Terry Eastland

How Edwin Meese saved originalism.

This fall Harvard College has been defending its admissions program against charges of racial discrimination brought in federal court. Ironically, this is not the first time that Harvard’s admissions practices have lain at the heart of an important case that could affect college enrollments across…

Concluding her Senate floor speech in behalf of Judge Brett Kava­naugh—her vote for him was the decisive one—Republican Susan Collins expressed “her fervent hope” that he “will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have fewer 5-4 decisions and so that public confidence in our…

The government says there is evidence strongly suggesting that Harvard may be engaging in 'racial balancing.'

In 2016 the College of Charleston ended the practice of considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions—affirmative action, as it is called. The change went unnoticed in the college community until the Post and Courier, the local daily paper, reported it on July 29. Whereupon, almost within…

So Brett Kavanaugh is now part of the story. Kavanaugh, from that part of the swamp known as Bethesda, Md., is President Trump’s nominee for the seat vacated by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, and if, as advertised, he is a constitutionalist, the country will be closer…

Anthony Kennedy was not a great Supreme Court justice, but not a bad one either. If you were to rank the 113 justices so far, he would be somewhere in the middle, probably the upper middle. On the Supreme Court for 30 years, which is a long time as the lives of justices go, Kennedy, who will be 82…

Investigating discrimination at Harvard.

The Justice Department has won a small but significant victory in the campus free-speech case of Young America’s Foundation and Berkeley College Republicans v. Napolitano. Justice didn’t have to get involved in the case, but it did so and has helped the cause of free speech. Justice’s work in the…

When diversity morphs into discrimination.

In the course of a week in early March, one of President Trump’s longest-serving aides, Hope Hicks, resigned. One of the president’s most capable economics advisers, Gary Cohn, threatened to resign—and soon did. Son-in-law/presidential adviser Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded,…

More than 200 players have been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Membership in the hall is a confirmation of baseball greatness, and when teams convene in late winter in warm climes to prepare for the new season, prospects who possess evident talent become subjects of fan enthusiasm, even…

It’s a bit disconcerting that a church would see litigation as an acceptable way to pursue its mission here on Earth. Yet last fall the Archdiocese of Washington sued the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and we must say that it did so on pretty good grounds.

A major theme of the Trump administration lies in its effort to discipline the regulatory state, with the Justice Department playing a key role. In November Attorney General Jeff

Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican, is vice chairman of the little known Joint Economic Committee. Congress created the committee in 1946, its job basically to review economic conditions and recommend policy improvements. Economic concerns dominated in those post-war years, but today, Lee told…

Among the many reasons to give the book Scalia Speaks for Christmas are its collected speeches on religion. And of these speeches, my favorite is “Being Different,” which the justice gave in 1992 to the Judicial Prayer Breakfast Group, an informal gathering of judicial officers in the Washington,…

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump admired President Obama’s willingness to go around Congress and make law on his own authority. So it was reasonable to think that Trump, too, might become a unilateralist. But that isn’t happening.

As Jonathan Adler writes here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Judge Roy Moore is “constitutionally illiterate” on some basic issues. He also happens to be biblically illiterate in a crucial particular.

In case you haven’t finished reading the 429-page House Republicans tax bill, go to pages 427 and 428 to see what it proposes to do regarding the Johnson Amendment. Passed in 1954 and named for its chief sponsor, Senator Lyndon Johnson, the amendment prohibits politicking by tax-exempt nonprofits,…

Of all the professional sports, Major League baseball has the broadest range of players from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds: In 2015, more than 230 foreign-born players from 17 countries played the game at its highest level.

Justice Scalia was a terrific writer. And he thought about the craft, and what it requires. A short speech titled “Writing Well,” given to a group of legal writers who were giving him a lifetime achievement award, is fantastic.

Published last week, Scalia Speaks is a collection of the justice’s speeches edited by his son Christopher and the lawyer Ed Whelan. The book has six parts, the first of which is “On the American People and Ethnicity.”

“The American university was once the center of academic freedom,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in his speech at the Georgetown Law Center this week. It was “a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas.” But over the years it has become “an echo chamber of political…

Comes this week from the Brookings Institution a new survey by John Villasenor demonstrating that undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities have no idea what the First Amendment means.

Barbecue is a Southern food, and a special one. The food writer Jeffrey Steingarten says it is “simply the most delectable of all traditional American food." It originated in the 18th century in eastern North Carolina with whole-hog barbecue, in which the entire pig is cooked. While that tradition…

Give the Trump Education Department credit for rescinding the Obama Ed’s “Dear Colleague” letter of 2011 and opening a discussion about the meaning of Title IX. Under that law, “No person shall . . . on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected…

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was so disturbed by the clash of protesters in Charlottesville that he made a policy decision he may have to reverse: In a speech at the State Department on August 19, he repudiated hatred and racism before addressing what he called “a great diversity gap” in…

I’ll remember Mike Cromartie as a fellow Christian and my friend. I met Mike in the early 1980s. We were roughly the same age and had some of the same interests—at the top of the list, politics and religion. Mike became a master of evangelical Christianity and its involvements in politics in his…

President Trump thinks the Gorsuch appointment to the Supreme Court is one of his biggest achievements of his presidency. Another major success may await him: the redirection of the lower federal courts, such that there will be more Republican than Democratic appointees, and thus a more…

President Trump’s statement on Charlottesville caught my attention roughly halfway through: “We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal,” he said. Trump was invoking the Declaration of Independence, which indeed set forth that truth, and on which we were founded as a…

Students for Fair Admissions is at it again.

The Justice Department is pushing back against a New York Times article that claimed it was preparing to investigate and sue universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against applicants not of the preferred race or ethnicity.

The New York Times has noticed that, as President Trump faces “the sort of politically charged investigation that dogged Bill and Hillary Clinton when they were in the White House in the 1990s, he has consciously adopted a strategy from the Clintons’ playbook.”

The three people involved in effecting the termination of FBI director James Comey last week were President Donald Trump and the two highest officers in the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The Constitution vests in Trump the executive…

The three people involved in effecting the termination of FBI director James Comey last week were President Donald Trump and the two highest officers in the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The Constitution vests in Trump the executive…

In case you didn't notice, the star performer in the Judiciary Committee today was the nominee himself, Judge Neil Gorsuch.

J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…

J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…

In nominating federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, President Trump has made an excellent choice. Assuming there is nothing in Gorsuch’s record that is disqualifying, the Senate should confirm him posthaste.

With his aggressive executive action on immigration, President Obama has struck a constitutional nerve in the body politic. The first lawsuit challenging the president’s action was filed last week by a coalition of 18 states led by Texas. Oklahoma is about to file, and other states may do so as…

The Fall 2016 issue of the Claremont Review of Books features a review well worth your time by Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at the splendidly named Antonin Scalia Law School (previously the George Mason University Law School). The professor has written on Randy Barnett's new book, Our Republican…

Soon after Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, the battle over who should fill the Supreme Court vacancy commenced. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, took the position that it shouldn’t be President Barack Obama but the next president—whoever Americans choose—who…

As the seventh game of the World Series continued deep into the night last week, three things happened that were unusual, three things that make baseball the remarkable game it is. They had to do with rain, a meeting, and a player—three reasons the Cubs won the game, and thus the series.

When Justice Scalia died on February 13, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell vowed not to process anyone President Obama might pick for the vacancy, arguing that the next president should make the nomination instead. Senate Republicans stuck to that position, and so the vacancy is now Trump’s to…

The death this week of Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's first attorney general, recalls the era of the failed independent counsel law. The law was passed in 1978, and Congress declined to reauthorize it in 1999, when Reno was still the attorney general. A product of Watergate and the infamous…

On election eve, just how long are the odds that Evan McMullin will be our next president? The former CIA agent and independent conservative candidate has ballot access in just 43 states—32 in which his name is actually on the ballot and another 11 that allows his name to be written in. Despite the…

In a case awaiting review by the Supreme Court, the Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief making an argument for one of the nation’s fundamental principles—the equal protection of the law.

It's been more than a week since Originalists Against Trump issued their public statement opposing the election of Donald Trump. William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Stephen Sachs of Duke Law School organized the project; both worked on drafts of the statement, and Sachs also…

A Supreme Court nominee must be confirmed by the Senate in order to be appointed by the president. But for months now the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's choice to fill the seat opened by the death of Justice Antonin…

In this down year for conservatives one bright spot has been the renaming of George Mason University's law school in honor of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

In this down year for conservatives one bright spot has been the renaming of George Mason University’s law school in honor of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Back in the day, I threw papers for the Dallas Times Herald, the city’s afternoon daily. I was 12 years old when I took over a route of about 50 papers. I folded the papers and put them in a canvas bag about twice as big as a beach bag. I walked the blocks, pitching papers. Sometimes I'd ride my…

In 1965, Michael Novak was a young academic living in Los Angeles when Stanford University hired him for a teaching position. He was a Dodgers fan, and as he wrote in his fine book, The Joy of Sports (1976), he moved his young family to Palo Alto only to discover that he couldn't tune in the…

Kenneth Woodward's new book Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama is out, winning a positive review from D.G. Hart in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal: "His subject is how Americans get religion, and the author's own formation as a Catholic both…

Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The Clean Power Plan, as it is called, is central to President Barack Obama's overall…

Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The Clean Power Plan, as it is called, is central to President Barack Obama's overall…

Donald Trump used his visit this week to the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland to speak further to the matter of judicial selection for the Supreme Court. Last May the candidate said he would name judicial conservatives to the Court, and he released a list of 11 such jurists, all of them…

Last January at Liberty University, Donald Trump told the audience that as president he would "protect Christianity." Since then he has reiterated that promise. And last week, at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, he declared his intention this way: In "a Trump administration our…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg again feels compelled to urge the Senate to vote on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat held by the late justice Antonin Scalia. At an event this week for incoming law students at Georgetown University, Ginsburg said the Senate should vote on…

The great lefthander Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game 51 years ago Friday. It was at home against the Chicago Cubs. As usual, Vin Scully called the game. Scully, who is now 88 years old, will conclude his 67-season run as the voice of the Dodgers in a game on October 2…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies "to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

Being a baseball fan, and in particular a fan of the Braves even before they moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta; and being also a fan of Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who joined the team in 1989 and retired in 2009, all but the last of those 21 seasons spent with Atlanta, I could not resist listening to…

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook has been experimenting with its hiring policies “to help diversify its largely white, largely male workforce." Thus, two years ago the company began to incentivize in-house recruiters by offering them 1.5 points "for a so-called 'diversity hire'—a black,…

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal to sell or rent housing "because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or national origin." The provision prohibits the disparate treatment of individuals because of race or any of the other forbidden grounds it identifies, as when a real…

Summer ends with Donald Trump having spent the year’s hottest months pursuing evangelical voters by advocating repeal of the so-called Johnson amendment. His pursuit of evangelicals is understandable: Trump can't win the White House without them—lots and lots of them. But the Johnson amendment?

"Federal Transgender Bathroom Access Guidelines Blocked by Judge" is the headline atop a New York Times story. Here is how the case came to be, where it stands now, and why it is important:

Dansby Swanson went 2-for-4 last night. OK, so who is Swanson, and why am I writing about him?

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, President Obama published a piece in the Wall Street Journal lamenting "congressional inaction" on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. We have heard that term before, of course. Obama has often used congressional inaction…

"It might may (sic) no difference, but for [Kentucky] and [West Virginia] can we get someone to ask [Sanders's] belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern…

"Our Constitution is great. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, okay?"

Let’s make America great again, you say? We'd settle for making the Constitution great again. That's been a goal of Republicans for years, and it's a worthy one. It is essential, in fact, to making America great again.

From the Republican party platform: "Merit and hard work should determine advancement in our society, so we reject unfair preferences, quotas, and set-asides as forms of discrimination."

Under Article V of the Constitution, a constitutional amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress or by a special convention called by Congress on the application of two-thirds of the state legislatures. Thus, Congress controls one path for proposing amendments,…

In 2010, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives. One of the Republicans re-elected that year was Mike Pence, for a sixth term. During his campaign, Pence gave major speeches about the presidency and the Constitution, a key point of which was that President Obama was a poor…

Last month a federal district judge in Wyoming invalidated an Interior Department rule setting stricter standards for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking," in commin parlance) on public lands. The decision dealt a blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, and news coverage focused on…

Here's a matter on which elites and the general public sharply differ: affirmative action in higher education. Recall that on June 23 in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin II the Supreme Court upheld the school's use of race in admissions. Leaders at UT-A and competitive schools across the…

Last week, the FBI made its recommendation to the Justice Department not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information while secretary of state. Attorney General Loretta Lynch quickly accepted it, announcing that she was officially closing the case with no charges filed.

Writing for the Supreme Court in the Texas affirmative action case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the school's use of race in admissions "can make a difference [as] to whether an application is accepted or rejected." The question for the Court, as Kennedy put it, was whether, "drawing all…

"That’s the good thing: As a president I can do whatever I want." Those are President Obama's words. He may have meant it as a joke, but it's true enough: He, or any president, can do whatever he wants, even unwise things—provided they are legal.

As we reported here earlier this week, a coalition of Asian-American organizations has asked the Department of Education to investigate the admissions policies at Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. The coalition says the policies discriminate against Asian-American applicants…

This week Donald Trump delivered what he promised in March—a list of people he would consider as "potential replacements for Justice [Antonin] Scalia." Trump wants to ease concerns among Republicans and conservatives (two categories that largely overlap) about his commitment to "conservative…

In case there is any doubt as to the importance of the presidential election for the future of the Supreme Court, consider the court's decision Monday in Zubik v. Burwell.

Justice and Education department officials Friday sent a “significant guidance letter" to educators throughout the country advising that public schools should allow transgender students to use the bathroom and locker facilities of their choosing—the one for boys (and men) or the one for girls (and…

Still on Donald Trump's to-do list is carrying out a promise he made two months ago—that he'll release a list of people that, if elected president, he'd choose from in filling Supreme Court vacancies. Trump is drawing up such a list in order to ease concern among conservatives that he might pick a…

Of the 54 Senate Republicans, only 2—Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine—support holding hearings this election year on President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Kirk, but not Collins, also says he would consider voting for the nominee, making…

Utah senator Orrin Hatch has contended in numerous speeches, op-eds, press releases, and television appearances that the Senate should not act this year to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court that resulted when Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13. Instead, says Hatch, the Senate should…

Elections matter, affecting even the appointment of judges, as the Merrick Garland nomination demonstrates.

Here’s the read-out from Senator Grassley's office, on his breakfast this morning with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland:

Last week President Barack Obama nominated federal appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death in February. Under the appointments clause of the Constitution, Garland won't take a seat on the Supreme Court unless the Senate approves his…

President Obama evidently thinks he has a nominee who is confirmable by a Republican Senate that soon after Antonin Scalia's death made clear its intention to block anyone the president might nominate and thus let the voters decide in November who instead should select Scalia's replacement.

The late justice Antonin Scalia thought his best opinion was his dissent in Morrison v. Olson, a case decided on June 29, 1988, when he was finishing just his second term on the Supreme Court. At issue was the constitutionality of the independent counsel law, first passed in 1978. By a vote of…

Senator Charles Grassley has responded to President Obama's post last week on SCOTUS blog titled "A Responsibility I Take Seriously." Which responsibility might that be? "The power to appoint judges to the Supreme Court," said the president.

In 1998, Justice Antonin Scalia attended the funeral service for Justice Lewis Powell at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. At the luncheon afterwards Scalia looked for the church's pastor, the Rev. James Goodloe. Unable to find him, Scalia wrote Goodloe a letter telling him…

As political Washington wonders who will (sooner or later) replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died during his sleep a week ago, the more pressing question really is who will replace him in the mirth department. Scalia was that good at humor, and many of his most memorable quips came from the bench…

President Obama says he soon will nominate someone to fill the vacancy opened by the unexpected death of Supreme Court associate justice Antonin Scalia. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says his chamber will block any nominee the president sends up.

Soon after Ed Meese was sworn in as attorney general in early 1985, he organized a group within the Justice Department whose purpose was to advise him, and ultimately President Reagan, on who would be the best candidates to select for the Supreme Court, in the event seats opened. There were about…

First published November 13, 2006, and re-published today as news breaks of Antonin Scalia's passing:

The Supreme Court has granted a stay of a final rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants fueled by fossil sources. It has the dull title, "Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric…

From the Washington Post: Chief Justice John Roberts is worried about how the public sees the Supreme Court. In a recent speech celebrating Law Day at New England Law-Boston, Roberts discussed (among other things) the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominees, namely how it has evolved—or…

In few cases in its long history has the Supreme Court had occasion to interpret Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which provides that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This year it may have another. We'll know by the end of the Court's term in June,…

As Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott spoke with evident pride about how many times he’d sued the federal government. The total came to 31, and invariably the lawsuits challenged actions that Abbott believed violated federal statutes or the Constitution. Now, as Texas governor, he is no longer in…

The Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But, as Gary Scott Smith of Grove City College writes in his new book, Religion in the Oval Office, "Throughout American history many citizens have…

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a rookie who ranks 99th in seniority, gave his maiden speech on the Senate floor in November. Normally, senators use such speeches to discuss why this or that legislation is needed. Sasse, a former college president and a historian by training (Yale Ph.D.) who has…

A few days before the opening of its new term, the Supreme Court accepted for review a case from Texas that could prove one of the Court’s most important this year—provided that the justices actually get to decide it.

The day after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Attorney General Loretta Lynch attended a dinner in Washington held by the Muslim Advocates, a Muslim-rights organization. Lynch made no direct mention of the attacks but addressed the Justice Department's responsibilities in light of what she…

Next month the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, one of the most important cases this term. In 2008 Fisher, a white high school senior in Texas, applied for admission to the university and was turned down. She sued the school, claiming that its…

Ben Carson remains in the presidential race notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that the retired neurosurgeon and first-time-candidate-for-any-office wouldn’t last this long. Indeed, the most recent polls show Carson leading Donald Trump in Iowa, which kicks off the presidential primary season…

Some 45 municipalities and communities make up Westchester County, the prosperous, heavily Democratic jurisdiction just north of New York City whose most famous residents are Bill and Hillary Clinton. Like many localities across the country, Westchester has long been a recipient of federal housing…

During the debate in Las Vegas, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Jim Webb how, if were he elected, “he would not be a third term for Obama.” Webb said that “there would be a major difference between my administration and the Obama administration,” and it would concern “the use of executive authority.”

Consider that in Republican Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, we have a presidential candidate who during his high school years in Houston was among several students who met twice a week to read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers and the even more…

In his powerful dissent from Obergefell v. Hodges, the case in which the Supreme Court redefined marriage to include same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of their faith” and that if they “exercise their religion in…

Most summers I’ve had a fruit and vegetable garden, but rarely has my summer reading included much about gardening other than nursery catalogues and seed packets and basic how-to articles. This year has been different. My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner, first published in 1870, has had…

Wikipedia defines “startup accelerators” as “fixed-term, cohort-based programs that include mentorship and educational components and culminate” in a “demo day” on which hopeful entrepreneurs make pitches to prospective funders. On August 4, President Obama hosted his own demo day, recasting it to…

Ted Cruz, who in 1996 clerked for then-chief justice William Rehnquist and is now a first-term senator and GOP presidential candidate, has assumed the leadership of conservatives aiming to rein in a Supreme Court they fault for imposing on the country rights not found in the Constitution. This is…

Ye who are disappointed in the Supreme Court this term, take heart: Its plainly wrong decision in the housing case from Texas, handed down last week, was not as bad as it might have been.

A largely unnoticed story about Carly Fiorina is that she is the daughter of a man who was one of the finest lawyers of his generation. His influence on her, she says, is “huge.” Asked in an interview whether he would be surprised by her bid for the Oval Office, Fiorina said he “probably would be,”…

In his new book on the Constitution, Senator Mike Lee, the first-term Utah Republican, recalls his decision to run for the upper chamber in 2010. “It bothered me that even in the Republican Party, far too many elected officials have been reluctant to engage the public in a meaningful constitutional…

The most notable exchange during the argument last month in the same-sex marriage case before the Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges, likely occurred between Justice Samuel Alito and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. 

Senator Rand Paul has entered the presidential sweepstakes as a Tea Party favorite and limited-government constitutionalist—i.e., one who believes Congress should not pass legislation unless it has the constitutional authority to do so.

America’s freight railroads get to continue their argument with Amtrak, America’s passenger rail service.

President Obama wants explicit legislative authorization to use military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The administration has sent a draft of an AUMF to Congress, which has begun hearings that could last a while.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Constitution is being amended​—​though not according to the process our supreme law actually provides for. Which is, first, that two-thirds of both houses propose the amendment and, second, that the amendment then be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of…

In one of the biggest Supreme Court cases of the year, Justice Antonin Scalia seems destined to cast the critical vote. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, argued late last month, concerns the Fair Housing Act of 1968, specifically its prohibition…

Our first national government—the one established by the Articles of Confederation—was notoriously weak. Congress wasn’t much good at administering the laws it passed or at conducting foreign affairs. The government lacked what the Framers of the Constitution said it sorely needed: energy. As James…

In Grutter v. Bollinger, decided in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor upheld race preferences in higher education but also declared they must have “a termination point.” So when a lawsuit against preferences in admissions is brought, there is a presumption that they could be terminated, perhaps…

This, the “concise edition” of Liberty and Union, is an abridgment of a larger, two-volume work. It contains a glossary of legal terms (“writ,” for example, is a court order), tables of cases, a list of the 118 (so far) justices of the Supreme Court, and the texts of the Declaration of…

Let us now praise famous men, or at least one good federal judge, as some recent work of his demonstrates. Jeffrey Sutton is this judge, and he sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which includes the states of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Earlier this month he…

With Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time since Barack Obama took office, the president may find it harder to appoint left-wing lawyers to judgeships. Whether he compromises on some of his nominees, including any to the Supreme Court, may depend on the willingness of the new…

Last winter President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development published a regulation pursuant to the Fair Housing Act that defines discrimination as actions or policies that while neutral and nondiscriminatory in their intent have a disparate impact, shown through statistics, on a group…

During his confirmation hearing in early 2009, Eric Holder declared he would not politicize the Justice Department. Yet throughout more than five years in office, the attorney general has done just that—without objection from President Obama, who obviously  paid no heed to Holder’s promise. Indeed,…

In case you’ve not been paying attention, an issue for House Republicans as the midterm elections draw near is what to do about a president they believe has offended the Constitution by usurping legislative power and failing to carry out his duty to faithfully execute the law.

On August 15, a grand jury in Travis County, Texas, shocked the Lone Star State when it handed up an indictment of Governor Rick Perry, a likely candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. According to the grand jury, Perry abused his power in 2013 when he attempted to get the county’s…

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is the affirmative action case that won’t go away. It’s been to the Supreme Court once and may return. It is a case that could well turn on a failure to define terms—“critical mass” being the critical term.

On the topic of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the contraceptive mandate case decided on the last day of the recent Supreme Court term, the Democrats are fighting mad. They don’t like the decision. No, they despise it. Indeed, their rhetoric on Hobby Lobby has become so misleading, even strange, that the…

On a wide range of matters, including health care, energy, immigration, foreign policy, and education, says House speaker John Boehner, President Obama has ignored some statutes completely, selectively enforced others, and at times created laws of his own, thus failing to “take care that the laws…

The other day a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that a First Amendment challenge to an Ohio law should be heard in the lower courts. While the decision may have seemed a minor one, it represents an important advance for freedom of speech.

In NLRB v. Noel Canning, whatever the differences between the bare majority of five justices led by Justice Breyer and the four dissenters for whom Justice Scalia wrote, there is no question between the contending sides that President Obama acted unconstitutionally in making three ostensible recess…

In our episodic “national conversation about race,” perhaps it is time to take notice of Rothe Development Corporation of San Antonio, Texas, which, you could say, has been having its own conversation about race—in the federal courts. Rothe is a government contractor that has now brought two…

I happen to like fried chicken. I like just about everything about it. I like being in the store and looking for the right chicken. I like cutting up the chicken, and then preparing the pieces for frying, and then frying them in the big pan we use for that purpose. And I like eating my portion. I…

Looking for issues to push in this year’s congressional elections, Senate Democrats are proposing a constitutional amendment that would enable government at the federal and state levels alike to heavily regulate campaign contributions and expenditures. The effort is driven by the Democrats’ intense…

On March 24, World Vision, one of the nation’s best-known Christian relief and development nonprofits and one of the world’s largest charities, announced that it would no -longer exclude from employment, on its stateside staff of 1,100, Christians who are in legal same-sex marriages. Two days…

"As Justice Harlan observed over a century ago, ‘our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.’ .  .  . The people of Michigan wish the same for their governing charter. It would be shameful for us to stand in their way.”

"This is the best Supreme Court, if you’re interested in a free society and in the ability of Americans to participate in the political process with a minimum amount of government restrictions. In fact, this is a great Supreme Court.”

Leslie H. Southwick of Jackson, Mississippi, is (or rather, was) “the nominee,” and here provides an account of his quest to become a judge on a particular federal court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which sits in New Orleans. President George W. Bush nominated him to that court…

In a speech the other day to state attorneys general, the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, offered an ideal job description for himself and his state counterparts: “not merely to use our legal system to settle disputes and punish those who have done wrong, but to answer the kinds of fundamental…

In his State of the Union speech in January, President Obama said he was planning a new initiative to help “more young men of color facing tough odds to stay on track and reach their full potential.” Last week, Obama launched “My Brother’s Keeper.” In essence, the president will use the power of…

Last month the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The vote broke along party lines, 10-to-8. Over the weekend Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania became the first Democrat to oppose Adegbile. “I will not vote to…

President Obama and Senate Democrats have gone to great lengths to secure the appointment of executive-branch officers and judges and thus help advance his policies and programs. Obama has made recess appointments in a way no president before him did, an action now being challenged in National…

Under our Constitution, a government agency may not act beyond the authority given it by Congress. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has said, “an agency literally has no power to act .  .  . unless and until Congress confers power upon it.”

Dr. Brian Lee is pastor of Christ Reformed Church, a small church in downtown Washington, D.C., which he founded six years ago. Lee knows something about a topic not ordinarily discussed at his church, that of “legislative prayer.” As we’ll see, he has his doubts about it.

The biggest political story in our domestic politics since 2009 has been, as it will be for the foreseeable future, health care. One part of this story is ripe for telling now: the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—also known as Obamacare. That effort, you’ll recall, came in…

A question: Are Texas and all its agencies and local governments breaking the law? The answer is that they probably are, according to the Obama administration and its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, isn’t waiting for the EEOC to investigate and…

On November 5, Republican Rob Astorino was reelected executive of upscale Westchester County, which lies directly north of New York City, between the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. Back from a week of postelection beachifying in Puerto Rico, Astorino is already thinking about running for…

“Detroit civil rights lawyer Shanta Driver made a last-minute decision to argue in a high-profile Supreme Court affirmative action case on Oct. 15 in part, she said, because so few African-Americans appear before the justices.”

Among the first cases heard by the Supreme Court in its new term is one from Michigan. The state stands accused of violating the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee by requiring equal treatment in public-university admissions decisions. Michigan has committed no such violation. Yet to judge…

President Obama may have been distracted by Syria, but his domestic presidency proceeds apace, seeking what he heralds as “the transformation of the United States.” Especially is this true at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which aims to remake neighborhoods all across America,…

When I asked Mike Lee, the freshman Republican senator from Utah, how he identified himself politically, he said, “A constitutional conservative.” Note the adjective “constitutional.” It’s not surprising that the senator uses it. 

Since the early 1990s the New York Police Department has used a crime-prevention strategy that it calls “stop, question, and frisk.” Accordingly, officers stop and question a person based on reasonable suspicion and sometimes pat down the clothing of the individual to ensure that he is not armed.…

Is Obama lawless? House Republicans certainly think so. The issue involves the Affordable Care Act, under which employers with 50 or more full-time workers must provide health insurance in terms defined by the statute or pay a $2,000 penalty per employee. Known as the “employer mandate,” it was to…

Arguably the most important case the Supreme Court handed down this past term was United States v. Windsor, in which Justice Kennedy, writing for a five-justice majority, declared unconstitutional the Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage for federal purposes. Largely neglected in…

 In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled against using race to determine public school assignments. Chief Justice Roberts concluded his plurality opinion with this eloquent statement: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

My wife says the only thing I’ll plant is what I can eat. Not entirely true, I tell her. I point to certain things I’ve planted: the cluster of yellow iris in the side yard, the bunch of white iris in the backyard, and the large spread of irises of many colors in the front yard, under the crape…

Last month, in City of Arlington, Texas v. Federal Communications Commission, the Supreme Court’s five judicial conservatives divided on a question concerning the relationship between federal courts and federal regulators. Justice Scalia wrote the decision for a majority that included Justice…

This is the latest in the “edible series” of books put out by Reaktion Books, each of which explores the history and cultural associations of a particular food or drink. Written by Lorna Piatti-Farnell of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, Beef is number 33 in the series, its…

Late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, my wife Jill and I were driving through Vienna, Virginia, toward Tysons Corner when we found ourselves in front of, and then beside, and then right behind an old gray Volvo wagon. The car caught our eyes, and quickly we realized why, for it wasn’t just…

Robert H. Bork, we all know, didn’t sit on the Supreme Court. His legacy thus cannot lie in votes cast and opinions written. You have to look elsewhere, and you certainly could begin with his earliest work at Yale Law School, which was in antitrust. In a series of law review articles and ultimately…

Our government is not a pure democracy but a constitutional republic, meaning that we govern ourselves in accord with the Constitution, which provides for a Supreme Court with the authority to review and strike down laws that are in conflict with the Constitution. In Cosmic Constitutional Theory,…

Born in Dallas on February 7, 1953, my sister Janie was a healthy baby, smart and fun to be around, the last of the three children in our family. She was Exhibit A in support of Carl Sandburg’s famous aphorism that a baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.

Let us now praise the Supreme Court. We know that Newt Gingrich thinks the judiciary needs rebuking, and we agree with him to a point. But sometimes​—​actually, often under Chief Justice John Roberts​—​the Court gets it right. And it did so last week unanimously in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical…

Among the cases the Supreme Court is being asked to take in its new term is one from Texas challenging racial preferences in college admissions. Alice Fisher was finishing her senior year at Stephen F. Austin High School in 2008 when she applied, unsuccessfully, for admission to the University of…

Last month, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a Pennsylvania woman named Carol Bond may challenge a federal law under which she was prosecuted, on grounds that Congress had exceeded its powers and intruded upon the sovereignty and authority of the states. Until Bond v. United States, it was…

Last week the Supreme Court reentered the business of dubious liberal policymaking with its decision in a case from California, Plata v. Brown. With Justice Kennedy writing for himself and four colleagues, the Court sustained a lower court’s order requiring the state to reduce the number of…

In a week when the news concerned taxes and spending, the Supreme Court happened to decide a case dealing with .  .  . taxes and spending. This was not a federal but a state case, from Arizona, and the good news is that in a 5-to-4 ruling the Court recognized its proper, limited role in our system…

At least it doesn’t involve a mandate. The Obama White House has launched something called “The President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge,” the point of which is to advance “Interfaith Cooperation and Community Service in Higher Education.” The White House is “encouraging”…

Whether House Republicans will succeed in limiting the national government is a question raised by a simple rule adopted on their first day in the majority. Under the rule, every bill when introduced must be accompanied by a statement citing the specific authority granted to Congress by the…

It may be startling to imagine the American presidency as a train that “has run off the rails.” But that’s the metaphor Indiana Republican Mike Pence chose in a speech he gave at Hillsdale College on September 20 titled “The Presidency and the Constitution.” Elected last month to his sixth term in…

Alas, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the latest politician to turn his attention to the Supreme Court. Leahy thinks the justices have more conflicts of interest than they acknowledge, and should recuse themselves more frequently than they do. He believes that…

In January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held that under the First Amendment Congress may not limit corporate and union funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections. The Court overturned one of its own rulings and a provision of the…

Justice Stevens turned out to be one of those Republican appointees to the Court who “grew” during his tenure. That was nowhere more evident than in cases challenging the legality of racial preferences. Consider that in the landmark Bakke case (1978), Stevens wrote an opinion joined by three other…

Regarding Obama v. SCOTUS majority in Citizens United, which continues to be a story at least in Washington: Count me among those who believe that a president may criticize an opinion by the Court. As Lincoln once said (though before he became president) a Supreme court decision is not a “thus…

The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions Edited

I didn't realize before I married Jill that our union meant we'd always own a dog or two.

On the first day of the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Washington Post led with a story about how the hearings were "not just about" the nominee and the Senate's response to her. They were also about the struggle between the two parties over the direction of our courts.…

The most notable development in the Sotomayor hearings yesterday was her rejection of her sponsor's approach to judging. President Obama has made clear over the years that the rule of law, or legal process, is not enough to decide a small percentage of cases, and that in those cases judges have to…

Key passages from the judge's opening statement: "Throughout my seventeen years on the bench, I have witnessed the human consequences of my decisions. Those decisions have not been made to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice." And…

Last Monday, on the final day of its 2008-09 term, the Supreme Court decided its most controversial recent case, Ricci v. DeStefano. This concerned the now-famous claim by a group of firefighters--17 white and one Hispanic--that New Haven unlawfully discriminated against them on the basis of race.

In announcing her nomination to the Supreme Court last week, President Obama said Sonia Sotomayor has the "first and foremost quality" needed in a justice: "a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law, an ability to home in on the key issues and provide clear answers to complex legal questions." He…

Now that Obama has picked Sonia Sotomayor to take the seat of the retiring David Souter, the summer promises to be really interesting. By the last week of June the Supreme Court will have decided Ricci v. DeStefano. This is the case alleging racial discrimination in employment on the part of New…

Blind Spot

Yesterday John McCormack posted here the clip of then candidate Obama declaring that George Bush used signing statements to "accumulate more power in the presidency." The implication of Obama's remarks was that Bush aimed to accumulate more power than the Constitution vests in the executive, that…

Notwithstanding the president's righteous campaign talk about how committed he is to the separation of church and state, White House aides are now in the business of vetting prayers said before Obama rallies by individuals whom they've asked to do the praying. Read this remarkable story by the…

A recent edition of Newsweek ran a photograph of Barack Obama that was taken in the White House the morning of January 20, just after the Obamas and the Bushes had finished coffee and were about to leave for the inauguration. The caption noted that Obama was fussing with his tie, which he was, but…

Surprisingly, President Obama didn't mention the Second Great Commandment--love thy neighbor as thyself--in his inaugural address. But he did this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast. Obama described it as "one law that binds all great religions together," quoting equivalents to the…

Barack Obama is the most religious Democratic president since Jimmy Carter. In announcing his campaign two years ago in Springfield, Illinois, he explicitly declared his Christian faith, and on the stump he regularly described himself as "a devout Christian." He made "religious outreach" a key part…

Among the first "directives" of this very young presidency is one Barack Obama has given himself. From a press release issued earlier today: I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former…

This week the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Gary, Indiana, charging the city with racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. You can read the complaint here. The story in brief: Gary wanted to hire some Emergency Medical Technicians. It had 25 job…

Speaking of things that could kill a prayer, there is a new lawsuit by Michael Newdow (the guy who tried unsuccessfully to get "under God" struck from the Pledge of Allegiance) that takes aim at inauguration prayers as well as the practice (it started with George Washington) of a president's saying…

The other day I emailed a few questions to Rick Warren, who has accepted Barack Obama's invitation to give the inauguration prayer, and he's now responded. Warren says, among other things, that the invitation was "completely unexpected" and that "several dozen" other pastors would do "a better…

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

During his press conference today, Obama defended his choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation, as reported here, by saying that the country needs to "come together," even when there's disagreement on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about."…

So the president-elect has asked Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. It's an interesting decision. Warren, a Southern Baptist, is pastor of Saddleback, the evangelical megachurch in Orange County, Ca. When I was at the church in August for the debate between Obama and McCain…

Holy Smoke

What does Obama think? That's a question raised by the Federal Circuit's decision this week in Rothe Development Corp. v. Department of Defense, which held unconstitutional a federal law that sets aside five percent of defense contracting dollars for businesses owned and controlled by "socially and…

From what's known so far, the Obama campaign's outreach to white evangelicals appears to have helped. Obama strategists never thought that Obama would win a majority of evangelical voters in any state, and he didn't. But Obama aides had their eyes on certain states they aimed to contest, and they…

Our first web editor, Jonathan V. Last, tells the intriguing tale of how Dean came to our attention here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Read the whole thing. It's another chapter in the continuing story of how the web has democratized journalism. Dean was trained as a lawyer and then started a headhunting…

Have you noticed how the justices of the Supreme Court are living longer and longer, compiling more and more years of service--far more than they used to? Doubtless the justices tire of seeing their ages mentioned in stories triggered by the presidential race that contemplate who is most likely to…

A few weeks before the Republican convention, Time magazine asked Sarah Palin what her religion was. "Christian," she said. Asked whether she was any particular kind of Christian, she replied, "No. Bible-believing Christian." Ever since John McCain asked Palin to be his running mate, her religion…

Palin is having an impact. I saw it myself at the McCain-Palin rally held earlier today at Van Dyke Park in Fairfax County, Va. My sense is that the crowd was substantially larger than it would have been had McCain showed up there with a running mate who is not Sar-ah. I break her name down into…

In an earlier post I noted that the Obama campaign left something out of its new pro-abortion rights radio ads that started running last week in key states-its ostensible commitment (it's in the platform) to "reducing abortion." In his appearance yesterday on ABC's "This Week," Obama, talked about…

Over at Spiritual Politics, Mark Silk makes the interesting observation that Sarah Palin is "the first movement evangelical ever to occupy a place on a GOP national ticket since the emergence of the religious right." Silk doesn't say what a "movement evangelical" is, but a fair definition would…

Sarah Palin may not be "going to Washington to seek [the] good opinion" of "reporters and commentators," as she put it in her speech last night. But some of those reporters and commentators offered surprisingly positive (as these things go) opinions about her speech. For example, the Washington…

Sarah Palin is a pro-life, social conservative. And she attends churches that scholars of evangelicalism usually label as evangelical--a non-denominational church in Juneau and an Assemblies of God church in her home town of Wasilla. So you can see why evangelical leaders (such as James Dobson)…

Politico reports that Barack Obama has a new radio ad challenging John McCain on abortion that's running in at least seven states-Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Colorado. I've not heard it, as I'm not in any of those states. But here's the ad as Politico has it: "Let me tell…

By now we know that evangelical Protestants--generally supportive of Republican candidates but eagerly courted by Democrats this year--are a crucial voting bloc in the November election. Thus it was big news when Rick Warren, the evangelical megachurch pastor, recently asked both John McCain and…

Lake Forest, California

TOWARD THE END OF his acceptance speech Barack Obama borrowed twice from the New Testament. The first was when he said that "what makes us rich" and "strong" and "what keeps the world coming to our shores" is "that American spirit--that American promise--that pushes us forward even when the path is…

Tony Campolo is a rare bird indeed--an evangelical Protestant who's also a Democrat and pro-life. He was on the platform committee and worked on the plank dealing with abortion. At yesterday's meeting of pro-life Democrats, Campolo was introduced as the committee member responsible for the new…

Joe Biden gave a speech in which-in contrast to Bill Clinton's -Barack Obama is an actor. He makes choices and does important things from the time he is a young adult to the present. Instead of choosing Wall Street after college, he goes to Chicago, and he makes the lives of poor people the work of…

Bill Clinton left no doubt that he's for Barack Obama. But it's striking that his case for Obama depended much less on any accomplishments by the candidate than on his intelligence, character, "family heritage," "life experiences," and promise. Consider that section early on in which Clinton said…

Denver During that Democrats for Life meeting today, held at the Monaco Hotel not far from the Pepsi Center, some of the speakers criticized an ostensibly pro-life Republican Party for failing to make serious progress on a pro-life agenda. One criticism in particular was that despite the fact that…

Seen in a storefront window close to the Pepsi Center: "Liberal Markdowns: 50 to 70% Off." Ah, something liberal in this Democratic week that you have to like.

Regarding living Americans involved in politics whom Hillary Clinton referred to in her speech, in order of mention and excepting Obama and of course the despised (by Democrats) Bush and her own husband Bill, here is how she described them: --Michelle Obama will be "a terrific partner" for her…

One of Obama's closest contemporaries, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, made only one point worth noting: that the Democrats don't deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose--that the Democrats need not just better programs and policies but also a better (than Republicans) vision.…

At today's "Faith in Action Panel," I heard some interesting rights talk. A rabbi said that "affordable education is part of the unalienable right to happiness." Other clergy said that education (presumably "affordable" education) and universal health care are rights we should recognize. None of…

After the Democrats' first ever "Faith Caucus," I interviewed Shaun Casey, the Obama campaign's evangelical outreach coordinator. That's a fancy title for someone whose day job is teaching theology (at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.) As Casey's title suggests, Obama is "reaching…

". . . caring for the least among us each and every day." Thus said Michelle Obama, halfway through her speech. Her husband likes to quote this passage (from Matthew 25). Who are "the least" in Obama's world? Lots and lots of people, including widows and orphans and, generally, those who are poor.…

Introducing Michelle was her brother Craig Robinson. He is the new coach of the Oregon State basketball team. Last year he led Brown University to a school record 19 victories. Robinson played at Princeton University and was an investment banker for a while. Last year the Oregon State Beavers went…

The Obama press office has just released a text of Michelle Obama's speech "as prepared for delivery." Here's the sentence we've been waiting for: "That is why I love this country." Catch her speech and you'll learn the reasons she gives for her love of country. Michelle's "why-I-love" statement is…

Denver Jesse Jackson Jr. has sounded a theme that the Democrats will push all week-namely that "at the heart of this campaign" is the idea that "we all have a stake in each other," meaning, he continued, that the well-being of each depends on the well-being of us all. What Jackson didn't say is…

Denver Inside the Pepsi Center, sitting in a close-down row, I think I'm seeing Carmelo Anthony out there on the court. I think I see him muscling in for a leaner from about 12 feet, with a bunch of bodies sliding in for maybe a rebound. But no such luck. I'm at the Democratic Convention, not at a…

In a largely overlooked respect, Biden is the perfect choice for Obama to have made. They both believe that judges may enforce rights not found in the text or history of the Constitution. Biden made plain his belief in unenumerated rights jurisprudence (this is some fancy law language) in 1987…

For my story in this week's issue, "The Faith-Based Campaign," there were some details about Saddleback Church that I was not able to use, for space reasons, but may be of interest especially to people wanting to know more about this high-profile church: Saddleback is, by intention, "a…

Saddleback Church Lake Forest, Calif. In the "message" room afterwards ("message" being a churchly word for spin), Gary Bauer, for McCain, having described the candidate's performance as "a grand slam home run," told me that "all this talk that Barack would peel off a significant portion of [the…

Saddleback Church Lake Forest, Calif. Saddleback's "Civil Forum on the Presidency" starts in about an hour from now. Note the grand title of this event, when the reality is that the two campaigns are battling for the votes of evangelicals. Bush got a whopping 78 percent of the evangelical vote in…

David Brody is covering the presidential campaign for CBN, giving particular attention to the role of religion. His interview with Rick Warren is interesting, to say the least. Warren's 22,000-member Saddleback Church will be the site tomorrow night of the two presidential candidates' first joint…

I WAS GLAD I CAUGHT a lot of Harry Christopher "Skip" Caray Jr. in the last game he broadcast, which was last Thursday. The Braves were at home against the Cardinals, and Skip was in the booth with his longtime partner, Pete Van Wieren. Between the first pitch and the fifth inning I was in various…

The Supreme Court ended its term this year by making a mistake in one of its most controversial cases--the case in which it held unconstitutional a Louisiana law authorizing capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12 years of age.

To add to what Steve Hayes just posted, the deeper problem is this: If Schmidt holds such a high view of the Clinton record on race, how can anyone expect McCain to be adequately briefed on issues involving race? Already McCain is behind the curve, as consider this exchange with CNN's Wolf Blitzer…

McCain's decision to support the Arizona civil rights initiative, on the ballot on Election Day this fall, means that a critical campaign issue is now in play. The initiative, patterned after ones in California, Washington, and Michigan, requires that the state of Arizona neither advantage nor…

Tony Snow was two years out of college when he got his first job in journalism. I was editor of the editorial page of the Greensboro Record, the afternoon daily in Greensboro, N.C., and I needed an editorial writer. Tony applied for the job. He had no "clips" as such, but the several pieces of…

A key issue in the eight years of Bush's faith-based initiative has concerned the authority of religious entities as employers: May they take religion into account when hiring people to do the work that government funds? On numerous occasions Bush has asked Congress to pass legislation confirming…

So Obama would create what he calls "a new President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships." Sounds a lot like Bush's White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. But Obama wants a fresh start. Announcing his plans today after a tour of a food bank in Zanesville,…

I once wrote a letter to my hero, hoping to get one back. This was early in 1976, and I'd recently taken my first newspaper job. William F. Buckley Jr., who was willing to challenge liberal orthodoxy and defend traditional norms like no one else, was as famous as I was obscure, and I could think of…

BARACK OBAMA IS GUILTY as charged by the Clinton campaign--of using without attribution words uttered by Deval Patrick during his successful run last year for the governorship of Massachusetts. Patrick, a friend of Obama's and one of his campaign chairmen, is hardly aggrieved about this, nor do…

Barack Obama is promising change, and in an important respect he is delivering it. Obama, the son of a Kenyan, is African American, yet he isn't offering himself as "an African-American candidate" but as a candidate who happens to be African American. That's a big change. He has made transcending…

My previous post lacked clarity, which is a writer's besetting sin. ("Be clear, be clear, and yet again I say, be clear," said the columnist of a generation ago, James J. Kilpatrick.) Here is the essential point I meant to convey: That while Huckabee said in his concession remarks that he still…

My previous post lacked clarity, which is a writer's besetting sin. ("Be clear, be clear, and yet again I say, be clear," said the columnist of a generation ago, James J. Kilpatrick.) Here is the essential point I meant to convey: That while Huckabee said in his concession remarks that he still…

In conceding South Carolina to John McCain, Mike Huckabee nonetheless declared his intention to keep on in his quest to be our 44th president. (He was the 44th governor of Arkansas, by the way.) But it's far more likely that Huckabee will be our 47th vice president. It's obvious he likes McCain,…

In conceding South Carolina to John McCain, Mike Huckabee nonetheless declared his intention to keep on in his quest to be our 44th president. (He was the 44th governor of Arkansas, by the way.) But it's far more likely that Huckabee will be our 47th vice president. It's obvious he likes McCain,…

This morning on CNN, Mike Huckabee said that the Constitution is "a living, breathing document." If you read the full transcript, you'll see that Huckabee wasn't embracing the view of liberal theorists - that judges should adapt the Constitution - and thus make it "live" and "breathe" - in order to…

This morning on CNN, Mike Huckabee said that the Constitution is "a living, breathing document." If you read the full transcript, you'll see that Huckabee wasn't embracing the view of liberal theorists - that judges should adapt the Constitution - and thus make it "live" and "breathe" - in order to…

One other point about Thompson's criticism of Huckabee's willingness to support a federal ban on smoking in public places: It was one of several Thompson made in an effort to illustrate "the direction" Huckabee "would take us in" as president. Others included Huckabee's willingness to bring enemy…

One other point about Thompson's criticism of Huckabee's willingness to support a federal ban on smoking in public places: It was one of several Thompson made in an effort to illustrate "the direction" Huckabee "would take us in" as president. Others included Huckabee's willingness to bring enemy…

As reported by The Hill (and oddly ignored by other media), Mike Huckabee has modified his position on the advisability of a federal law outlawing smoking in public places. Back in August, during a forum on cancer, the former Arkansas governor said he would be willing to sign a bill to that effect.…

As reported by The Hill (and oddly ignored by other media), Mike Huckabee has modified his position on the advisability of a federal law outlawing smoking in public places. Back in August, during a forum on cancer, the former Arkansas governor said he would be willing to sign a bill to that effect.…

In his trips to Iowa last summer, Mike Huckabee often joked about how he was actually the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, notwithstanding polls showing his support in the low single digits. "None" was polling higher than Giuliani, Romney, or McCain, and Huckabee would…

Concerning the Democrats, the big question is how large the margin of Obama's victory will be. I have him at 50 percent, Hillary at 28 percent, and Edwards at 16 percent. If the 50-28 part is right, then there is a second big question: How long before Hillary bows out? On the Republican side,…

Concerning the Democrats, the big question is how large the margin of Obama's victory will be. I have him at 50 percent, Hillary at 28 percent, and Edwards at 16 percent. If the 50-28 part is right, then there is a second big question: How long before Hillary bows out? On the Republican side,…

It will be an Obama Iowa, with Hillary second and Edwards third. Obama's appeal to independents proves critical. Biden stays in the race by finishing fourth. The numbers: Barack, 32 Clinton, 26 Edwards, 25 Biden, 11 On the Republican side, if you'd asked me on Christmas Eve, I'd have said Huckabee…

It will be an Obama Iowa, with Hillary second and Edwards third. Obama's appeal to independents proves critical. Biden stays in the race by finishing fourth. The numbers: Barack, 32 Clinton, 26 Edwards, 25 Biden, 11 On the Republican side, if you'd asked me on Christmas Eve, I'd have said Huckabee…

Aboard the Huckabus

"Character matters most": I could see how someone down in, say, Little Rock, who clicked on those words might ask for equal treatment. Here are the pages that someone might insist on. And this page, too. Doesn't it take some will power to put down that fork?

"Character matters most": I could see how someone down in, say, Little Rock, who clicked on those words might ask for equal treatment. Here are the pages that someone might insist on. And this page, too. Doesn't it take some will power to put down that fork?

THE VALUE OF NONPROFITS

One reason that latest Huckabee ad - "What Really Matters" - will prove effective: Exiting from the elevator this morning, a woman said: "Happy Holidays." I didn't know her, but the words she spoke registered with me, and negatively so, since I don't like the pluralizing of Christmas that has…

One reason that latest Huckabee ad - "What Really Matters" - will prove effective: Exiting from the elevator this morning, a woman said: "Happy Holidays." I didn't know her, but the words she spoke registered with me, and negatively so, since I don't like the pluralizing of Christmas that has…

I just received from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life an email recommending "our new and improved Religion & Politics '08." The site's worth checking out, especially since the presidential race already is knee-deep in religion. There's lots of religion-and-politics info here, including…

I just received from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life an email recommending "our new and improved Religion & Politics '08." The site's worth checking out, especially since the presidential race already is knee-deep in religion. There's lots of religion-and-politics info here, including…

The question that has preoccupied the Mitt Romney campaign since its outset is whether voters will hold his Mormon faith against him.

"Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: 'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'" Huckabee asked that question in an interview with Zev Chafetz, and Chafetz reported it in "The Huckabee Factor", which will appear in the next issue…

"Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: 'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'" Huckabee asked that question in an interview with Zev Chafetz, and Chafetz reported it in "The Huckabee Factor", which will appear in the next issue…

Here's another angle from which to see the presidential race: Where your sports heroes are putting their money - should they happen to be campaign donors. Few are, but I noticed last night that John Smoltz has contributed the max to Mitt Romney. Yep, I'm a Braves fan, from way back (even have a…

Here's another angle from which to see the presidential race: Where your sports heroes are putting their money - should they happen to be campaign donors. Few are, but I noticed last night that John Smoltz has contributed the max to Mitt Romney. Yep, I'm a Braves fan, from way back (even have a…

Among the more quoted passages from Mitt Romney's speech today is found seven paragraphs into it. It's a chiasmus: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Now, the first half of that was another way of saying what John Adams did in the passage Romney had just quoted - saying…

Among the more quoted passages from Mitt Romney's speech today is found seven paragraphs into it. It's a chiasmus: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Now, the first half of that was another way of saying what John Adams did in the passage Romney had just quoted - saying…

The other day, at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C., Rudy Giuliani observed that there are "200 reasons why the next election is really important." Which 200, you ask? "The 200 federal judges that the next President of the United States will likely appoint over four…

For Bob Vander Plaats, January 3--the day of the Iowa caucus--can't get here quickly enough. Vander Plaats, chairman of the Mike Huckabee campaign in Iowa, can read the polls, and in the latest surveys of likely Republican caucus-goers Mike Huckabee came in second, trailing Mitt Romney by only two…

Two Hours of Humiliation

The best performance wasn't turned in by one of the candidates. No, the Oscar goes to that Thompson ad. It doesn't introduce Thompson - he doesn't even speak.The ad features Mitt Romney when he was pro-abortion rights, and Mike Huckabee when (as governor of Arkansas) he was agreeable to increasing…

The best performance wasn't turned in by one of the candidates. No, the Oscar goes to that Thompson ad. It doesn't introduce Thompson - he doesn't even speak.The ad features Mitt Romney when he was pro-abortion rights, and Mike Huckabee when (as governor of Arkansas) he was agreeable to increasing…

Mike Huckabee's new TV ad is only his second, and it's dramatically different from his first. That ad, which had Chuck Norris endorsing Huckabee, virtually mocked the very idea of such an ad (though maybe that's the only way the ad could have been done). The new ad has no humor. It means business.…

Mike Huckabee's new TV ad is only his second, and it's dramatically different from his first. That ad, which had Chuck Norris endorsing Huckabee, virtually mocked the very idea of such an ad (though maybe that's the only way the ad could have been done). The new ad has no humor. It means business.…

Jay Cost has a noteworthy post on the decision by the Romney campaign to forgo, at least for now, a major speech by the candidate on his Mormon faith. Romney himself addressed the matter before an audience in Holderness, New Hampshire, revealing that he is game for such a speech but that his aides…

Jay Cost has a noteworthy post on the decision by the Romney campaign to forgo, at least for now, a major speech by the candidate on his Mormon faith. Romney himself addressed the matter before an audience in Holderness, New Hampshire, revealing that he is game for such a speech but that his aides…

Mike Huckabee has made it into the "top tier" at least in Iowa, to judge by the latest Rasmussen poll of likely Republican voters in the Hawkeye state. Huckabee's position on Hillary is that he can beat her. During a lunch with 20 or so reporters here in Washington today, Huckabee said, "Assume…

Mike Huckabee has made it into the "top tier" at least in Iowa, to judge by the latest Rasmussen poll of likely Republican voters in the Hawkeye state. Huckabee's position on Hillary is that he can beat her. During a lunch with 20 or so reporters here in Washington today, Huckabee said, "Assume…

In a little-noticed interview with Michael Tomasky in the Guardian America this week, Hillary Clinton was asked, "What specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example, the power to declare a U.S. Citizen an enemy combatant?" Clinton didn't name any…

In a little-noticed interview with Michael Tomasky in the Guardian America this week, Hillary Clinton was asked, "What specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example, the power to declare a U.S. Citizen an enemy combatant?" Clinton didn't name any…

At the Values Voter Summit, held this past weekend in Washington, Mike Huckabee gave a speech that confirmed his status as the best orator among the Republican presidential candidates. "The audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den," writes Rich Lowry. What…

At the Values Voter Summit, held this past weekend in Washington, Mike Huckabee gave a speech that confirmed his status as the best orator among the Republican presidential candidates. "The audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den," writes Rich Lowry. What…

The question the Republican presidential candidates are asking themselves today is whether, by the end of this weekend's Values Voter Summit at the Hilton Washington, they will be in better position to win the nomination than before. Surely Fred Thompson is thinking about that, but if you judge on…

The question the Republican presidential candidates are asking themselves today is whether, by the end of this weekend's Values Voter Summit at the Hilton Washington, they will be in better position to win the nomination than before. Surely Fred Thompson is thinking about that, but if you judge on…

Gary Bauer is the only person I know who has both run for president (in 2000) and served as president of the Family Research Council (in the 1990s). So I called him this week, figuring he'd have some thoughts about FRC's Values Voter Summit, which opens today at the Hilton Washington and will…

Gary Bauer is the only person I know who has both run for president (in 2000) and served as president of the Family Research Council (in the 1990s). So I called him this week, figuring he'd have some thoughts about FRC's Values Voter Summit, which opens today at the Hilton Washington and will…

During his visit last Sunday to the Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina, Barack Obama became the only presidential candidate to endorse the establishment of "a Kingdom of God." Obama has been praised for previous remarks on religion and politics, but his appearance before…

During his visit last Sunday to the Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina, Barack Obama became the only presidential candidate to endorse the establishment of "a Kingdom of God." Obama has been praised for previous remarks on religion and politics, but his appearance before…

The Terror Presidency

Michael Luo of the New York Times reports on a letter written by an evangelical public relations executive to 150 "conservative & evangelical leaders" urging them to back Mitt Romney. Mark DeMoss, a Southern Baptist whose first employer was Jerry Falwell and whose clients include Franklin Graham,…

Michael Luo of the New York Times reports on a letter written by an evangelical public relations executive to 150 "conservative & evangelical leaders" urging them to back Mitt Romney. Mark DeMoss, a Southern Baptist whose first employer was Jerry Falwell and whose clients include Franklin Graham,…

The line-item veto? That almost certainly won't determine who the GOP nominee is. But you can see why Mitt Romney brought it up in the Michigan debate. Romney is trying to distinguish himself from Rudy Giuliani as the more conservative choice. To question Giuliani's commitment to fiscal restraint,…

The line-item veto? That almost certainly won't determine who the GOP nominee is. But you can see why Mitt Romney brought it up in the Michigan debate. Romney is trying to distinguish himself from Rudy Giuliani as the more conservative choice. To question Giuliani's commitment to fiscal restraint,…

It's a short walk from our offices to the Mayflower Hotel, where Americans for Prosperity are holding their annual meeting. Republican presidential candidates are getting 7 minutes each at the podium, which leads Mike Huckabee to joke that if Jesus had been invited here this morning he would have…

It's a short walk from our offices to the Mayflower Hotel, where Americans for Prosperity are holding their annual meeting. Republican presidential candidates are getting 7 minutes each at the podium, which leads Mike Huckabee to joke that if Jesus had been invited here this morning he would have…

Weighing in (again) on the presidential race, James Dobson had an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times under the headline, "The Values Test." The "values" by which Dobson and some co-pro-family advocates have decided to test presidential candidates concerns (no surprise here) abortion. A candidate…

Weighing in (again) on the presidential race, James Dobson had an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times under the headline, "The Values Test." The "values" by which Dobson and some co-pro-family advocates have decided to test presidential candidates concerns (no surprise here) abortion. A candidate…

Muscatine, Iowa

The Supreme Court, in its very last decision of the term, limited the ability of public school districts to use race in determining which schools students may attend. The Court reviewed student assignment plans from Seattle and Louisville. The 5-to-4 decision in the consolidated case generated no…

TIME KEEPS DRAGGIN' ON

Though today's opinion does not go so far as to discard Roe or Casey, the Court, differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation, is hardly faithful to our earlier invocations of "the rule of law" and the "principles of stare decisis." That sentence comes…

Arriving at the funeral home, the chairman of the Hill County Republican party asked me whether my mother, a resident of Hillsboro, the county seat, had known how the local elections had gone. She knew, I told him. Democrats had dominated the county since Texas entered the Union. But last fall, for…

Toward the end of his long day testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 29, Kyle Sampson offered this rueful judgment: "Looking back on all of this, I wish we could do it over again. . . . In hindsight, I wish the department hadn't gone down this road at all." The former Justice…

Supreme Conflict

Sam Brownback lives closer to Iowa than any of the other Republicans likely to run for president in 2008. Brownback, the senior senator from Kansas, resides in Topeka, which is but a few hours by car from Iowa. And he plans to travel there quite a lot over the next 12 months--through January 21,…

SCALIAS OF JUSTICE

THE GREAT WALL

IN 2003, WHEN THE Supreme Court upheld the use of race and ethnicity in the admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stated in her opinion for the Court that a core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was "to do away with all governmentally imposed…

"My only agenda is to be a good judge."--Antonin Scalia, in his 1986 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing During this time of conservative angst, of worry about what conservatism stands for and means, why not consider the contribution to the country of someone who is not a politician but…

A Secular Faith

Around the first of September I tend to have memories of my days selling books door to door during my college summers. I worked in what was called the Bible division, because the lead book was a family Bible. I didn't sell many, since most everyone living in my territories already seemed to have a…

Ellsworth, Kansas

Judicious Judges

JOHN ROBERTS HAS SAT IN the center seat of the Supreme Court a mere five months. Conventional wisdom holds that it takes four or five years for a new justice to hit his stride. Even so, Roberts's work stands out in a Washington whose daily manufacture, it seems, is another fight between an…

In her opinion sustaining the use of race in admissions in the 2003 University of Michigan Law School case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke of the "deference" owed to institutions of higher education as they make "complex educational judgments." In the three years since the former justice wrote…

WITH SAMUEL ALITO ABOUT to be confirmed, it's time to take stock of this particular episode in the making of a justice, the nation's 110th. Bear in mind that Alito was not President Bush's first choice to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor. The estimable John Roberts was, but when Chief Justice William…

Books in Brief

ABOUT THE ALITO HEARINGS, one thing is certain: If it had been the Concerned Alumni of Princeton that was up for confirmation, the nomination wouldn't even make it out of the Judiciary Committee. Democrats led by Sen. Edward Kennedy portrayed CAP as hostile to minorities and to coeducation and thus…

Any assessment of the prospects for the Alito nomination must begin with the fact that Republicans hold the Senate. That matters-a lot. Under the Constitution the president and the Senate play the key roles in Supreme Court appointments. Simply put, the president nominates and the Senate…

THE OUTLOOK FOR THE ALITO nomination remains favorable. Even so, there is this short essay Sam Alito wrote in 1985. Senate Democrats and their political and media allies don't like it. Indeed, they think it may provide kindling that will feed a flame that they can blow into a fire mighty enough to…

WELL, THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. In Judge Sam Alito, President Bush has chosen a more plausible High Court nominee. Make that a much more plausible nominee. His legal qualifications are exceptional, his character widely attested. And having spent 15 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third…

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH ANNOUNCED THE nomination of Harriet Miers, he said she was the "one person [who] stood out as exceptionally well-suited" for the Supreme Court. Bush cited her character and "distinguished legal career." What Bush didn't mention was Miers's assistance in helping him pick federal…

WHEN SHE RAN for the Dallas City Council in the spring of 1989, Harriet Miers sought the endorsement of Texans United for Life, according to its president, Kyleen Wright. Miers's interview with TUL's Political Action Committee was scheduled for April 11, 1989, and in preparation for the interview…

IT WAS EARLY ON THE first Monday in October, two hours before the Supreme Court heard its first case of the new term, that President Bush announced the nomination of Harriet Miers to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. That evening, James Dobson, the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, a…

Worth a Do-Over?

State of the Revolution

ON THE FINAL DAY OF the Roberts hearings, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois tried one last time: "If you've made one point many times over . . . the course of the last three days," he told the judge, "it is that as a judge you will be loyal and faithful to the process of law, to the rule of law."…

IN THE Federalist, James Madison observed that judges are "shoots from the executive stock." With this phrase, Madison was making a point about where, in a government of separated powers, judges come from; and of course, the answer is the executive, since the Constitution plainly sets forth that it…

SOMETHING TO LISTEN FOR DURING the Roberts confirmation hearings is an uncommon word, "superprecedent." Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, used "superprecedent" in a July 24 op-ed in the New York Times previewing the hearings, which are scheduled to begin September 6. Specter…

LIKE PRESIDENTS BEFORE HIM, George W. Bush has turned to the lower federal bench, specifically to the appeals court in Washington, D.C., to choose a Supreme Court justice. John Roberts has been a circuit judge for two years, but the more salient aspect of his résumé is the time he spent in another…

SO, JUST WHO IS John G. Roberts? His brainpower, legal experience, and character duly recognized, what is his judicial philosophy? What is his approach to judging--to interpreting and applying the Constitution and other federal law? What kind of jurist will he turn out to be--20, 30 years hence?

ON MAY 23, THE Supreme Court announced it would review the constitutionality of a New Hampshire law requiring parental notification at least 48 hours before an abortion may be performed on an "unemancipated minor" (a female under age 18). Immediately, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood figured to be one…

OF THE MANY LAWYERS under consideration for nomination to the seat vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor, only one, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is drawing substantially negative reviews from conservatives. Of course, it's understandable why Gonzales is on the president's short list. Bush first…

Good Mormon, Romney?

Mormon President?

YOU REMEMBER, OR PERHAPS you don't, Sen. Orrin Hatch's 2000 presidential campaign. The senator talks about it in soft inflections, recalling this event and that debate. But especially he talks about what motivated him to run. Hatch, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cites…

Specious on the Origin?

IF YOU WERE A SENATE Democrat, you'd filibuster those Bush judges. Yes, you would. When it came time to vote on a targeted nominee in this new Congress, you'd know the deal. You'd know that Republicans would move for cloture to limit debate, and that if they succeeded, the nominee would get an…

THE SUPREME COURT OUGHT TO uphold the several displays of the Ten Commandments on government property whose constitutionality it considered last week. But how might it do that?

SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON has given a speech on abortion that is befuddling the political class. Did she, in her speech Monday to abortion-rights supporters, say what she's always said on abortion, or something new?

THE WORLD CHANGED ON SEPTEMBER 11, and with it the Bush presidency--but not as much as you may think. True, its priorities shifted dramatically, with the war on terrorism taking precedence over all else. But much of what this presidency has become was there in the beginning--indeed, when George W.…

Books in Brief

"We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the…

NO POLITICAL BIAS--none at all. So says the independent panel that CBS News asked to find out what went wrong with its infamous Sixty Minutes Wednesday broadcast concerning George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. "The panel," says its 224-page report, "cannot conclude that a…

REPUBLICANS GREW SO EXASPERATED by the reign of Mary Frances Berry as chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that they wound up calling for the agency's termination. But now that Berry, a member of the commission since 1980 and its chairman since 1993, has resigned, Republicans see things,…

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMERGED IN THE 1960s as a policy intended to help blacks. How, then, would institutions committed to affirmative action respond if it could be shown that the policy does blacks more harm than good? Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, is about to find out.

MICHAEL GERSON deserves extra pay, or something, for agreeing to spend half a day earlier this month discussing with journalists a subject of some controversy--"Religion, Rhetoric, and the Presidency." If anyone was qualified for such a task, it was Gerson. He is President Bush's chief…

ASHCROFT V. RAICH, the "medical marijuana" case argued this week in the Supreme Court, is less about marijuana and its medical effects than it is about federal power--specifically the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

YES, the president must get this decision right. He must take real care with the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. He must name someone impressive who shares his judicial philosophy. And he must get that nominee confirmed.

IN NOMINATING Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general, President Bush noted that "this is the fifth time I have asked Judge Gonzales to serve his fellow citizens." The other four? In order: general counsel for Gov. Bush, Texas secretary of state, Texas Supreme Court justice,…

TUESDAY'S EXIT POLLS showed that voters identified "moral values" ahead of jobs and the economy--and even terrorism--as the matter most on their minds. Some 80 percent of those most concerned about values voted for George W. Bush. Obviously, "value voters" helped President Bush win a second term.…

JOHN KERRY reaches the finish line tomorrow having had to speak more words about religion this year than ever before in his long political career. The point has been to reveal his deepest values, say his aides, and it has been a telling revelation.

"LET'S GO to a new question for you, Senator Kerry," said Bob Schieffer of CBS in the final debate. It was indeed a new question, for the trio of debates as well as for the long campaign. And because you might have missed the answer--the fact-checkers, analysts, and pundits sped right past…

IN THE SECOND DEBATE, an issue of obvious importance finally came up, in a question put to President Bush: "If there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who do you choose and why?" The question was smartly asked, not least because it began…

ONE OF THE HARDER THINGS to do in Washington is to speak the truth about Saudi Arabia. So give the State Department credit for declaring that in the desert kingdom there is no freedom of religion.

RIGHT NOW, Bill Burkett of Baird, Texas, happens to be the most notorious former anonymous news source in America, which, I'll grant you, is a distinction no one would ever aspire to. On the other hand, no news organization would want to find itself where CBS News is at the present moment, thanks…

New York

New York

New York

George W. Bush's record in office invites fresh consideration of a question long asked about him: Is he a conservative? Conservatives tend to agree that on the so-called social issues--abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, marriage--the president is a conservative. But on other matters there is…

JOHN KERRY has long been on record with his view that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance don't violate the First Amendment's ban on establishing religion. But days before the Democrats convened in Boston, the Democratic National Committee announced as its first ever director of…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

ASK JOHN CORNYN when the Senate might again consider the Federal Marriage Amendment, known as the FMA, and he has a ready answer: "It's probably going to take an adverse court decision." By that, Texas' junior senator means a decision adverse to marriage as traditionally defined--as consisting only…

MITT ROMNEY isn't someone Democrats from the 50 states have traveled to Boston wanting to meet and greet. Yes, Romney is governor of the Bay State, but he is also a Republican. Worse, he believes, contra the nationally unsettling decision of his own state's supreme court, that marriage consists…

Boston

Boston

The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. --Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861 SENATE REPUBLICANS deserve…

AMONG THE LEAST REMARKED aspects of John Edwards's résumé is that he is a Protestant, a Methodist in particular, a member of Edenton Street Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Edwards's faith was not, strictly speaking, the reason John Kerry chose him as his running mate. On the other…

THE TORRENT of commentary on Ronald Reagan's political career has tended to overlook our 40th president's cultural conservatism. It was hard to miss, however, when he captured the presidency in 1980. Writing in Commentary a month before the election, political scientist James Q. Wilson observed…

BILL CLINTON'S book release is giving him more chances to take shots at the man who spent five years investigating him, Kenneth Starr. Starr resigned in 1999. That same year the independent counsel law, under whose authority he worked, was allowed to expire.

IN THE FALL of 1981, Ronald Reagan placed a phone call from the Oval Office to a lawyer named Jesse Eschbach. Reagan had decided to nominate Eschbach to the federal bench and was calling to ask him to serve. Would he serve! Of course! Judge Eschbach later wrote Reagan to express "my deep…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

MOST VOTERS don't care a fig about polls on the presidential race, and it is obvious why, since the only poll that really matters is the one taken on Election Day.

LET'S STIPULATE that the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were as serious as the pictures suggest. But America now has images of a different kind to absorb.

OUR DAUGHTER is to be graduated from high school this spring and will go to college this fall. That means, of course, that she applied and was accepted somewhere--actually, a number of places.

IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN The Alamo, I recommend it. I know the movie is vulnerable to criticism on historical grounds, but that doesn't bother me much. Being a native Texan, I like just about anything that stimulates thinking about Texas history, and The Alamo, directed by John Lee Hancock, did that for…

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Siena, Italy

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

IMAGINE IT IS THE SPRING of 2006, John Kerry is president, and the Democrats hold the same number of Senate seats as the Republicans do today--51. President Kerry has made dozens of nominations to the bench, but he is frustrated because the Republican minority has used the filibuster to block floor…

AMERICAN CATHOLICS now find themselves having to think about a question that concerns their church and the Democratic party's presumptive presidential nominee, John Kerry. The question is: Can Kerry be a good Catholic and yet take positions as a lawmaker that contradict the teachings of the church…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

TO ALLOW National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath before the September 11 commission today, President Bush had to stand down from a claim of executive privilege. Bush was right to do that, but let's give the privilege its due.

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AS "MUHANED" RECALLS, the year was 1991, and he was south of Baghdad, on a trip to visit his parents, when an Iraqi army unit seized him without explaining why.

YEARS AGO, once colleges and universities had decided to make race and ethnicity "a factor" in their admissions, many of them cast about for additional ways to advance educational opportunity for minorities. So they came up with scholarship and financial aid programs, freshmen orientation programs,…

WITH MORE THAN SEVEN MONTHS between now and Election Day, President Bush and John Kerry already are in full battle cry. Once the smoke over this election clears (which, last time, took a long time), we will have the answers to such questions as: Will Bush suffer the same fate as Herbert Hoover?

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS has just made public the accumulated papers of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who served from 1971 to 1994. More than a half-million items fill 1,576 boxes. For obvious reasons, the papers on the abortion cases are likely to draw the most interest.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

The Supreme Court has taken another crack at explaining the government's proper relationship to religion. Unfortunately, last week's ruling in Locke vs. Davey, while it may seem limited just to the facts of a difficult case, could lead to substantial discrimination against religion. The defendant…

FOR MORE THAN A MONTH, one of our national papers of record, the New York Times, has been examining "conservative forces in religion, politics, law, business and the media." No, that isn't made up. The quoted material comes from Times national editor Jim Roberts, announcing last month that David D.…

AMONG THE EVENTS that doomed Howard Dean's candidacy, one that has been insufficiently parsed took place on January 11 during a question-and-answer session in Oelwein, Iowa. A Bush supporter, Dale Ungerer, got up and condemned the press and the Democratic candidates for over-the-top criticisms of…

ROY MOORE, you will recall, is the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who last summer defied a federal court order to remove his hefty Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the State Judicial Building. The order eventually was carried out by the associate justices of his…

LAST MONTH, a federal judge in Harlingen, Texas, sentenced Juan Carlos Soto, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, to 23 years in prison. That is the longest allowed under the sentencing guidelines. Any lesser sentence would have been incomprehensible.

JOHN EDWARDS has a problem even if he wins the South Carolina primary today.

MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES AGO, when the framers decided to amend the Constitution to protect religious liberty, they wanted to constrain the federal government. So in the amendment that became our first, they told Congress to "make no law respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the…

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WHY DON'T YOU AMERICANS mind your own business? That, in essence, is what the French thought the other day when a State Department officer took issue with President Jacques Chirac's proposal to outlaw the wearing of head scarves by Muslim girls, large crosses by Christians, and skullcaps by Jewish…

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AMONG THE MANY FAULTS charged against George W. Bush it is probably his conservative Christian faith that most troubles the people who dislike him--or most infuriates the people who hate him. Kevin Phillips has gone so far as to argue that Bush has reshaped the Republican party into a coalition…

IN HIS INITIAL COMMENTS on Saddam Hussein's capture, President Bush didn't mention the main reason we went after the brutal dictator in the first place. Not that Bush needed to go into the principal justification for invading Iraq. But the matter is worth bringing up--especially since Howard Dean,…

YEARS AGO a writer of some distinction told me that books sometimes read you. I had no idea what he meant--until a book read me.

ASKED HOW his life has changed during his first year as the junior senator from Texas, John Cornyn has a quick answer: "It's totally unpredictable." He explains: "I was used to having a schedule and keeping it. . . . But here you're subject to a calendar set by the leadership. It's very hard to…

Books in Brief Common-Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism by James R. Stoner Jr. (University of Kansas Press, 212 pp., $29.95). American law begins with the Constitution of 1787. Or so we like to think. James Stoner usefully reminds us, however, that American law also includes the…

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA won't participate in the Pledge of Allegiance case, which the Supreme Court last week accepted for review. Justices typically don't explain their recusals, and Scalia didn't say why he took himself out of Elk Grove School District v. Newdow. The code of conduct for federal…

DURING A LUNCH LAST WEEK with reporters and editors of the New York Times, Howard Dean was asked how he would vote, were he a member of Congress, on the proposal to spend $87 billion to cover troop deployment and reconstruction costs in Iraq. Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential…

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAWYER John Dion has worked on every major national security case of the past quarter-century, including the prosecutions of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen. Since 1997, he has run the counterespionage section within the Criminal Division. About once a week, the CIA advises his…

HISTORIAN GEORGE MARSDEN begins his excellent new biography of Jonathan Edwards, born 300 years ago last week, with this brief sentence: "Edwards was extraordinary." It is hard to imagine a better summation of the life of a man many Americans remember only for his oft-anthologized sermon, "Sinners…

THE NINTH CIRCUIT seems to specialize in reminding the country that judges don't come out of nowhere, that they are appointed by presidents, and that, generally speaking, Democratic presidents more than Republicans tend to appoint judges who enforce a "living" or "growing" Constitution that just…

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THE DEMOCRATS have gone where no party ever has: It has become the party whose senators routinely filibuster nominations to the circuit courts of appeals. The obvious intention is to make it harder to confirm a nominee. Indeed, where a simple majority always has sufficed for Senate approval, 60…

THAT TWO-AND-A-HALF TON Ten Commandments monument no longer sits in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building, having been wheeled into a storage room. But two issues remain. One involves the meaning of the Constitution, the other the duties of government officials. The story began in 2001, when…

IN A JULY LETTER to colleges and universities across the country, Gerald Reynolds, head of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, addressed "a subject," as he put it, "of central importance to our government, our heritage of freedom and our way of life: the First Amendment." Reynolds'…

WHATEVER ELSE may be said about the base of the Democratic party, it most definitely is upset with President Bush. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says that in his 25 years of polling he never has seen Democrats so angry with a Republican president. Veteran columnist Robert Novak writes that he…

ON OCTOBER 7, California voters will decide two questions. The first is whether Gov. Gray Davis, re-elected a year ago to a second term, should be removed from office. The second is who should replace him, if a majority votes for his removal. Whoever gets the most votes--and a plurality…

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WILLIAM PRYOR isn't going to become a federal judge. Not this year, not next. Pryor is a nominee for the appeals court that encompasses his native Alabama, Florida and Georgia. But he has become the third Bush nominee to hit the hard wall of a Democratic filibuster. Under Senate rules, you need 60…

AT FIRST GLANCE, you might think, as I did, that the letter from Rep. John Dingell of Michigan to a fellow American--a law-abiding American--wasn't his but a parody. Surely, someone who fancies himself a satirist wrote the letter. After all, would Dingell (or any member of Congress) actually write…

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was another president named Bush, and he, too, gave a speech that later gave him fits. In 1989, during a nationally televised address on drug law enforcement, George H.W. Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine that he said had been seized right across the street from the White…

SOON AFTER the Supreme Court wrapped up its work this year, no fewer than five of the justices left for Europe. Most of them will spend several weeks there. They like it there. Europe, in fact, is where most justices tend to spend their summers, attending legal conferences and seminars in cities of…

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THE BIG HEADLINE in the Michigan affirmative action cases is that the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, sustained the use of race in admissions policies. Less publicized is the fact that the court also held, near the end of its ruling in the law school case, that…

IN RESPONSE to the Supreme Court's decisions in the Michigan race-preference cases, President Bush issued a statement. "I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our nation's campuses," he said. "Diversity is one of America's greatest strengths. Today's decisions seek a…

IN THE MICHIGAN affirmative action cases, the Supreme Court upheld a race-based admissions policy used by the law school while striking down the one used by the undergraduate school. The court's decisions aren't of equal weight. The more important one involved the law school. It was a 5-to-4…

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PRESIDENT BUSH may or may not get the opportunity to name a Supreme Court Justice this summer. But if he does, who would be the right choice? Bush himself has told us. In 1999, Fred Barnes asked Bush what kind of judge he'd select. "I have great respect for Justice Scalia," he said, "for the…

WILLIAM H. PRYOR, the Alabama attorney general, is a nominee for a seat on the federal appeals court for Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Last week, he came to Washington for his confirmation hearing, and opponents of his nomination showed up in force. The Senate vote on Pryor could be…

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WHILE THE NATION AWAITS the Supreme Court's rulings in the Michigan affirmative action cases, the Bush administration has launched an effort designed to stimulate interest in race-neutral means of enhancing educational opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities. The project has proceeded…

INTERIOR SECRETARY Gale Norton recently announced a grant of $317,000 to help preserve an aging edifice of historical importance to the nation. Whereupon Americans United for the Separation of Church and State objected. Why? Because the group sees a manifest violation of church and state in the new…

IN 1991, James Hunter of the University of Virginia wrote a book in which he argued that on the big moral issues of our time, such as abortion and homosexual rights, the nation divides into two groups: "the orthodox" and "the progressive." The orthodox hold conservative views that are derived from…

SIX TIMES NOW Senate Democrats have blocked a vote on Miguel Estrada's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. And twice Senate Democrats have blocked a vote on Priscilla Owen's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Republicans are outraged by…

IT IS FITTING that former Texas Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice John Cornyn sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is chairman of its subcommittee on the Constitution. Last week, Cornyn presided over its first hearing, which he framed as: "Judicial Nominations, Filibusters and the…

Education Secretary Rod Paige says he once had a low view of federal workers. He now thinks better of them--perhaps at least partly because of reforms he instituted within his own agency. When he arrived in Washington in 2001, he found an Education Department wracked with charges of criminal fraud,…

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Shia Muslim prisoners at New York's Fishkill Correctional Facility are suing state prison authorities. Their complaint is that the state, in accommodating the religious activities of Muslim inmates within its prison system, has favored one Islamic sect over another--Sunni Islam over Shia Islam. The…

FEDERAL COURTS UNDERSTAND the First Amendment ban on establishing religion to mean that government may not prefer one religion, or sect, over another. Why then has New York state, in treating the religious activities of Muslim inmates within its prisons, favored one Islamic sect over…

HISTORIANS will look back at this month and regard it as one of our nation's most important ever. April 2003 will be seen as the month in which we toppled a regime that tyrannized its own people and was a threat to its region and even beyond it. We don't know what the liberation of Iraq will fully…

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EDUCATION SECRETARY Rod Paige gave an interview to the Baptist Press early in the year. The publication, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, isn't widely read in the nation's capital. But the just-published story, featuring Paige's comments on Christian schools and Christian…

IF YOU FOLLOW men's college basketball, you know that Georgia didn't play last night in New Orleans for the national championship. But it could have--had it not disgraced itself. Georgia finished the regular season with 19 wins and 8 losses, having won 11 of 16 games in the Southeastern Conference.…

BOUNCING AROUND the Internet is a photo of a huge banner that was carried in the recent "peace" demonstration in San Francisco. The banner says, "We support our troops when they shoot their officers." Now, the calm response to that banner is that "our troops," were they to shoot "their officers,"…

THE MICHIGAN AFFIRMATIVE action cases, which the Supreme Court will hear on April 1, have attracted more than 100 friend-of-the-court briefs, a record number. The overwhelming majority of these amicus curiae filings support the university. Among the signatories are more than 300 organizations,…

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

WHATEVER ELSE HAPPENS in the life of Priscilla Owen, the Texas Supreme Court justice has made history. Of a sort. Two years ago, President Bush nominated her for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate Judiciary Committee finally gave her a hearing in July and then--on a…

LAST WEEK, the Supreme Court acted as it often should--with restraint.

REMOVING SADDAM HUSSEIN from power would eliminate the direct and growing threat he poses to the United States. That alone is justification for war against Iraq. Our security is at stake. Yet we wouldn't be the only ones to benefit from Saddam Hussein's demise. So would the Iraqi people.

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WHATEVER YOU MAY THINK of the filibuster, Senate rules provide for it. Rule XXII permits senators to block a vote on a given measure, unless no fewer than 60 senators invoke cloture. The filibuster thus requires a supermajority to get something done. That isn't what the Constitution envisions, nor…

SENATE DEMOCRATS say they don't know enough about Miguel Estrada's legal views. That's the reason they give for filibustering his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As Sen. Charles Schumer told the nominee at the end of his confirmation hearing last fall, before the…

EVERY SO OFTEN, news is made that tells a story larger than first appears. That happened earlier this month when the Education Department issued a four-page document titled "Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools."

TOD LINDBERG knew he had something big. Lindberg is editor of Policy Review, a publication of the Hoover Institution. More than a year ago, he had commissioned several articles on the subject of American power. The one Robert Kagan wrote caught his eye. "It was quite apparent on first reading that…

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THAT SENATE DEMOCRATS are mulling whether to filibuster the nomination of Miguel Estrada is a telling measure of their reduced power to block Bush judges. Thanks to the midterm elections, Republicans now hold a two-seat majority in the Senate. And in the Judiciary Committee the 10-to-9 advantage…

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SO MUCH OF THE SPEECH was what we've come to expect from George W. Bush. Yet there was a freshness to it, as well as some odd moments. And you can count on this: The war will start soon.

LAST MONTH, "Dateline NBC" told the story of a young couple's decision to have a baby who had been diagnosed with Down syndrome. The story, which took place in 1998, is worth recalling as the nation continues to grapple with the morality of abortion.

That Old-Time Religion in Modern America by D.G. Hart Ivan R. Dee, 246 pages, $24.95 TO LISTEN to the more lurid claims of the ACLU, you'd think that evangelical Protestants were dominating American culture as never before. But this is not quite so. Yes, evangelicalism is still a presence in…

ON WEDNESDAY, President Bush announced that his administration would file briefs in opposition to the University of Michigan affirmative action policies now before the Supreme Court. Bush apparently would be taking, as one news account put it, a "hard-line" position.

DAVID FRUM, who returned to journalism after spending 2001 as a presidential speechwriter, has just published what he saw from inside the White House during that historic year. The book is titled "The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush." It is a study of the president's character,…

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SINCE THE NOVEMBER ELECTION, prominent Democrats have said what prominent Democrats have said in past years--namely, that we have to do something about the much too powerful conservative media. Now, Democrats actually are doing something--or starting to. So we learn from the New York Times.

[img_assist|nid=|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=|height=] A CONSUMER-MATH PROBLEM: How many cell-phone calls would you have to make to be billed $1,759.35?

"Senator Trent Lott's lament that Strom Thurmond lost his segregationist campaign for the White House in 1948 . . . is already influencing an internal Bush administration debate on what approach to take on a major affirmative action case.

THIS MONTH, the New York Times became a story when another paper reported that its editors had spiked sports columns written by staffers Harvey Araton and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Anderson.

UPON LEARNING that the Supreme Court had accepted the big affirmative action cases involving her campus, University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman said about the only thing that she could, which was that "we are looking forward to presenting our cases." Ms. Coleman's--and…

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THE SAUDIS CONTINUE to generate what for them is unwanted news. The urgency for Americans is to place the news in context, and toward that end there is no better guide than Stephen Schwartz, author of the new book "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror."

A WEEK AGO, an obscure court in the nation's capital rendered a decision that has outraged certain civil libertarian groups and their friends in the commentariat. They protest too much. The decision by the awkwardly named Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review significantly strengthens…

HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED, Texas politics has seen a large (as befits Texas) number of flamboyant personalities. Lyndon Baines Johnson, for one. Mark it down: Sen.-elect John Cornyn, a man not given to fancy speeches or grand gestures, isn't among them.

ON JUDGES, things will be different. The wars over judges of the past two years were made possible by the simple fact that the Democrats controlled the Senate. They used their power to block an unprecedented number of President Bush's appeals court nominees. Now that the Democrats constitute the…

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THE BIGGEST CONSEQUENCE of the midterm elections may well concern judges. Because the Republicans now control the Senate, President Bush is in a far better position than he was during his first two years in office to change the confirmation process for the better and to see his nominees confirmed.

WAHHABISM UNVEILED Stephen Schwartz's "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror" (Doubleday, 288 pp., $25) takes as its point of departure September 11 and the terrorist attacks on America. They were carried out, we now know, by nineteen Muslims who subscribed--like their…

ONE CONSEQUENCE of the shift of Senate control to the Republicans may be to nudge a Justice or two towards retirement. It's about time we had a vacancy. The last was in 1994, when Harry Blackmun stepped down and his seat was taken by Stephen Breyer. More than eight years have passed--the second…

HOWEVER the Minnesota Senate race turns out, the voters of that state have been offered distinct alternatives on abortion. Going into Monday's debate, it was well-known that Norm Coleman is pro-life and thinks Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that announced a constitutional right to abortion, was…

FROM MAINE TO CALIFORNIA, the midterm elections surely will test the candidates. But they also will test history, for history supports the belief--held by Democrats--that they will win both houses of Congress.

Lee Bockhorn

Why did they do it?

IMAGINE A COMPANY, a very big one. It makes things athletic--running shoes, for example. The company is headquartered in the United States but has manufacturing facilities in dozens of countries.

SOON AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, the Bush administration did things that annoyed the news media. One was to adopt a policy by which the deportation hearings of aliens the government believes "might have connections with, or possess information pertaining to, terrorist activity against the United States"…

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YOU DON'T HAVE TO FOLLOW the debate over war against Iraq for long without noticing the recurrence of a certain term: "clear and present danger." In fact, if you do a Nexis search for the past six months for "clear and present danger" and "Iraq," you'll find more than 600 mentions. Do the same…

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OUR ESTEEMED web editor Jonathan Last asked me the other day to explain why I think the Braves, who open the divisional playoffs today against the Giants, will win the World Series this year. He asked me to do it since I'm a Braves fan, having followed the team since it played in County Stadium and…

DAVID AIKMAN is back from three months in China, having taken more than 800 pages of notes, and he reports a religious awakening that could have enormous political implications.

LAST WEEK, the Senate Judiciary Committee took up the nomination of Michael McConnell to a seat on the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Edward Kennedy, who had missed much of the session and was only now engaging the nominee, thanked McConnell for counsel he…

ABORTION is the issue in our politics that won't go away. Consider its appearance last week in the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee held a hearing for President Bush's nominee to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Michael McConnell.

IN HIS ADDRESS last week to the U.N. General Assembly, President Bush reviewed in detail how Iraq, as he put it, "has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance." Whereupon he asked, "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence?…

ONCE UPON A TIME, another judicial nomination failed. It was 1987, and the nominee for the Supreme Court was Robert Bork. Some supporters came up with a button they sported on their chests. "Reappoint Bork," it said. That, of course, never was going to happen and technically couldn't have, given…

A GADFLY, my dictionary advises, is "any fly that goads or stings domestic animals." Gadflies take various forms and have other targets, and one particularly good at goading and stinging a complacent educational establishment is the self-described "Education Gadfly," otherwise known as Chester E.…

NEWS FLASH: North Carolina failed this week to make Islam the official state religion. Nor did it compel residents to profess that there is no God but Allah.

DURING HIS PRESIDENCY Bill Clinton vowed to mend affirmative action. The latest evidence he failed to do so comes in the form of a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the federal government. Now it's up to the Bush administration to undertake the needed reforms.

PRESIDENT BUSH rightly recognizes that Western ideas have universal origins and application. He has said the right to "liberty and justice" is the "birthright of all people" and specifically emphasized that "all people" include Muslims. He has further said America will stand "alongside people…

NO ONE HAS PROVED more important to the confirmation of judges--or non-confirmation, as the case may be--than James Jeffords, who last year shifted control of the Senate to the Democrats. Had Jeffords not bolted the Republican party, we wouldn't be writing this editorial, for, as the lawyers say,…

HAVING NEGOTIATED the plea bargain by which John Walker Lindh managed to avoid life in prison and was instead sentenced to 20 years, lawyer James Brosnahan recently was asked by Newsweek: "How will we look back on this case by the time John Walker Lindh leaves prison?"

Editor's Note, September 5, 2002: After a party-line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Judge Priscilla Owen's nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was denied. President Bush called the vote "shameful." He's right.

"I've known Ted since 1936, and everything is a production. I guess that's the way it's going to end up." -Bobby Doerr BOBBY DOERR played with baseball legend Ted Williams for ten seasons and surely knows whereof he speaks. Williams died on July 5, but his death wasn't the end of things but the…

LAST WEEK, President Bush flew to Cleveland, where he dared to speak the v-word, which is to say "vouchers."

TEN YEARS AGO in a case called Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court decided that a state may not sponsor the sort of prayers long customary in America at middle or high school graduation ceremonies--invocations and benedictions--not even when the saying of those prayers is rotated among…

THIS WEEK, the Supreme Court will decide whether an Ohio program using vouchers at church-related schools violates the First Amendment's ban on establishing religion. The outcome in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris is hard to predict, not least because the court is narrowly divided on church-state…

IT TURNS OUT that on the morning of September 11, 2001, two FBI agents were monitoring phone calls from the home of a madam of a New Orleans brothel. Yes, the prostitution supervised by one Jeannette Maier so concerned the feds, who suspected it involved drug trafficking and organized crime, that…

THAT PRESIDENT BUSH has called for the creation of a Cabinet department for domestic defense hardly is surprising. Nor is such a department a bad idea, at least not on paper. Notwithstanding some bureaucratic opposition, the department will be established, probably by the end of the year.

COLEEN ROWLEY is making a vital contribution to the war on terrorism, though not in the way she would have preferred.

IT'S WELL KNOWN that tax-exempt organizations aren't supposed to engage in politics. Federal law says they may not "participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."…

"DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS" is doubtless an imperative that Walter Jones has seen on bumper stickers in Washington. Yet Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, has found a cause that has compelled him to mess with the Lone Star State. Actually, with Lyndon Johnson.

YET ANOTHER federal appeals court has issued an opinion on whether a state university may use race in admitting students. This time the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit--which handles cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee--has approved race-based admissions at the Michigan Law…

JOHN ASHCROFT is once again the subject of criticism from the left, this time for his department's filing in cases from Texas and Oklahoma in which the Supreme Court is being asked to interpret the Second Amendment. Its famous text is this: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security…

MAY 9 IS AN anniversary worth noting: Last year on that date, President Bush sent Congress the names of 11 judicial nominees for the U.S. circuit courts of appeal. One year later, 3 of them--including 2 Democrats named as a conciliatory gesture--have been confirmed by the Democratic Senate. Of the…

TODAY A SUBCOMMITTEE of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing designed to put Republicans on the defensive. "Ghosts of Nominations Past: Setting the Record Straight," is how the hearing is billed. By "nominations past," the Democrats, led by subcommittee chairman Charles Schumer, mean…

IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE if Priscilla Owen, a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, thinks she has wound up in the wrong queue. A year ago this week, President Bush nominated her to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Later that month, James Jeffords bolted the Republican Party, shifting control of…

CONCERNING SAUDI ARABIA, whose de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, visited Crawford last week, let's start with a multiple-choice question.

FORTY YEARS AGO, President John Kennedy got his first chance to name a Supreme Court justice when Charles Whittaker, a lackluster Eisenhower appointee worn out after only five years of service, announced his resignation. On April 3, 1962, Kennedy nominated his deputy attorney general, the famous…

ESPN recently asked Jim Morris whom he would like to invite to dinner and why. Morris included President Bush on his list, since he "has seen some things other presidents have not had to look at"--things such as what happened on September 11.

A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION in the Middle East conflict is whether the Palestinians can be saved, not from Israel, as many of them would have it, but from themselves.

LAST WEEK, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored a discussion at the Library of Congress on the timely issue of the selection and appointment of federal judges. I say timely, because just days before the event, the Senate Judiciary Committee split along party lines--10 Democrats…

MY FAVORITE radio talk show host is Hugh Hewitt. Granted, Hugh's an old friend of mine. But personal friendship aside, one reason I like going on The Hugh Hewitt Show is that I stand a good chance of learning something new.

THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE once more is the source of bad news. The agency has a problem, all right, but it isn't as huge as some people think. Indeed, the story involving the Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Fla., raises issues more profound than any now facing the INS. It…

IN 1978, Congress first passed the statute we know as the independent counsel law. Congress reauthorized it in 1983, 1988, and 1994 but declined to do so in 1999, having decided enough was enough. The wisdom of that decision was confirmed afresh last week when Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth…

WHILE VISITING Israel week before last, I was--like most everyone else there--doing serious reviews of whether I should turn this corner or that, stay here or go there. Personal security is the big "existential" issue in Israel, and any discussion of that leads naturally to politics, the…

THE NEWS from Israel is unremittingly grim. The process by which Israel was to give land to the Palestinians in exchange for peace has turned out to be one in which it has given land only to get war in return. To visit Israel, as I did last week, is to be aware of the real possibility of a…

AMONG the announcements White House press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his daily briefing on February 15 was this: "The president believes in and will fight for the nomination of [Charles] Pickering." Pickering certainly could use the president's help. His nomination--the first judicial…

LAST WEDNESDAY, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two of the biggest cases this term. First, the court considered the constitutionality of an Ohio program providing vouchers to low-income parents who enroll their children in church-related schools. Then, the court reviewed the constitutionality…

WITH THE Senate out this week, Judge Charles Pickering's embattled nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is getting help from seemingly unexpected sources.

LAST MAY, even as Vermont senator James Jeffords prepared to leave the Republican Party, President Bush decided to nominate federal district judge Charles Pickering to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Judge Pickering has endured not one but…

WHEN JIM JEFFORDS left the Republican party last May and became an independent, Democrats gained control of the Senate. By a single vote, yes, but what a difference that margin makes, especially when it comes to appointing judges. Consider the case of Charles Pickering, for twelve years a U.S.…

JOE BARTON doesn't really wear Texas on his sleeve. Actually, he wears it on his tie--or at least he does on the day I arrive at his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Cut from what can only be called Texas-flag cloth, his tie is red, white, and blue and has, rightly placed, a lone star.…

A YEAR OLD, the Bush presidency seems to have undergone a dramatic shift. It began as a presidency concentrated on domestic issues, such as education. It now is, as the president's State of the Union address last week affirmed with even more definition, a war and foreign policy presidency. It would…

GEORGE W. BUSH is a war president and is prepared to be one until he leaves office. He made that clear last night. "Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch, yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch. We cannot stop short. . . ."…

BOOKS IN BRIEF The Votes That Counted How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election by Howard Gillman (University of Chicago Press, 280 pp., $27.50) There is no shortage of books on the case of Bush v. Gore. The Weekly Standard has already reviewed 11 of them in essays by Noemie Emery and…

OVER THE WEEKEND Bill Keller of the New York Times pumped out a column dumping on three lame-duck Senators, all Republicans--Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and Phil Gramm. For Keller, it's more than time for them to go.

WHERE DOES Larry Summers, Harvard University's new president, stand on affirmative action? That may or may not have been the major concern of the senior members of the Afro-American Studies Department who laid various grievances before Summers in recent weeks. But by year's end it had elbowed aside…

IN EARLY DECEMBER, President Bush had to decide what to do about Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui is the French citizen of Moroccan descent who entered the United States back in February. On August 16, having aroused suspicions at a flight school in Minnesota, he was detained on visa violation…

IN MATTHEW'S GOSPEL, some wise men in the East see Jesus's star and evidently interpret it as a sign of the birth of the promised King of Judah. They follow the star all the way to Jerusalem and ask where the newborn is. "We have come to worship him," they say. Herod, King of the Jews, gets word of…

[img caption="Photo by Kevin Frayer of the Canadian Press, via the AP." float="right" width="432" height="328" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]8792[/img]DO YOU see what I see? Look carefully at the photo above, which ran in Monday's Washington Post. It was taken by Kevin Frayer of the Canadian Press…

ON NOVEMBER 29, Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced President Bush to an audience of the nation's 94 U.S. attorneys. Bush began his remarks by commending Ashcroft for "principled" and "steady" leadership. "I guess we call you General," he said. Then, turning to the U.S. attorneys, he added,…

GEORGE W. BUSH was sworn in almost ten months ago, yet it's remarkable how his presidency has completely changed directions. I don't mean it's changed politically. Rather, it's changed in terms of its preoccupations. It has gone from being a domestic-policy presidency to one centered on foreign…

GEORGE W. BUSH once ate a hamburger here at the Coffee Station in Crawford, Texas. I know that because on your left as you enter, at eye height, is a framed bill from this past August that Bush himself paid. It's bill #173803, and it lists orders for eight people. Bush paid $35--plus half that…

ON MONDAY the Northern Alliance took the small town of Taliqan from the Taliban. The people of this valley town in northeast Aghanistan deserve more than cursory notice, for they are compelling witnesses to what the war on terrorism is about. According to Dexter Filkins's account in the New York…

IN LATE SEPTEMBER three men of Middle Eastern origin had tickets on Northwest Airlines out of Minneapolis. They were set to board when other passengers--presumably not of Middle Eastern origin--objected. Their objection was sustained. The Middle Eastern men took a later flight on Delta. Once upon a…

Clarence Thomas A Biography by Andrew Peyton Thomas Encounter, 661 pp., $29.95 IN RECENT YEARS THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION of Clarence Thomas has undergone a remarkable change. Few who closely follow the work of the Supreme Court now indulge the notion he isn't up to the job. Seldom is it said that he…

AT A CHURCH DINNER RECENTLY I stepped out during a lull to use the facilities. That wasn't all I did, nor, I'll confess, was it my only purpose. I proceeded outside, into the parking lot and then to my car. I got in and turned on the radio, preset to WSB-Atlanta, which is found at 750 AM, in case…

AMONG THE MANY THINGS that have changed since September 11 is the public profile of Attorney General John Ashcroft. It's a lot bigger now. You can get an idea of how much bigger by visiting the Justice Department's website. It lists all of the A.G.'s public appearances going back to when he was…

IN MY CHURCH A WEEK AGO SUNDAY, we sang the fourth verse of the National Anthem. I wonder how many others have had the chance to sing it recently. I can't remember ever singing it before. As we lifted our voices, I wondered what the church-state police would say if this verse ever came to be sung…

If you've been to our site before, you’ll notice it’s undergone change. Quite a lot, in fact. Here’s a guide to what you’ll find here.

HAS ANYONE NOTICED that we are not having a discussion about war powers? No one is talking much about the War Powers Resolution, nor is anyone proposing that President Bush may not initiate military action unless Congress formally declares war. The almost complete silence on these matters…

UPON BEING NAMED DIRECTOR of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, John DiIulio Jr. made clear that he expected to be in the post for only a short while. Notes of my January interview with DiIulio begin: "Do at least six months." DiIulio, as it turns out, will have done…

ON JULY 11, THE HOUSE Ways and Means Committee approved one part of President Bush’s faith-based initiative when it passed a measure permitting those who don’t itemize their taxes to deduct charitable contributions. In a statement, the president praised the committee for its vote and predicted the…

THE ELECTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH has brought forth a change in the government’s view of the Second Amendment. More than a few Americans know the amendment by heart: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be…

THE ELECTION OF George W. Bush has brought forth a change in the government's view of the Second Amendment. More than a few Americans know the amendment by heart: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be…

The week's political news had reporters in Washington working overtime. The Senate passed a $1.35 trillion tax cut, the biggest in 20 years. The House approved an education bill that would require the states, for the first time, to test students and identify failing schools. The Senate finally (if…

April 1865

April 1865

ON SATURDAY, MARCH 17, the New York Times broke the story: President Bush's legal advisers had "told the American Bar Association that they want to end the group's nearly half-century role as a semiofficial screening panel for judicial nominees." The story had the earmarks of one leaked by sources…

MIDWAY THROUGH his recent budget speech to Congress, President Bush announced that he had asked attorney general John Ashcroft "to develop specific recommendations to end racial profiling." The practice, he continued, "is wrong and we will end it in America." Two days later Ashcroft held a press…

Fighting Poverty with Virtue

LAST MONTH'S DEBATE at the Apollo Theater in Harlem remains one of the more ill-covered campaign events, not least because the press failed to notice that, on a key policy question, Al Gore moved to the left of not only Bill Bradley but also Bill Clinton. The moment came early in the debate after a…

Censor the mass media? In theory, I agree. It defies common sense to say that education is morally trivial; and we are educated, for better or worse, through various media. The case for censorship -- or regulation, as I prefer to call it -- is simply this: Society has a right to reduce the moral…

In Great Souls, David Aikman has assembled brief biographies of six modern figures, all but one of whom are still living: Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and Elie Wiesel. Each of these six has indeed "changed the century," and for the better.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON is eager to turn the public against Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, for the obvious reason that he might be intimidated and back off. But there's a less obvious reason, too. The public's view of Starr would be enormously important in either of two eventualities: a…

EARLIER THIS YEAR the National Organization for Women and its friends on the cultural left decided it was time to take on Promise Keepers, the men's evangelical movement founded six years ago by the former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney. Armageddon was to be October 4, 1997,…

THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE is expected to vote shortly along strict party lines in favor of the so-called Equal Opportunity Act, which would end virtually all of the race- and sex-based preferences now administered by the federal government. The bill is sound in principle: When government favors…

THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE is expected to vote shortly along strict party lines in favor of the so-called Equal Opportunity Act, which would end virtually all of the race- and sex-based preferences now administered by the federal government. The bill is sound in principle: When government favors…