Opinion - The Weekly Standard

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 32 - 5/11/2009 - To both departing Justice David Souter and party-switching Senator Arlen Specter, one is tempted to say: Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 31 - 5/4/2009 - Strong job approval, higher personal ratings"--that's pollster Andrew Kohut's assessment of President Obama at roughly the 100-day point. "A bravura performance," wrote David Broder of the Washingon Post. The president's flacks take the Muhammad Ali approach: Obama is The Greatest. What comes to my mind, however, is the guy who falls off a skyscraper and halfway down declares, "So far, so good."

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 31 - 5/4/2009 - Some Democrats, from the White House on down, are pushing the idea of a "truth commission," à la South Africa, to deal with the "harsh measures" used by the Bush administration in interrogating al Qaeda detainees. Good. Let's have lots of truthtelling. Please bring it on.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 31 - 5/4/2009 - "We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history," President Obama said when he ordered the release of the Justice Department interrogation memos.

Washington (The Daily Standard) - Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States, thanks to his nomination by Barack Obama, believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced "high-value information" and gave the U.S. government a "deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.

Washington (The Daily Standard) - It's just another inconvenient truth: If Americans want any of thegovernment remedies that would supposedly save a planet allegedlyimperiled by global warming, it's going to cost them.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 30 - 4/27/2009 - Edenton, North CarolinaEvery day, Jackie and Ben Hobbs go about their modern lives inside walls hewn by hand before the In dustrial Revolution. The sounds of their TV and telephone mingle with the quiet creaks of wide slat floorboards laboring under 200 years of foot traffic, as the couple runs a small country bed-and-breakfast and restaurant outside Hertford, county seat of Perquimans County, North Carolina.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 30 - 4/27/2009 - As isolated as Republicans appear to be in Washington, they often find allies in the struggle to keep the federal government from becoming the command-and-control center of American life.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 29 - 4/13/2009 - As April 15 rolls around let us take a moment to recall why we Americans pay taxes: Because some of our country's good-for-nothing bums are too chicken to rob us at gunpoint. That would be members of Congress and the executive branch. How come we keep electing politicians who will tax the bejeezus out of us? Especially Democrats? At least Republicans are smart enough to lie about it.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 29 - 4/13/2009 - In football, it's called misdirection. When the ball is snapped, offensive linemen pull from the line of scrimmage and head to the right or left. A running back takes off in the same direction. But it's a deception. The play, a run or a pass, actually goes in the other direction. It's a clever tactic--pretending to head one way while going another--that also works in politics.

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 014, Issue 29 - 4/13/2009 - You can learn a lot from a budget. President Obama's $3.6 trillion behemoth isn't just a bunch of numbers and tables. It's a vision of where America ought to be in the future. Obama would ramp up government spending in health care, energy, and education. Taxpayers would foot the bill for a larger, more intrusive government that would claim to improve the quality of life and reduce inequality.