THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Obama’s Slippery sentence-commutation slope

I think President Obama's idea to commute the sentences of 46 drug offenders was a good one, but I also think it will create a slippery-slope effect in which people who have been sentenced for other crimes using federal mandatory minimum guidelines will also seek to have their sentences commuted.

July 16, 2015

EDITORIAL: President Obama’s hissy fit over Iran question

There is not a lot to love in President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, despite the attempted assurances in his what's-not-to-like press conference on Wednesday. In addition to the near-unanimous doubts about his "air-tight verification" promises, which he insists make a nuclear arms race in the Middle East less likely, a short list of what's wrong with the deal must include the names of four Americans: Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Robert Levinson. They're American hostages in Iran, and they just lost their best chance for freedom. Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry apparently "forgot" to press for their release.

July 16, 2015

EDITORIAL: Crisis in Ukraine shows what happens when U.S. blinks

All historical analogies are odious, some dead white man has written somewhere. It's true that comparisons from one era to another are obviously false because the facts and conditions may be different. They always are.

July 16, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Obama will do anything for a legacy

President Obama was so intent and committed to doing something to cement his legacy before leaving office that he agreed to a catastrophic deal with Iran ("Landmark nuclear agreement sparks celebrations in Iran, alarm in Israel," Web, July 14). The deal allows Iran to continue to develop nuclear weapons — without full international inspection of its military installations, and while removing all trade sanctions. This is purportedly to allow Iran to get its economy rolling again, but in reality it means Tehran now has the economic might to expand its support of Islamic terrorism in the region and across the world.

July 15, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Obama, John Kerry foreign-policy fools

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry received their degrees from the same school: Harvard University. Apparently they also graduated from the Neville Chamberlain night school of diplomacy, where both majored in appeasement and capitulation strategies and minored in bowing to foreign leaders.

July 15, 2015

EDITORIAL: Government must make personnel records safe from hackers

Katherine Archuleta's resignation as director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management was inevitable, even in an administration with an easy tolerance of incompetence. On her watch, hackers, probably working for the Chinese, opened doors in cyberspace enabling access to millions of confidential files of current and former government employees.

July 15, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Obama’s chance to help Ethiopia

The White House has announced President Obama will visit Ethiopia later this month. Mr. Obama's office has been flooded with letters and faxes of deep concern from Ethiopian-Americans. Under normal circumstances, Ethiopians would rejoice at such a visit. Why the anguish?

July 15, 2015

EDITORIAL: Further damage of the gay marriage ruling

When Anthony Kennedy testified before the U.S. Senate three decades ago as Ronald Reagan's nominee for the Supreme Court, he professed great deference to the Constitution and the separation of powers.

July 15, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Terry McAuliffe, get wise on illegals

How many criminal activities committed by illegal aliens here in Virginia have to occur before we wise up? Our commonwealth has sanctuary cities in Alexandria, Virginia Beach and in Fairfax County, all sanctioned by the Virginia legislature.

July 14, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Jeb Bush, Donald Trump just helping Hillary Clinton

Those of us who closely follow politics and who are old enough shall always remember the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards' nasty 1988 Democratic Convention taunt of George H.W. Bush: "Poor George can't help himself. ... He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Silver or otherwise, it is obvious that the same affliction has seized presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

July 14, 2015

EDITORIAL: The president’s disastrous deal with Iran

The Iranians are dancing in the streets, and why not? They won. There's not enough sugar in Louisiana to coat the disaster that President Obama and John Kerry agreed to in Iran. Everyone expected something bad, and now that the details of the deal are emerging the dimensions of the disaster are larger than anyone imagined. Mr. Obama wanted a legacy, and he got one, writ large.

July 14, 2015

EDITORIAL: Liberals afraid of guns aren’t safe

Baltimore's mayor is all wet, and not only because a woman poured water on her at a town hall. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake blames the cops for the spike in murders in her city. Uncaring cops, her argument goes, prey on the underclass, particularly young black men like Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

July 14, 2015

Newt Gingrich joins The Washington Times as columnist

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is joining The Washington Times to write an online column focused on crafting conservative policy solutions for America.

July 13, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Hillary Clinton’s compromised emails

The news about the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management computer systems reminds me of Hillary Clinton's email server 'problems.' More than one cybersecurity expert has mentioned that it is 99.99-percent certain that Mrs. Clinton's email server was hacked.

July 13, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Don’t use ‘Nazi’ lightly

"Hungary's Viktor Orban antagonizes European Union with border fence, Russia embrace" (Web, July 2) unfortunately presents a narrative of Hungary that is as compact and simple as it is false. Everyone has a right to his or her own opinion, however misinformed, but the article contains a very grave statement from Princeton Prof. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is quoted as saying, "Orban is always in danger of losing support to the Nazi Party, so he is out-Nazi-ing the Nazis."

July 13, 2015

EDITORIAL: Obama’s idea to trust Iran, not his generals

Secretary of State John Kerry is exactly the mandarin that George Wallace was talking about when he warned about bureaucrats "who can't park a bicycle straight." Mr. Kerry can't ride one, either, and has the bruises to prove it. He's in Lausanne now, polishing the last concessions President Obama is determined to make to enable the Iranians to protect their path to the Islamic bomb. Mr. Obama wants the deal to be the foreign-policy legacy of his eight years in the White House. He need not fear.

July 13, 2015

EDITORIAL: Hillary Clinton’s practiced deceptions

The idea that telling a lie in Washington is somehow shameful was probably born with the fabricated tale of little George, his hatchet and his father's favorite cherry tree at Mount Vernon. Lies are to Washington what cars once were to Detroit. In our own time Bonnie and Clod have made deceivers fashionable, demonstrating that speaking in fable is no dishonor.

July 13, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Redskins nickname nonsense

A federal judge has canceled the Washington Redskins' trademark registrations ("Judge orders cancellation of Redskins trademark registration," Web, July 8).

July 12, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Voters inured to Hillary Clinton’s lying?

Well, there she goes again. In an interview with CNN, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton denied ever having received a subpoena related to her use of a private email server. It's not true, but there's nothing new there ("Hillary Clinton caught in lie: Benghazi committee contradicts claim of no subpoena," Web, July 8).

July 12, 2015

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Michael Oren right about Obama on Israel

Martin Rubin's review of the latest book by former U.S. Ambassador Michael Oren, in contrast to reviews by sycophants of President Obama, presents an accurate picture of the abandonment of Israel by the current administration ("BOOK REVIEW: 'Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,'" Web, July 7). Certainly the other critics do not consider the gravity of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon and thus obtaining the means of eliminating Israel from the map. This is a threat continually made by the leadership of that Muslim nation.

July 12, 2015