Earlier in the week, we were treated to a discussion about Elena Kagan’s 1981 senior thesis at Princeton, “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”  In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, we learned that, despite some sympathy for the broad goals of the movement, Kagan isn’t a socialist and is both philosophically and [...]

RedState‘s Erick Erickson notes that, not only would Elena Kagan replace the Supreme Court’s last Protestant but also “the last of the military veterans on the United States Supreme Court.” Indeed, according to his Wikipedia entry, John Paul Stevens “began work on his master’s degree in English at the university in 1941, but soon decided [...]

With only a week to go until Pennsylvania Democrats head to polls to pick their Senate nominee, things are very suddenly not looking good for Arlen Specter. First, there’s a new Rasmussen poll that shows Specter falling behind Sestak for the first time since the race began: Congressman Joe Sestak has moved ahead of incumbent [...]

People are having fun with reports that Elena Kagan, who argued as an advisor during the Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmation that Supreme Court nominees should be required to give very detailed answers to policy questions, has changed her position now that the shoe is on the other foot. Kagan wrote in 1995 that the confirmation [...]

Responding to the fact that, by nominating Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Barack Obama has now gone two-for-two in appointing women to the High Court — and, assuming she’s confirmed, would triple the number of female Justices in a matter of months — NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez tweets, “Just wondering: are men allowed to [...]

The Nation‘s Marc Cooper is generating some minor buzz with his suggestion that President Obama appoint an atheist to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor. Though the court without Stevens will be [...]

Two prominent Republican Congressmen have come out against reading Miranda rights to American citizens suspected of terrorism. Congressional Republicans want to know whether the Pakistani-born American arrested in the Times Square car bombing plot was read his Miranda rights, with Sen. John McCain saying it would be a “serious mistake” if the suspect was reminded [...]

Saturday night’s annual White House Correspondents’ dinner has provoked the standard commentaries about the insipidness/banality/sinisterness of the event, what with the press sucking up to the president and the highlighting of the thin line between politics and celebrity.   And then there’s the required assessments of the president’s talents as a stand-up comedian. The most common [...]

Via Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein, I see that yesterday Rush Limbaugh questioned the timing of the oil spill off the Louisiana coast.  His own rush transcript is titled “Regime SWAT Teams Sent to Gulf.” That would be the Obama regime, naturally.  He seems to be alleging that Obama sent SWAT teams to blow up [...]

President Obama’s unscripted line, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money” continues to draw scorn and derision. Here’s the video: The text: We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. [...]

Patrick Ruffini goes all in with this one: I might be setting myself for a healthy serving of crow on November 3rd, but I get a distinct feeling that the GOP may be headed toward to a seat gain in the House of epic proportions — somewhere over 50 seats and well above the historical [...]

The big news overnight is that President Obama has ordered hospitals to allow partners of gays and lesbians to visit and be allowed to make critical decisions. Michael Schear, WaPo: “Obama extends hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners of gays” President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of [...]

Terry Lakin, the army lieutenant colonel who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan on account of President Obama not really being an American and thus not authorized to make him will instead be deployed to Fort Leavenworth as a private. U.S. military officials tell NBC News that the U.S. Army will court martial a lieutenant colonel [...]

Neil Armstrong has led a pretty quiet life since becoming the first man to set foot on the moon four decades ago.  But he’s going public with his displeasure over President Obama’s rumored plan to cancel the next generation space vehicle. The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to [...]

Speaking of Ron Paul, he took the bold step yesterday of announcing that President Obama isn’t a socialist. Not in a technical sense, anyway. “The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist,” Paul said. “I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical [...]

Sarah Palin, who was governor of Alaska for a few months before launching a career as a talk show host, objects to President Obama’s new nuclear policy thusly: Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, as a part-time senator, and as a full-time candidate, all that [...]

After a brief hiatus, the next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern. The tired and very, very busy Dave Schuler and I will be joined by a special guest, Colonel Pat Lang of Sic Semper Tyrannis to talk about the WikiLeaks Iraq video, Afghan president Hamid [...]

Actor Kal Penn is  leaving the Obama White House to film another “Harold & Kumar” sequel. Our friends at Lifeline Live and other entertainment news outlets are reporting that actor Kal Penn is leaving his White House job to film another sequel to the Harold & Kumar movies. So did you ever wonder what Kalpeni [...]

When I saw the NYT headline “Secretary of the Army Says He Will Not Pursue ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Discharges,” I was a bit shocked. While there’s always discretion in which policies one emphasizes, it’s unusual, indeed, for a senior official to blatantly announce that they’re going to ignore the law. It took me several [...]

In yet another way President Obama is like his immediate predecessor, he’s shamelessly abusing the recess appointment power to bypass Senate intransigence. President Obama, making a muscular show of his executive authority just one day after Congress left for spring recess, said Saturday that he would bypass the Senate and install 15 appointees, including a union [...]

President Obama announced this morning that he had reached an agreement with his Russian counterpart on a new START agreement. While I’ve generally been dismissive of Obama’s “Reset Button” approach to relations with Moscow, I believe this treaty was a no-brainer. I explain why in my New Atlanticist piece, “Nuclear Treaty a New START.” The [...]

Georgetown lawprof Randy Barnett wants to repeal the just-passed health care reform act by an Amendment to the United States Constitution: THE FEDERALISM RESTORATION AMENDMENT The legislative power of Congress shall not be construed to include mandating, regulating, prohibiting or taxing the private health insurance of any person; nor shall the power of Congress to [...]

In response to a posting from Tunku Varadarajan accusing him of being a “polite company conservative” who “yearns for the goodwill of the liberal elite in the media and in the Beltway—who wishes, always, to have their ear, to be at their dinner parties, to be comforted by a sense that liberal interlocutors believe that [...]

Scott Brown was elected to be the final vote against ObamaCare but he never got the chance.  Now, some of his erstwhile supporters are having second thoughts. Republican folk hero Sen. Scott Brown is being taunted by triumphant Democrats – and slammed by irked conservatives – after the historic health-care bill he was elected to [...]

As regular readers are painfully aware, I’ve been opposed to President Obama’s health care reform plan, such as it was, from the beginning.  But, apparently, it’s much worse than I thought.   Economist Thomas Sowell, one of the more thoughtful columnists in the business, sees it as the banana peel on the slippery slope to doomsday. [...]

There has been some interesting analysis of the impacts on our health care system of the bill President Obama signed into law earlier today by libertarian economists Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan, and Tyler Cowen.   Many of the ideas have been floating around for a while  (the bill’s been in development for more than a year [...]

Ben Domenech notes that, while the healthcare bill that now awaits President Obama’s signature explicitly states that Members of Congress and their staff are covered under its provisions, there seems to be a carveout for those who serve on committee or leadership staff. It’s not uncommon for Congress to exempt itself from laws it passes.  [...]

Now that health care reform has been revived from its near death experience, it appears that it will face a series of Constitutional challenges.  My home state of Virginia has fired the opening shot. Via Twitter, no less. To emphasize how ready Virginia is to take the health care overhaul to court, take a look [...]

President Obama is setting a bad example for the country by getting expensive, unnecessary medical tests, at least two critics charge. NPR’s Scott Hensley reports: For starters, take the whiz-bang CT scan that looked for traces of calcium in his coronary arteries, a screening test for heart disease. Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the [...]

As the University of Alabama football team prepares to meet President Obama as part of the ritual victory tour that comes with winning a national championship, Randy Ross reflects on the last time the Tide made the trip. Then Alabama’s recruiting coordinator under head coach Gene Stallings, and now the director of football operations at [...]

When President Obama invited Republican Congressional leaders to join him for a televised health care summit, they reasonably feared it was “a trap” in which the contrast between the contrast between a smooth talking Commander-in-Chief and Podunk legislators would make them look small.   Clearly, Obama intended it as a PR gambit that would showcase him [...]

President Obama seems to have backed off of his plans for a government insurance program to compete with the private sector.  Instead, he’s doubling down and proposing something much more radical:  having the federal government set the rates of private insurance companies! President Obama will propose on Monday giving the federal government new power to [...]

This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference kicks off at 9 this morning.  Some are predicting a very different atmosphere than seen in recent years. The Washington Examiner editorial page, honchoed by Mark Tapscott, sees “a new beginning.” Consider the situation that confronted many of these same attendees at last year’s CPAC: President Obama had just [...]

Indiana’s Evan Bayh, a much-touted aspirant for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, is announcing that he will not seek another term in the Senate. Mary Beth Schneider for the Indianapolis Star: Sen. Evan Bayh will not run for re-election, a decision that will shock Democrats and Republicans alike in Indiana. In prepared remarks, Bayh, [...]

WaPo’s Jon Cohen thinks the “bipartisanship” tack that President Obama is taking to fight back against recent Republican gains could work. Nearly six in 10 in the new poll say the Republicans aren’t doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little [...]

A new WaPo-ABC poll shows that Americans are increasingly dissatisfied and has Republicans tied with President Obama in approval. The survey paints a portrait of a restless and dissatisfied electorate at the beginning of a critical election year. More than seven in 10 Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and as many say [...]

Alabama’s Richard Shelby has placed a hold on all nominations until a 2008 earmark for Redstone Arsenal is released. The Mobile Press-Register: Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, is blocking Senate action on executive branch nominations, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this afternoon in an e-mail. In response to a question from [...]

Cato’s Ted DeHaven juxtaposes quotes from President Obama’s first State of the Union address with several from his predecessor. With President Obama’s repeated attempts to draw distinctions between himself from his predecessor—and a widespread belief that he and Bush are polar opposites in nearly every way—it’s actually startling how similar the two men are. And [...]

In last night’s State of the Union speech, President Obama called out the Supreme Court’s decision overturning corporate and union spending limits, saying it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” Associate Justice Samuel Alito shook his head [...]

Public Policy Polling‘s latest 2012 presidential poll (I know, I know) has Mike Huckabee leading President Obama and Mitt Romney within the margin of error. Mike Huckabee has a 45-44 advantage over Obama, aided largely by a 44-38 lead with independents. There continues to be no evidence of any negative fallout for Huckabee after murders [...]

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that the right of corporations to engage in political speech, including campaign and issue advertising,  is protected by the First Amendment. AP, “Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law” The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and [...]

Neil Newhouse, who served served as the pollster for the Brown for Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (and was indirectly my source* last night) has written a public memo to National Democratic Leaders with the subject line WHAT MASSACHUSETTS MEANS FOR YOU.  While it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek, he makes some salient points.   Among [...]

There was talk over the last few days, from Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democrats might use parliamentary tricks and outright chicanery to ram a healthcare bill through even if Scott Brown won in Massachusetts and take the party coalition down to 59.   Thankfully, cooler heads seem to have prevailed and that looks quite [...]

The special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the passing of Teddy Kennedy is ongoing, with most expecting a win by Republican Scott Brown.  Andrew Sullivan sees this as the death knell of American politics. I can see no alternative scenario but a huge – staggeringly huge – victory for the FNC/RNC [...]

Galrahn of Information Dissemination has an outstanding post on the U. S. response to the earthquake in Haiti that deserves your attention. He asks some very interesting and potentially embarrassing questions: How long will it take the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command to open up the port in Port-au-Prince? How effective will the helicopter operations of [...]

Barack Obama’s approval ratings are now firmly below 50 percent, with the CBS poll as the latest data point: President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 46 percent, according to a new CBS News poll. That rating is Mr. Obama’s lowest yet in CBS News polling, and the poll marks the first time his [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in trouble. Among the juicy revelations in the highly touted 2008 tell-all by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is that Reid made some borderline racist comments about then-candidate and Senate colleague Barack Obama. He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace [...]

Opposition to the Democrats’ health care reform plan has created some strange bedfellows, with the Hard Left and the Hard Right frequently working together.  Here’s on that I didn’t expect:  NYT columnist Bob Herbert attacking the plan from the Right. There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s [...]

Politico‘s Josh Gernstein notes that revelations of Yemen’s connection to the failed Detroit terror plot will further complicate President Obama’s plans to move prisoners from the prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I’d expect Yemen’s handling of returned Guantanamo detainees to come under intense U.S. scrutiny,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who was an assistant [...]

TV writer Steve Marmel takes to the pixels of HuffPo to excoriate President Obama for continuing his vacation in the wake of the failed Detroit terror plot. [T]he only thing that stopped 12/25 from feeling a lot like 9/11 was a failed detonator and a guy named Jasper Schuringa. Weather now seems like a quaint [...]