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Repeal Obamacare
Liberals had hoped, and some conservatives had feared, that the legislative Frankenstein’s monster known as Obamacare would become more popular as its sundry measures were implemented. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is no more popular now than when it was passed, as Americans have come to realize...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 22 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
The Cruz Birthers
Birthers, it turns out, can be bipartisan. They have a new target — the rapidly rising GOP senator Ted Cruz. Though he bears all the marks of a Texan — the swagger, the signature twang, and the ever-present cowboy boots — 42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Budgets by Bach
In addition to being a writer, I am a rank amateur musician with a tenuous grasp on theory and only the shallowest of appreciations for the great classical composers. But for whatever reason — a tic of the iTunes shuffling algorithm, maybe — I’ve been spending a lot of time lately reacquainting myself with the...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Obamacare Reboot
More than half the country agrees with my view that Obamacare should be repealed. But perhaps even the rest of the public could be persuaded that delaying full implementation for at least a year — say, till January 2015 — is a good idea. Why? There are five simple reasons. First, it would save a boatload of money,...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Why Did We Invade Iraq?
On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the back-and-forth recriminations continue, but in all the “not me” defenses, we have forgotten, over the ensuing decade, the climate of 2003 and why we invaded in the first place. The war was predicated on six suppositions. 1. 9/11 and the 1991 Gulf War. The Bush...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Cyprus: Can It Happen Here?
The decision of the government in Cyprus to simply take money out of people’s bank accounts there sent shock waves around the world. People far removed from that small island nation had to wonder: “Can this happen here?” The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
SDI at 30, Part II
Editor’s Note: This week, we are running a series by Jay Nordlinger on missile defense. It has been 30 years since Reagan gave his speech announcing the project. What was his vision, and how has it fared? For Part I of the series, go here. Reagan is the object of widespread respect today. He is respected even by...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Florida Atlantic U., Left-Wing Seminary
Question: What is the difference between Christian seminaries and American universities? Answer: Christian seminaries announce that their purpose is to produce committed Christians. American universities do not admit that their primary purpose is to produce committed leftists. They claim that their purpose is to...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Festival of Denial?
This week, together with about 13 million Jews worldwide (yes, that’s all there are), our family will celebrate the feast of Passover — perhaps the oldest continuously celebrated religious holiday in the world. Passover is primarily a holiday of the home, not the synagogue. The preparations take days. We sit down to...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Gay Marriage by Fiat?
It is a sign of how far supporters of gay marriage have advanced that the term “opposite-sex marriage” — an infelicitous phrase that once would have been a confounding tautology — is now in common usage. They have all the momentum. The polls are swinging their way. They had victories in state-level referenda for the...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 23 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Cuomo’s Shameful SAFE Act
All things being equal, New York State’s infamous new gun laws will go down in history as a prime example of the folly of hysterical calls to action; and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who led the chase for the measures, will join them in disgrace. After 20 children were killed in Newtown, Conn., last December, progressives...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Obamacare Costs Spark Voter Cynicism
Ask any pollster. Distrust of the government in Washington stands at unprecedentedly high levels. Between three-quarters (Pew) and four-fifths (Gallup) of Americans now instinctively question the veracity of promises from politicians and government agencies. Their frustration with all things governmental, in fact,...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
T.R. and T.B.T.F.
We are currently engaged in a lively debate on whether our financial institutions are too big, whether government policies such as Dodd-Frank are making them bigger, and whether the government should break up big banks instead. Just over a century ago, breaking up big business — “trusts,” as they were then called —...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Unhappy Birthday for Obamacare
Obamacare marked its third birthday last Saturday. It is now even less popular than when it barely passed Congress in March 2010. The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, which has always shown the highest support for Obamacare of any major poll, found that 46 percent of Americans approved it when it originally passed....
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Too Big to Fail Is Too Good to Resist
The U.S. Senate rarely votes unanimously on anything of much importance. The Obama White House, though, managed to bring this about: Last May, a clone of its previous year’s budget proposal failed unanimously, 99–0. Way to bring the two parties together, Mr. President. There was far less consensus on the Senate...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Spies Like Us?
One almost-entirely-unguilty pleasure of watching The Americans — the strong new FX thriller that follows a “married” pair of KGB sleeper agents hiding in the Washington suburbs at the dawn of the Reagan era — is the frequent and mostly pathetic attempts of Mrs. Elizabeth Jennings (née Nadezhda, from Smolensk) to...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
SDI at 30, Part I
Saturday, March 23, was the 30th anniversary of President Reagan’s famous “SDI speech” — the speech in which he announced our missile-defense project, which soon came to be known as the “Strategic Defense Initiative,” or “SDI.” I have a piece on this subject in the current National Review. I thought I would do an...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
The Red and the Black
‘What have the Democrats done for you lately?” Republicans should start asking black Americans that question — early and often. Doing so could become the GOP’s secret weapon.Keep reading this post . . .
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Monetary Migrants
What parts of America have been growing during these years of sluggish economic growth? Answers come from comparing the Census Bureau’s just-released estimates of metropolitan-area populations in July 2012 with the results of the census conducted in 2010.Keep reading this post . . .
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Francis, Poverty, and Freedom
Rome — The pope, petting a seeing-eye dog? It happened at Pope Francis’s audience with members of the media the Saturday morning after his election. As a blind man approached the stage, even the most hardened journalist might have found himself cheering the pontiff on. They wondered: Would he do it? Do popes do such...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 24 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
End Medicaid’s Crony Federalism
Last year, in an otherwise dispiriting opinion, the Supreme Court handed the nation’s governors an important victory in NFIB v. Sebelius. The Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion mandated in the law was an unconstitutional infringement on state prerogatives. Specifically, the federal government does not have the...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 26 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Games and Tribes
There’s a joke among psychology researchers: We know almost nothing about human psychology, but we know everything about the psychology of Harvard psychology undergrads — because they’re the ones who serve as the subjects of influential studies. It is likely that the same thing holds true of experimental economics....
nationalreview.com (1 month and 26 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
The Iraq War, Ten Years Later
Ten years ago this week, the United States launched the Iraq War. A decade later, thanks to the mismanagement of the Bush administration, the indifference of the Obama administration, and the inherent difficulties of Iraqi society, it is clear that we expended great blood and treasure for an unsatisfactory outcome....
nationalreview.com (1 month and 26 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Geopolitical ADHD
Ten years ago, along with three-quarters of the American people, including the men just appointed as President Obama’s secretaries of state and defense, I supported the invasion of Iraq. A decade on, unlike most of the American people, including John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, I’ll stand by that original judgment. None...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 26 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
McCarthyism on Campus
‘F**k! The Maine same-sex-marriage initiative passed!” This is what someone who does not know me and happened to be passing my university office the day after the fall elections allegedly heard me say on the telephone.Keep reading this post . . .
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Priebus’s Way Forward
On Thursday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus chatted with National Review’s Jim Geraghty about the committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project report, released Monday, and the next steps for the party. JIM GERAGHTY: Obviously, it’s been a busy week for you. What do you think of the reaction to...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
The War on Jobs
Senate Democrats finally released their first budget plan in four years this month: It offers nearly $1 trillion in new taxes, an end to sequester budget savings, and almost no new spending restraint. Despite the failure of the 2009 stimulus package, Democrats also want an extra $100 billion to create jobs on...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Obama’s Illegal-Immigrant Booster
Illegal immigrants have always had a friend in Thomas Perez, President Obama’s nominee for labor secretary. As a member of the Montgomery County council in Maryland, he advocated for day-laborer sites and pushed for IDs distributed by Mexico and Guatemala to count as proof of identity, even though allowing such IDs...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Without Representation
The founding battle cry of the United States of America was “No taxation without representation!” Senator Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) and Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) propose to challenge that with the misnamed Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, a sales tax for Internet transactions, which would empower states and...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
Cheers for Drinking Reform
Alcohol occupies a peculiar position in the culture of the United States. Like so much else besides, it is subject to the ongoing brawl between puritanism and libertarianism, two philosophies that have long jockeyed for dominance here. Americans have made many contributions to the bar — including the perfection and...
nationalreview.com (1 month and 27 days ago) read full article at nationalreview.com
