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THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Articles by THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Teddy Roosevelt

EDITORIAL: The GOP retreats into fear

With frightened Republicans scattering like bunny rabbits at the sound of distant thunder, a job-killing minimum-wage increase is probably inevitable. Only 63 House Republicans voted to maintain the budgetary discipline that prevented President Obama from breaking the budget into even tinier pieces. The early, unconditional surrender in the House sends a message that these congressmen will throw good policy overboard at the first sign their re-election could be imperiled. The Republican cynicism stands proud and naked. It's enough to make a speaker cry.

December 15, 2013
In this March 18, 1980, file photo, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker listens to a question as he appears before the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C. The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. each unanimously voted to adopt the so-called Volcker Rule, taking a major step toward preventing extreme risk-taking on Wall Street that helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis. The rule which states that U.S. banks will be barred in most cases from trading for their own profit under a federal rule is named after Paul Volcker, a former Fed chairman who was an adviser to President Barack Obama during the financial crisis. (AP Photo/Chick Harrity, File)

EDITORIAL: A bad idea making America even less competitive

The usual suspects were positively giddy last week after five federal agencies got together to adopt what's known as the Volcker rule. This somewhat obscure, thousand-page regulation isn't the sort of thing to come up in casual conversation around the water cooler (except on Wall Street). But it's another example of how the government thinks it knows best how to spend other people's money.

December 15, 2013
Illustration by Greg Groesch

EDITORIAL: The art of stealing elections

Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by "winning" the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be "lost." LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were supposed to put an end to such election-night chicanery, but Earl Long, the colorful governor of Louisiana, where fraud is the national sport, boasted that "I can make a voting machine play 'Home on the Range' all night long."

December 15, 2013
Madison Root, 11, from the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego, Ore., sells mistletoe last weekend Nov. 31, 2013 by the Skidmore fountain in Portland. She wanted to help pay for her braces but ran afoul of city ordinances when she tried to sell the mistletoe she picked at her uncle’s farm. (AP Photo/Ashton Root)

EDITORIAL: Caught under the mistletoe

Eleven-year-old Madison Root is an example of what's right with America, and her story is an example of everything that's wrong with America.

December 12, 2013
Notes about words the new Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary will publish are shown at the company's headquarters in Springfield, Mass., Tuesday. Many of the new words reflect the nation's growing interest in culinary arts.

EDITORIAL: The war on pronouns

To most people, pronouns are an inoffensive combination of letters used to convey meaning. "He" went to the store. "She" read a book. The latest cause celebre among professional umbrage takers is the oppressive pronoun.

December 12, 2013
Matthew Triska, 13, learns to build code using an iPad at a youth workshop at the Apple store on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, in Stanford, Calif. Apple stores nationwide were participating in computer science education week Wednesday, part of a joint effort with code.org to teach children the basics of coding. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

EDITORIAL: The Potemkin website

Oppressive regimes throughout history have built cities of false facades meant to impress from afar, concealing the embarrassing condition of the places. In its quest to persuade Americans that Obamacare is working, the Obama administration has built the most expensive Potemkin website yet.

December 12, 2013
FILE - In this Friday, March 22, 2013, file photo, the exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, is shown. The Obama administration, on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013, launched a bid to rein in the use of tax-exempt groups for political campaigning. The effort is an attempt to reduce the role of loosely regulated big-money political outfits like GOP political guru Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the pro-Obama Priorities USA. The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department said they want to prohibit such groups from using "candidate-related political activity" like running ads, registering voters or distributing campaign literature as activities that qualify them to be tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

EDITORIAL: The new payday inequality

President Obama says income inequality is the "defining challenge of our time" and insists that America must address the difference between the rich and the poor. He may be on to something, but not in the way he thinks — or wants to talk about.

December 11, 2013
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, came up with a solution that would allow the president to request a debt limit increase. To reject it, Congress would have to pass legislation that the president could veto, meaning it would take a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to stop an increase. (Associated Press)

EDITORIAL: This is no bargain

Can Mitch McConnell rescue the conservatives? The senior senator from Kentucky leads an increasingly irrelevant Republican minority in the Senate, but he is the key to bringing down the newly struck budget deal that gives Democrats all they want, and then some. The Republican leaders in the House have surrendered early, giving the Democrats a $65 billion spending card for letting them get home in time for Christmas. They still believe in Santa Claus.

December 11, 2013
FILE - In this Oct. 29, 2012, file photo, a traveler on Delta Airlines waits for her flight in Detroit. As federal regulators consider removing a decades-old prohibition on making phone calls on planes, a majority of air travelers oppose such a change, a new Associated Press poll finds on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

EDITORIAL: Turbulence at 30,000 feet

Nobody's going to get any sleep on the red eye to Milwaukee sitting next to a blabbermouth yammering into a plastic box about what he plans to do when he lands. There's growing sentiment that the federal government must protect passengers from this annoyance. Many, no doubt most, passengers want the Federal Communications Commission to keep the prohibition on using cellphones on airliners.

December 11, 2013
ASSOCIATED PRESS Alejandro Mayorkas, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says fees have to be raised to cover the budget for processing requests for immigration benefits. But proposed increases are being kept as low as possible, he says.

EDITORIAL: Harry Reid’s favor factory

The radioactive smoke has yet to clear from Harry Reid's detonation of the nuclear option, but the senator from Las Vegas is already using his new powers. Mr. Reid can rubber-stamp any name President Obama puts forward to hold a high office; Republicans have been cut out entirely. Cushy sinecures are handed out as reward for faithful service (and cash) to the Democratic Party.

December 10, 2013
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and British Prime Minister David Cameron pose for a picture with Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt (C) next to US First Lady Michelle Obama (R) during the memorial service of South African former president Nelson Mandela at the FNB Stadium (Soccer City) in Johannesburg on December 10, 2013. Mandela, the revered icon of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and one of the towering political figures of the 20th century, died in Johannesburg on December 5 at age 95. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

EDITORIAL: Mr. Obama’s pretentious obsession

Most mourners at a funeral are happy that the occasion isn't about them, but President Obama wants star billing everywhere he goes, even at the gates of paradise. Speaking Tuesday in Johannesburg at a memorial service for Nelson Mandela, the president imagined that a somber occasion where the eyes of the world were upon him was an appropriate stage for advancing his political agenda at home.

December 10, 2013
In this image from TV, US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, in the rain for a memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela, Tuesday Dec. 10, 2013. The handshake between the leaders of the two Cold War enemies came during a ceremony that's focused on Mandela's legacy of reconciliation. Hundreds of foreign dignitaries and world heads of states gather Tuesday with thousands of South African people to celebrate the life, and mark the death, of Nelson Mandela who has became a global symbol of reconciliation. (AP Photo/SABC Pool)

EDITORIAL: The shake that shook the world

Soweto, the Johannesburg suburb where popular resistance to apartheid set off the revolution that changed South Africa and established Nelson Mandela as the father of a new country, is the most dangerous place on the continent this week. Anyone who ventures into the street risks being crushed by the hordes of official visitors trying to get in front of a camera.

December 10, 2013
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS Wind turbines from the Maple Ridge Wind Farm tower over a farm in Lowville, N.Y. John Yancey (left), whose father agreed to have seven windmills erected on family land, dislikes them intensely, despite the guaranteed income they provide. He calls the 400-foot windmills "monstrosities."

EDITORIAL: Electric dreams

Liberals think they know better. To the progressive, there is no undertaking that couldn't be made better with governmental direction and the collective advice of an ivory tower full of experts. When it comes down to it, they think Americans are too dumb to know what's in their own best interests, and thus someone must tell them what to do. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently put it, "It takes the government (to make a market)."

December 9, 2013
This Oct. 24, 2013 photo shows the marriage license issued to Darren Black Bear and Jason Pickel, by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, at Jason's home in Oklahoma City. Despite Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, the couple will be legally married in the state thanks to Black Bear, who is a member of the Oklahoma-based Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes. It’s among the few Native American tribes in the U.S. that allow same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

EDITORIAL: Colorado ruling takes the cake

A Colorado court is making it a crime to refuse to cater to militant homosexual activists. Judge Robert N. Spencer held on Friday that a bakery owner who, citing his Christian religious beliefs, wouldn't bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple must "cease and desist from discriminating" or pay fines so large that he'd go out of business.

December 9, 2013
Illustration: Red tape by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

EDITORIAL: Rules from the Obama air force

No crystal ball is necessary to foretell what's in store for the country in the new year. The Obama administration has a scheme to regulate the air itself.

December 9, 2013
Residents wait in line to enter a polling station to vote in front of a wall painting depicting late president Hugo Chavez during municipal elections in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013. Venezuelans head to the polls to elect mayors and city councilors at a moment when the country's economic troubles have deepened, with inflation touching a two-decade high of 54 percent, and shortages of everything from toilet paper to milk spreading while the black market value of the currency plunges. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

EDITORIAL: Lights out in Venezuela

The lights are out in Caracas, and "right-wing sabotage" is to blame, according to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. That's the socialist leader's version of saying it's George W. Bush's fault — a favorite tactic of our own president.

December 8, 2013
Illustration: Chris Matthews by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

EDITORIAL: Health care hardball

Chris Matthews may still get a tingling sensation whenever he listens to Barack Obama, but for millennials, the thrill is gone. A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll finds the president's favorability rating underwater among those between the ages of 18 to 29. Not surprisingly, once-devoted youthful fans have been turned off by Obamacare.

December 8, 2013
Host President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, arrive at the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors reception honoring the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipients, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

EDITORIAL: IRS doubles down

While most Americans were buying turkeys, baking pumpkin pies and planning their family Thanksgiving get-togethers, the Internal Revenue Service was hard at work strengthening its grip on free speech. With the release of a new set of new rules governing nonprofit organizations, the tax man is granting himself the authority to crack down further on groups that annoy the administration.

December 8, 2013
A blind woman begs for money while her child sleeps next to her on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013. According to the latest independent surveys in Zimbabwe the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. The recent elections in the country have done little to deal with the challenges facing a nation trying to recover from an economic meltdown and the ravages of hyperinflation. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

EDITORIAL: Our ideological president

At a fundraiser in Seattle on the day before Thanksgiving, President Obama told a group of Democratic donors, apparently without a hint of irony, "I'm not a particularly ideological person." One wouldn't know it from the ponderous 48-minute oration on income inequality that he delivered in Washington on Wednesday.

December 5, 2013