THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Real reason peace efforts failed

"Trump welcomes King Abdullah II of Jordan to White House; Middle East peace tops agenda" (Web, April 5) states that the 2002 Arab peace initiative "collapsed over the proposed border, which took back territory Israel captured in the 1967 war." Actually, it failed primarily for two reasons.

April 6, 2017

EDITORIAL: Heck on the border

There's change coming on the border. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are working to make Speaker Paul Ryan's tax reform scheme palatable enough to sell to a cranky chamber. It's a high wall to climb over.

April 6, 2017

EDITORIAL: Responsibility Lite

What exactly, do the words, "I take responsibility," actually mean? In American public life, circa 2017, usually not very much.

April 6, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Current rules hurt only GOP

The GOP should take advantage of Sen. Chuck Schumer's promise to filibuster the Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination ("Girding Republican Loins for the War," Web, March 30). They should go beyond the Schumer invitation to create another filibuster exception for Supreme Court picks. Already going "nuclear" to do just this, why not go nuclear on the filibuster rule altogether? Left in place, the existing filibuster rule will surely be employed by the partisan Democrats to defeat the upcoming legislation to rebuild defense, reorder budget priorities and make government more efficient.

April 5, 2017

EDITORIAL: Roping in the cost of ships

Every sailor worth his salt knows the old knock: A boat is a hole in the water where you pour the money in. For Navy-size vessels, that hole in the water can be bottomless. As he commands the ship of state, President Trump has made it clear he intends to rebuild the nation's shrunken defense. While doling out cash to the warfighting services, the president should keep a weather eye on Navy shipbuilding contracts. They shouldn't dig that hole deeper than it should be.

April 5, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Declare Brotherhood terrorists

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 in Egypt with the goal of creating a global Islamic state, or caliphate, and implementing Shariah law. Their bylaws state that jihad is their way and martyrdom is the means of Allah's will. The Brotherhood has a long history of supporting Islamic supremacist attacks and has been declared a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and many other countries, and it should be declared a terror organization in America.

April 5, 2017

EDITORIAL: Banish the trolls

There's an entire class of litigants in patent law that lawyers call "venue-shoppers." U.S. district courts in East Texas and Delaware have become the go-to venues, courts likely to produce huge judgments in plaintiffs' favor. Courts in these jurisdictions have shown themselves to be sympathetic to the trolls, or as they call themselves, "patent-assertion entities."

April 5, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Cigarette tax unconstitutional

It is painfully understood by California smokers that they are public outcasts, held up to hatred and ridicule by liberal non-smokers ("Cigarette tax hike takes effect in California, costs surge by $2 per pack, Web, April 1). Indeed, arrogant celebrity Rob Reiner arranged for a voter initiative taxing smokers 50 cents per pack. This increased the cigarette tax to 87 cents, which will fund Mr. Reiner's personal project to protect children from smoking and fund smoking-related health initiatives.

April 4, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Silent victors

While assisting a new arrival to Washington this past week I was asked for directions to Trump International Hotel. The woman who made this request explained with embarrassment, "My husband said for me to stay there and check it out." After I had greeted her request with a sympathetic response she looked up at me and said: "You know I couldn't tell any of my friends. People are so weird these days."

April 4, 2017

EDITORIAL: The permanent police line-up

Most Americans haven't sampled the thrill of being the subject of a police line-up, where the victim of a crime studies the faces of suspects from behind a one-way mirror. The proliferation of facial recognition technology changes all that. While the police need every advantage they can manage to stay ahead of evildoers, strong safeguards are necessary to protect individual privacy and prevent false accusations and arrests.

April 4, 2017

EDITORIAL: Susan Rice strikes again

Susan Rice, the most notorious liar in the employ of Barack Obama, is revealed as the queen of the unmasked ball. She abused her position as the national security adviser to the president to obtain the "masked" name of at least one member of the Trump transition team in the weeks between the election and the inauguration. What she did with the information is anybody's guess, and anybody could make a pretty good one.

April 4, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Left’s Gorsuch treatment abhorrent

Few things are more frustrating than discovering that you are not negotiating in good faith. For that reason alone the Trump administration is completely justified in its frustration, if not anger, toward Senate Democrats. Judge Gorsuch is about as strong a Supreme Court pick as has come along in quite some time. He's a man of impeccable character and thoughtful jurisprudence, and he has demonstrated a healthy respect for the laws of the United States. He is exactly the kind of Supreme Court justice that President Trump promised the American people he would nominate.

April 3, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Not ‘enlightened’ enough

So Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, wants to filibuster Neil Gorsuch out of being nominated to the Supreme Court. It's a good thing Mr. Gorsuch isn't Jesus, or Mr. Schumer would probably have the cross and nails out by now. He wants someone more mainstream and abortion-friendly — like Ruth Bader Ginsburg (or Karl Marx). Mr. Gorsuch's main problem when it gets right down to it is that he simply isn't Mao enough, lacks the proper insight into the leftist agenda and doesn't goose-step to the apparatchik ideology. In other words, he simply isn't one of the "enlightened ones," and is thus seen as a renegade and loose cannon. In short Mr. Gorsuch just doesn't get it. He is therefore deemed bad for America.

April 3, 2017

EDITORIAL: Sen. Schumer’s chutzpah

Chuck Schumer is a New Yorker, so he knows about chutzpah. He schmears it liberally on his breakfast bagel. Chutzpah is the useful Yiddish for "shameless audacity," once defined by the young man who murdered his parents and begged the judge and jury to show "mercy for a poor orphan boy."

April 3, 2017

EDITORIAL: No playing Russian roulette

On paper, NATO is an imposing institution --one of the world's oldest and largest collective defense alliances. On the ground, its strength hinges on a single question: Will its 28 signatory nations actually spend blood and treasure to honor their pledge of collective defense in time of war? No one will know until the dread moment of truth arrives. With Russia more menacing than ever, it's gut-check time for NATO.

April 3, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Key illegals stats missing

"Rape at Maryland high school stirs up debate on sanctuary cities" (Web, March 22) cites statistics from a "study" applying enigmatic references to different statistical populations, and it misses key information. Using the 2015 Census Bureau number for the U.S. population (318,881,992) and the Justice Department number for the prison population (6,741,400), one gets a total of 2.11 percent of the total population as incarcerated that year. From the article's "5.6 percent" reference one derives that 377,518 illegals are incarcerated. According to Voice of America News in December 2015 there were an estimated 11 million illegals in the United States at that time. That would mean 3.43 percent of them were incarcerated.

April 2, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Hillary wrongs swept under rug

With all these attacks against and investigations into President Trump, I wonder about the status of the 'quid-pro-quo' assertions against the Clinton Foundation. Has anything ever come of it? Or has that news been swept under the carpet? If it's the latter, the uranium deal that Bill Clinton coordinated with Kazakhstan doesn't get any scrutiny, even though it had some significant security implications.

April 2, 2017

EDITORIAL: More bluster from the bag man

If Hillary Clinton had won, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia might now be in President Clinton's Cabinet. But there is no President Clinton, and there is no Secretary McAuliffe, and the nation's gain is Virginia's loss. His days in Richmond are numbered, but the Old Dominion must endure 10 more months of bluster from Bill and Hillary's longtime bag man.

April 2, 2017

EDITORIAL: A modest suggestion to move Congress

Donald Trump, like a lot of Republicans, is mightily disappointed with the Freedom Caucus for blocking repeal of Obamacare, so he has gone to war with the caucus and thinks he can persuade some Democrats to help him repeal Barack Obama's signature "accomplishment." He will learn to his sorrow that this is a recipe for more disappointment. Democrats don't do compromise.

April 2, 2017

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Taming the federal behemoth

President Trump, with his budget proposals and executive orders, has taken the first necessary steps toward arresting the invasive bureaucratic kudzu that is the administrative state. Americans face no greater threat, domestic or foreign, than that posed by the liberty and wealth stealing apparatchik of our horrid and confiscatory governing class, abetted at every turn by a malignant media and political establishment. If we are to remain sovereign and prosperous, we will need to support the Trump administration as it hacks and rips and burns the roots and sinew of the federal behemoth. The defenders of the status quo will try to misdirect our attention and undermine Mr. Trump's legitimacy; we must see them for the self-perpetuating shape shifters they are and reject their lies and fakery.

March 30, 2017