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Political Commentary

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April 23, 2010

Bad Service Dressed as Good Service By Froma Harrop

More service is not necessarily good service. And bad service dressed as good service is even worse. Here are examples:

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April 23, 2010

The First Amendment and Animals By Susan Estrich

Let me be clear at the outset: I love dogs. Not like them, love them. Of course, I love mine the best: Judy J. Estrich, Molly Emily Estrich and Irving A. Estrich. Judy is named after one of my dearest friends, Judy Jarvis, who died of cancer 10 years ago. Molly is named after her dog, who took care of her when she was sick and taught me not to be afraid of big dogs.

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April 22, 2010

John Stossel and the Media’s “Statist Syndrome” By Howard Rich

When he first began his career as a crusading consumer journalist in the 1970s, John Stossel believed fervently that higher taxes and greater government involvement in the marketplace were integral checks against corporate greed and malfeasance.

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April 22, 2010

The Value of the "Obama Effect" By Joe Conason

As approval ratings for Barack Obama decline at home, world opinion of the United States is rising steadily under his stewardship.

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April 22, 2010

Gangster Government Becomes a Long-Running Series By Michael Barone

Almost a year ago, in a Washington Examiner column on the Chrysler bailout, I reflected on the Obama administration's decision to force bondholders to accept 33 cents on the dollar on secured debts while giving United Auto Worker retirees 50 cents on the dollar on unsecured debts.

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April 21, 2010

What's Wrong With Arizona? By Susan Estrich

Over the weekend, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony joined in on the attack against the new law passed by the Arizona legislature to expand police powers to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. The law basically makes it a crime to be an undocumented alien. If that doesn't sound like an inherently controversial proposition, believe me, it will by the time it gets to court.

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April 21, 2010

There Bill Clinton Goes Again By Tony Blankley

Former President Bill Clinton last week inadvertently demonstrated Karl Marx's shrewd observation, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." The historical event in question is the attempt to deter by smearing a broad-based, popular, American anti-high-tax, anti-big-central government movement as likely to induce seditious violence against the government.

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April 20, 2010

Using the Oklahoma City Bombing By Debra J. Saunders

Monday was the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that left 149 men and women -- most of them federal workers -- and 19 children dead. As is his habit, former President Bill Clinton used the occasion to bash his critics.

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April 20, 2010

Too Much Medicine Isn't Good Medicine By Froma Harrop

In the land of "too much ain't enough," the idea that less medicine could be better medicine is a hard sell. This was impossible to discuss during the fracas over health care reform, when any talk of fewer tests and less surgery was portrayed as rationing or the government coming between you and the doctor.

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April 19, 2010

Tea Partiers Fight Obama's Culture of Dependence By Michael Barone

"Do you realize," CNN's Susan Roesgen asked a man at the April 15, 2009, tea party in Chicago, "that you're eligible for a $400 credit?" When the man refused to drop his "drop socialism" sign, she went on, "Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion out of the stimulus?"

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April 17, 2010

When It Comes to Earmarks in DC, It's 'E Pluribus Oink' By Debra J. Saunders

When he ran for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama argued that earmarks account for a mere "0.5 percent of the total federal budget," so eliminating earmarks would not solve the problem.

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April 16, 2010

Mean and Angry versus Angry yet Determined By Debra J. Saunders

The Republican National Committee has an African-American chairman, Michael Steele, and still the GOP manages to come across as racially insensitive, as well as just plain insensitive. That's no easy feat.

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April 16, 2010

America's Constitutionalist Revolt By Lawrence Kudlow

So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.

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April 16, 2010

A Quarterback's Bad Calls By Susan Estrich

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is a bad guy. He may not be a rapist, in the sense that it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had nonconsensual sex, but not being guilty of a crime doesn't mean you're innocent. In my book, this guy should pay.

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April 15, 2010

Before a New Justice Is Chosen By Joe Conason

Choosing a Supreme Court justice has become a deplorably dishonest process that hides ideological disputes behind petty and often personal matters. Nominees pretend to have no opinion about controversial issues such as abortion, when everyone listening knows they certainly do. Politicians pretend to worry about nothing except judicial qualifications, temperament and balance.

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April 15, 2010

Politicians Honoring Their Kind By Froma Harrop

Fly from Atlanta to Houston, and you may start at an airport named after two mayors and land at one named for a president. While in the air, you pass over hundreds of bridges, roadways and public buildings -- all honoring politicians, alive or dead.

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April 15, 2010

GOP Should Push Tough Regulation of Wall Street By Michael Barone

It's not hard to predict how the coming fight over financial regulation legislation will be framed by most of the mainstream media. Democrats like Christopher Dodd, the sponsor of the pending Senate bill, will be portrayed as cracking down on greedy Wall Street operators. Republicans will be portrayed as letting Wall Street operators have their way.

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April 14, 2010

The Kindness of a Stranger By Susan Estrich

I was power walking up Broadway in New York City last Tuesday, when something went terribly wrong. The world started spinning. I literally couldn't see straight.

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April 14, 2010

No More Profiles in Caution By Tony Blankley

The Republican Party must break with its long-established cautious instincts and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government -- from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits. This is not so much reproach of past Republican conduct as it is recognition of new opportunities.

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April 13, 2010

Where Third Party Candidates Are Almost Routine By Froma Harrop

They make less of a ruckus than the tea party people, but independents in New England are brewing their own revolution. Third-party governors may have been elected elsewhere -- Walter Hickel in Alaska (1990) and Jesse Ventura in Minnesota (1998) -- but in New England, such candidacies have become almost routine.