The coming elections are not as slam dunk as the Morris & McGann hope. The Obama administration's attack on the financial industry will resonate voters who may have found themselves unable to pay their mortgages or are unemployed and have had to default on their charge cards.

The past week's SEC lawsuit against Goldman Sachs backs up Obama's "anti-investment banker" strategy. The strategy is ironic in that said financial industry created Obama's presidency: in the Spring of 2008 Barron's weekly reported that
the financials had shifted their funding from old-reliables like Hillary and Bill Clinton to a previously obscure political figure, i.e., Obama.
So this is indeed a case of "biting the hand that fed you" as per Mark...

Raging against Obama is useless when you consider that he was constitutionally elected president by the American people. If like myself you consider his domestic and foreign policies injurious to America's health then you must recognize then you must admit that there is something wrong within the American people as a body. That is, Obama is a symptom not a cause.

Most will agree that America is at low tide. We are withdrawing from the world financially, economically, militarily, diplomatically and culturally. As individuals we behave like that when we are sick. We take mountebanks as doctors and swallow the syrups offered by them. If we diagnose the disease(s) correctly we will identify the cures. We won't need Obamas then.

Whenever a group or faction gains state power it inherits the interests of that state. Thus when the communists achieved power in Russia they put the ideology of "world revolution" on the back burner. On the front burner came Russia's interests. If the assumers of power had not pursued Russia's interests they would not have remained in power long.

Given the Iranian Islamists' solid hold on power in Persia one must conclude that they do pursue Persia's national interests. Any negotiation with them must center on these. Their seemingly absurd religious beliefs must not be fought but brushed aside as irrelevant to the task at hand.

Many analysts now think of World War II as a continuation of World War I after a brief armistice. Germany was really not fully defeated in WWI so after an Armistice and phony peace treaty, which the western allies had to grant due to their own poor condition, Hitler resumed the battle. Therefore there was only one 20th century WW.

In the same way there was only one Iraq-U.S. War. Objective: Saddam's removal and execution. George Herbert Walker Bush at last minute decided not to enter Baghdad and remove him - for too many reasons to list here. After a pause during which Saddam actually behaved rather well internationally GWB decided this dangerous ruler had to be removed after all. The job was completed - including heir removal....

Ted

You - as a lawyer - have now convinced me that precedents before Kelo had in effect already decided that Kelo's appeal would be rejected. In view of the precedents the Court majority would not re-enter the perilous route of parsing the words of the Constitution, i.e., "public interest" vs. "public use," this last being the actual wording. No doubt they did not consider the Kelo issues as important enough - in contrast to such parsing, say, of the the right to bear arms or of "separate but equal." I would now shelve Kelo and go back to the Gov. Nelson Rockefeller initiated "taking" of pre-Twin Towers-Lower Manhattan to erect the monuments to the U.S. financial industry.

As concerns limitations to Justices' tenure and...

Ted

As a non-lawyer I do not see the case as revolving around any "facts" but around the interpretation of the Constitution's permission seizure of private property only for "public use" with, of course, "just compensation." With the Stevens reading of "public use" as "public interest" the issues are thrown into the political realm - what is or is not in the "public interest" is not for judges to determine but rather by legislators and to a lesser extent by executives. What is or is not "groundbreaking" is a subjective judgment. I for one would call re-interpreting important passages in the Constitution as such.

The important predecessor to Kelo was the judicial green light during the 1970s to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's ...

Today's WSJ revisits Justice Stevens' masterpiece: the Kelo ruling that read the Constitution's "public use" as "public interest." It seems that developer Vornado Realty had `convinced' the Mayor of Boston that a well-known older but still popular department store be torn down to make way for a more modern and more profitable commercial development. Under Kelo, if the mayor and his council agreed, "eminent domain" as ruled by Justice Stevens, i.e., "public interest," Filene's had to go.
But it turned out after the tearing down that Vornado had not in fact intended prompt building in the now vacant lot. Vornado will wait for a better real estate market. The populace is angry at the firm and, especially, the Mayor. Nothing to be...

Powers' weapons systems take time to align with their nations' positions and needs. Thus over a long period of isolation from Old World disputes a strong Navy was sufficient to the U.S.'s defense needs. Then came WW when suddenly America had to build up deploy vast armies abroad. Miracle we succeeded. During the past Cold War the nuclear weapons Triad was sufficient to deter a U.S.-Soviet war. That time of inter-power stability is over. So is the stability of weapons systems.

One of the contributors to nuclear stability was that as practically sole possessors of nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia were forced to cooperate in maintaining peace over unstable parts of the world - like the Middle East. If the U.S. and Russia agreed...

Kudlow's survey of public debt glosses over a very important distinction anyone who has ever been involved in Federal budgeting: the difference between "discretionary" and "entitlement" outlays. These days only the smaller part of the pie is "discretionary": even defense spending falls under that slice. What then are "entitlements"? They seem not to be contractual or even voted on by legislatures. They seem to be "rights" to money we all have because 1) we exist, 2) are of a certain age or sex or 3) because our ancestors were subjected to various misfortunes. The recipient of entitlements does not have to pay the money back ever or reciprocate with any form of work.

Other countries may be as indebted as hell, but somehow don't...

"Nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies - only permanent interests." Like the "tectonic plates" that make up the world's continents - sticking together in a pattern for long periods of time but suddenly breaking up to form a new one - national alignments only seem unalterable: In actuality, realignments are as natural as bygone and future alignments. And at a time of "earthquakes" we can have no certain knowledge of what the coming pattern will be.

Krauthammer laments that a long period of U.S.-UK alignment of interests may be breaking up. But after all for most of their history the American Republic was at odds with the British Crown. Founding Father Jefferson, who opened the Continent up for the new...