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So with New Hampshire behind us (and with any luck, never again in front of us), and with my tendency to be overloaded with life to the point at which I catch up on things I meant to write two to fifty-two weeks after they are timely, I wanted to say something about the controversy which was and is best described as “National Romney Online.” For those of you who don’t keep up on conservative tendencies to engage in circular firing squads, a summary is in order; for those of you who couldn’t give a rat’s anus, best just to...

In last night’s debate among Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich defended his proposal to oust bad judges from office by statutorily abolishing the judicial offices they occupy. In a series of posts, Matt Franck and I will explain why we believe that this particular proposal of Gingrich’s is constitutionally unsound and politically foolish. (Matt and I may have somewhat different thinking on the underlying issues, so the views expressed by one of us should not necessarily be imputed to the other.)In this opening post, I will set forth Gingrich’s proposal to abolish judgeships. At the outset, let me emphasize that...

Discussing a National Review piece criticizing Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh offered some thoughts on how the publication has changed since its founding: “National Review used to, indisputably, it was the voice of conservatism. There was no question. Now, it’s not so much that, as it is the voice of Republicanism, which could also be said to be the inside the beltway or Washington-New York conservatism.” This perception of National Review was echoed by Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III in a post on Twitter in which suggested National Review has abandoned its original vision established when the publication...

Brent Bozell, a nephew of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., who founded National Review magazine in 1955, and whose father, Leo Brent Bozell, collaborated with Buckley for many years at NR, today dismissed the magazine as having lost the identity forged for it by its founder. “National Review's endorsement of Romney & Huntsman proves only that this is no longer the magazine of William F. Buckley Jr. My uncle would be appalled,” said Bozell in postings on Facebook and on Twitter. In its Dec. 14 “The Editors" page, National Review published an editorial entitled “Winnowing the Field,” which flippantly...

The December 31 issue of National Review — the last one before the Iowa caucuses — will feature a cover of Newt Gingrich appearing as “Marvin the Martian,” which some of have suggested could be one of the most memorable covers of the bi-weekly magazine. The cover story is the latest in a series of eyebrow-raising moves by the magazine, often considered to be the gold standard for periodicals in conservative politics. On Wednesday afternoon, its editorial page came out vehemently against Gingrich, warning his nomination would place the White House out of reach for the GOP. Mark Steyn, one...

CNS News catches Rush Limbaugh in a reflective mood yesterday after National Review’s anyone-but-Newt-or-Perry editorial earlier this week. Instead of railing about the attack on two of the Republican candidates in the field, Rush muses on how little influence NR has these days, and how it’s much more the voice of Beltway Republicanism than actual conservatism these days, and questioned whether it has any real impact at all anymore: “National Review used to, indisputably, it was the voice of conservatism. There was no question. Now, it’s not so much that, as it is the voice of Republicanism, which could also...

One of our co-founders, Ben Domenech, produces one of the best daily reads in my inbox. It’s the Transom. If you do not subscribe, you should. And if you do subscribe, today you got Ben’s thoughts on the two big conservative endorsements for Mitt Romney. I think he hits the nail on the head and it is very much worth sharing. Today the Washington Examiner and National Review endorse Mitt Romney. The Examiner does so honestly and forthrightly – you can read their rationale here. http://vlt.tc/1k1 I disagree with them, but as I’ve said before, I limit my assessment of...

Re that NR editorial, I would like, politely, to dissent from my colleagues’ dismissal of Perry and Bachmann. In the former case, a handful of poor debate performances should not disqualify a man from executive responsibility: Our age’s veneration for men with “nothing to do but think and talk” (in Churchill’s words, on the sort of chaps he didn’t want in his war cabinet) is one reason why the Western world is sliding off a cliff. In the latter case, Congresswoman Bachmann has fought a principled, conservative campaign with only one significant misstep — her overreach on the Gardasil business....

“We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editor”

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editors

As the early primaries draw near, Newt Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel could be the millions he was paid by Freddie Mac. Yesterday morning, top rival Mitt Romney called on Gingrich to return the money during a Fox News appearance. For Gingrich, Romney’s request was merely the latest in series of blows since Bloomberg first reported the payments, estimated at $1.6–$1.8 million, in mid-November. “It’s a perfect argument against Gingrich because it ties him to the sleazy practices of the beltway when he is trying to run as an outsider,” observes Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University...

NRO POLL Would you trust Newt as president? Yes No

The Tea Party’s limited-government, constitutional heart is in the right place. But it needs much better guidance about how the Constitution works in wartime. The defense-authorization bill currently under congressional consideration contains some unremarkable, largely redundant provisions about the treatment of enemy combatants. Naturally, the now-familiar alliance of leftists and libertarian extremists — self-proclaimed “constitutionalists” all — attacked with their signature “sky is falling” equanimity. On Wednesday, my column addressed some of the more hysterical arguments posited by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano. The real action, however, was taking place on the Senate floor, where Tea Party favorite Rand Paul...

NOVEMBER 18, 2011 Cain’s Knowledge-Deficit Disorder He is running for president knowing little about major matters of public import. Poor Rick Perry. His “brain freeze” is indelible, otherwise it would forever be eclipsed by Herman Cain’s more cringe-inducing meanderings on Libya. At a meeting with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain was asked whether he agreed with Pres. Barack Obama’s handling of Libya. You would think he had been asked who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, Cain’s joshing description of a prototypical gotcha foreign-policy question. What ensued was the longest five minutes of an editorial-board meeting ever. Cain...

In a previous legal life, I worked as a litigator at a large law firm and on occasion worked (as a defense attorney) for various corporate clients in sexual harassment cases. So I read Politico’s story with the jaundiced eye of someone who’s represented more than one corporate executive accused of harassment. From what I read, I found the story profoundly underwhelming. Before I go on, let me first make clear that I don’t know the actual facts in the case. I have no idea what Herman Cain did or did not do, and I have no idea whether the...

I am willing to give Herman Cain the benefit of the doubt and assume that the sexual-harassment allegation(s) against him was entirely baseless. Here is what troubles me. Mr. Cain says: “If the Restaurant Association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it, and I hope it wasn’t for much, because nothing happened. So if there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other offices that worked for me at the association, so the answer is absolutely not.” Okay, so if I’m reading that quote right, then: 1. Herman Cain, in his role as head of...

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northern Oregon is a real stinker. I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

A reminder about the totalitarian temptationThe Washington Post’s culture critic, Philip Kennicott, recently took to the pages of his paper to note the “cognitive dissonance” between ingrained “habits of homophobia” in American culture, on the one hand, and a recognition that “overt bigotry is no longer acceptable in the public square,” on the other. As an example of those who resolve this dissonance by holding fast to their homophobic prejudices, Kennicott cited Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who had remarked on the similarities between the Empire State’s recent re-definition of marriage and the kind of human engineering attempted by...

It was one of those perfect nights here in Los Angeles. Ginger and her girlfriends had left, the hot tub was quiet, and the lights of downtown sparkled like Festivus-tree ornaments down the hill from my palatial pad in Echo Park. Only the occasional sound of gangbanger gunfire from Boyle Heights marred the stillness of the evening as I sat sipping my Jägermeister and contemplating the infinite void that my father, the sainted “Che” Kahane, had raised me to believe is my destiny. And then the phone rang. “So listen, Dave,” said my agent, breathlessly. It wasn’t like her to...

The Battle from Waterloo Representative Bachmann runs for president BY ROBERT COSTA Waterloo, Iowa Near the cornfields, her parents danced. On hot summer nights in the Sixties, when things were good and the kids were young, David and Jean Amble would shimmy to the music of Ray Charles and Bill Haley at the Electric Park Ballroom. Down the road, their headstrong daughter, Michele, would order ice-cream cones for her three brothers at Jensen’s Dairy Queen, two blocks from the family’s working-class home. The day before she announced her presidential campaign in late June, the former Michele Amble, now Representative Bachmann...