THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: Panic in the streets

News from Twitter, Facebook and live television is often not much more reliable than news from the gossips and the town crier. We didn't learn our lesson from the pursuit of "white men driving white vans" during the Beltway sniper terror a decade ago, or the "multiple shooters" with AR-15 rifles said to be terrorizing the Washington Navy Yard last month. Rumors, tales and frantic gossip flew again during the Capitol lockdown Thursday.

October 8, 2013

EDITORIAL: A good day for free speech

There's good news today. Two plucky citizens, one in Mississippi and another in Arizona, stood up to defend free speech, and everyone was rewarded when two federal courts joined the defense. Restoring lost constitutional freedoms sometimes requires patience and always requires vigilance. Officials of various sizes and persuasions often look at the First Amendment with a skeptical eye because they don't relish answering to the people who elected them.

October 8, 2013

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Latest smear of GOP isn’t the worst

White House press secretary Jay Carney recently blamed the GOP for the government shutdown saying, "What we see happening with this Republican strategy is a willingness to threaten the very foundation of the world's greatest economic power, the economy that basically stabilizes the entire world economic system, and that is a very risky proposition."

October 8, 2013

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: California, feds flouting immigration laws

California Gov. Jerry Brown and some of our politicians here in California do not know the difference between illegal aliens and the legal immigrants who come to America with the necessary paperwork because they really want to be in America ("California grants driver's licenses to illegal immigrants," Web, Oct. 3).

October 8, 2013

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Traver not best choice for NCIS

On TV's "NCIS," the director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service rises from the agent ranks, which is as it should be. Under the current administration, however, the director position has just been politicized.

October 8, 2013

EDITORIAL: Cashiering God

Before being all they can be, aim high, or become Army strong, military recruits must first raise their right hands and swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, "so help me God." The Air Force wants to revise the sacred oath and make it ordinary, striking the last phrase.

October 3, 2013

EDITORIAL: A grand bargain

John A. Boehner began talking up a "grand bargain" Wednesday, a bargain with congressional Democrats and the White House to enable the government to reopen for business, guarantee a rancor-free agreement to increase the debt limit and set the stage for entitlement and tax reform. Good luck with that.

October 3, 2013

EDITORIAL: Stoking the shutdown

Pollsters have convinced Democrats that they'll win the government shutdown fight, so President Obama is doing all he can to create the impression that the republic is in peril because 800,000 nonessential federal employees won't come to the office today. This insults the intelligence of ordinary Americans who are more concerned that the private economy has been shut down for the past four years.

October 3, 2013

EDITORIAL: The president blinks

The Democrats got what they prayed for, a government shutdown to damage Republicans in next fall's congressional elections. They think it might even enable them to regain control of the House of Representatives and over the following two years they could "fundamentally transform" the country.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: A needle for Obama

Samuel Johnson's celebrated observation that nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of hanging applies to nations, too. Benjamin Netanyahu reminded the delegates to the United Nations this week that Israel, surrounded by threats to its survival, pays close attention to both enemies and friends, particularly to friends of suspect reliability in the clutch.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: The dead-end kid

Two weeks ago President Obama's nominee to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission tried to walk back an earlier statement that natural gas is a "dead-end" fuel. Ron Binz's flip-flop didn't change any minds, and now it's his nomination that's hit a dead end.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: The blame game

Washington loves the blame game, and President Obama most of all. He woke up Tuesday morning with his finger primed to point at "one faction of one party in one house of Congress" for the partial government shutdown. He was, of course, talking about the conservative House Republicans he can't criticize often or harshly enough, but his words apply more accurately to the red-state Democrats in the Senate.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: Nary a prayer for jobs

Destroying jobs is hard work, but many liberal Democrats have a real knack for it. As early as Thursday, the House of Representatives could vote on an amendment from Rep. Ben Lujan of New Mexico to give Indian tribes the authority to shut down mining projects on any land they regard as sacred. This would ensure there are no jobs where jobs are needed most.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: First in war, last with a library

Shutdowns and sequestrations don't bother the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. It will stay open throughout the government follies, because not a penny of government money was included in the $47 million it took to build the library in Mount Vernon, which opened Friday. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association announced in July that it had raised $106.4 million for the library, and the government had nothing to do with that, either.

October 2, 2013

EDITORIAL: The unnecessary conflict

It didn't have to come to this. The showdown between House Republicans and the White House, with all the phony drama seasoned with buckets of crocodile tears, wasn't inevitable. President Obama has been working on this for four years as if the Republicans didn't exist. The mess is the natural consequence of the no-compromise strategy he has taken from Day One.

September 30, 2013

EDITORIAL: Squeezing the turnip

An odd thing happened at the state capital when the government closed its books on the fiscal year just past: Tax revenues are out of sight. Despite a faltering economy, taxpayers sent more of their money to state capitals and city halls than ever before. The politicians see no reason to quit blowing money as long as they can squeeze the taxpayers, so the Big Squeeze is on.

September 30, 2013

EDITORIAL: Words aren’t enough

Muslim persecution of everyone who is not a Muslim that simmered for centuries in the Middle East now has come to a full boil in certain places. Religious thugs looking for justification for their evil cannot be allowed to hide within the pages of the Koran to excuse or justify murder. The West must realize that the outrage of decency won't be appeased by soft words.

September 30, 2013

EDITORIAL: The essential city

Every Friday afternoon at 5 o'clock, the government shuts down. Just as predictably, it reopens the following Monday morning — unless, of course, it's a federal holiday. Over weekends and holidays, while the government is at rest, the sun also rises on schedule, and the sky neither falls into the street nor turns bright green (like a plate of ham and green eggs).

September 30, 2013

EDITORIAL: The hyperbole disease

Some of our politicians should go back to junior high school for the history lessons they missed the first time. Ted Cruz sees Germans lurking behind the arborvitae bush, and Tom Harkin imagines the thunder he hears in the west to be P.G.T. Beauregard, organizing the Confederate lines to lick the Yankees once more at Manassas Junction.

September 30, 2013

EDITORIAL: President Obama’s blame game

President Obama is the most audacious president in memory, mostly because he knows that no matter how outlandish his pronouncements, there's a willingness among Americans to grant a little more indulgence. Mr. Obama's cockiness was on full display Thursday when he told an audience at Prince George's Community College in Largo that when his signature health care law crashes and burns it'll be the fault of the Republicans.

September 27, 2013