THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: Giving thanks for Obamacare

President Obama's minions want family holiday gatherings to be a time for reflection on the blessings of Healthcare.gov. Organizing for Action, the rebranded version of Mr. Obama's political machine, has unveiled an advertising campaign designed to boost Obamacare's embarrassing enrollment numbers. It's titled "Health Care for the Holiday."

November 26, 2013

EDITORIAL: Wall Street shakedown

The Department of Justice decided to go after Wall Street investment bank J.P. Morgan over the firm's role in America's recent economic woes. The result last week was a $13 billion settlement, which is the biggest shakedown of a single company in American history.

November 26, 2013

VIDEO: Emily Miller on CNN about Obama’s lowest approval rating and backlash for Iran nuclear deal

CNN's Brooke Baldwin interviewed Emily Miller about President Obama hitting his lowest ever approval ratings and the political backlash of his deal with Iran

November 26, 2013

EDITORIAL: Revenue camera shakedown

Officials in the District of Columbia waited until Friday to bury the announcement that 130 new revenue-enhancement cameras are being deployed on the streets of the nation's capital. Locals have learned a speed camera lurks hidden behind the "Welcome to Washington" sign, and they're jamming on the brakes, so the big-spending bureaucrats in City Hall had to come up with a solution to keep the ticket money flowing. The latest invasion of cameras will create expensive "gotcha" moments at stop signs, crosswalks and intersections.

November 25, 2013

EDITORIAL: No influence to peddle

Not so long ago, Barack Obama could fill a stadium in Europe with people eager for the chance to hear him speak. He accepted a Nobel Prize for his achievements only weeks into his presidency. Now the arbiter of all things fashionable, GQ, finds Mr. Obama has gone out of style, landing the No. 17 spot in "The 25 Least Influential People of 2013."

November 25, 2013

EDITORIAL: No more razzle-dazzle

President Obama's deal-making skills usually shortchange America. He puts the world at risk by coddling an Iran loving the bomb; he requires Americans to purchase health care they don't want from a website that doesn't work. Now the administration is compelling utility companies to pay for a nuclear-waste storage site they can't use, and never will.

November 25, 2013

EDITORIAL: China’s inevitable slowdown

We've been told so many times that China is about to overtake the U.S. economy that a lot of people are beginning to believe it. Economists of the left-wing persuasion are especially infatuated with this notion because it implies the superiority of state-directed "semi-capitalism" over the free market.

November 24, 2013

EDITORIAL: Nuclear warfare in the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid leaped beyond the point of no return on Thursday. Majority leaders in the past toyed with the idea of stripping the minority party of the filibuster, but they always pulled back when a cooler head prevailed. Not the senator from Las Vegas, who detonated the "nuclear option" and ended hope of collegiality returning to Capitol Hill for a very long time.

November 24, 2013

EDITORIAL: Health care accountability

When the going gets tough, politicians usually get going, looking for the tall grass. Only Democrats voted for Obamacare, and now millions of Americans are coming to grips with the consequences. The millions must find a replacement insurance policy they can afford. The Libre Initiative, a nonprofit free-market group, is encouraging Hispanic voters to find their congressmen and hold them responsible.

November 24, 2013

EDITORIAL: Surrender on Iranian sanctions

The saddest commentary on the deal Barack Obama and his frightened allies struck to save the Iranian nuclear program is that it's what we knew to expect. Well into his second term, there are no surprises by this president. He promised Vladimir Putin that he would be "more flexible" once past his re-election, and this is the promise he's keeping.

November 24, 2013

EDITORIAL: Bailing out the insurance companies

Twenty years ago, Harry and Louise sat across a kitchen table and faced a mound of paperwork. They were distraught over being forced to drop their health insurance. They had to select a new plan from a list of government-approved options. "Having choices we don't like is no choice at all," Louise observed. "They choose, we lose."

November 21, 2013

EDITORIAL: Dallas and the haters

Five decades have passed since a gunman's bullet took the life of the 35th president, but the assassination in Dallas remains shrouded in myth, mystery and mendacity. Some still argue that grassy-knoll conspiracies ended the life of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Others, like the grieving widow Jacqueline Kennedy, still want the world to see "what Dallas has done to my husband." The conspiracy industry long ago outgrew the modest cottages where the tall tales were hatched.

November 21, 2013

EDITORIAL: The alarmist league

Members of Congress are hot under the collar about global warming, and they're anxious to do something about it. As co-chairmen of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island huddled Thursday with executives of the major sports leagues to talk about recruiting third basemen, power forwards, linebackers and masters of the hockey puck to save the planet.

November 21, 2013

EDITORIAL: Beating the IRS

David beats Goliath so rarely that the smart money is always on Goliath, and the tax collector always wins. But not quite always. Two Michigan businessmen have beaten the Internal Revenue Service at its own game. After a wave of bad publicity — and a lawsuit by the Institute for Justice — the IRS agency beat a retreat from using civil forfeiture to seize $70,000 by arbitrarily calling it "suspicious." It agreed to return the money last week.

November 20, 2013

EDITORIAL: Big Brother’s lies

Public trust in the federal government is at a record low. All the polls and surveys show it, but we're still expected to take it on faith that everything is done for our own good. The National Security Agency, for example, has been keeping tabs on where we go and when, listens to our telephone calls and reads our emails. If it wants, it could listen to a conversation with Granny, and let us know when we need to stop at the 7-Eleven for a quart of milk. Such all-knowing surveillance is supposed to thwart terrorism. Everyone wants to stop terrorism, so what's wrong with a little surveillance?

November 20, 2013

EDITORIAL: The broken promise

The race card has been played so often over the five years of the Obama administration that it's fraying at the edges. We haven't seen and heard it played quite so often lately as Obamacare crashed and burned. Everyone feels the same pain. But Oprah Winfrey, the billionaire black diva from Chicago, is trying to preserve it. She explained to an interviewer for the BBC the other day how she thinks the opposition to the president's radical politics works. "There's a level of disrespect for the office that occurs," Miss Winfrey said, "and that occurs, in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he's African-American."

November 20, 2013

EDITORIAL: Drinking from a fire hose

The Environmental Protection Agency thinks of everything, which is why the agency is often a hazard to your mental health. Once it heard the old saw about the difficulty of "drinking from a fire hose," the agency sprang to action to protect Americans who might get lead poisoning from drinking from a fire hose. Beginning next year, the EPA will require fire hydrants to flow with water as pure as a mountain spring.

November 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: The orphan child

There's no do-over of elections. However fervently many Americans might want to turn back the clock to replace Barack Obama with Mitt Romney, they can't. Higher taxes, more spending and Obamacare are with us until Jan. 20, 2017. According to a new ABC News poll, most Americans think Mr. Obama is not a strong leader, that he doesn't understand the problems of Americans, that he's neither honest nor trustworthy, and he's a terrible manager. Mr. Romney, the pollsters found, would defeat the president in an election today. What a difference Obamacare makes.

November 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: Snubbing Mr. Lincoln at Gettysburg

Thousands gathered at Gettysburg on Tuesday to mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, but President Obama, who likes to make speeches, was not among them.

November 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: The contempt of Justice

The Obama administration is as transparent as the blacked-out papers the Justice Department sends in response to congressional inquiries into the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. continues his defiance of the House of Representatives, which found him in contempt last year for his refusal to hand over readable documents that could explain why Mr. Holder and his department lied to Congress about the sale of guns to drug kingpins in Mexico.

November 18, 2013