Category Archives: National Journal

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Opening Argument – The President Should Stop Saying Things That Aren’t True

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

President Bush’s pre-war exaggerations of the strength of the intelligence that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program and large stockpiles of biological and chemical arms were neither "lies" nor as far from being true as partisan critics suggest. His now-infamous assertion in his January 28 State of the Union address — that the British government "has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" — would have been quite accurate had he crossed out "has learned" and inserted "believes." More recently, Bush could have repaired the damage to his credibility by taking responsibility for any overstatements or errors about details, while carefully explaining why the case for war was and remains strong.

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How Campus Censors Squelch Freedom of Speech

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Steve Hinkle, a student at California Polytechnic State University, was posting fliers around campus last November 12 that advertised a speech to be given the next evening. The fliers contained a photo of the speaker, black conservative Mason Weaver, and the words "It’s OK to Leave the Plantation," the name of a book in which Weaver likens African-American dependence on government programs to slavery.

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Getting Serious About Race: The Next 25 Years

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"We are mindful … that `[a] core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.’ … Accordingly, race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time…. We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in racial diversity] approved today."

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Ashcroft and the Post-9/11 Arrogance of Power

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Some of the 762 mostly Middle Eastern men detained on immigration charges after the September 11 attacks "appear to have been arrested more by virtue of chance encounters or tenuous connections to a … lead rather than by any genuine indications of a possible connection with or possession of information about terrorist activity," concludes Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in his 200-page report, released on June 2, on the detentions.

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Legal Affairs – Courting Trouble

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Conservative and liberal activists, lawyers, political junkies, and the media are abuzz with eager anticipation that this summer will bring the mother of all Senate confirmation battles, with the closely divided Supreme Court’s ideological balance at the tipping point. "It is almost certain," Time magazine forecast last month-with more confidence than evidence-"that by the end of June, when the Supreme Court adjourns for summer recess, at least one justice will have announced his or her retirement."

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The Judicial Selection Wars: How a Truce Could Be Fashioned

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Republicans and Democrats are nearing the brink of nuclear warfare over President Bush’s judicial nominations. Unless both sides compromise, the damage to the government and the nation could be profound. Hostilities have raged on and off since the 1987 Battle of Bork, resulting in a downward spiral of partisan bitterness and recriminations. The latest and biggest escalation has been Senate Democrats’ all-but-unprecedented filibusters of professionally well-qualified Bush nominees who are simply too conservative for the Democrats’ taste. And now, as both sides prepare for a climactic battle in the event of any Supreme Court retirements, Republicans are threatening the so-called nuclear option.

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America’s Credibility Is Taking a Hit in Iraq

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Did the Bush administration deliberately mislead the nation and the world when President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and others so confidently suggested, as their casus belli, that Saddam Hussein had hundreds of tons of banned chemical and biological weapons and a program to build a nuclear bomb?

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Three Judges, Four Opinions, 1,638 Pages, and One Good Idea

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"Last year when I ran for the Senate … I locked myself in a room with an aide, a telephone, and a list of potential contributors. The aide would get the `mark’ on the phone, then hand me a card with the spouse’s name, the contributor’s main interest, and a reminder to `appear chatty.’ I’d remind the agribusinessman that I was on the Agriculture Committee; I’d remind the banker I was on the Banking Committee. And then I’d make a plaintive plea for soft money-that armpit of today’s fundraising…. I always left that room feeling like a cheap prostitute who’d had a busy day."