010
EDITOR'S NOTE: Part I of 'Five Days in Pyongyang' can be read here.My minder, Mr. Kim, was, in many ways, what I expected. He was loyal. He adhered to his talking points -- in most cases, rigidly. I once posed the question: 'What do you like the most about living in the DPRK?' He seemed a little taken aback by this, and his answer was wobbly: 'Everyone in the DPRK is equal...

The Huge Role of Luck -- By: Dennis Prager

Posted on August 03, 2010
The longer I live -- yesterday was my birthday -- the more I come to realize how much of life is affected by luck.Let's begin with life itself. Whether one lives to 62 -- or to 92 (my father's age) -- and whether in health or in sickness is largely a matter of luck...

Tea with Breitbart -- By: Robert Costa

Posted on August 03, 2010
Philadelphia -- The media hive swarms Andrew Breitbart as he hustles through the visitors' center. Lefty bloggers, local print journalists, and a documentary film crew all crowd around him. Tourists, picking up Liberty Bell pamphlets, turn their heads in curiosity...

Oh, No: Not Another ?CIA Solution? for Afghanistan -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on August 03, 2010
It has been over 20 years since the American-sponsored Afghan mujahideen stunned the world by forcing the invading Red Army to withdraw, a major falling domino in the Soviet collapse. Now Jack Devine, a former top CIA official who was instrumental in that effort, argues that, in today's war, there will be no U...

Letting Go of Death Panels -- By: Avik Roy

Posted on August 03, 2010
I'm a great admirer of the thoughtful, literary style of Atul Gawande. He writes sincerely and movingly about the trials and tribulations of modern medicine. It's when he tries to extrapolate public-policy recommendations from these stories that he falls flat, kind of like a Steinway piano whose middle C is badly out of tune...

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...