By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
By appointing John F. Kerry to be the new secretary of state, President Obama attempted to tamp down the wildfire of criticism that had erupted over his debacle in Libya.
The only way the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be the secretary of defense makes sense, political or otherwise, is that Barack Obama is looking for a further opportunity to show the Republicans who's the boss of bosses in Washington.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta will meet Friday with New Zealand's defense minister to cap a 10-day trip to the Asia Pacific to advance the Pentagon's "pivot" to the region.
Milton Friedman, the great economist, was one of a handful of intellectuals whose work forms the foundation for the modern conservative movement. He has been dead since 2006, but this week would be his centennial. He lived a long and prodigious life.
After World War II, the United States veered from one strategic military policy to another. The "mutual assured de- struction" of President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers gave way to the "graduated escalation" of Robert McNamara during the Vietnam era.
Because the Gipper is not here to say, "There you go again!" to Mr. Gingrich, and because the choice of a new president is so critical to the nation today, it falls on us who served with Reagan and are still around to tell America the truth about Mr. Gingrich and his repeated attempts to thwart Reagan's cornerstone achievement: the defeat of global tyranny in the form of the Soviet Union and the final rejection of communism as a failed experiment.
When Megaupload executives arrive in court to answer charges that they orchestrated a massive online piracy scheme, they'll be backed by a prominent lawyer who has defended Bill Clinton against sexual harassment charges and Enron against allegations of corporate fraud.
For most diplomats, nothing can be more injurious than a slip of the tongue. But during 2010's "Snowmageddon," Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley endured a far more painful slip.
On March 30, 1981, outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, John Hinckley Jr., described by a presidential assistant as "a kid from a good family in Colorado who just happened to be crazy," opened fire with a small handgun, wounding the president of the United States, his press secretary, a Secret Service agent and a D.C. police officer.
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray has been in office just 2½ months, but his administration already is reeling under allegations that cash payoffs were made during his campaign and that he doled out high-paying city jobs to political friends who were either underqualified or had undisclosed criminal pasts.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he inherited a broken all-volunteer military force, still reeling from the traumas of the post-Vietnam era. When he left the White House eight years later, he left the nation a well-equipped, highly professional military on which the country has depended for three decades.
The White House is reviewing a new pardon request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the case of former Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.
Colin Powell was on "Larry King Live" last week — the day after Paris Hilton — and was talking about his life and politics in Washington.
In his memoir, Weinberger said the conduct of the Vietnam War shaped his thinking about defense policy.
