John Hinderaker is a conservative blogger and attorney best known as a co-founder of Power Line, one of the most influential early political blogs. He contributed commentary and analysis to The Weekly Standard between 2005 and 2008, writing on media bias, government accountability, and political controversies. He is also a senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment.
Jill Simpson is an unusual woman. A lawyer, she has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama. Fellow DeKalb County lawyers describe her as "a very strange person" who "lives in her own world." The daughter of rabid Democrats, she has rarely if ever been known to participate in…
THE HEARINGS on John Roberts's and Sam Alito's nominations to the Supreme Court featured a Latin phrase most people hear only in connection with Supreme Court confirmations: stare decisis. Stare decisis is the legal doctrine holding that in general, an issue once decided should stay decided, and…
THE CIA'S WAR against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency's most successful covert action of recent times. The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the administration by former Democratic officeholders. The agency…
ALMOST EXACTLY one year ago, President Bush was reelected with more votes than had ever been cast for a presidential candidate, breaking Ronald Reagan's 1984 record. Not only did Bush sweep to victory by a three million vote margin, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and…
PRESIDENT BUSH'S NOMINATION of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has divided the conservative movement. Initially, most conservatives, but not quite all, expressed disappointment with the nomination. Since then, paths have diverged. Some conservatives, having gone on record as wishing that Bush…
LAST SUMMER, New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail rather than reveal to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald the identity of the source who told her that Valerie Plame was an employee of the CIA. Or so she said. But there was always some doubt as to what motivated Miller. It has been…
A FEW MONTHS AGO, most observers expected Chief Justice William Rehnquist's failing health to trigger President Bush's first Supreme Court nomination. But Rehnquist hung on, to the surprise of many, and it was Sandra Day O'Connor whose resignation brought about the first vacancy on the Court since…
THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA ("ELCA") is the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, with nearly 5 million members. The ELCA's highest legislative body is its Churchwide Assembly, which convenes every two years. The ninth such Churchwide Assembly has just ended. Yesterday, the…
PRESIDENT BUSH'S NOMINATION of John Roberts to the Supreme Court has brought into public view a hitherto-obscure movement, or conspiracy; or maybe just an obscure hoax: the "Constitution in Exile" movement. The concern that Roberts might be part of this shadowy group was voiced most explicitly by…
THE SUPREME COURT'S DECISION in Kelo v. City of New London has sparked a great deal of comment, most of it critical. Conservatives, in particular, have denounced Kelo's holding that economic development projects are a "public use" that municipalities and other government units can use eminent…
WHEN NEWSWEEK REPORTED that a Guantanamo Bay guard had flushed a detainee's Koran down a toilet, the Muslim world erupted in protests, some of which turned violent. Newsweek later retracted the story. More significantly, so did the detainee who made the original allegation--a fact that went largely…
THE UNITED NATIONS has been in the news of late. As usual, most of the news is negative: evidence suggesting that one or more members of the Security Council were bribed by Saddam; an inability to deal effectively with various crises in Africa; the embarrassing presence of nations such as Iran,…
LAST WEEKEND, Yale's chapter of the American Constitutional Society sponsored a conference at Yale Law School titled "The Constitution in 2020." The stated purpose of the conference, at which some of America's best-known liberal law professors appeared, was to work toward a "progressive" consensus…
FOR THE PAST TWO AND A HALF WEEKS, Washington has been roiled by controversy over an alleged "GOP talking points memo" that, according to ABC News and the Washington Post, was circulated among Republican Senators on the evening of March 17, when the Senate took up debate on the Terri Schiavo…
MUCH TIME MAY PASS before we fully understand the political ramifications of the Terri Schiavo case. For now, though, it seems that Republicans are taking a fearful beating. Opinion polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans disapproved of the effort--bipartisan, to be sure, but led…
ON MARCH 1, 2005, in a case titled Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court held, by a five to four majority, that the Eighth Amendment's proscription of "cruel and unusual punishments" bars imposition of the death penalty on those aged between 15 and 17 years at the time they commit a…
ONE OF LIBERALS' chief motivations these days is fear of the religious right. Ask people on the left to explain their loathing of President Bush or the Republican party, and the answer often comes around to Jerry Falwell, evangelicals, theocracy, and so on. The left's fear of conservative…