THE WASHINGTON TIMES

CITIZEN JOURNALISM: Other BRAC-related development ahead

Maryland needs more federal dollars for Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) transportation projects, and Gov. Martin O'Malley said Friday that state officials will work closely with Congress to get them.

December 16, 2009

EDITORIAL: Captain Morgan’s rum war

Most people think the Captain Morgan of rum fame was a pirate. Yo ho ho and all that. Not so. The eventual Sir Henry Morgan was a privateer - that's a pirate with a license. The English crown authorized Morgan to wage war on the Spanish as an element of foreign policy. The distinction is worth remembering in the modern politics of the Caribbean.

December 16, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obama’s rich bureaucrats

President Obama doesn't like bankers. Sounding like the community organizer he was back in the 1990s, Mr. Obama told the nation during his Sunday appearance on CBS' "60 Minutes": "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat-cat bankers on Wall Street. Nothing has been more frustrating to me this year than having to salvage a financial system at great expense to taxpayers that was precipitated, that was caused in part by completely irresponsible actions on Wall Street."

December 16, 2009

EDITORIAL: Psssst … Let’s nail the sheriff

Controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is no stranger to hardball tactics, so he probably isn't fazed by being on the receiving end of rough politics. Still, that doesn't excuse the Obama administration's apparent ideological vendetta against him.

December 16, 2009

EDITORIAL: Democrats divided over health care

Democrats are running into one problem after another trying to pass the health care bill in the Senate. Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, blames the "ideological battle driven by the right wing of the Republican Party," and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, says Republicans are stalling the health care bill because obstruction is a "cash cow" for their party. This rhetoric is blarney because there are enough Democrats in the Senate to pass the bill without a single Republican vote. The real holdup on government health care is division within the Democratic party.

December 15, 2009

Media Room: DVD & Blu-ray reviews

"The Hangover" might have been the surprise of the year to those who couldn't tell at first viewing it was going to be a hit. Warner Bros. executives certainly could.

December 15, 2009

America’s Morning News

In case you didn't tune into The Washington Times' nationally syndicated radio show "America's Morning News" -- heard in Washington on WTNT-AM 570 and coast-to-coast via the Talk Radio Network -- here's what two of Monday's guests told co-hosts Melanie Morgan and John McCaslin:

December 15, 2009

EDITORIAL: Tax dollars up in smoke

The D.C. City Council should do everything in its power to stop, and reverse, an outrageous sweetheart deal that the D.C. Fire Department gave to a former deputy fire chief. As it stands now, D.C. taxpayers will fork over about $600,000 in extra benefits to former deputy chief (and one-time interim chief) Kenneth B. Ellerbe for work he isn't doing. Talk about a potential 10-alarm political fire.

December 15, 2009

EDITORIAL: Tehran’s nuclear trigger

A smoking-gun document has emerged that indicates Iran is closer than ever to developing a nuclear weapon. Top-secret technical notes leaked from deep within the Iranian nuclear program - and making the rounds of Western intelligence agencies - detail research on a neutron initiator, a device that sets off a nuclear detonation. It is the smoking gun's trigger.

December 15, 2009

EDITORIAL: Socialism by any other name…

Time is ticking for Democrats to claim some kind of victory on health care legislation, as polls show a public increasingly disillusioned with what is being passed off as "reform." So now Democrats are trying to rename the public option in the hope no one will notice.

December 14, 2009

CITIZEN JOURNALISM: Boosting young scientists

The 1983 landmark report, "A Nation at Risk," warned that students should take three years of math and science to graduate, but 26 years later, nearly half the states still do not require that amount. The Patriots Technology Training Center in Prince George's County helps fill the void with science -- and technology -- related programs that target youths -- STEM programs. STEM stands for programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

December 14, 2009

EDITORIAL: Black Panther battle intensifies

The dispute between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department is starting to look like the legal equivalent of World War II's Anzio campaign, which represented a major escalation late in the war. The battleground is the controversy about the department's decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against members of the New Black Panther Party. The commission is mounting a massive legal assault; Justice is refusing to be budged; and the casualties could be high.

December 14, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obama secrecy

You can't have a closed-door meeting about the need for fewer closed-door meetings and expect anyone to take you seriously. That's like writing a memo to order fewer memos. Such folly is business as usual in the Obama White House.

December 14, 2009

EDITORIAL: Pelosi’s hide-and-seek accounting

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's directive for lawmakers to disclose individual office spending online for the first time was billed as a victory for transparency. Well, not really. Earlier this month, the House clerk posted 3,400 pages of expense reports detailing about $300 million in spending on everything from staff salaries to mail, but the effort was a sham. The new disclosure system hides more than it reveals.

December 13, 2009

EDITORIAL: Government tackles football

Unemployment is over 10 percent, the national debt is bigger than ever, the dollar is sinking, Iran is getting nukes, and we have troops in combat without a plan for victory. Amid all this tumult, Congress has focused its attention on regulating college football. It's offensive that the political class has decided to fiddle while America burns.

December 13, 2009

EDITORIAL: Federal fuel fiasco

The idea of farming our way to energy independence by turning corn into ethanol hasn't worked as advertised. A complex tangle of environmental regulations, ill-targeted federal subsidies and interference with the farm economy hasn't helped farmers, improved air quality or weaned the United States off foreign oil. Nevertheless, the Obama administration is poised to expand the effort.

December 13, 2009

EDITORIAL: A Black Panther sings

The heat is rising against the Justice Department's mishandling of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members. The last thing Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. needed was for the party's national chieftain to resurface in Mr. Holder's defense, but that's exactly what Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party chairman, did on Dec. 4. It says a lot about the Obama Justice Department that it is being promoted by a Black Panther.

December 11, 2009

EDITORIAL: The tip of the Climategate iceberg

A skeptical public repeatedly has been told that questions about purported global warming are closed. "I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science ... I think that this notion that there's some debate ... on the science is kind of silly," said President Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs when asked Monday about the president's response to the controversy. The flack was talking smack.

December 11, 2009

EDITORIAL: Cruising gay bars with the ‘safe schools czar’

Teenagers shouldn't drink alcohol. That's the policy of the United States government, which spends billions to enforce laws backing the policy, and it also is the position of pretty much every respectable organization in the nation, including the Department of Education. So naturally, when looking to fill the post of the nation's top school-safety official at the Education Department, President Obama chose a guy who founded and led an organization that allowed bar guides to be handed out to high school students.

December 11, 2009

EDITORIAL: Leave our fish ponds alone

Not content to have the government control the very air we exhale, some liberal members of Congress want to regulate every drop of water in the country and the land on which it sits. If they get their wish, the government would exercise dominion over land, air and sea to an extent never before seen.

December 10, 2009