Obama agenda is ensuring loss of trust in government

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government's large capacity for misbeha…

Watergate's lessons are as fresh today as 40 years ago

'He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to ... cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

Immigrants will propel new economic growth

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with "twenty thousand times the force" of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today's argument about immigration.

Unless Democrats take House, Obama's legacy is in doubt

WASHINGTON

Gov't unfairly restricting commercial speech

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex."

Confusing rhetoric about Syria and the 'red line'

WASHINGTON

A few signs that grown-ups are taking charge in Washington

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision.

Waiving constitutional rights rarely ends well

Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events. The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which up…

George Will: Keep an eye on this outside-the-box Republican

America's most interesting development since November is the Republican Party becoming more interesting. Consider the congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., who occupies the seat once held by Gerald Ford, embodiment of vanilla Republicanism. Justin Amash, 33, may seek the Senate seat being va…

Congress' abnegation of power leads to more debt

The regulatory, administrative state, which progressives champion, is generally a servant of the strong, for two reasons. It responds to financially powerful and politically sophisticated factions. And it encourages rent-seekers to exploit opportunities for concentrated benefits and disperse…

'Central Park Five' telling may advance social justice

From Tom Paine's "Common Sense" to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," American history is replete with examples of printed words accelerating social justice.

Thatcher transformed Britain, helped bury socialism

She had the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe. So said Francois Mitterrand, the last serious socialist to lead a major European nation, speaking of Margaret Thatcher, who helped bury socialism as a doctrine of governance.

George Will: Diversity doesn't include tolerating pro-life view

We know Johns Hopkins University is devoted to diversity, because it says so. Its "Diversity and Inclusion Statement," a classic of the genre, says the university is "committed to sharing values of diversity and inclusion ... by recruiting and retaining a diverse group of students."

George Will: Minions of political correctness infest schools

WASHINGTON - The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R's - formerly reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic - now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin's Department o…

Try this baseball quiz (and it ain't over till it's over)

As the unendurable monotony of the offseason ends, celebrate baseball's return with mental calisthenics.

George Will: Presidents intervene; Congress' spine dissolves

"President Obama has arguably established the authority of the president to intervene militarily virtually anywhere without the consent or the approval of Congress, at his own discretion and for as long as he wishes."

George Will: Tinker with process, but first improve candidates

Because of the grotesquely swollen place the presidency now occupies in the nation's governance and consciousness, we are never not preoccupied with presidential campaigning. The Constitution's Framers would be appalled.

Marriage case should make both sides nervous

"Under the Constitution, the regulation and control of marital and family relationships are reserved to the states."

Gay marriage is a thicket of law and social science

When on March 26 the Supreme Court hears arguments about whether California's ban on gay marriages violates the constitutional right to "equal protection of the laws," these arguments will invoke the intersection of law and social science. The court should tread cautiously, if at all, on thi…

Making Sentence B follow Sentence A with real style

WASHINGTON - When asked to explain the brisk pace of his novels, Elmore Leonard said, "I leave out the parts that people skip."

Regulating kids' social interactions is inappropriate

Rodney Francis is insufficiently ambitious. The pastor of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church in St. Louis has entered the fray over guns, violence and humanity's fallen nature with a plan for a "buyback" of children's toy guns. And toy swords and other make-believe weapons. There is, h…

Think DC is grim now? Let's talk about Watergate

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Voting Rights Act needs 21st century update

Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress. Social Security is 78 years old and myriad social improvements have added 17 years to life expectancy since 1935, yet progressives insist the program remain frozen, like a fly in amber.

Fed's monetary policy is having perverse results

RICHMOND, Va.

The sequester is a manufactured crisis

Even during this desultory economic recovery, one industry thrives - the manufacture of synthetic hysteria. It is, however, inaccurate to accuse the Hysteric in Chief of crying "Wolf!" about spending cuts under the sequester. He is actually crying "Hamster!"

Why solitary confinement is self-defeating

WASHINGTON -

Let's give up annual State of Union histrionics

In the 12 months we have to steel ourselves for the next State of the Union spectacle, let us count the ways that this spawn of democratic Caesarism - presidency-worship - has become grotesque. It would be the most embarrassing ceremony in the nation's civic liturgy were the nation still cap…

Loquacious Barack could learn a lot from Silent Cal

WASHINGTON

Politicians are incorrigible because, face it, they're human

The arguments against a constitutional amendment to require balanced budgets are various and, cumulatively, almost conclusive. Almost. The main arguments are:

Moral grandstanding is costly, impractical politics

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Mike Hammer, Tony Soprano have nothing on Christie

TRENTON, N.J.

Obama's agenda will spur a conservative revival

WASHINGTON -

City uses its powers to bludgeon the Bill of Rights

NORFOLK, Va. -

Supreme Court may have set up health-care act for failure

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A few questions for Obama's defense nominee

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Math-challenged libs can't see equations on the wall

"Even victors are by victories undone."

Notre Dame proves academic, athletic excellence can coexist

Yet another reason to revere Calvin Coolidge is that he thought the Chicago Bears were a circus act. In the 1920s, professional football was small beer compared with the already big business of college football - which today prospers partly by selling beer: Watch the commercials that pay for…

Homestead Act of 1862 holds lessons for today

At the end of this year in which election results reinserted immigration into the political conversation, remember that 2012 is the 150th anniversary of "the first comprehensive immigration law."

Right to work gathers credibility among states

Rick Snyder warned Michigan's labor leaders. When unions put on Michigan's November ballot two measures that would have entrenched collective bargaining rights in the state Constitution, the state's mild-mannered Republican governor told them they were picking a fight they might regret.

Why it's a good month to die, and other fiscal follies

If you have worked hard for five decades, made pots of money and now want to squander it all in Las Vegas on wine, women and baccarat, go ahead. If, however, you harbor the anti-social desire - stigmatized as such by America's judgmental tax code - to bequeath your wealth to your children, t…

Precedent, logic make case for targeted killings

'Gosh!' Says Roosevelt

Obama's vow of spending cuts vanished like a mirage

Even Jonathan Swift, who said promises and pie crusts are made to be broken, might have marveled at the limited shelf life of Barack Obama's promise of a "balanced" deficit-reduction plan - substantial spending cuts to accompany revenue increases.

Liberals trammel free speech at colleges

WASHINGTON

A fiscal cliff of the Democrats' own choosing

WASHINGTON

Let us give 'thanks' for questionable stuff

Among the things for which Americans can, on this feast day, be thankful is Washington's resolve to temper severity with mercy: It will seriously - this time we really mean business, we are not going to be Greece, or worse, Illinois - restrain spending but will not balance the budget on the …

Consumer finance agency has no 'taint of legality'

There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a creature of the laby- rinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and Congress' constitution…

Conservatives should dust themselves off and look ahead

Nothing's impossible I have found,

GOP failed to realize that demographics are destiny

America's 57th presidential election revealed that a second important national institution is on an unsustainable trajectory. The first, the entitlement state, is endangered by improvident promises to an aging population. And now the Republican Party, like today's transfer-payment state, is …

Here's advice on what to watch for as the returns come in

PRESIDENT: The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for president.

Wake up, or entitlement mind-set will ruin us

The election-eve mood is tinged with sadness stemming from well-founded fear that America's new government is subverting America's old character. Barack Obama's agenda is a menu of temptations intended to change the nation's social norms by making Americans comfortable with the degradation o…