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May 24, 2013 | 12:03 PM
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Gene Healy

Examiner Columnist

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Gene Healy is a columnist for The Washington Examiner, a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of "The Cult of the Presidency."

Contributions

  • Gene Healy: Rand Paul vs. the 'forever war'

    Gene Healy

    Published: Mon, Mar 11, 2013

    The cruelest thing about politics is that it occasionally gets your hopes up. Sometimes, just when you've almost concluded that the best D.C. has to offer is ringside seats at the latest legislative catastrophe, you get an unexpected outbreak of political courage and common sense. So it was a...

  • Gene Healy: D.C. is capital of the absurd

    Gene Healy

    Updated: Mon, Mar 4, 2013

    Like most of this company town, I'm addicted to Netflix's Beltway "telenovela," "House of Cards," starring Kevin Spacey as a conspiratorial House majority whip. But the show unwittingly flatters D.C., depicting a city of ruthless, steely competence. The real thing is a clown show consumed by...

  • Gene Healy: America in denial as fiscal tsunami approaches

    Gene Healy

    Published: Mon, Feb 25, 2013

    It's hard to hear yourself think over all the caterwauling on Capitol Hill about the looming sequestration "crisis." For opponents of the spending cuts -- at $85 billion, 2.3 percent of the $3.6 trillion federal budget -- the rallying cry is half Lord Keynes, half St. Augustine: "Grant me...

  • Gene Healy: Obama's executive death warrants

    Gene Healy

    Published: Mon, Feb 11, 2013

    Don't Americans have "the right to know when their government believes it's allowed to kill them"? As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., put it last week, you'd think that's "not too much to ask." For three years now, thanks to Obama administration leaks, we've known that the president claims the right...

  • Gene Healy: Chuck Hagel's farcical hearings

    Gene Healy

    Published: Mon, Feb 4, 2013

    Last week's confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel made clear it's past time to retire that hackneyed phrase "World's Greatest Deliberative Body." Eight hours of questioning by the Senate Armed Services Committee allowed plenty of bloviating, grandstanding and browbeating...

  • Gene Healy: Obama's 'second-term blues' have begun

    Gene Healy

    Updated: Mon, Jan 28, 2013

    Last Wednesday marked the anniversary of President Clinton's historic pronouncement, in the 1996 State of the Union, that "the era of big government is over." "Not by a long shot," President Obama seemed to say in his second inaugural last week. It was "a surprisingly liberal speech" remarked...

  • Gene Healy: Pomp and circumstance, all signifying nothing

    Gene Healy

    Updated: Mon, Jan 21, 2013

    Congressional Quarterly's comprehensive "Guide to the Presidency" helpfully explains that "the only part of the inaugural ceremony that is required by the Constitution is the taking of the oath of office." If only somebody had bothered to check, we could have wrapped it all up Sunday when Chief...

  • Gene Healy: 'No labels'? No thanks

    Gene Healy

    Updated: Mon, Jan 14, 2013

    Fiscal cliffs, "nuclear options," trillion-dollar platinum coins -- in this late stage of our imperial decline, we seem to be drowning in apocalyptic metaphors and loopy policy gimmicks. Who among us can disagree with the sentiment articulated by hip-hop star Akon in his "No Labels Anthem": "We...

  • Gene Healy: Will Newtown lead to 'Lockdown High'?

    Gene Healy

    Published: Mon, Jan 7, 2013

    Sandy Hook Elementary School students returned to class without incident last Thursday, less than three weeks after one of the most horrific school shootings in U.S. history. Such horrible but extremely rare tragedies often spur legislative panic attacks in which the urge to "do something"...

  • Gene Healy: The Five Worst Op-Eds of 2012

    Gene Healy

    Published: Tue, Jan 1, 2013

    For three years running, I've closed the Old Year with a seasonal burst of bile, my annual Five Worst Op-Eds column. As before, this year's malicious listicle rewards bad arguments and bad writing, with extra points for warped values. ? 5. Eric Posner, "The World Doesn't Love the First...


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