Doyle McManus: Second-term plague afflicts Obama
What is it about presidents’ second terms that makes them seem so scandal-ridden? Simple: The iron law of longevity. All governments make mistakes, and all governments try to hide those mistakes. But the longer an administration is in office, the more errors it makes, and the harder they are to conceal.
Just ask Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, all of whom spent much of their second ter …
Read More →
Benghazi’s scandal
Yes, Virginia, there is a Benghazi scandal.
The scandal is that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and some Republican colleagues are dishonoring the memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans by making a political circus out of their deaths.
As chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa is ready to manipulate the pain and anger of relatives and colleagues of the victims, but shows …
Read More →
Obama Derangement Syndrome afflicts GOP
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are so hungry for scalps, they just can’t leave well enough alone. The scandal engulfing the Internal Revenue Service is a story that’s playing to their benefit. Monday, after having the weekend to think about it, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida puffed himself up and called on the president to “demand the IRS commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately.”
Only one problem: The p …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: Vacations first, school second
CHICAGO — It’s that time. If you’re a teacher in a school with a large concentration of Hispanic students, you’re doing end-of-year reviews and preparing for final exams — and you have kids trickling up to you to let you know they won’t be around for them.
This also happens at the beginning of the school year and during the holidays as parents take their children out of classes for long family trips. But I can tell yo …
Read More →
Five ways the IRS could right its wrongs
We have witnessed remarkable performances this past week in the unfolding drama involving the Internal Revenue Service.
First, Lois Lerner, director of the agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit, apologized for the agency’s targeting of conservative groups based solely on their political views, saying (falsely, it turns out) that the unlawful actions were confined to rogue workers in Cincinnati and that it had happened on …
Read More →
George Will: In Obama we don’t trust
WASHINGTON — Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” w …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: Media and patriots find common cause
WASHINGTON — Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media.
Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.”
In a twist of irony, the two groups have coalesced around a common enemy: the U.S. government.
Revelations the past few days that the Internal Revenue Servic …
Read More →
George Will: Abuse of power — We told you so
“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to ... cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”
— Article 2, Section 1,
Articles of Impeachment
— Adopted by the House Judiciary Committee,
July 29, 1974
WASHINGTON — The burglary occurred in 1972, the cl …
Read More →
The GOP’s divergent views
A group of rich Republicans is raising money to support same-sex marriage. By doing so, they reveal a fundamental split in conservative ranks between two very different philosophies.
On one side are Western or frontier conservatives, who truly believe in small government and individual choice. On the other are Southern or evangelical conservatives, who think government should be used to enforce moral values and determ …
Read More →
Beware ghosts of Christmas past
WASHINGTON — Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with “twenty thousand times the force” of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today’s argument about immigration.
Last week, a disagreement between two conservative think tanks erupted when the Heritage Foundation excoriated …
Read More →
Military must address crimes of sexual abuse
The following editorial appeared in Friday’s Washington Post.
The pattern is all too familiar. Rocked by sexual abuse within its ranks — 1992 at Tailhook, 1996 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, 2002 at the Air Force Academy, 2011 at Lackland Air Force Base — the military vows no tolerance and promises action. But abuse and a culture of impunity persist. It is time for fundamental change in how the military investiga …
Read More →
Lower Valley water pollution: Cooperation, not litigation, will solve problem
Activists hell-bent on the destruction of dairy farms filed a lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and demanded that dairy farms be treated as waste dumps. The claim has been revised to seek monitoring, plus an unspecified amount in attorneys’ fees.
The case threatens dairy farms across the nation with extinction. The outcome literally has worldwide implications.
The United Nations says world popu …
Read More →
Lower Valley water pollution: Dairies, enforcement agencies can’t be trusted to control problem
During the 1999 CARE v. Henry Bosma Dairy federal trial, the Department of Ecology testified that the dairy pollution problem was compounded by Ecology allowing the dairies to dictate their own regulations. Judge Edward Shea found that Bosma’s record of discharges made him one of the worst offenders in the state.
CARE settled Clean Water Act enforcement actions against five other dairies for similarly using irrigation …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: Hey, kids! Iron Man eats his vegetables!
CHICAGO — Is it just me or is Tony Stark on a health kick?
In the third “Iron Man” — a series that spent its first two installments glorifying the reckless life of a spoiled, rich genius — Stark, the man inside the metallic exoskeleton, seems to have finally taken a turn toward wellness.
No spoiler alerts are needed for me to point out that, though subtle, Stark set beautiful examples of healthful eating throughout t …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: Here’s what matters about Benghazi
WASHINGTON — Mistakes were made.
This, we are supposed to accept, is the conclusion to be drawn about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, despite congressional testimony Wednesday suggesting that significant efforts were made to camouflage those mistakes.
As Democrats and Republicans alike know all too well: It’s always the cover-up.
Yet in this case, where so clearly the State Department and others in the Obam …
Read More →
George Will: Obama fixes politics, policies on 2014
WASHINGTON — Thirty-one months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell affronted the media and other custodians of propriety by saying something common-sensical. On Oct. 23, 2010, he said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He meant that America needed conservative change from the statist course of Obama’s presidency (the stimulus, Obamacare, etc. …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: Enough of divisive identity politics
WASHINGTON — Enough with this “enough” business.
Latest to the question of whether a person is sufficiently identifiable as belonging to a particular demographic is Ted Cruz — the conservative Texas senator who happens to be of Hispanic descent.
But is he Hispanic enough? For what, his family taco recipe? Before you send in the sensitivity police, permit me to finish, por favor.
The suggestion that Cruz might not qual …
Read More →
Byron York: GOP should look deeper than ethnicity
After six months of mulling over November’s election results, many Republicans remain convinced that the party’s only path to future victory is to improve the GOP’s appeal to Hispanic voters. But how many Hispanic voters do Republicans need to attract before the party can again win the White House?
A lot. Start with the 2012 exit polls. The New York Times’ Nate Silver has created an interactive tool in which one can l …
Read More →
Judiciary matters
“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
— James Madison, Federalist 48
WASHINGTON — But under today’s regulatory state, which Madison could hardly have imagined, the legislature, although still a source of much mischief, is not the principal threat to liberty. Suppose a federal executive department flagrantly abused its regul …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: We’ve simply gotten too accommodating
CHICAGO — Our society is on the path to random chaos because our willingness to make exceptions for people has morphed into never-ending feelings of grievance and expectations of entitlement.
Let me illustrate:
While earning my master’s in special education, I became aware that the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act gave equal protection to children with disabilities.
This important piece of legislation …
Read More →
Patty Murray: Senate bill makes immigration more practical, fair
Today in Washington state, 230,000 undocumented immigrants live in our cities and towns, attend our schools, and contribute to our communities. These aspiring Americans pay taxes, buy homes, raise families, and attend church alongside their neighbors. They are more than 5 percent of our adult workforce and an important part of our state’s social fabric, but because of outdated laws, they continue to live in the shadows …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: Prudishly prudent on Plan B
WASHINGTON — They lost me at the word “women.”
As so often happens with contemporary debate, arguments being proffered in support of allowing teenagers as young as 15 (and possibly younger) to buy the “morning-after pill” without adult supervision are false on their premise.
Here’s an experiment to demonstrate.
Question 1: Do you think that women should have access to Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, to …
Read More →
The Van Halen M&M test
Right there on page 40, in the “Munchies” section, nestled between “pretzels” and “twelve (12) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” is a parenthetical alert so adamant you can’t miss it: “M&M’s,” the text reads, “(WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).”
This is the famed rider to Van Halen’s 1982 concert contract. In a sentence fragment that would define rock-star excess forevermore, the band demanded a bowl of M&M’s with the br …
Read More →
George Will: The red line of caution
WASHINGTON — People who talk incessantly often talk imprecisely, and Barack Obama, who is as loquacious as he is impressed with his verbal dexterity, has talked himself into a corner concerning Syria and chemical weapons. This is condign punishment for his rhetorical carelessness, but the nation’s credibility, not just his, will suffer. His policy is better than his description of it, and his description is convoluted …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: Young, alone — and in court
CHICAGO — Last week, a federal judge in California ordered immigration courts in three states to provide legal representation for immigrants with mental disabilities who are in detention or facing deportation.
This happened the day after federal immigration officials issued a new policy that would effectively expand that ruling, making government-paid legal representation available to people with mental disabilities i …
Read More →
Trudy Rubin: Syria’s ‘red line’ keeps moving
There is something bizarre about the debate over how the United States should respond to the Syrian regime’s likely use of chemical weapons against its own people.
The White House said Thursday that Syria may have used deadly sarin gas, after France, Britain and Israel had made similar assessments. This puts President Obama in a pickle.
He has said that use of chemical weapons by the regime would cross a “red line” a …
Read More →
Hurray for signs of grown-ups in charge
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision.
Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made …
Read More →
It’s high time to undo an outdated deal
The following editorial appeared in Friday’s Washington Post.
If you had to name one institution that epitomizes President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, it might be the Tennessee Valley Authority. Created by Congress in 1933, this immense federal electric-utility-cum-water-project owns 29 hydropower plants, 11 coal plants and three nuclear plants, which serve 9 million customers in seven states from Virginia to …
Read More →
D.C. is drawing wrong lessons
WASHINGTON — Ordinary people, elected and unelected, behaved heroically earlier this month. Unfortunately, it all happened hundreds of miles from Washington.
In Boston, strangers gave clothes and shelter to shivering runners. They comforted injured spectators. They saved lives and limbs. In New York, there wasn’t as much to do, so they sang “Sweet Caroline” at Yankee Stadium. Meanwhile, the people we love to hate — el …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: The George W. Bush that few know
WASHINGTON — In a reprieve from the horror of the most recent terrorist attack, the nation’s attentions turned to the man who declared the war on terrorism, George W. Bush.
During Thursday’s dedication of his library at Southern Methodist University, nary a word was spoken about the most controversial aspect of his tenure, the Iraq invasion. All living presidents were in attendance and made only generic references to …
Read More →
Afghan war hits home in Boston
Last week, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told investigators that he and his brother set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in part because of their opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who fought in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, the news made me wonder: Had my war brought the horrors of battle home?
My family’s home is a few blocks from the blast site, where flying shrapne …
Read More →
George Will: The case against waiving rights
WASHINGTON — Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events. The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.
Korematsu v. United States (1944) …
Read More →
Esther J. Cepeda: Uncle Ruslan speaks the truth
CHICAGO — After a gut-wrenching week of terror, my award for bravery in the face of adversity goes to Ruslan Tsarni.
The uncle of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who are suspected of having carried out the Boston Marathon bombings, stepped into the spotlight and showed uncommon humility and fortitude.
Tsarni did not back away from evidence of his two young relatives turning against their adopted country to do the unt …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: The terror of not knowing culprit
WASHINGTON — As the manhunt for the Boston bombers reached its climactic conclusion, Americans of all hues and backgrounds heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness it wasn’t ... fill in the blank:
A white Christian from the South;
A dark-skinned Muslim foreigner;
An illegal Latino immigrant.
Thank goodness.
The marathon terrorists it turns out were of a Chechen background. Huh? Is that, like, in Czechoslovakia or some …
Read More →
Why Hillary’s no Margaret
WASHINGTON — Who thought that in stuffy old England in the 1980s a woman could act like a man and thrive, but here in the New World, Hillary Clinton still has to watch her p’s and q’s in 2013? Margaret Thatcher didn’t change a hair, hedge a bet or trim a sail. She never had to be told to lean in because she never leaned back. She was certain, opinionated and strident to the point of, yes, shrillness. Listen to her on g …
Read More →
Moderately exciting news for GOP
WASHINGTON — America’s most interesting development since November is the Republican Party becoming more interesting. Consider the congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., who occupies the seat once held by Gerald Ford, embodiment of vanilla Republicanism. Justin Amash, 33, may seek the Senate seat being vacated by six-term Democrat Carl Levin, who was elected in 1978, two years before Amash was born.
Michigan supported …
Read More →
Spend U.S. aid money on food, not shipping, special interests
The following editorial appeared in Friday’s Washington Post.
The United States has a proud tradition of supplying food aid to hungry people around the world, whether their plight is due to chronic poverty or sudden natural disaster. Still, food aid was never a purely altruistic exercise. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower kicked off the program that would become known as Food for Peace by saying that it would …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: In search of definition of school safety
CHICAGO — Safety in public schools has been much on the public’s mind in the post-Newtown era. The massacre has inspired calls for getting more police officers into school buildings.
At the same time, civil rights organizations are calling for the exact opposite: getting the cops out. Critics cite horrors such as the 5-year-old who was cuffed and taken down to the police station for having a temper tantrum and a 7-yea …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: Sanford still lost in wilderness
CHARLESTON, S.C. — As the reporter said to the novelist: Why bother to make stuff up?
For stories and characters, one needs only a pair of walking shoes in this city, where recent attentions have turned to two salacious stories. One concerns a murder-for-hire plot involving a banker, his wife, his lover’s ex-husband and his ex-lover’s husband’s cellmate. Not to be confused with his soul mate.
No, that designation refe …
Read More →
Boston bombings: And that’s the way it isn’t
After a tragedy like the Boston Marathon bombing, the torrent of news coverage often gives us a little extra reason to cringe. While it’s too early to know whether that terrible act of terror will be followed by a daily drumbeat of terrible journalism, there are reasons to worry. There also are some past examples of crimes against journalism that are well worth remembering.
In the days before we knew that the 1995 Okl …
Read More →
Boston bombings: Putin could aid investigation — and himself
WASHINGTON — Just hours after the Boston Marathon bombings, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the act as a “disgusting” crime and offered to help in any way he could.
Now’s his chance.
The Tsarnaev brothers appear to have Chechen roots; the older, now-deceased brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, may have touted radical Islamists on his YouTube site. (The only question is whether the site’s holder is the same Tamerlan …
Read More →
George Will: How government borrows trouble
WASHINGTON — The regulatory, administrative state, which progressives champion, is generally a servant of the strong, for two reasons. It responds to financially powerful and politically sophisticated factions. And it encourages rent-seekers to exploit opportunities for concentrated benefits and dispersed costs (e.g., agriculture subsidies confer sums on large agribusinesses by imposing small costs on 316 million Ameri …
Read More →
Esther Cepeda: Spare the outrage over Mexico Barbie
CHICAGO — I love Mexico Barbie’s Chihuahua.
There, I’ve said it. Let the Latino community slam me for lacking cultural sensitivity if it will, but I’m sticking to my pistolas on this one.
The furor over Mexico Barbie came to a head last week when a $30 doll that had been released in June 2012 became the subject of news stories and chatter on social media networks for perpetuating offensive stereotypes.
Accusations of …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: One day later, the shock lingers
WASHINGTON — You know the feeling. You wake up filled with dread but, still groggy, you can’t put your finger on the reason.
Possibilities flitter across the landscape of near-consciousness: An exam? A deadline? A speech? What day is it?
Oh my God, Boston.
For longer than usual, you linger, head on pillow, breathing, thinking, I have my legs. Oh my God.
Coffee.
“Boston will survive,” someone is saying on TV. The pa …
Read More →
Revisiting injustice
WASHINGTON — From Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” American history is replete with examples of printed words accelerating social justice. Still, from Mathew Brady’s 1862 photo exhibit of “The Dead of Antietam” to the televised fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 to the cameras that brought Vietnam into A …
Read More →
Time for GOP to take a turn in real world of budgeting
The following editorial appeared in Friday’s Washington Post.
We’re familiar by now with the incentives that push against compromise. Members of Congress increasingly come from lopsided districts. That’s due both to gerrymandering and population sorting. The effect is to elect true believers who see no wisdom in the opposing argument — and to discipline those who might compromise with the threat of doctrinaire prim …
Read More →
Kathleen Parker: The delusion of gun control
WASHINGTON — The biggest obstacle to the Obama administration’s push for tighter gun control may be its own best argument: Newtown.
This is because nothing proposed in the gun control debates would have prevented the mass killing of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and everybody knows it. At best, tighter gun laws will make us feel better.
Let’s review: The Newtown killer was a mentally disturbed young man li …
Read More →
Gun control, zombie patrol
Suppose the walking dead attacked your house. Would you (a) defend yourself; (b) lock the door and dial 911; (c) write a Facebook post blaming the sequester; or (d) negotiate?
If you don’t know that the correct answer is (a), you won’t survive the zombie apocalypse.
Zombies are everywhere these days. In June, Brad Pitt will star in the film version of Max Brooks’ best-selling novel “World War Z.” The Westerosi of “Gam …
Read More →
Doyle McManus: Obama chained to CPI proposal
President Obama didn’t release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and AARP howled all week about something they expected to be in it.
What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters?
He’s chained CPI.
In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security’s annual cost-of-l …
Read More →