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 September 19, 2011
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 September 12, 2011
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 September 5, 2011
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 August 29, 2011
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 August 15 - August 22, 2011
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 August 8, 2011
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 August 1, 2011
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 July 25, 2011
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 July 18, 2011
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 July 4 - July 11, 2011
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 June 27, 2011
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 June 20, 2011
This issue: September 26, 2011 (Vol. 17, No. 02)
BY JAMES C. CAPRETTA
Obamacare’s individual mandate—requiring that all Americans purchase government-approved health insurance beginning in 2014—has always been the law’s most vulnerable provision. It is incredibly unpopular, and not just among conservatives. Polls consistently show that a large majority of the electorate opposes it, including a good portion of registered Democrats.
It is not hard to see why. Conservatives worry that the mandate, which compels all Americans to buy a particular product whether they want to or not, involves an unprecedented assertion of federal power. ...
BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI
To find a metaphor for the failed Obama presidency, look no ...
BY WILLIAM KRISTOL
Paul Krugman, of Princeton and the New York Times, was up early last Sunday morning, reflecting, as many of his fellow Americans were, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He chose to share his thoughts on ...
Could the governors of Texas and Virginia end up on a national ticket together?
BY MARK HEMINGWAY
Richmond, Virginia
"We’re friendly rivals,” says Virginia governor Bob McDonnell of his relationship with Texas governor Rick Perry. “Texas and Virginia have a lot in common in terms of business rankings and the criminal justice system. All my relatives are from the Texas A&M area, so I’ve always had an affinity for Texas. He’s a veteran, I’m a veteran.”
McDonnell is sitting on a couch in his office. In about an hour, he’s scheduled to walk a few blocks to the ...
The Obama presidency enters its pathetic phase.
BY FRED BARNES
It’s come to this: The president touted for his brainpower, idealism, and global esteem has been reduced to leading captive audiences in chants of “Pass this bill,” a measure that Republicans loathe, Democrats ...
The Israeli-Palestinian clash comes to Turtle Bay.
BY LEE SMITH
Jerusalem
Three Kentuckians join forces to stop America from choking on red tape.
BY PHIL KERPEN
As the country teeters on the edge of recession, two competing visions of government’s role in the economy are being offered in Washington. President Obama again proposes big government programs and Keynesian ...
China’s One-Child policy is an epic disaster. Why does it have so many cheerleaders?
BY JONATHAN V. LAST
A few weeks ago Vice President Joe Biden made, by his standards, a minor squall when he visited China and held forth on the country’s One-Child policy. Biden didn’t endorse One-Child, exactly, but said that he would not “second guess” it. He wasn’t the first Westerner to look favorably upon the regime. Tom Friedman once mused that One-Child “probably saved China from a population calamity.” The Associated Press lauded it recently as a “boon” to Chinese girls. Others believe One-Child to be so admirable that it ought to be replicated on a global scale. Financial Post columnist Diane Francis, former Planned Parenthood director Norman Fleishman, and Ted Turner—among others—have all said that the entire world ought to adopt China’s One-Child policy.
An entitlement problem too big to ignore
BY YUVAL LEVIN
It is gradually dawning on Washington that a meaningful reform of the Medicare program will be unavoidable in the coming years. Medicare is ...
Merkel didn’t say yes and can’t say no to bailing out the Greeks
BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
German chancellor Angela Merkel is spending this weekend the way she spent the last two—struggling through an election. This weekend, her ...
Why Alexander really was great.
BY J.E. LENDON
Four years ago, at the climax of fashionable handwringing about the war in Iraq, there was rushed into print a crabbed and cranky book entitled Alexander the Great Failure, a volume whose author portrayed the conqueror as the Donald Rumsfeld of the ancient world. Too arrogant and feckless to care about the rule or the future of the titanic empire he had won by the spear, this NPR Alexander died leaving his conquests both ungoverned and ungovernable. The pointed parallel seems rather quaint now that the progress of our arms has rendered most of Iraq safer than Duluth, and the United States has ...
‘NCIS’ gets no critical respect, but should.
BY ELI LEHRER
NCIS (the title is short for “Naval Criminal Investigative Service”) is almost certainly the most popular television show in the ...
It’s not easy reducing the phenomenon of Viscount Palmerston to words.
BY BARTON SWAIM
"David Brown’s multi-faceted Palmerston,” says a blurb on the back of this volume, “in its archival mastery, scope and insight, ...
An English monument goes digital.
BY EDWARD SHORT
In 1747, eight years before the publication of his pioneering dictionary, Samuel Johnson wrote that his “chief intent” in ...
The interrupted journey of a latter-day pilgrim.
BY THERESA CIVANTOS
The word “saint” does not typically conjure up images of a Harvard alumna and New England housewife, but it may begin to do so if Ruth Pakaluk’s story gets around. She ...
A thriller that deserves the name.
BY JOHN PODHORETZ
Contagion
Joseph Epstein, handshake man
BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN
Time to declare a moratorium on the high five. That combination salute and handshake has been around for more than 30 years, and is now entering the stage of the perfunctory, perhaps even the otiose. The other evening, watching a White Sox game, I saw a player hit by a pitch replaced by a pinch-runner and returned to the Sox dugout forced to undergo from all his teammates a full round of high fives, with a few head rubs and bottom pats thrown in at no extra charge. Perfunctory, I call that, otiose.
I am equally eager to see an end to the low five; the side ...
The Obama administration has established a new (even lower) standard for kowtowing to Beijing. In the first instance, the White House has decided against selling Taiwan 66 new F-16s the government in Taipei has been asking for over the last few years. With an aging inventory of Taiwan air force fighters and the continued buildup of Chinese advanced air defenses, fighters, and fighter-bombers, the sale was absolutely essential if the deteriorating air balance over the Taiwan Strait was to be addressed.
Ignoring his legal obligations under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military equipment it needs to maintain its self-defense capabilities, the president has allowed Chinese threats of a rough ...
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