Copyright 2012 The New York Sun Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:26:51 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Opinion :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/opinion admin@nysun.net (Seth Lipsky) webmaster@nysun.com en-us CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obama-ignites-a-catholic-moment-in-the-culture/87708/ Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:26:42 EST The last two weeks have produced an astounding convergence of profound philosophical public controversies in the United States that finally does justify the phrase, much bandied about for some years, “culture wars.” That expression was coined originally for Bismarck’s mad Kulturkampf against the Roman Catholic Church (and, to a lesser degree, other churches) in the mid–19th century. It was the usual self-aggrandizement of secular states against a vast, international, un-submissive... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/why-gingrich-floundered-in-florda/87686/ Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:15:18 EST Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination! Newt quoted Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” Citing Goldman Sachs’ profiting from the... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/state-of-obama-begs-for-a-challenger-like-mitch/87685/ Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:06:38 EST I cannot have been the only person who found President Obama’s State of the Union message and much of the indulgence of it, even by serious commentators, worrisome. The president was correct that “too many of our institutions have let us down.” He seemed not to recognize that first among them were the administration (especially the presidency), the Congress, and the Supreme Court — the speaker and the audience for the occasion (apart from the justices who boycotted because of Mr. Obama’s... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrich-meets-the-enemy-and-it-turns-out-to-be/87683/ Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:49:12 EST Even before polls opened in Florida’s Republican primary, some pundits were trying to explain a potential Newt Gingrich loss there by saying he’d been outspent. Mike Allen’s influential Politico Playbook daily morning email reported Monday, “Newt Gingrich has been outspent on the Florida airwaves by a nearly $12 million margin,” about $15 million to about $3 million. The thought was echoed on Twitter by a political reporter for the New York Times, Nick Confessore, who asked, “Money carrying the... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/william-jefferson-gingrich/87674/ Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:00:46 EST How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism’s Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit but he has all the charm of barbed wire. Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping. It is not as egregious as Bill’s, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/a-comeback-of-nixonian-if-not-lazarene/87669/ Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:46:58 EST Just when it seemed the presidential campaign could not become odder, it has. If, as I wrote last week here, Mitt is an improbable savior for America, Newt Agonistes is an apparition that the mothers of America could use to frighten their children into eating their breakfast cereal. As the inventor last month (I doubt if anyone else would claim or even admit to it) of the Hegelian Newt — who would not win the nomination but could prevent Mitt from closing the deal and enable the Republican... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romney-could-hit-problems-at-florida-over-his/87668/ Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:48:52 EST With the Republican presidential candidates headed to retiree-heavy Florida in advance of its January 31 primary, expect the debate about Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly, to heat up. If voters start focusing on the issue, it’s not going to be particularly helpful for Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Romney raised the issue twice the other night in a debate on CNN. First, he said, “we do not want a $500 billion cut in Medicare to pay for ‘Obamacare... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romney-offering-the-right-stuff-on-obama-s-crony/87665/ Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:18:21 EST Let me build on Charles Krauthammer’s great Friday column, “The GOP’s Suicide March.” Mr. Krauthammer argues that just as President Obama’s class-warfare, soak-the-rich mantra started lagging in the polls, some Republicans on the campaign trail started making the case that Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital was involved in nothing more than vulture capitalism, looting companies, and destroying jobs. Keeping class envy alive. I’m not going to name names, because everybody knows who these Republicans are... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrich-has-chance-tonight-to-trump-interview/87661/ Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:55:34 EST Might a strong Newt Gingrich debate performance tonight trump the ABC Nightline interview with Newt’s ex-wife Marianne? Remember, the debate comes before Nightline. And the roughly 5 million to 6 million people who watch the debate will be a lot more than the roughly 2 million folks who turn on Nightline. Plus, the Nightline crowd is largely liberal, and these viewers are not going to favor Newt Gingrich. I’m not saying the ABC Brian Ross interview with Marianne isn’t something. But I’m not... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romney-emerges-as-an-improbable-savior-in-an-age/87658/ Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:47:42 EST Though it is distressing to be enduring such a dismal election campaign, it is not unprecedented. As both parties prepare to spend a billion dollars either reelecting a president most Americans do not think deserves to be reelected, or a challenger most of his fellow Republicans don’t think can win (and as in most things, the public may well be right on both counts), it is easy to find the whole process discouraging. The liberal national media took dead aim at Mitt Romney when he emerged from... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romneys-revolution-wealth-and-politics/87655/ Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:43:46 EST To understand the presidential bid of the 70th governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it’s useful to remember the career of the first. John Hancock, like Mitt Romney, was one of the richest men of his time. Hancock had a three-story, 56-foot-wide granite mansion atop Boston’s Beacon Hill, complete with a ballroom and stables. Mr. Romney reportedly has a $12 million beachfront house in La Jolla, Calif., and a $10 million lakefront house in New Hampshire, as well as a Massachusetts... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/is-romneys-bain-capital-type-of-treatment-just/87653/ Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:00:09 EST There’s a troubled company out there called U.S. Government, Inc. It’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It badly needs to be taken over and turned around. It probably even needs the services of a good private-equity firm, with plenty of experience and a reasonably good track record in downsizing, modernizing, shrinking staff, and making substantial changes in management. Yes, layoffs will be a necessary part of the restructuring. A quick look at the income statement of this troubled firm... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obamas-defense-strategy-leaves-room-for-hope-if/87650/ Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:53:04 EST It would be unfair to dismiss the administration’s latest assault on the U.S.’s defense capability as the folly and cowardice some commentators are already alleging. Without a worldwide rival of comparable strength threatening all American strategic interests, it is certainly possible to retrench gradually and support regional forces of stability and, preferably, moderation. President Roosevelt saw that if Nazi Germany were permitted to retain its conquests of 1938–40, and to continue to enjoy... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/tebow-inspires-our-man-in-washington-to-call-off/87644/ Mon, 9 Jan 2012 17:37:12 EST I have officially called off my boycott of the National Football League. I do not care how many felons or frotteurs play the game. Now there is Tim Tebow to redeem it. He can pass and run. He inspires his teammates. He inspires many returning fans like me. I shall follow him through the playoffs and maybe even next year as the season resumes anew. He is an American original — and he is controversial. I am for him. No, I shall not fall for the NFL’s gimmicks. You will not see me wearing a jersey... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/expect-to-hear-more-about-the-elder-romney/87643/ Mon, 9 Jan 2012 14:54:40 EST One of the strange things about America — a country founded on a revolution against a hereditary monarchy — is that so many of our politicians seem to inherit their professions. John Adams begat John Quincy Adams. Senator Prescott Bush begat President George Herbert Walker Bush, who begat President George W. Bush. Senator Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee begat Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. Governor Brown of California, Sr., begat Governor Brown of California, Jr. Even the ties between Barack... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/time-to-repair-the-wreck-of-the-progrssive-reforms/87634/ Wed, 4 Jan 2012 11:48:28 EST An underlying theme of our times that has gone unperceived by the high and mighty in press, government, and other locales where the politically alive come to roost is the thumping failure of an increasing number of counter-productive old Progressive reforms. Once they were beheld as prodigies from the minds of superior citizens, such stars of yesteryear as Robert M. La Follette and Woodrow Wilson. Now they are revealed as hollow shams or at best curiosities. Surely soon they will be seen for... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/editorials/its-on-getting-ready-for-santorum-and-watch-out/87636/ Thu, 5 Jan 2012 13:04:58 EST We will have to wait to see whether Rick Santorum’s jump to a virtual dead heat with Mitt in Iowa is enough to bring out the anti-non-Mitt assassination squads. Santorum is an unusually fervent Roman Catholic for a presidential candidate and such an emergence would doubtless treat us all, one more time, to Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times dusting off their former little selves as intellectually abused Catholic choir girls and Garry Wills acolytes in dogmatic schism. Who... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/germany-canada-and-israel-stand-out-in-a-parlous/87629/ Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:51:14 EST My year-end column will be a tour of the political horizon, with a reflection on the comparative virtues of good government. But anyone gripped by the fear that I am going to sermonize some treacle about civics at them has nothing to fear. In all of the European Union, apart from a few of the very small states, only Germany, Finland, Poland, and the Czechs qualify as well-governed. They have all kept unemployment and deficits under control, returned to economic growth, and avoided catastrophic... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/why-art-laffer-finds-newt-gingrich-so-promising/87626/ Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:32:00 EST “The purpose of economic policy is growth, jobs, and prosperity,” supply-side founder Art Laffer told me today. As such, Mr. Laffer has endorsed Newt Gingrich and the Gingrich 15% flat-tax plan, which includes the 12.5% corporate-tax reform. “It’s nothing against the other candidates,” Mr. Laffer said. “But Newt’s plan is right, and therefore endorsing him is the right thing to do.” Mr. Laffer is concerned with the fact that Mitt Romney has no tax-reform plan, and he worries that the former... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/index-of-crony-capitalism-charts-embarrassing/87630/ Mon, 2 Jan 2012 14:43:31 EST Employees who hope to keep their jobs and investors who hope their shares will rise may want to hope their executives avoid President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. When the council’s members were announced February 23, among the concerns raised was that the members would use their status to the advantage of their companies. In fact, what’s happened since then is that the 13 publicly traded companies whose executives were appointed to the council, taken together, have declined in... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-ron-paul-rand-paul-ticket-new-york-times/87621/ Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:51:18 EST With apologies and thanks to William Safire. 1. The Supreme Court a) leaves ObamaCare in the political realm for now but leaves a future court room to ride to the rescue in 2015 by agreeing with the Fourth Circuit opinion on the Anti-Injunction Act b) upholds Arizona’s immigration law c) strikes down both ObamaCare and the Arizona immigration law, leading to a bipartisan backlash against the “new judicial activism” of the Roberts Court. 2. The nominee for secretary of state awaiting approval at... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/merry-christmas-to-christopher-hitchens-wherever/87620/ Sat, 24 Dec 2011 07:45:15 EST As Christmas remains a religious occasion, a few thoughts from that perspective commend themselves. The National Post [where this dispatch first appeared] seems to have been plunged into mourning for Christopher Hitchens, perhaps best-known for his belligerent atheism. I must say that I had a few fierce written exchanges with Christopher over the years, mainly in Britain’s Spectator magazine, but not on religious matters. In our polemical battles, which were entertainingly acidulous and... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/first-real-convention-draft-since-1952-may-be/87618/ Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:44:30 EST It seems to me that I have a duty to write about Newt Gingrich, as I am one who did not think his rise in the polls as a Republican presidential contender would be as durable as it already has been. As interesting as Newt himself is the dumbfounded reaction to his return to the grand tier of political life after a sleep almost as long as Rip Van Winkle’s, and after he had flat-lined for months as a candidate, and had been abandoned by his entire staff. In a year that should be a big Republican... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/how-the-once-and-future-gingrich-outshines-his/87606/ Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:08:39 EST Peggy Noonan calls him “ethically dubious…unreliable….egomaniacal…harebrained.” George Will says he “embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive.” David Brooks says he “has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with '60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance.” And never mind Newt Gingrich’s character — Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry reminded viewers of Saturday night’s debate that Mr. Gingrich once favored a... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/america-agitation-for-europe-to-dilute-its/87614/ Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:17:18 EST The fate of the Eurozone is an excruciatingly slow reenactment of The Perils of Pauline. The latest beaming photo opportunity — as another emergency agreement was made last week and more than a score of European national leaders preeningly tried to appear relevant, if not exactly statesmanlike — will be as fleeting a source of comfort and celebration as its many predecessors. The idea of a tightly enforced injunction against any repetition of today’s debt-raddled impotence and chaos, without... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gop-debate-in-iowa-fails-to-deliver-a-pro-growth/87613/ Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:22:43 EST Color me cranky about this week’s Republican presidential debate in Iowa. The headline stories were about whether Newt Gingrich actually lobbied for Freddie Mac, or why Mitt Romney changed his positions on gay rights, guns, and abortion. But a GOP growth message to defeat President Obama was completely missing in this debate. It was a supply-side whiff. This election is principally about the economy and its poor performance. It’s about the slow rate of growth, the high rate of unemployment, and... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/pat-buchanan-chooses-shame-and-ends-up-as/87609/ Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:48:27 EST I am afraid that Pat Buchanan, who earned his battle stars as a courageous spokesman for President Nixon, especially when he demolished the rabidly partisan Senate Watergate Committee in 1973, has become a babbling idiot. He returned to the Reagan White House and performed less needed prodigies for a much less beleaguered administration. His disenchantment with what he took to be the apostasy of the administration of George Bush Sr. is understandable, but the plan of action he devised for... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/editorials/economic-horizon-is-brightening-as-arithetic/87602/ Sat, 10 Dec 2011 04:54:16 EST Difficult though current economic and political times are, ineluctable forces of economic arithmetic and national interest are asserting themselves in ways that are, in the circumstances, reassuring. There are a number of particular areas where this phenomenon of irrepressible geopolitical logic is emerging. Finally, the Chinese miracle, replete with the hallelujah chorus of China marching inexorably to the headship of the world, is starting to appear less a wave of the future than a faddish... JEROLD AUERBACH http://www.nysun.com/opinion/when-the-arabs-themselves-denied-there-was/87607/ Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:23:25 EST Newt Gingrich has been challenged for calling the Palestinians an “invented” people. He was accused by a spokesman for the American Task Force on Palestine of “deep historical ignorance and an irrational hostility toward Palestinian identity.” To Sabri Saidam, adviser to Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Gingrich had displayed “extreme racism.” But the former speaker seems to know more about Palestinian history than his critics. Indeed, Palestinians have said the same thing... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/editorials/why-romney-needs-gingrichs-supply-side-sizzle/87600/ Thu, 8 Dec 2011 20:06:18 EST Say what you will about the former speaker, Newt Gingrich. His philosophy, his policy proposals, his track record, his campaign, and all the rest. But the one thing you have to acknowledge about Mr. Gingrich is that he’s a sizzler. He has a way with words. He’s as good a communicator as anyone in modern politics. In my CNBC interview with Mr. Gingrich this week, he slammed President Obama’s tax-the-rich, class-warfare attack on bank’s and businesspeople. He hammered Mr. Obama, calling him a... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/can-republicans-be-losing-the-tax-debate/87596/ Tue, 6 Dec 2011 19:22:10 EST Do my eyes deceive me? It seems that the Republicans are in danger of losing the debate on cutting taxes. Some thirty years after President Reagan proved that tax cuts encourage economic growth — which enriches us all — glum figures like President Obama are roaming the land talking about the apolaustic lives of the very rich and the need to take their loot so we can all live better. Facts are facts: if you expropriated all the wealth from the top one percent you would but dent our national... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrichs-most-important-political-race-may-be/87592/ Mon, 5 Dec 2011 10:41:32 EST The most interesting political race this presidential election season may just be Newt Gingrich versus himself. There is clearly a faction within the Republican Party looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney, for whatever reason, and Mr. Gingrich is the latest to capture their attention. Two polls out over the weekend showed Mr. Gingrich leading the Republicans in Iowa, where the caucuses are a month away. Another recent poll showed him leading in South Carolina, an early primary state. I’ve... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ron-paul-will-be-missed-at-forum-of-jewish/87591/ Sun, 4 Dec 2011 19:27:44 EST When the Republican candidates gather Wednesday at Washington for a forum focusing on Jewish issues, one candidate will be absent — Congressman Ron Paul. The host of the event, the Republican Jewish Coalition, “rejects his misguided and extreme views,” the group’s executive director, Matt Brooks, told the Washington Jewish Week. So it has excluded him from the event. By my lights it will lead to a less illuminating discussion. It happens that I’ve covered the Republican Jewish Coalition and Mr... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/how-golda-meir-indira-gandhi-and-margaret/87590/ Sat, 3 Dec 2011 21:59:10 EST It is surely time to recognize what an immense improvement has been wrought in world standards of governance by the rise of female national leaders. Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi were effectively the pioneers, among democratically elected leaders, though the genius of a considerable number of previous empresses and queens gave a foretaste of what the world was denying itself in excluding women from its highest public offices (and most other important positions). Queen Elizabeth I was the... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/collapse-of-us-justice-system-into-a-shambles/87587/ Thu, 1 Dec 2011 11:09:38 EST In the current issue of Commentary, there is a symposium of 43 knowledgeable people who discuss whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about America. In the current edition of The New Criterion, the eminent British historian Andrew Roberts, now a U.S. resident, assesses similar points in a lead essay about how benign America has been as the superpower, and how keenly it will be missed if superseded in that role by China. Nowhere in either interesting section of either magazine is the... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/thatcher-on-the-edge-of-madness/87586/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:40:25 EST One of my favorite stories in respect of Margaret Thatcher concerns the prime minister’s visit to a sitting of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. This must have been about 1990. I wasn’t in the meeting, having already become editor of the Forward. The Journal had issued editorials critical of Mrs. Thatcher for agreeing to give back to Communist China not only Hong Kong’s New Territories that Britain had had under lease but also Hong Kong Island itself, territory that Britain owned... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/owners-of-new-york-times-used-tax-loopholes/87581/ Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:59:04 EST For sheer hypocrisy masquerading as journalism, it’s hard to come up with as bald an example as the 3,000-word attack on Ronald S. Lauder that ran Sunday on the front-page of the New York Times. Well, maybe the New Yorker’s August 2010 hit piece on Charles and David Koch is a competitor. But it’s a close call. Mr. Lauder was American ambassador to Austria in the Reagan administration, in which he also served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense. He’s been politically active as chairman of... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/latest-demarche-of-the-fed-gives-europe-a-tylenol/87585/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:26:54 EST  It’s often said that help comes to those who help themselves, but Europe can’t seem to help itself. So on Wednesday, the United States Fed came to the rescue. That rescue triggered a global stock market rally, including a near 500-point gain in the United States.  Basically, the Fed is making it cheaper for Europe to borrow dollars. This dollar backstop symbolically shows that the Fed, the European Central Bank, and other big central banks are not going to permit a 2008-type credit freeze and... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/nixon-and-kissinger-emerge-in-ever-better-light/87579/ Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:39:20 EST The latest drop from the interminably repetitive and rather innocuous Nixon Tapes has caused the customary outburst of confected indignation against Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as anti-Semites, and, in the case of Kissinger, as effectively a self-hating Jew. This is the final spluttering of the Nixon demonology movement and its subcommittee for the smearing of Kissinger. Nearly 40 years after Watergate, it is long past time that the Nixon presidency be seen as the imaginative and... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-day-teddy-fortsmann-gave-away-his-coat/87575/ Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:13:27 EST We lost a big-hearted prodigy on Sunday morning, Teddy Forstmann, financier, political player, philanthropist (especially for the young and in education) and a bit of an adventurer. I know. I accompanied him on some and feared for my life. He was a member of the Board of Directors of The American Spectator in the 1980s and early 1990. He died of brain cancer, and we shall miss him. Teddy was from a prosperous family, but his fortune he made on his own. He relished “the deal,” and sports, and... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/america-dodges-a-super-tax-hike-as-super/87574/ Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:42:29 EST Didn’t our Democratic friends always intend to derail the super-committee over the top Bush tax rates? You remember that $800 billion revenue number always floating around from the Democratic leaks? Well, that’s the static-revenue estimate of repealing the 35% and 33% Bush rates. Sometimes that Democratic revenue number moved up to $1.2 trillion. Well, that would include the static-revenue estimate of the 5.6% millionaire surtax. Get it? In an important sense, the whole super-committee debate... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/in-which-our-man-on-the-canada-beat-defends/87572/ Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:00:54 EST It is with regret that I take issue, and square off, with my esteemed friend of many years, Senator for Ontario Nicole Eaton. But I am scandalized by her rude and almost unpatriotic attack on the noble and distinguished national animal of Canada.* The beaver is an almost incomparably exemplary and original national animal. Eagles abound; Germany’s scrawny black eagle, a panoply of other Alpine, Andean, and Central American eagles, including Mexico’s rampant and belligerent version, Egypt’s... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fred-ikle-set-an-example-that-will-illuminate/87568/ Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:14:26 EST The death of Fred Iklé last week inspires me to prophesy. Thus far only the redoubtable Wall Street Journal has remarked on Fred’s passing. That he was a formidable mind during the Cold War and important to the peaceful settlement of that decades-long struggle is remembered thanks to the Journal. Yet to the rest of the media he is a minor figure, perhaps a menacing figure. We shall see what they say, but I am not holding my breath. This is the way Liberalism creates the kultursmog, which is to... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/usns-medgar-evers/87566/ Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:54:59 EST Each civil rights leader had his own role to play in the struggle for integration. Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer. Martin Luther King, Jr., the inspiring orator. And Medgar Evers was the martyr. Evers was the field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP. After President Kennedy had given a nationally televised civil rights speech on June 11, 1963, Evers’s wife had let their three children stay up past midnight to wait up for their father, who was returning from a strategy meeting. At about 12:20... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/even-kafka-would-be-scandalized-at-obamas-effort/87562/ Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:22:54 EST The effort by junior administration officials to banish all references to God from the speeches recorded on plaques at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, is an outrage. It would be wrong to impute every action of everyone in the vast U.S. government to the dispositions of the current president, but any militant disregard for religious sensibilities does seem to reflect his disparagement of the tendency of Americans who don't vote for him to reach for religion (and guns) in... LAWRENCE KUDLOW http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrich-emerges-as-the-most-interesting-figure/87561/ Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:15:52 EST There were three winners in the CNBC debate: Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. Governor Perry was the obvious loser because of his memory lapse. The guy with the toughest job on Wednesday night was Herman Cain, who has been hammered by sexual-harassment charges. He needed a strong performance to put him back on message with his 9-9-9 tax plan and pro-business, free-enterprise views. I give him first prize, simply because he performed so well. He had the most to gain and the most to... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/western-nations-will-survive-but-not-by-staying/87560/ Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:00:43 EST As the world financial crisis deepens, it is unlikely that it can be alleviated without carefully reviewing the infelicitous confluence of mistakes in Europe and the United States that has brought it to its present extreme state. The European Monetary Union, involving 17 countries, was based on a number of generally admirable premises, but also on a couple of false assumptions. All civilized people were grateful at the extension of European cooperation to this new level of intimacy, as ancient... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/an-erroneous-idea-about-william-f-buckley-takes/87559/ Wed, 9 Nov 2011 10:46:53 EST Last weekend I was given a hint as to how an erroneous idea is born and how it takes on a life of its own. I was at Yale University, as a guest of “The William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale.” It is run by a group of extremely winning young Yale students who are all admirably conservative. Bill would approve. They all carried themselves like young ladies and young gentlemen. They were confident of their ideas and amused. One of their goals is to keep the name of William F. Buckley Jr. alive and... NATHAN LEWIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/america-can-prosecute-those-terrorists-freed-by/87556/ Sun, 6 Nov 2011 14:35:51 EST On August 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi, a member of Hamas, drove a suicide bomber to the Sbarro restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem, where the bomber blew himself up, killing 15 people including Judy Greenbaum, an American citizen from New Jersey. On March 5, 2003, Abigail Leitel, a 14-year-old Baptist schoolgirl born in New Hampshire, was killed, along with 14 Israelis, by a suicide bomber who exploded a bomb on a Haifa bus. Three Hamas members — Fadi Muhammad al-Jabaa, Maedh Abu Sharakh, and Majdi... CONRAD BLACK http://www.nysun.com/opinion/reforms-of-british-monarchy-desirable-but/87553/ Sat, 5 Nov 2011 08:46:51 EST The proposed changes to the rules of British Commonwealth monarchic succession and marriage raise some interesting reflections on the past and future. Henceforth, if these changes are adopted, the eldest shall succeed regardless of sex. This is not only right in itself, but responds to the fact that British reigning queens have on average been more talented than the kings. Mary I was problematic; Mary II and Anne were adequate; Victoria and the   Queen are generally reckoned to be highly...