The Week: Most Recent Edward Morrissey

A flood of scandals engulfs Obama

The Week — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:05:00 -0400

President Obama has had a tough week, and it's about to get a lot worse.

The past few days have seen a cascade of evidence that the administration not only feigned transparency, but may have covered up the politicization of the IRS and the response to the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate. Whistle-blowers on the Benghazi response moved that story back into the headlines, but not for long. Because on Friday, the IRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for aggressive investigations. And that wasn't even the worst of the scandals.

On top of everything, Obama's Department of...

The ghosts of Benghazi have not disappeared

The Week — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:35:00 -0400

A few months ago, defenders of President Obama and Hillary Clinton cheered when Clinton angrily responded to Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) questions about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the White House's response by asking, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" This week, both Clinton and Obama may find out — and may soon find themselves in a trap of their own making.

Recall that the attack took place in the middle of the general election, just a couple of weeks after the party conventions. Obama and the Democrats had just argued that the administration's foreign-policy...

Stay out of Syria!

The Week — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:31:00 -0400

Red lines, credibility, and history have collided over the last few weeks in Syria and here in the U.S.

What began as an effort to keep the Bashar al-Assad regime from conducting inhumane attacks on its own population may end — if certain members of Congress get their way — with American boots on the ground in yet another Arab country. And the only possible lesson one can draw from this is that Americans aren't very good at drawing lessons from history, even our most recent history.

This present crisis began when President Barack Obama, flush with what he thought was success in Libya...

Don't let the Boston bombings influence immigration reform

The Week — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:10:00 -0400

Big news stories often produce political non sequiturs, and the bigger the story, the more nonsensical the attempts to attach political issues to it. The Boston Marathon bombings and the attempts to exploit them for favored hobbyhorses has proven no exception to this rule. Over the last few days, we've seen members of the media and politicians alike attempt to use the story as a platform for making points about everything from gun control to Gitmo.

Over the weekend, though, as details about the suspected bombers and their status in the U.S. became more widely known, the talk turned to the immigration...

The willful disingenuousness of Obama's budget

The Week — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:10:00 -0400

Yesterday was Tax Day. It's a day most Americans dread, as we scramble to gin up the extra cash owed to Uncle Sam while trying to avoid the smug few who did their taxes early and got refunds. (You know who you are…)

Needless to say, tax season isn't exactly an ideal time to push for tax hikes or defend record-high levels of government spending. And yet, Democrats seem oblivious to national moods on either topic, and have plunged ahead on both fronts.

Last week, President Barack Obama sent his proposal for the FY2014 budget to Congress (more than two months after the deadline for its submission...

America's deadly parade of Middle East follies continues

The Week — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:24:00 -0400

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the U.S. has intervened several times in the Muslim world. Some of the actions have turned out better than popularly assumed, and some have turned into disasters with relatively little coverage.

Last month, the media used the tenth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq to reopen the debate on the war, largely assuming a point of view of defeat. Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded this week in The Washington Post to argue that the U.S. won an important regional ally in Iraq, and ended a brutal dictatorship to boot.

Plus, Maliki objects to the assumption...

Marco Rubio is right: Don't rush immigration reform

The Week — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:46:00 -0400

No one doubts that momentum has quickly developed for a deal on comprehensive immigration reform and border security. But by rushing to get a deal done and working behind closed doors, Congress is cravenly trying to sneak reform through without a full hearing before the American public.

After a poor election showing, as well as a campaign that revealed serious demographic issues for Republicans in future contests, the GOP appears ready to make some compromises on previous hard-line positions regarding normalization for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. Democrats, sensing...

Government should get out of the marriage business

The Week — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:10:00 -0400

This week, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that could lead to decisions changing the traditional definition of marriage. That definition, let's remember, is based on thousands of years of Western culture in which such a union has been between one man and one woman. The justices might change that definition to a union of any two adults.

Polls show that the acceptance of same-sex marriage in the United States has rapidly increased in just a single generation. Politicians in both parties have begun jumping on an expanding bandwagon, beginning last year with Joe Biden in the middle of a presidential...

What it's like to cover the papal conclave

The Week — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:07:00 -0400

VATICAN CITY — To cover a papal conclave in Rome is to encounter any number of contradictions, especially for a novice at the Sala Stampa — or in this case, at its expanded auxiliary media center. For instance, normally I always have my umbrella with me, and yet never have it handy when it rains, which on this trip has been nearly every day. Standing in line to buy a transportation pass that no one ever uses for the trams is another. But quite frankly, I didn't mind that contradiction at all. Nor did I mind the apparent contradiction of finding a robust and effective technological infrastructure...

A return to practical conservatism

The Week — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:10:00 -0500

My good friend and The Week colleague Matt Lewis and I have engaged in an ad-hoc symposium of sorts over the last two weeks, launched by the New York Times' Ross Douthat and his initial lament over the disappearance of what he described as the "Catholic view" of American economic thought. Douthat noted that the ground on economic policy had changed considerably since the last papal transition, that it signaled a diminishing influence of the Catholic Church as both political parties moved to the extremes, and that the Republican Party had begun to abandon Thomas Aquinas for Ayn Rand.

Since...

Simony at the Church of Hope and Change

The Week — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:26:00 -0500

Ever since Watergate, the political class in Washington — and those who want to make it to Washington — has promised to clean up politics, end corruption, and reduce the bitter partisanship that plagues the Beltway.

Barack Obama's first presidential campaign explicitly included those pledges as part of the "hope and change" he would usher in, while his second presidential campaign relied on populist scolding of the wealthy for not paying for their "fair share" of American government. When the Supreme Court struck down part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, better known as...

What Uncle Sam could learn from the Catholic Church

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:23:00 -0500

Over the past few days, we have seen a number of conversations arise over the relevance of Catholicism in America, thanks to the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. More than 57 million Catholic adults lived in the U.S. in 2008, according to census figures, far and away the largest religious affiliation, with Baptists second at 36 million. Catholics accounted for almost a third of all self-identifying Christian adults, a group that comprises 76 percent of the total adult population; Catholics alone are 25 percent of the adult population.

With those numbers in mind, it might have surprised...

The annual pivot to jobs you can set your watch to

The Week — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:53:00 -0500

Tonight, Barack Obama will deliver his fourth State of the Union address. (His first such speech, right after he took office in 2009, wasn't officially a State of the Union.) Surely, the president will pepper his speech with several references to individuals whose life circumstances will emphasize a particular political point he wishes to make. Some of those individuals will attend the speech in person, and be recognized in the gallery. Members of the House and Senate from the president's party will interrupt the speech every few sentences for standing ovations. The opposition party will offer...

The GOP should filibuster Chuck Hagel

The Week — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:21:00 -0500

Normally, the Senate's role in a presidential appointment involves a testing of the waters, an airing of public disputes over policy, and then an uneventful vote to confirm the nominee. Presidents usually get a great deal of leeway in choosing their appointments, especially Cabinet officers.

Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials serve at the pleasure of the president and are replaced on a regular basis. Presidents who win elections are entitled to their choice of advisers. The only solid rationales for denying confirmation are corruption, abuses of power, and/or incompetence. Senate Republicans...

The intertwined fates of Marco Rubio and immigration reform

The Week — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:38:00 -0500

Perhaps the move by a handful of Senate Republicans and Democrats to press ahead on a compromise immigration reform package will not surprise many observers. The rationales on both sides are clear. President Barack Obama got some backlash during the presidential campaign from Latino voters, who responded to his promise of immigration reform in a second term by reminding Obama that he promised the same thing before his first term, and totally failed to deliver. Democrats have wanted to press forward on normalization for existing illegal immigrants for years, hoping to reap the benefit of the additional...

Can the 113th Congress get anything done?

The Week — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 07:15:00 -0500

Inaugurations of American presidents are optimistic occasions, and for good reason. We often forget that peaceful transitions of power in history have been relatively rare, and still are, even in an age of republics. Most people living today won't see an orderly, lawful transition — or continuation — of a representative government under the rule of law. Regardless of your political persuasion, the quadrennial American tradition dating back to 1792 should fill all of us with optimism and appreciation for the blessings of a functional and stable representative republic.

Still, it's possible...