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Archive
Privacy Isn’t All We’re Losing
The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2013
- The U.S. surveillance state as outlined and explained by Edward Snowden is not worth the price. Its size, scope and intrusiveness, its ability to target and monitor American citizens, its essential unaccountability—all these things are extreme.
The purpose of the surveillance is enhanced securi...
The IRS Can’t Plead Incompetence
The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2013
- Quickly: Everyone agrees the Internal Revenue Service is, under current governmental structures, the proper agency to determine the legitimacy of applications for tax-exempt status. Everyone agrees the IRS has the duty to scrutinize each request, making sure that the organization meets relevant crit...
An Antidote to Cynicism Poisoning
The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2013
- The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Hold...
A Battering Ram Becomes a Stonewall
The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2013
- “I don’t know.” “I don’t remember.” “I’m not familiar with that detail.” “It’s not my precise area.” “I’m not familiar with that letter.”
These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate. That is the aut...
This Is No Ordinary Scandal
The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2013
- We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associa...
The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi
The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2013
- The Benghazi story until now has been a jumble of factoids that didn’t quite cohere, didn’t produce a story that people could absorb and hold in their minds. This week that changed. Three State Department officials testifying under oath to a House committee changed it, by adding information that...
Is Obama a Lame Duck Already?
The Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2013
- I think we’re all agreed the president is fading—failing to lead, to break through, to show he’s not at the mercy of events but, to some degree at least, in command of them. He couldn’t get a win on gun control with 90% public support. When he speaks on immigration reform you get the sense h...
The Presidential Wheel Turns
The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2013
- Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 because he was not George W. Bush. In fact, he was elected because he was the farthest thing possible from Mr. Bush. On some level he knew this, which is why every time he got in trouble he’d say Bush’s name. It’s all his fault, you have no idea the m...
Britain Remembers a Great Briton
The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2013
- London
The funeral of Margaret Thatcher was beautiful, moving, just right. It had dignity and spirit, and in that respect was just like her. It also contained a surprise that shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was a metaphor for where she stood in the pantheon of successful leaders of the 20th ...
A Statesman’s Friendly Advice
The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2013
- I found myself engrossed this week by the calm, incisive wisdom of one of the few living statesmen in the world who can actually be called visionary.
The wisdom is in a book, “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World,” a gathering of Mr. Lee’s in...
Pope Francis Looks Outward
The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2013
- In line with tradition Pope Francis this holy week washes the feet of the poor. In a departure from tradition he did it in a juvenile prison in Rome. In line with tradition he will live in the Vatican. In a departure from tradition he will live not in the apostolic palace but in a small suite (Room ...
Can the Republican Party Recover From Iraq?
The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2013
- The air has been full of 10th-anniversary Iraq war retrospectives. One that caught my eye was a smart piece by Tom Curry, national affairs writer for NBC News, who wrote of one element of the story, the war’s impact on the Republican party: “The conflict not only transformed” the GOP, “but a...
‘Go and Repair My House’
The Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2013
- I’ll tell you how it looks: like one big unexpected gift for the church and the world.
Everything about Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election was a surprise—his age, the name he took, his mien as he was presented to the world. He was plainly dressed, a simple white cassock, no regalia, ...
The Anti-Confidence Man
The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2013
- It’s not a debt and deficit crisis, it’s a jobs crisis. The debt and the deficit are part of it, part of the general fear that we’re on a long slide and can’t turn it around. The federal tax code is part of it—it’s a drag on everything, a killer of the spirit of guts and endeavor. Federa...
Obama Is Playing a New Game
The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2013
- Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who’ll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethi...
Government by Freakout
The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2013
- The president’s sequester strategy is like Howard Beale in “Network”: “Woe is us. . . . And woe is us! We’re in a lot of trouble!”
It is always cliffs, ceilings and looming catastrophes with Barack Obama. It is always government by freakout.
That’s what’s happening now with the...
A Faith Unshaken but Unsettled
The Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2013
- It is disquieting, the resignation of the pope. “We are in uncharted territory,” said a historian of the church. An old pope is leaving but staying within the walls of the Vatican, and a new one, younger and less known, will come before Easter.
In a week’s conversation with faithful and bel...
So God Made a Fawner
The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2013
- So many people this week mentioned Dodge’s great Super Bowl spot, “So God Made a Farmer,” from a 1978 speech by the late Paul Harvey.
Here are some reasons it was great:
• Because it spoke respectfully and even reverently of others. We don’t do that so much anymore. We’re afraid of...
Republicans Break the Ice
The Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2013
- Do you hear the sound of an ice floe cracking? I think I did the past 10 days. In that time these things happened:
Gov. Bobby Jindal went before the Republican National Committee to call the GOP “the stupid party.” Newly re-elected RNC chairman Reince Priebus admitted the party got smoked on ...
Lessons Conservatives Need to Learn
The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2013
- Two lessons on how conservatives and Republicans might approach the future, and a look at the meaning of Barack Obama.
Lesson one: Golf star Phil Mickelson this week complained about taxes—”I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state”—and suggested h...
