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Recent Blog Posts |
Editorials'A tonic for political depression' Editorial of The New York Sun That’s how Seth Lipsky’s passion for the United States Constitution is described by The Wall Street Journal in a weekend interview with the founding editor of the Sun. The occasion is the publication of Mr. Lipsky's new book, “The Citizen’s Constitution, An Annotated Guide,” which has just been brought out by Basic Books. October 21, 2009 The editor of The Drudge Report reports he is being blamed for the collapse of the dollar because he's given it so much coverage. By our lights his constant coverage is proof that he has better news judgment than those who are ignoring one of the great stories of our generation. October 21, 2009 The founding chairman of Human Rights Watch has shown real courage in speaking out against the organization he brought into being — and has elicited a stunning response from its current leadership that proves the founder's point. October 18, 2009 Apart from the question of whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Prize — a matter that we’ve suggested is the purview of the Norwegians — the newspapers are starting to crackle with the question of whether the Constitution permits Mr. Obama to accept it. October 15, 2009 An email has just come in from one of our favorite newspapers, Il Foglio, seeking support for the candidacy of Tony Blair to be president of the European Council. It seems that under the Treaty of Lisbon, the presidency of the Council will changing from being a rotating musical chairs kind of thing to a position with a two-year term and slightly more power. Its power would not amount to a hill of beans in an era when there was a strong and assertive American president pressing our interests. But in a season of American retreat, and with only the Czech president now holding out against Lisbon, the issue Il Foglio is pressing is something to think about. October 11, 2009 Thomas Friedman has a marvelous column in the October 11th number of the New York Times, urging President Obama to go to Oslo and accept the Nobel Prize “on behalf of all the most important peacekeepers in the world in the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.” We were particularly pleased with Mr. Friedman’s column, because it followed by only two days the New York Sun’s latest editorial urging that the peace prize really should go to G.I. Joe. October 10, 2009 Those of us who have been waiting for a politician to pick up on the monetary issue are perking up at Governor Palin’s demarche on the dollar. This came last week in a posting on her Facebook page, where she reacted to a report that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan, and France to abandon the use of the dollar in pricing petroleum. October 9, 2009 The decision of the Norwegians to award the Nobel Prize for Peace to President Obama is not going to be met with sneering in these quarters. For all that we disagree with the president in respect of policy, Mr. Obama has clearly inspired not only a huge number of Americans but also a huge number of Europeans. September 21, 2009 The decision by America to drop criminal charges against General Vang Pao, whom it had accused of plotting to overthrow the communist regime in Laos, is being greeted with joy among the freedom-loving Hmong the world over — and these columns are with them. It is hard to recall a prosecution as misguided as that which was brought against the general whose army, in league with the Central Intelligence Agency, played a heroic role in the fight against the communists during the long war in Indochina. September 10, 2009 As President Obama was getting ready to address the joint meeting of Congress, we were alerted by the Drudge Report to Richard Pindar’s dispatch in the London Daily Telegraph on a new report that argues that the “cheapest way to combat climate change” is — wait for it — contraception. The report turns out to have been done for a British environmental organization called Optimum Population Trust. September 9, 2009 That was quite a warning the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, delivered earlier this week at the Brookings Institution in Washington. A version of it appears this week on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. It is not often that the district attorney, who normally does his talking in a court room or in a press conference related to a specific case, goes public in a matter of international politics and strategy. May 19, 2009 God Bless the Supreme Court of the United States, which has just decided to hear the appeal of the press baron Conrad Black, who has for more than a year been imprisoned at a federal correctional facility at Coleman, Florida. It would be far premature to suggest that the court’s decision to hear Black’s appeal means that he will win the argument at the high court. But it certainly puts paid the idea that the courts should have, as they did, dismissed out of hand Black’s insistence that he was wrongly convicted and that serious errors were made in the trial that cast him into the penitentiary for what could be as much as 6 and ½ years. May 12, 2009 The big question following Secretary Geithner’s admission that monetary policy was in error during much of the Bush administration is whether the Congress is going to step up to its responsibilities in respect of the national currency. Mr. Geithner’s comments were made last week in response to a question from Charlie Rose about what mistakes he would see looking back. One the secretary cited was that, as he put it, “monetary policy around the world was too loose too long.” That, he said, “created this just huge boom in asset prices, money chasing risk. People trying to get a higher return.” April 28, 2009 “Cheney for President” is the headline today over the first column by the New York Times’s newest op-ed regular, Ross Douthat — a delightful debut suggesting that, as Mr. Douthat puts it, “both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.”
Opinion ›
 By SETH LIPSKY The death of Marek Edelman, who led the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and whose example towers over the generations, offers much to think about in the current crisis. By ANDREW WOLF No sooner did the Daily News lambast critics of Mayor Bloomberg’s educational program as “flat earth” adherents than the federal NAEP math test released its results, which undermine the mayor’s claims for academic improvements on his watch. Bloomberg’s Diversion Strategy By ANDREW WOLF The negative tone of Mayor Bloomberg’s reelection effort must signify that there is concern in the Bloomberg camp over Comptroller Thompson’s surprising strength with just over two weeks to go in the campaign. By ANDREW WOLF News is in from the front lines of the epidemic afflicting our nation. No, I’m not talking about Swine Flu, which seems to be well under control, but the raging “Childhood Obesity Epidemic,” against which Mayor Bloomberg has just banned the common practice of selling at school fund-raisers the dreaded cupcake. Apple pie, no matter how American, will, I predict, be next. New York’s Education Challenge By ANDREW WOLF David Steiner was sworn in as the new State Commissioner of Education Thursday, and was immediately greeted with a familiar song: Send More Money. These are the education “advocates” who have become the perpetual remains of the “Campaign for Fiscal Equity,” undeterred even in the face of evidence that huge increases in expenditures in New York City schools during the Bloomberg years — some 79% in just six years — has barely moved student performance. By SETH LIPSKY One way to reflect on the death of Corazon Aquino would be to go onto the Internet and bring up the address she gave to a joint meeting of the United States Congress. It took place nearly 23 years ago, on September 18, 1986—half a year after Aquino acceded to the presidency of the Philippines in a triumph over the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Even from this remove, the speech leaves one trembling with emotion, particularly when the universal hunger for democracy is being demonstrated yet again, this time in Iran. By SETH LIPSKY The curtain is about to go up on the confirmation hearings for President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. During the advance maneuvering, The New York Times reported that the campaign against Sotomayor has been drawing inspiration from the attacks that succeeded against President Clinton’s nomination of Lani Guinier for a Justice Department position. The JTA's Bizarro Attack on Neo-Cons By IRA STOLL The Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, has posted a screed against neoconservatives on that organization's Web site. "For eight years we in Washington lived in a bizarro world where the most obvious conclusions were not just ignored, but mocked, actively suppressed and made akin to treason," he said. Now, "neoconservatives are losing," because of "their failure, or their abject inability, to say 'I was wrong.'" He writes, "The Bush administration had not merely an aversion but a psychotic fear of saying 'We wuz wrong.'" By ALICIA COLON President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has unleashed, among other things, a cascade of emails into my computer from friends remarking on the similarities of our backgrounds. I, too, am a Newyorican who lived in a housing project. Mine was in Spanish Harlem, hers in the Bronx, and we both went to parochial schools. Our fathers passed away when we were young, and our mothers struggled to support our families. We also speak perfect unaccented English and are both Catholic.
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