Calif. Ruling Shows Hurdles Remain for Gay Marriage

The ruling Tuesday by California’s Supreme Court upholding a ban on same-sex marriages shows that, despite a year of successes for gay activists, the road toward full marriage rights remains difficult — particularly when voters are given a direct say. The decisions in three states this year to legalize same-sex marriage, and the possibility that [...]

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Rescue Plan Would Give U.S. Most of GM’s Stock

Canada, UAW Also in Line For Stakes, Sources Say. The United States and Canada would own nearly three-quarters of a restructured General Motors, effectively nationalizing the border-straddling industrial colossus as part of an overhaul plan that would put most of the rest of the company in the hands of a union trust fund. Sources said [...]

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Today in History – May 27

Today is Wednesday, May 27, the 147th day of 2009. There are 218 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On May 27, 1937, the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, Calif., was opened to pedestrian traffic. (Vehicular traffic began crossing the bridge the next day.) On this [...]

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The Deadliness of Certainty

Freud recognized that human beings have a sex drive and even a death drive. Is it possible that we also have an aphorism drive? We do seem attracted to pat answers and pithy summations — especially from our politicians. It isn’t enough to be wise or effective; one must be quotable. In fact, aphorism is [...]

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Colin Powell’s Truths

Last week’s explosive Cheney-Obama rhetorical showdown ended in a damp fizzle of substantive agreement about the continuation of military commissions, about the need for indefinite detention of some terrorists and about the three-ring foolishness of a “truth commission.” The sharpest dispute, it turned out, concerned interrogation practices discontinued six years ago. Meanwhile, President Obama continues [...]

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Sonia Sotomayor vs. Kim Jong Il

Kim Jong Il, I’m told, is a leader with a few deficiencies. Add this to the list: terrible news judgment. The mercurial Stalinist who runs North Korea, after all, decided to test a nuclear weapon yesterday — Memorial Day. If you didn’t hear, I don’t really blame you. Americans are far more likely to be [...]

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Nancy Drew Rules!

Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are a generation apart, but they share a childhood passion for the girl sleuth. When I was writing a column last year about my own experience with Nancy Drew, I phoned the Supreme Court’s public information office to see if Justice Ginsburg, who had identified Nancy as an early [...]

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An Easy Choice for Obama

The job, in a sense, was Sonia Sotomayor’s to lose — even though she was the only one of the four candidates President Obama interviewed for the Supreme Court vacancy he didn’t know beforehand. Two — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan — serve in his administration; the fourth one — [...]

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Scenes From Judge Sotomayor’s Courtroom

IN nominating Sonia Sotomayor to fill Justice David Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court, President Obama chose someone similar to himself in experience and intellect. What may surprise those who have read criticisms of Judge Sotomayor’s personality on the bench — largely, descriptions of her by anonymous detractors as imperious and a “bully” — is [...]

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Every Justice Creates a New Court

EVERY time a new justice comes to the Supreme Court, “it’s a different court,” Justice Byron R. White liked to say — and he was in a position to know, having witnessed the arrival of 13 new justices during his own 31-year tenure. He meant that in a group of nine people bound together by [...]

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Rifacimento

The young political novelist Benjamin Disraeli, in his 1826 “Vivian Grey,” took aim at the drastic change in the writing by one of his characters: “it is the same tale, the same refacimento of lies, and treachery, and cowardice doled out with diplomatic politesse.” Robert Louis Stevenson, in an 1882 collection of his early work, [...]

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Abbreve That Template

Why am I doing these sit-ups? Because I am working on my abs. And what are they? My abdominal muscles, of course, which in those physical-­culture ads have the look of a washboard. (A washboard is, to coin a w­ord, a “metaforgotten” — a word-picture of a household item like a dial phone that has [...]

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Questions for Frank Luntz

The Republican spin doctor talks about Dick Cheney’s communications skills, President Obama’s health care plan and why a rabbit is more frightening than a bunny. Your new 28-page memo, “The Language of Health Care,” was sent to Republicans in Congress and recommends that they speak about health care reform in ominous phrases. For instance, you [...]

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North Korea Is Said to Test-Fire 3 More Missiles

North Korea celebrated its arms tests with a rally on Tuesday in Pyongyang, amid signs praising its founder and the military. One day after its nuclear test drew angry and widespread condemnation, North Korea further antagonized the international community on Tuesday by test-firing three short-range missiles. In addition, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday [...]

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Antitrust Laws a Hurdle to Health Care Overhaul

President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws. Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to [...]

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Burris-Blagojevich Ties Come to Life in Transcript

A transcript of a secretly recorded telephone call released on Tuesday revealed the degree to which Roland W. Burris aggressively and openly pursued an appointment to the United States Senate with those close to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, who went on to appoint Mr. Burris last year before he was removed from the [...]

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Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid

Human beings are not obviously equipped to be nature’s gladiators. We have no claws, no armor. That we eat meat seems surprising, because we are not made for chewing it uncooked in the wild. Our jaws are weak; our teeth are blunt; our mouths are small. That thing below our noses? It truly is a [...]

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Leadership Mystery Amid N. Korea’s Nuclear Work

In dealing with North Korea, American officials are reduced to studying two-month-old photographs of its reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, to calculate how long he is likely to live. The new administration’s North Korea team includes a special emissary who works part time as an academic dean and a State Department official who has yet to [...]

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Why Freed Dissidents Pick Path of Most Resistance

When political dissidents who challenge authoritarian leaders are locked away in prison, when they are tortured and their families threatened, the goal is to break their resolve, to crush their spirit, to silence them. So how come so many get right back to it when they are finally freed? What compels them to fight on [...]

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Sotomayor’s Rulings Are Exhaustive but Often Narrow

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial opinions are marked by diligence, depth and unflashy competence. If they are not always a pleasure to read, they are usually models of modern judicial craftsmanship, which prizes careful attention to the facts in the record and a methodical application of layers of legal principles. Judge Sotomayor has issued no major [...]

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Burma Ends Suu Kyi’s House Arrest

Burma’s military government has officially ended the six-year house arrest of opposition leader and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, but she remains in prison while awaiting the outcome of her trial for breach of the terms of her detention. Suu Kyi, who is accused of allowing a U.S. citizen who swam to her lakeside [...]

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Spy Fired Shot That Changed West Germany

It was called “the shot that changed the republic.” The East German Communist Party membership card of Karl-Heinz Kurras, a former West Berlin police officer who also acted as a Stasi spy for East Germany. The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest [...]

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‘Kid From the Bronx’ With Hopes and Doubts

Sonia Sotomayor, who would be the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice, brings to the confirmation experience the kind of rich personal story that has always been deeply gratifying to Americans, the journey from humble beginnings to a respected position of great influence. As she was presented by President Obama at the White House on Tuesday [...]

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Sizing Up Sotomayor

“Che Guevara in robes.” “Pure Chicagoland politics.” “Empathy has won out over excellence.” Yes, the Sonia Sotomayor nomination and confirmation circus is officially up and running. The Che line comes from Paul Miringhoff at Powerline, who says that’s “what a friend of mine” calls Sotomayor (“He’s kidding, I think.”). “Chicagoland politics” is how David Frum [...]

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Justice not for all

Barack Obama’s first pick for the Supreme Court infuriates conservatives. EVEN before the announcement of Barack Obama’s choice for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court on Tuesday May 26th attack ads were up and clickable. Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals-court judge from New York, “didn’t give a fair shake in court to firefighters deprived [of] [...]

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Obama and the ‘South Park’ Gnomes

Too many initiatives that require a leap of faith. Sometimes it takes “South Park” to explain life’s deeper mysteries. Like the logic of the Obama administration’s policy proposals.  Consider the 1998 “Gnomes” episode — possibly surpassing Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” as the classic defense of capitalism — in which the children of South Park, [...]

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Dick Cheney’s Second Act

The president plays defense on security. By goading a sitting president into responding to his arguments on his terms, Dick Cheney won the contest with Barack Obama last week before either said a word. And his re-emergence onto the public square seems to be driving everybody nuts. “Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary [...]

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U.S. Expected to Own 70% of Restructured G.M

The government will hold a large share of a new version of General Motors after the company emerges from bankruptcy protection, and will provide G.M. with about $50 billion in financing so that it can restructure, people with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. The Treasury Department will receive about 70 percent of the [...]

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A Memory for Faces, Extreme Version

Jennifer Jarett never forgets a face. A few years ago, shortly after she moved to New York City, one of her friends pointed out a young man standing on the other side of the room at a party. Ms. Jarett took one look and said, “Oh, I know who he is — I went to [...]

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Referral System Turns Patients Into Commodities

I was chatting recently with a doctor friend who was depressed because he thought he had lost a referral source. “This internist was sending me patients,” he told me, as I recall. “Then last month he sent me only one patient. And this month only one patient.” I nodded hesitantly, unsure what he was driving [...]

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