Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
At 70, columnist George Will might be forgiven some mellowing. That will clearly not be necessary after reading his broadside against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
The Obama team inside and out of government feels Romney is not only the likeliest Republican presidential nominee in 2012, but also the most formidable of the field arrayed against the president. They will be using any criticism of Romney from any source to try and start the hoped-for loss of tea party support for the nominee.
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‘In the 17 years I’ve been there, I’ve never once heard a voice raised in anger. Never.”That was Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court in the course of a long interview he did with me for my radio program this past Wednesday. (The text of the interview is posted at the “Transcripts” page at HughHewitt.com.)
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National excess, like individual over-indulgence, leads to uncomfortable after-effects and even deeply painful ones. Even the dire consequences of the Panic of 2008 did not oblige the country to struggle through the dreariest recovery in modern times. This becalming of the economic waters became an inevitability when Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, an out-of-control federal regulatory onslaught and massive deficits all combined to create the perfect storm for the private sector.
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Very few civilians know the pain of loss of a son or daughter, husband or wife, father or mother or brother or sister to war. The vast majority of those who do not know that pain also struggle to communicate their sympathy and their sorrow for the loss of the loved ones.Almost 10 years after the Afghanistan war began, the country awoke to the awful news of a U.S. helicopter shot down with 30 Americans aboard — 22 of them from SEAL Team 6.
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During the 2010 campaign cycle, I heard a lot of campaign speeches and asked a lot of candidates questions on my radio show.
Not one candidate, winner or loser, campaigned on ending or limiting the home mortgage deduction.
Almost 40 million families use the deduction, 65 percent of whom earn less than $100,000 a year and nine out of 10 of whom make less than $200,000 annually.
The value of the deduction, which will grow as interest rates begin their inevitable rise, is built into the value of every home in America. Cut it, and the value of every home declines.
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Bravo, Jake Tapper.Finally a member of the increasingly supine White House press corps gave us a question that demanded President Barack Obama specify his proclaimed willingness to “upset his base.”ABC newsman Tapper asked the president to “tell us one structural reform that you are willing to make to one of these entitlement programs that would have a major impact on the deficit.”
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Leadership challenges are neither anticipated nor welcome among House Republicans. This much is clear from reading the rules the House Republican Conference adopted late last year.
No organization with elected leadership can completely insure against revolt from within. Under Rule 5, conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, can call a meeting, but so can a request from 20 percent of the members. Once assembled, two-thirds can vote to suspend the rules, at which point anything goes.
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President Richard Nixon ordered Archibald Cox fired from the job of special prosecutor on Oct. 20, 1973.Rather than follow the order, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus quit. They had both told members of Congress that they wouldn’t interfere with Cox’s investigation, so they turned in their keys and in a stroke established a very high bar for government lawyers confronting their superiors on matters of principle.
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On Monday, the first debate featuring all but two of the key GOP contenders for the presidency will occur.
Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum will participate in the debate on the campus of St. Anselm College.
Once again, GOP primary voters will only get to see their would-be-nominees through a lens ground by traditional media.
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If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it.
Friday’s showdown between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t close, and it wasn’t pretty — though Netanyahu didn’t want to leave any obvious marks. The end result was that our president is suddenly aware that Chicago rules don’t work on tough-minded leaders of countries surrounded by terrorists.
The battle between the warrior and the academic was bound to turn out this way. Obama had been a community organizer.
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There is one source of stimulus that the Republicans should propose to the public. Not only could it juice current economic activity, it could also bring the housing crisis to a quick and merciful end.If Congress were to allow Americans to use their retirement savings to pay down or pay off home mortgage debt without triggering withdrawal taxes or penalties on the use of those savings, millions of Americans would almost certainly do so. This would free up money families presently spend on first and second mortgage payment interest.
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Erosion of the attachment to the rule of law is unsettling. The rapid resort to increasingly bold displays of lawlessness mark governments in crisis.Individual rule, unpredictable and unappealable, is the opposite of the rule of law.California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is acting in concert with the Legislature to run roughshod over long-standing guarantees and procedures.
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There are 241 Republicans in the House of Representatives, and 29 of them sit on the Appropriations Committee.Two of the 29 — Jeff Flake of Arizona and Denny Rehberg of Montana — are seeking Senate seats and won’t have to run for re-election as appropriators in November 2012. This is to their great advantage, as it has become apparent early in the 212th Congress that you don’t want to be an appropriator.
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Josh Mandel is a 33-year-old veteran of the Iraq war, in which he served two tours while a U.S. Marine. Mandel is a graduate of Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve Law School. He served two terms in the Ohio legislature.Mandel is also the treasurer of the state of Ohio, having garnered more than 2 million votes last November. He is married to a beautiful wife whom he wed in Jerusalem in 2008. He is Jewish. He is a Republican.
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Enormous benefits would result if a few of the legion of interns working for the broadcast networks were dispatched to the tape archives and tasked with returning with a reel of American talking heads from 1979 opining on the revolution sweeping Iran back then.
Perhaps someone among the experts summoned to and through the green rooms of the day might have predicted the nature of Ayatollah Khomeini’s dictatorship, the Iran-Iraq war, the rise of Hezbollah or any of the assorted malignancies that sprang from the toppling of the Shah of Iran. But almost certainly no one did.
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