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George F. Will, whose newspaper column has been syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group since 1974, today appears in more than 460 papers. In 1976, Will became a regular Newsweek contributor, providing the backpage essay twice a month. In the same year, George Will won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his newspaper column.
In addition to his magazine and newspaper writing, George Will is also an author and network-television broadcaster commentator. George Will is Contributing Analyst with ABC-TV News on World News Tonight, and has been a regular member of ABC's This Week on Sunday mornings since 1981.
Four collections of his Newsweek and newspaper columns have been published. Most recently, his book Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (1989, Macmillan) topped national bestseller lists in the number-one position for over two months.
George Will, born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1941, was educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Oxford and Princeton universities. Prior to entering journalism, George Will taught political philosophy at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto and served on the staff of the United States Senate. Until becoming a columnist for Newsweek, George Will was Washington editor of The National Review.
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George Will (Dec 31, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Already 99.9 (and about 58 more 9s) percent of the universe -- it is expanding lickety-split -- is beyond Earth's atmosphere. Into what is it expanding?... more
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George Will (Dec 24, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Late in life, the mother of the Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J., began attending mass at a Southern California church, the congregation of which soon... more
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George Will (Dec 21, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- It was serendipitous to have almost simultaneous climaxes in Copenhagen and Congress. The former's accomplishment was indiscernible, the latter's... more
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George Will (Dec 20, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "Last year," Ryan Bingham says, "I spent 322 days on the road, which means that I had to spend 43 miserable days at home." Home is an Omaha rental unit less... more
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George Will (Dec 17, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Rushing to lock the nation into expensive health care and climate change commitments, Democrats are in an understandable frenzy because public enthusiasm... more
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George Will (Dec 13, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Two Saturdays ago, the nation was one tick of a Texas clock away from a cultural crisis. Nebraska led Texas 12-10 in the Big 12 Conference championship... more
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George Will (Dec 10, 2009)
They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat,
Hershey and his chocolate bar ...
-- George Gershwin
WASHINGTON -- And at Rep. Ron Paul, the... more
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George Will (Dec 06, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth's last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming... more
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George Will (Dec 02, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- A traveler asks a farmer how to get to a particular village. The farmer replies, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here." Barack Obama, who... more
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George Will (Nov 29, 2009)
DENVER -- Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a marijuana leaf, is a red cross. The cross serves the fiction that most transactions in the store --... more
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George Will (Nov 26, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Another huge value-destroying hurricane is about to slam America, destroying billions of dollars of value. Another Katrina? No, another Christmas.
... more
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George Will (Nov 22, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- What city contributed most to the making of the modern world? The Paris of the Enlightenment and then of Napoleon, pioneer of mass armies and nationalist... more
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George Will (Nov 19, 2009)
PHOENIX -- In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon... more
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George Will (Nov 15, 2009)
NEW YORK -- The 20th century was 100 years of amplitude. It overflowed with barbarous fighting faiths, wars enveloping continents, and graphic journalism... more
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George Will (Nov 12, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast... more
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George Will (Nov 08, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Intelligent people agree that, absent immediate radical action regarding global warming, the human race is sunk. That is a tautology because... more
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George Will (Nov 04, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Actress Cate Blanchett, who has played Queen Elizabeth I, is performing here, portraying someone less than regal -- flurried, anxious Blanche DuBois, in... more
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George Will (Nov 01, 2009)
SEATTLE -- Conservatives here, a droll minority, say that under this city's quota system, when a conservative enters the city, one already here is required to leave. They... more
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George Will (Oct 29, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- During his immersion in his new job, Gil Kerlikowske attended a focus group of 7-year-old girls and was mystified by their talk about "farm parties." Then he... more
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George Will (Oct 25, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000 he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages... more
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George Will (Oct 22, 2009)
Three years before Rep. Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who then chaired the Ways and Means Committee, had his fling with a stripper named Fanne Foxe, aka "The Argentine... more
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George Will (Oct 22, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Three years before Rep. Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who then chaired the Ways and Means Committee, had his fling with a stripper named Fanne Foxe,... more
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George Will (Oct 18, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- As Harvard's president, Larry Summers, economist and former Treasury secretary, was a lion in a den of Daniels. The faculty Daniels, their tender... more
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George Will (Oct 15, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Demure Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, but since then has not made many waves. It might, however, be part of a political wave a... more
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George Will (Oct 11, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Consider nature. Not the placid nature that Constable painted, but nature as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of... more
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George Will (Oct 05, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- In the Niagara of words spoken and written about the Obamas' trip to Copenhagen, too few have been devoted to the words they spoke there. Their... more
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George Will (Oct 04, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Last Thursday, the president's "engagement" with Iran began. This Wednesday, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will enter its ninth year. And U.S. foreign policy... more
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George Will (Oct 01, 2009)
Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution -- New York Times, Sept. 23
WASHINGTON -- In this headline on a New York Times... more
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George Will (Sep 27, 2009)
MIAMI -- Florida, a geological afterthought, was the last portion of what are now the lower 48 states to emerge from the ocean, and it emerged halfheartedly:... more
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George Will (Sep 23, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- While in Pittsburgh, a sense of seemliness should prevent President Barack Obama from again exhorting the G-20, as he did April 2 in London, to be... more
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George Will (Sep 20, 2009)
For 11 days in late August and early September in 1995, U.S. and NATO air power defended Bosnian Muslims, who were being attacked by Bosnian Serbs, who were supported... more
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George Will (Sep 17, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "This is just the beginning," said Yosi Sergant to participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for... more
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George Will (Sep 13, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Last March, during the Supreme Court argument concerning the Federal Election Commission's banning of a political movie, several justices were aghast.... more
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George Will (Sep 10, 2009)
SAN DIEGO -- Becoming governor next year will be a daunting challenge for California's Republican insurance commissioner, but Steve Poizner has surmounted other obstacles, as... more
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George Will (Sep 03, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two
months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly
transitioning to a... more
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George Will (Sep 01, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's)... more
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George Will (Aug 30, 2009)
SAN DIEGO -- The most ominous domestic event of the 1970s was the collapse of self-government in New York City, which before being put into receivership by the state... more
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George Will (Aug 26, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- At the Democrats' 1960 convention in Los Angeles that nominated John Kennedy, his 28-year-old brother Ted was standing with the Wyoming delegation when... more
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George Will (Aug 23, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev... more
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George Will (Aug 20, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- It began with the proliferation of campus "speech codes" ostensibly designed to promote civility but frequently used to enforce political conformity. The... more
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George Will (Aug 17, 2009)
Howard Lederer, aka "the Professor," is a professional poker player, not a gambler. If Congress will acknowledge this distinction, it will rectify one of its recent... more
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George Will (Jul 23, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Unfortunately, China's president had to dash home to suppress ethnic riots. Had he stayed in Italy at the recent G-8 summit, he could have... more
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George Will (Jul 19, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Fifty years ago, on July 21, 1959, Grove Press won permission to publish D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Two days later, G.D.... more
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George Will (Jul 16, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- How does the Obama administration love organized labor? Let us count the ways it uses power to repay unions for helping to put it in power.
... more
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George Will (Jul 12, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Economic policy, which became startling when Washington began buying automobile companies, has become surreal now that disappointment with the... more
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George Will (Jul 08, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- The death of Robert McNamara at 93 was less a faint reverberation of a receding era than a reminder that mentalities are the defining attributes... more
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George Will (Jul 05, 2009)
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- California's campaigns introduce candidates not only to the state's voters but to its immensity. In Bakersfield, Meg Whitman, 52, the former CEO of... more
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George Will (Jun 30, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "In the beginning," says a character in a Peter De Vries novel, "the earth was without form and void. Why didn't they leave well enough alone?"... more
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George Will (Jun 29, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Although New Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly -- 5-4. The egregious behavior by... more
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George Will (Jun 25, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for... more
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George Will (Jun 21, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- To dissect today's health care debate, the crux of which concerns a "public option," use the mind's equivalent of a surgeon's scalpel, Occam's... more
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George Will (Jun 18, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Politicians have extraordinary shoulder joints that enable them to pat themselves on the back, and last week the president, a master of that... more
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George Will (Jun 14, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "We," said Queen Victoria, employing the royal plural, "are not amused." "We," said the Treasury Department on Tuesday, relishing the royal... more
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George Will (Jun 11, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Noting that people "criticize me for harping on the obvious," Calvin Coolidge justified that practice by saying, "If all the folks in the United... more
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George Will (Jun 07, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "I," said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun, "want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we... more
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George Will (Jun 04, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- There once was an Indianapolis concert featuring 50 pianos. Splendid instruments, pianos. Still, 50 might have been excessive. As is today's... more
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George Will (May 31, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Epiphanies are a dime a dozen among congressional Democrats as they discover urgent new reasons to experience the almost erotic pleasure of... more
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George Will (May 26, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Responding to early 19th-century rumors that they drank excessively, the Supreme Court justices decided to drink nothing on conference days --... more
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George Will (May 24, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- For several decades, most of the ingenuity that liberal academics have invested in First Amendment analysis has aimed to justify limiting the core... more
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George Will (May 20, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- California, the sunny incubator of America's future, has relished its role as a leading indicator of political trends. Tuesday it became what it... more
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George Will (May 17, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Greed, we are agreed, is bad. It also is strange. It has long been included among the Seven Deadly Sins, which suggests that it is a universal and... more
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George Will (May 14, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as their whims decreed, were it not for the... more
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George Will (May 10, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- From Oct. 18 to Dec. 3, 1961, 116,000 people visited New York's Museum of Modern Art before anyone noticed that Henri Matisse's painting "Le Bateau" had... more
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George Will (May 07, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Gulliver's travels took him to the Academy of Lagado, where "professors contrive new rules and methods" for everything: "One man shall do the work... more
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George Will (May 03, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- California's increasingly severe and largely self-inflicted economic crisis will deepen on May 19 if, as is probable and desirable, voters reject... more
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George Will (Apr 30, 2009)
Reconciliation: The action of bringing to agreement, concord, or harmony. -- Oxford English Dictionary
WASHINGTON -- But under Senate rules,... more
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George Will (Apr 26, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Wednesday morning, a lawyer defending in the Supreme Court what the city of New Haven, Conn., did to Frank Ricci and 17 other white firemen (including... more
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George Will (Apr 23, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president... more
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George Will (Apr 19, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- America's "progressive" president has some peculiarly retro policies. Domestically, his reactionary liberalism is exemplified by his policy of No... more
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George Will (Apr 16, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- On any American street, or in any airport or mall, you see the same sad tableau: A 10-year-old boy is walking with his father, whose development... more
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George Will (Apr 12, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Rampant redistribution of wealth by government is now the norm. So is this: It inflames government's natural rapaciousness and subverts the rule... more
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George Will (Apr 09, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- In Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," a time-traveling American brought baseball to 6th-century England, where arguments... more
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George Will (Apr 05, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- The Constitution enumerates three requirements of those who would be president (they must be natural-born citizens, at least 35 and a resident... more
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George Will (Apr 02, 2009)
Fervent. 1. Hot, burning, glowing, boiling. -- Oxford English Dictionary
WASHINGTON -- "Fervently" is how America will henceforth engage in talks... more
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George Will (Mar 29, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- It is high time Americans heard an argument that might turn a vague national uneasiness into a vivid awareness of something going very wrong. The... more
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George Will (Mar 24, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House
of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax
code to confiscate legal... more
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George Will (Mar 22, 2009)
PHOENIX -- Police Chief Jack Harris, a solid block of a man with a shock of thick gray hair, is stolid and patient but there are limits. Clearly he is weary of... more
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George Will (Mar 19, 2009)
PHOENIX -- X-Caliber, a gun store in a nondescript neighborhood in this city's northern section, has become embroiled in Mexico's turmoil. The chaos there is... more
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George Will (Mar 15, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- During Reconstruction, Mississippi created a "shoestring" congressional district, sweeping so many blacks into a narrow district along the... more
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George Will (Mar 12, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Charles Dickens, who visited in 1842, described Washington as a "city of magnificent intentions" because of the incongruity between the city's... more
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George Will (Mar 08, 2009)
We're from I-o-way, I-o-way,
State of all the land
Joy on ev'ry hand ...
That's where the tall corn grows.
-- Iowa's unofficial song... more
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George Will (Mar 05, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- On Dec. 6, 2007, while she was away from the Senate pursuing the presidency, Sen. Hillary Clinton asked Majority Leader Harry Reid to introduce... more
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George Will (Feb 27, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented... more
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George Will (Feb 26, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Put down that cheeseburger and listen up: If food has become what sex was a generation ago -- the intimidatingly intelligent Mary Eberstadt says... more
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George Will (Feb 22, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment... more
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George Will (Feb 19, 2009)
"Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose. ... I don't say to him ... 'Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15 ... '"
--... more
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George Will (Feb 16, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- A corollary of Murphy's Law ("If something can go wrong, it will") is: "Things are worse than they can possibly be." Energy Secretary Steven Chu,... more
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George Will (Feb 12, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- The president, convinced that the only thing America has to fear is an insufficiency of fear, has warned that "disaster" and "catastrophe" are the... more
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George Will (Feb 08, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "Descended from the apes!" exclaimed the wife of the bishop of Worcester. "Let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become... more
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George Will (Feb 05, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- One answer is: Six rows of stars -- the top, third and fifth rows with nine, the second, fourth and sixth rows with eight. The question is: How... more
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George Will (Feb 01, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- "Recidivism" is Rep. Jim Cooper's laconic explanation of why he, although only 54, has spent portions of five decades on Congress' payroll.... more
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George Will (Jan 29, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Summoned to remove a fish bone agonizingly stuck in a rich man's throat, British surgeon Joseph Lister did so. When the grateful patient asked the... more
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George Will (Jan 25, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Days before becoming responsible, in the eyes of a public fixated on the presidency, for almost everything, Barack Obama vowed to convene a... more
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George Will (Jan 21, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Wondering if his publisher liked the manuscript of "Les Miserables," Victor Hugo sent a terse note: "?" His publisher replied as tersely: "!" That was the... more
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George Will (Jan 18, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- When, beginning in 1901, the Supreme Court decided some cases about how the Constitution applied to overseas territories, Mr. Dooley, the... more
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George Will (Jan 15, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Last November, 13,402,566 California voters expressed themselves for or against Proposition 8, which said that their state's Constitution should be... more
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George Will (Jan 11, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self. In a... more
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George Will (Jan 08, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- In America's ever-more-democratic society, egalitarianism seeps into everything, even the supposedly severe meritocracy of sport. So every... more
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George Will (Jan 04, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Like pebbles tossed into ponds, important Supreme Court rulings radiate ripples of consequences. Consider a 1971 Supreme Court decision that... more
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George Will (Jan 01, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- Health care, says the man most concerned with that 17 percent of America's economy, can be "a nation-ruining issue." As Michael Leavitt ends four years as... more