ETHANOL MANDATES HAVE BECOME a defining issue of the presidential campaign. And that’s a problem for Barack Obama. For many years, John McCain was an ardent opponent of ethanol. During the early part of the current presidential campaign—or at least while he was campaigning in Iowa—he was an advocate. Now, McCain’s an opponent again. Obama, […]

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Mayors Cheer Single Payer—Most of the national news media missed the story in the last week of June: the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously endorsed a bill that would provide universal health care under a single-payer system. West Palm Beach Mayor Lois J. Frankel introduced a resolution to support HR 676, Rep. John Conyers’s (D-MI) […]

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GIVE ONE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE CREDIT for identifying the problem and getting the policy right—and doing so before the twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into the tank in mid-July. “For too long the Congress has played the role of an indulgent parent to the GSEs. . . . It is time […]

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D’ACQUA IS AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT located halfway between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the space once occupied by Signatures, the celebrated Washington dining spot owned by disgraced—and incarcerated—lobbyist Jack Abramoff. (We’re staying with Abramoff for one more issue of the Spectator, because although he’s in a maximum security prison, he remains […]

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Feingold on FISA—Speaking at the New American Foundation the last week in June, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) argued that Senate Democrats, including Barack Obama, are wrong on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) compromise the House and Senate reached with the Bush administration. Feingold said the immunity provision for telephone companies that engaged in warrantless […]

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