THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: The president fiddles, Afghanistan burns

Yesterday marked the anniversary of American boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Eight years into the war, the U.S. effort is adrift. Those who expected decisive action on Afghanistan from President Obama will have to keep waiting.

October 8, 2009

EDITORIAL: Return of Walpin-gate

When last we left Gerald Walpin, the unfairly fired inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, he had filed a lawsuit on July 17 protesting his dismissal. He submitted technical amendments to his complaint on July 24, and the government was supposed to respond within 60 days. Seventy-five days later, the government still is stonewalling.

October 8, 2009

EDITORIAL: Ensign’s scarlet letter

An office affair and a blizzard of rule-bending are not the reason Sen. John Ensign, Nevada Republican, stands amid the irreparable wreckage of his personal reputation and political future. Such sleaze is all too typical in the nation's capital, where power, money and sex stand out as a warped political trinity. Mix power and a sense of entitlement with the Washington social scene, and you get a bipartisan recipe for scandal. Right now, there are Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill on the same path, secure in the delusion that they won't be caught.

October 7, 2009

EDITORIAL: Mental health reform for Virginia

It's too easy to want to throw the book at mentally ill people who commit crimes. It takes incisive forethought, consistent advocacy and deep compassion to find ways to get ill people the help they need, in advance, so they avoid not only crimes against others but also the personal anguish of losing touch with reality. The Virginia elections were ennobled last week when two statewide candidates, Robert F. McDonnell for governor and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II for attorney general, took time away from more vote-rich topics to outline a serious set of proposals for reforming Virginia's mental health laws.

October 7, 2009

EDITORIAL: Backdoor insurance for illegals

When President Obama addressed Congress last month he made a promise. "There are also those who claim that our [health care] reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, yelled, "You lie," which made that section of the president's speech a part of every newscast.

October 7, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obama bows again

The last time the Dalai Lama visited Washington, President George W. Bush presented the exiled Tibetan leader with the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony on Capitol Hill. Now the Dalai Lama cannot even get a private meeting with President Obama. The only winner in this rebuff is communist China.

October 6, 2009

EDITORIAL: Jobless rate hits 17 percent

America's jobless crisis is much worse than the 9.8 percent unemployment rate reported Friday. To understand how there are many more unemployed than the government reports, it's necessary to look at the numbers used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the unemployment rate. The Household Survey numbers paint a bleak picture that no one is discussing.

October 6, 2009

EDITORIAL: POMS de terror

Freedom won a big round Sept. 29 when Judge Rosemary M. Collyer slapped down federal commissars who are pushing a senseless and dangerous Medicare requirement.

October 6, 2009

EDITORIAL: Canada’s black-market clinics

The health care debate has been awash in worst-case scenarios - death panels, taxpayer-financed abortion and generous benefits for illegal immigrants among them. There's another potential nightmare. Imagine having to go to court for the right to choose your insurance or resorting to illegal clinics to have surgery.

October 5, 2009

EDITORIAL: The health care taxman cometh

Campaign promises are like fruit flies - they never live very long. The latest to go legs-up is President Obama's campaign pledge that not "one single dime" of new taxes will hit families making less than $250,000 annually.

October 5, 2009

EDITORIAL: The haunting of Medicare clawbacks

Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee ratified death panels by proxy on Wednesday night. Approval was granted even though one of their leaders worried that the provision in question might well haunt them later. Haunt them it should. The committee's vote in favor of this deadly article was unconscionable.

October 5, 2009

EDITORIAL: Don’t squeeze the telecoms

Certain Democratic senators are doing their Pavlov's dog routine again, responding to the bell of the trial lawyers who finance their campaigns. In this instance, they are reopening a fight to make telecommunications companies liable for trillions of dollars for complying with a presidential directive to assist in a "warrantless surveillance" program against suspected terrorists. This has negative consequences for public safety, for the already staggering economy and for the cause of basic fairness and justice.

October 4, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obama’s lewd schools czar

The Obama administration isn't adequately vetting important presidential appointees. When it was exposed that former "green jobs czar" Van Jones believed in crazy conspiracies about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it was questionable whether anyone had even bothered to Google individuals before they received presidential appointments. In that case, the White House strategy was to refuse to answer questions and hope interest faded away. That approach worked for most of the media, which carried water for President Obama's scandal-plagued pick. Stonewalling scandal is not what Americans were expecting from an administration that promised to usher in an "unprecedented level of openness in government." Instead, a pattern of presidential obfuscation is developing.

October 4, 2009

EDITORIAL: Fighting terrorists with pond scum and choo-choos

When speaking before a veterans group last month, President Obama's words sounded simple and direct. "If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it," he promised. The Democratic Congress is betting the president had his fingers crossed.

October 2, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obama appointee ignored illicit sex

Five years ago, Kevin Jennings - who now is President Obama's "safe schools czar" - threatened to sue another teacher who called him "unethical" in a Washington Times news article for ignoring a legal requirement to report a student's homosexual relations with an "older man." Mr. Jennings' lawyer wrote a letter stating that there was "no factual basis whatsoever for [the] claim" and that he was not "aware of any sexual victimization of any student, or that he declined to report any sexual victimization at any time."

October 2, 2009

EDITORIAL: Hillary Clinton vs. Afghan reality

In a PBS interview on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's detailed assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. "I respect that because clearly he is the commander on the ground," she said, "but I can only tell you there are other assessments from very expert military analysts who have worked in counterinsurgencies that are the exact opposite." She said the administration's goal "is to take all of this incoming data and sort it out."

October 2, 2009

EDITORIAL: Obamacare — faster inflation, worse care

President Obama's promise that a government health care takeover is the key to almost every ill echoes 19th century charlatans selling elixirs that would cure everything from constipation to baldness. From controlling the growth of government to reining in private business expenditures, Mr. Obama's health reform potion is promised as a cure-all. It's hardly that.

October 1, 2009

EDITORIAL: Panther injustice continues

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission is not backing off its showdown with the Justice Department about mishandling the voter-intimidation case involving agents of the New Black Panther Party. Nor should it.

October 1, 2009

EDITORIAL: Renew the Patriot Act

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to debate the key aspects of the Patriot Act today. The debate comes in the wake of the takedown of three terror plots: Najibullah Zazi from Afghanistan was arrested in connection to a plot to bomb the New York subway system; Hosam Maher Husein Smadi from Jordan was apprehended while planting a bomb at a Dallas skyscraper; and American "jihadist fighter" Michael Finton was arrested after attempting to detonate a car bomb outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill. These arrests demonstrate that the threat from domestic and international terrorism is ongoing.

October 1, 2009

EDITORIAL: Dirty Deeds

It is a rare politician who unites newspaper editorial boards across the political spectrum and across the state of Virginia. Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds has done just that: Throughout the state, observers agree that he is running a flatly dishonest advertising campaign that discredits his own claim to be worthy of the office.

September 30, 2009