THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: Senate misrule

Republican House leaders passed a package of sensible reforms to chamber rules last week, and now Senate Democrats have offered their own rule changes. Unfortunately, Democrats trample on the explicit language of Senate rules even when professing reformist intent.

January 7, 2011

EDITORIAL: Holder corrupts Black Panther probe

Justice Department whistle-blower J. Christian Adams says Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. "tampered" with two ongoing investigations into voter-intimidation by members of the New Black Panther Party. Tampering or not, Mr. Holder clearly prejudiced the case by publicly misrepresenting it.

January 6, 2011

EDITORIAL: Liberal distaste for the Constitution

The Constitution was read at the opening of the new session of the House of Representatives yesterday. What was most remarkable about this was the almost hysterical opposition from congressional Democrats and left-wing commentators. In what should have been a united celebration of the nation's foundation document in a period of partisan rancor, liberals instead reinforced the view that they are profoundly uncomfortable with the essential truths underlying American freedom.

January 6, 2011

EDITORIAL: Only $279,950,956,705.59 left to spend

Within the next few months, America will reach its credit limit. After blowing through $2.6 trillion in tax dollars, the government will only be able to charge a mere $280 billion extra to future generations - a horrifying prospect that has sent the White House into a panic. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner yesterday urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, to restore the president's ability to spend beyond the nation's means. If the new Republican House majority concedes on this point, it will have lost the only hope of restoring fiscal sanity.

January 6, 2011

EDITORIAL: Light-bulb banning begins

The cost of illuminating your home is about to go up significantly. Most Americans take for granted that when they flip a switch, darkness immediately gives way to a warm, natural light. That's no longer possible in California, where a regulation that took effect Jan. 1 only allows the sale of harsh, cold compact fluorescents above a certain wattage. Unless the new Congress takes action, the same rules will apply to the rest of the country, beginning next year.

January 5, 2011

EDITORIAL: Constitutional authority for Congress

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives adopted new rules yesterday that will make Congress more transparent, more fiscally responsible and more procedurally fair to members and their constituents. Although changes to procedure wade deep into the legislative weeds, they signify a new reform ethic taking hold on Capitol Hill.

January 5, 2011

EDITORIAL: Islam’s blasphemy murders

The Obama administration has declared a "struggle against violent extremism," but it has little to say when it comes to extremism practiced by governments. Blasphemy laws in Pakistan and Afghanistan are being used to sanction judicial murder in the name of Islam. The United States refuses to condemn these practices, apparently believing this would amount to an unwarranted imposition of American values on foreign customs. Even in these backward countries, however, there are brave political leaders who are standing up to legal persecution.

January 5, 2011

EDITORIAL: The aspirin tax

Forty million Americans started paying higher taxes last weekend because of Obamacare. That's enough to make anyone feel ill, but it's only a start.

January 4, 2011

EDITORIAL: When Muslims kill Christians

Radical Muslims detonated a car bomb outside a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, on Saturday, killing 21 and wounding many others. The White House condemned the attack as a "barbaric and heinous act" but - true to form - remained silent on the jihadist motives of its perpetrators.

January 4, 2011

EDITORIAL: Obama’s breezy hypocrisy

Just before Christmas, President Obama's top trade negotiator dropped off a report to Congress complaining of Chinese wind-turbine incentives. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk wants the World Trade Organization (WTO) to intervene in the dispute over Beijing's use of grants and loans to prop up its domestic propeller industry.

January 4, 2011

EDITORIAL: Medicare isn’t mandatory

The Obama administration insists Americans must accept Medicare, even if they don't want it, in order to receive Social Security payments for which their paychecks have been raided for their entire adult lives. On Nov. 24, D.C. federal district Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ordered government lawyers to produce documentation for their extravagant claims of authority by next week. "She is literally calling their bluff," Kent Masterson Brown, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Washington Times.

January 3, 2011

EDITORIAL: Smugmobiles get noisier

So long as lawmakers insist on enacting new regulations to address the problems caused by old regulations, government growth will never end. This is the case with the innocuously named Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010, which was placed on President Obama's desk before New Year's. The goal of this bill - which passed the Senate unanimously and had only 30 dissenting votes in the House - is to make hybrid and electric automobiles noisier.

January 3, 2011

EDITORIAL: America’s promise of progress

As 2011 commences, Americans naturally are reflecting on the events of the past year and asking ourselves, are we as a nation moving in the right direction? It's ingrained in our national character to expect the answer to be yes. When the verdict isn't positive, we get restless.

January 3, 2011

EDITORIAL: Obama & U.S. global decline: Year Two

The second year of President Obama's foreign-policy and national-security management continued the pattern of decline established in his first year. The unbridled and naive optimism that ill-served the country in Mr. Obama's failed freshman outing gave way to a sense of policy drift in 2010. Even the president began to question whether the United States should maintain its primary global leadership role.

January 2, 2011

EDITORIAL: A disastrous year domestically

With President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, in charge, liberalism took a big step forward on the domestic front in 2010. Fortunately, the public's icy response to big government's advance means the new year represents the perfect opportunity to take two steps back toward fiscal responsibility.

January 2, 2011

EDITORIAL: The year ahead

A collection of headlines from the upcoming year both likely and not so likely.

December 30, 2010

EDITORIAL: Rationing cancer cures

Breast-cancer patients are charging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with moving toward Obamacare-style rationing of useful treatments. Congressional overseers should monitor how the FDA handles an appeal of its ruling to disapprove the drug Avastin in the fight against breast cancer. The sick need every weapon in the struggle against this killer disease.

December 29, 2010

EDITORIAL: Municipal meltdown

When Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, takes the gavel from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi next week, the California Democrat won't be the new year's biggest loser. That dubious honor falls on America's big-spending big-city mayors. The Republican resurgence sends a message that municipal partying at taxpayer expense must come to an end. Finally, after an era of indiscipline, 2011 promises to be a year of reckoning.

December 29, 2010

EDITORIAL: Illegal aliens are illegal and alien

Are "illegal aliens" simply misunderstood "undocumented immigrants?" The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Diversity Committee believes so, and it's engaged in a campaign to "inform and sensitize journalists as to the best language to use when writing and reporting" on the issue. That may sound nice, but there is nothing insensitive about calling a crime a crime.

December 29, 2010

EDITORIAL: Murder on the border

Brian Terry died for President Obama's sins. Mr. Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, was killed during operations against bandits near the southern Arizona town of Rio Rico, approximately 15 miles inside the U.S. border. Here and along other infiltration routes, gangsters prey on illegal aliens and drug smugglers or serve as private security forces for gangs engaged in illegal activities. Agent Terry was part of a four-man Border Patrol Tactical Unit sent to engage the bandits, and he was shot down in the resulting firefight.

December 28, 2010