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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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"...
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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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