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.
"Do you wear a crash helmet to work?" I asked Bruce Josten, executive vice president for governmental affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, last Thursday, the same day the House of Representatives passed the Disclose Act.
Josten is widely recognized as a talented and influential voice of reason on the Hill, but these past 18 months have seen one setback after another for America's small businesses. The chamber often has had all the right arguments, but, as Disraeli noted long ago, a "majority is better than the best repartee."
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Democrats expect voters not to notice, or care if they do notice, that legislators have not passed a budget for next year's federal spending.
The Pelosi-Reid "leadership" team have "gone off the grid" of congressional practice and not even pretended to care about spending targets and deficit projections. Humming "que sera sera, what ever will be will be," they twirl toward summer vacation and the November elections beyond.
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President Obama has never been in this situation before.
Professor Obama could expound and explain, then close his casebook and leave the University of Chicago law students to marvel at his eloquence.
State Sen. Obama could vote "present," and colleagues on both sides of the aisle could nod at each other and mark him down as shrewdly planning a political future four moves out.
Candidate Obama could wow 'em in Boston in 2004, and then go on to thump the substitute candidate Alan Keyes.
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Anger is growing with BP.
No, not British Petroleum. The company may be confronted with a nightmare disaster and an overwhelming engineering problem, but only the fringe of left and right will argue that this BP either intended the disaster or is indifferent to its control.
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By Hugh Hewitt
Avandia is a prescription medicine that treats diabetes. According to an Associated Press account of a Senate Finance Committee staff report released Saturday, the drug may have caused up to 83,000 heart attacks from 1999 to 2007.
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Sunday’s joint appearance with Arianna Huffington on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” hosted by the estimable Howard Kurtz, gave me a chance to tell her in person what most people think about her crusade against Fox News: It’s silly.
Her focus on a word here and a phrase there is silly.
The warning that Glenn Beck or others are “inciting” the public and that this is dangerous is silly.
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On the day after President Barack Obama’s appearance before them, House Republicans invited my radio colleague Dennis Prager, the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and me to address their retreat.
I chose to open my remarks with a brief seminar on effective communication because the GOP is almost genetically disposed to blurred messages and garbled points. Here’s the summary of my remarks:
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Political chain reactions were initiated last week with consequences that could flow through the years.
Or not.
Republicans could refuse to study and apply the lessons of the Scott Brown U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts in other races. The GOP could stick with 20th-century technology and with message mavens from 2006 and 2008.
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Scott Brown is an impressive candidate — intelligent, experienced, good-humored and handsome.
Brown’s record of public service is distinguished as well. Not only is he in his third term as a state senator, he served three terms before that as a state representative. More impressive than even that, however, is his service in uniform.
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Nov. 2 is 10 months away, and if the Republican Party stays focused on three big issues, voters may reward them with a chance to check the huge lurch to the left that President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engineered in 2009.
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President Barack Obama’s year of blunders is ending with the worst failure yet by the president and his team: An Islamist terrorist penetrated the United States and came very close to perpetrating the greatest mass casualty attack within the U.S. since 9/11.
The president’s first year in office has been marked by a string of pratfalls.
President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus didn’t work.
His hasty takeover of GM didn’t restore confidence in the brand or faith in the company’s executive team or future.
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Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson’s abandonment of his alleged “pro-life” commitment brought Majority Leader Harry Reid within reach of a Christmas Eve vote to approve a Senate version of Obamacare. When that happens, the political battles about the future of American medicine and especially the care of seniors will shift to the conference committee and then to the House.
Though many conservatives are demoralized, they should instead be gearing up to peel off enough votes from among the 220 who voted for Obamacare when it passed the lower chamber.
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"The crowds asked, ‘What should we do?’ John replied, ‘If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry.’”
John the Baptist wasn’t a difficult fellow to understand, as this account from the third chapter of Luke makes clear. Generous giving, especially to the poor, has always been a part of the Christian ideal.
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Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is the most endangered incumbent in the Senate. Given her destructive lurch into the lowest form of populism last weekend, she deserves to be tossed out in 47 weeks — and by a wide margin.
Many centrists in both parties had hoped that Lincoln would be part of the coalition of Democrats — including Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. — who would insist on a much pared-down, focused set of health care reforms backed by a real threat of filibuster.
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Michelle Obama blew past Carla Bruni, former model and wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to grab fashion magazine Elle’s first place in the “political chic” category of its annual “best-dressed” list. Probably not one of our first lady’s key goals for her first year in office, but for the American designers shown off by Obama — like Naeem Khan, who provided the gown for last week’s U.S.-India state dinner — the attention from the Paris arbiters of style is very welcome.
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