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Everything is unexpected in an unserious Washington
Readers of the New York Times on the morning of Sept. 10, 2001, found a front page lead on how congressional leaders were in talks about economic stimulus and below-the-fold stories on school dress codes and the morning television ratings races.
The summer of 1950 was just another post-war summer, and on June 23 the Indians’ Luke Easter hit the longest...
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Second Term, Second String, Second Wind: A Regulatory Vesuvius Is Close at Hand
Speeches to lawyers’ groups are among the least fun to give. For one thing, if you get a detail wrong someone is sure to point it out. For another, most lawyers (and judges) have quasi-professional commitments to impassivity in their facial expressions.
Tough audience indeed.
In a pair of recent outings before collections of general counsels and their...
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The Bible vs. Heart
I offer the single most politically incorrect statement a modern American — indeed a modern Westerner, period — can make: I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom.
I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia),...
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The Speech I Would’ve Given at CPAC
Good evening, and thanks for coming. What you are about to experience will — I hope — entertain, perhaps enlighten, and maybe even move you.
To begin, I want to promise you what I won’t talk about. I won’t talk to you about current events. No talk of President Obama. Or Nancy Pelosi. Or the Senate Democrats. I won’t talk about the national debt. Or the...
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The crux of the marriage cases
Last week’s arguments over marriage were the latest chapter in a very long but very important book about how freedom endures through the separation of powers.
The first day’s argument turns on whether the people of the state of California may decide what “marriage” is. They did, and they may yet change their mind, but it is absurd to say...
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Missing Republicans—FOUND!
On talk radio, in internet commentary and at right wing conferences, worried analysts and activists obsess over the dire electoral consequence of “three million missing Republicans” who doomed conservative chances in 2012.
This lament for the lost legions of conservatism has been relentlessly recycled in right-leaning media to prove that Mitt...
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Challenge to the House GOP: Kill the Medical Device Tax, Now
Of all the many awful features of the Affordable Care Act –”Obamacare”– the medical device tax (“MDT”) is the most obviously ruinous of a particular sector of the economy.
More than 8,000 firms in the United States are at work on such devices, from artificial hearts to sight-saving eye technologies to low tech bandages and...
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Florida Atlantic University: Another Left-Wing Seminary
Question: What is the difference between Christian seminaries and American universities?
Answer: Christian seminaries announce that their purpose is to produce committed Christians. American universities do not admit that their primary purpose is to produce committed leftists. They claim that their purpose is to open students’ minds.
This month Florida...
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Easy repeal for medical device tax
Harvard won an NCAA tourney game and the United States Senate voted 79-20 to repeal a tax — both on the same day last week. “Your old men shall dream dreams,” proclaimed the prophet Joel, “and your young men shall see visions.” Strange things are afoot.
There is nothing the House GOP can do about arranging for more basketball...
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The GOP’s “Youth Problem” Is Really a Race Problem
Republican soul-searching about what went wrong in the 2012 election often focuses on the youth vote, suggesting that Democrats will continue to win among young voters unless conservatives abandon their traditional positions on social issues.
But this argument ignores the fact that among the big majority of voters 29 and younger who identified as white,...
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Celebrating Redemption as a Process
The holiday of Passover begins on March 25th, but most Americans, Jews as well as Christians, don’t realize the festival actually lasts eight days rather than the one or two days commonly observed. The Bible directs the Israelites to abstain from work at the beginning of the holiday, then allows a resumption to toil during its intermediary days, but orders a...
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Even If Your Child Is Gay…
Last week, Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced that he had reversed his position on same-sex marriage. The reason was that his son had come out to him and his wife as gay.
This is not the first such instance. Periodically, we hear about Republican politicians whose child announces that he or she is gay, prompting the parent to change his mind about...
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If You Don’t Like Assault Weapons, Don’t Get One
Gun control advocates love the line that “nobody needs an assault weapon for self-defense” or “no one needs a clip with more than seven rounds.” The best answer to these arguments is that if someone feels no need for a so-called assault weapon then that person should feel no obligation whatever to get one.
But in America, we don’t get to make such...
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Is the Pope Hispanic?
Since the new pope was born in Argentina, should he count as Hispanic, and does that make him a member of a different race from the former pope, who was German? In America, Pope Francis would indeed count as racially distinct from Pope Benedict, since the government—ridiculously—counts people of Hispanic heritage as “non white.”
This mislabeling occurs...
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The Coming Debate Among American Catholics
Pope Francis, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio walk into a bar…
OK, so that’s not going to happen. But say it did. What would the new pope want to talk about, and what would the these most visible Catholic members of the new GOP say?
For the benefit of the Beltway conservatives who spent the week at CPAC, or the MSMers who...
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Francis is third of three champions of freedom
Karol Wojtyla lived under both the Nazis and the communists, and helped bring about the shattering of the communist empire.
Joseph Ratzinger grew up under the Nazis as well, and spent most of his life locked with his friend John Paul II in the worldwide battle with the Soviets and their branch operations in various intellectual garbs around the globe.
Now comes...
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