THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: Underprivileged public servants

In these tough economic times, not many people stop to worry about the plight of the underprivileged members of the Montgomery County Council in the Maryland suburbs of the nation's capital. Fortunately, the members, the equivalent of aldermen in many cities, might get little respect from their constituents, but they do have the authority to look after themselves. This is a responsibility they take very, very seriously. They're giving themselves a 17.5 percent raise.

September 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: Trading down to Obamacare

The public remains deeply skeptical about Obamacare. Several new polls find that most people still think it's a bad idea, and opinions divide not just between liberals and conservatives, but rankle everybody.

September 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: Drilling to prosperity

Ordinary Americans are searching desperately for a way up and out of the crater of high unemployment and stagnant growth, and the Obama administration's only strategy is to borrow and borrow until the economy rises to life. The resurrection strategy hasn't worked; the way out lies right under our feet.

September 19, 2013

EDITORIAL: Madness at the Navy Yard

What can anyone say in the wake of an awful tragedy such as the massacre at the Washington Navy Yard? It was a heartbreaking crime beyond the ability of the human tongue to tell. The politicians and other public officials rush out with platitudes — well meaning, no doubt, and occasionally sincere — though Washington politicians rarely strike anyone as the prayerful sort. They're fond of dispensing what their speechwriters call "T&P," the assurance to surviving families and loved ones that they're in the pol's "thoughts and prayers."

September 18, 2013

EDITORIAL: Thuggery in Northern Virginia

Democrats in Northern Virginia have watched enough of "The Sopranos" to know it only takes a few carefully chosen words to deliver a message of intimidation. The Democrats are telling technology executives they had better support Terry McAuliffe for governor in November if they know what's good for them.

September 18, 2013

EDITORIAL: The circular firing squad

Conservatives are sometimes their own worst enemy. A group of Capitol Hill aides who worked for Jim DeMint when he was a senator from South Carolina have set up a political action committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund, to cleanse Congress of whom they consider squishy Republicans. It's a worthwhile endeavor, except when the "squishes" turn out to be conservatives.

September 18, 2013

EDITORIAL: When chilly isn’t cool

A climate scientist, comfortable in his government digs, nevertheless has a lot in common with the palm reader at the mall, hunched over her crystal ball between Nell's Nails and Wanda's Wigs. Both make their money from predictions, and as any high-end soothsayer could tell you, the more outlandish the prognostication, the more readily the client can be parted from his cash. Speed is essential, because the game ends when the mark realizes he has been played the fool. That's why the weather clairvoyants who have been predicting global warming doom — "climate change" is the current name for it — are starting to sweat.

September 17, 2013

EDITORIAL: The road to Nowhere

The Environmental Protection Agency will issue new rules Friday to crack down on power-plant pollution. The rules won't target plants producing the toxic, black clouds of smoke billowing from shabby industrial buildings. Technology has put those unhappy days behind us. The administration is instead going after the very air we exhale — carbon dioxide — as if it were evil.

September 17, 2013

EDITORIAL: A safety net, not a hammock

With his Syrian expedition in jeopardy, President Obama pivoted back to the economy. "Everything I've done," he told ABC News on Sunday, "has been designed, No. 1, to stabilize the economy, get it growing again, start producing jobs again." He used a Rose Garden event on Monday marking the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers to reiterate the message. "We've cleared away all the rubble from the financial crisis," said the president, "and we've begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity." That's news to the millions in the unemployment lines.

September 17, 2013

EDITORIAL: The fraud of a ‘living wage’

Hauling trash is a dirty job, and the men and women who haul the refuse, like the rest of us, deserve all they can get their employers to pay them. What none of us deserve is a government edict to tell employers how much to pay. But it's tempting for the politicians to do that, since it's not their money.

September 16, 2013

EDITORIAL: Budget blarney

President Obama is a master of fiscal discipline, or so he says. "Our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years," he told an audience the other day at Knox College in Illinois. It is true that the federal deficit is on track to be the lowest since Mr. Obama took office, but there's a catch.

September 16, 2013

EDITORIAL: Hiding from the nanny

The first rule of food club is you do not talk about food club; what happens at the table, stays at the table. But some of the Manhattan foodies didn't get the message. Mayor Michael Bloomberg caught an aroma from the private supper clubs operating throughout the Big Apple without his approval, and nothing gives Mr. Bloomberg heartburn like someone on the town, having fun. You let someone nibble on foie gras today, and tomorrow he'll want a 20-ounce Big Gulp.

September 16, 2013

EDITORIAL: Derailing Obamacare

The Republican National Committee has set up a website counting down the minutes remaining before the "Obamacare train wreck" arrives. In less than three weeks, the insurance exchanges open, and House Speaker John A. Boehner wavers over whether he ought to prevent it from happening.

September 13, 2013

EDITORIAL: The exceptional nation

Vladimir Putin, as our English cousins might put it, is too clever by half. In his Thursday op-ed essay in The New York Times, he couldn't resist needling President Obama's calling America "an exceptional nation," and tried to instruct him in the perils of hubris: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional."

September 13, 2013

EDITORIAL: Labor’s bitter regret

Even early Obamacare backers are starting to wonder whether they made a colossal blunder. It wasn't so long ago that Labor aided President Obama in ramming his health care scheme through Congress, fully expecting to win exemptions for unions as a reward for their service. Today, union leaders are upset that their multiemployer health care plans aren't eligible for federal tax subsidies.

September 13, 2013

EDITORIAL: Goodbye to Carlos Danger

Voters in New York City and Colorado are trying to make up for past mistakes. Despite bad decisions on Election Day last year, they're throwing out some of the politicians who abused their trust.

September 12, 2013

EDITORIAL: The unserious president

"There's no use trying," Alice told the White Queen. "One can't believe impossible things."

September 12, 2013

EDITORIAL: Cooling off Down Under

A year before Americans sent Ronald Reagan to the White House, the British rejected the frazzled Labor Party and embraced the opposition led by Margaret Thatcher. Her upset victory demonstrated to the world that principled conservatism resonates with the public and wins elections. This has happened again, this time in Australia, where voters over the weekend dumped the big-spending, big-government Labor Party in favor of the Liberal Party, which is "liberal" in the classical sense.

September 12, 2013

EDITORIAL: Misleading by example

Tragedies matter, and when they're preventable, they matter even more. Two somber anniversaries are marked on Wednesday, commemorating days that Americans wish they could forget. It has been 12 years since the attacks on the twin towers, the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania that together claimed nearly 3,000 lives. It was only a year ago that four Americans, including an ambassador, died when Islamic terrorists overran the U.S. diplomatic consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

September 11, 2013

EDITORIAL: Compounding Obamacare

Forcing Americans to give up their favorite doctors and health plans through Obamacare isn't all the administration plans to do to shake up health care. It's going after the corner drugstore pharmacist with a scheme to require Mom-and-Pop druggists to take further orders from the bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration.

September 11, 2013