Sobran's Washington Watch --- Archives, 2005

Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch
Archives, 2005

Joe’s Washington Watch columns are posted at this site by special agreement with The Wanderer three weeks after they are published in The Wanderer.

Joe began writing his column for The Wanderer in 1986. Beginning with the April 3, 2003, column, the Washington Watch columns are archived on this website and are accessible from every page.

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December 29, 2005	•	Bush’s “Implied” Powers • Bush’s Monarchic Predecessors They seem to be limitless. • An awesome figure, dwarfing Caesars and Napoleon
December 22, 2005	•	Democracy in Iraq • Tookie’s Reward • Eugene McCarthy RIP We owe our real liberties, the ones we exercise daily rather than at four-year intervals, to Christianity and to English common law. • Opposing capital punishment does not mean sentimentalizing the criminal or minimizing his crime. • The liberal I loved
December 15, 2005	•	Alito and the Constitution • Forgotten Prophet • Boo-Hoo of the Week Are conservatives permanently afraid to avow their principles in public? • How completely America has changed! • The self-pity of Andrew Sullivan
December 8, 2005	•	“I’m Gay; Ordain Me” • Saddam the Martyr? • Revolutionary America Why is this even an issue? • We’re supposed to think the end is in view. • Since when do Republicans talk like Lenin and Trotsky?
December 1, 2005	•	More Woes for Bush • Bethell vs. Darwin Keeping a losing issue for Republicans from becoming a winning issue for Democrats • Abusing the scientific method
November 24, 2005	•	Bad Times for Bush • The Abortion Front • The Bright Side of Mao Forced optimism isn’t contagious. • The unbiased liberal press weighs in. • How not to “emancipate” women
November 17, 2005	•	Papal Court • French Follies • Queen Camilla? Aristotelianism versus Hegelianism • Seeing America’s future • High-level gossip
November 10, 2005	•	Alito’s Threat • Just in Time Never at a loss for a party line • Forgetting about independent variables
November 3, 2005	•	Cheney and Company • Rosa Parks RIP A petty and vindictive game • A change in images
October 27, 2005	•	Is Bush a Liar? • Harriet Miers’s Dark Secret • Clooney’s Folly What wishful thinking sounds like • It’s worse than actually having an abortion. • A silly fable
October 20, 2005	•	The Miers Debate • Bush’s Legacy • Big Winners? His recommendation is actually a disqualification. • Dropping benign dominoes • Conservatives have marginalized themselves.
October 13, 2005	•	The New Nominee • Bennett’s Logic • Defending Virtue She can hardly be any worse than the justice she’s replacing. • Liberal hypocrisies • It’s become a dangerous job, but someone’s got to do it.
October 6, 2005	•	Taking Trillions • SOS (Same Old Smears) • Dirty Words Principle finally makes an appearance — probably too late. • They don’t even bother to supply any evidence anymore. • Some of these words are just stupid.
September 29, 2005	•	Advanced Conservative Studies • Late Surprises • Clare Asquith, Shakespeare, and the Catholic Question Principle and partisanship • The Court is supposed to rule on strictly legal merits, not extraneous contingencies that may arise from its rulings. • How Catholic was Shakespeare?
September 22, 2005	•	Roberts and Precedent • New Light on Roe The answer that froze my blood • It looks as though the Court didn’t exactly intend what followed.
September 15, 2005	•	Blaming Bush • Conservatism: The False “Triumph” The constant yet fluxive sense of crisis, serial obsessions, insane partisan recriminations, and bottomless generosity with public money • Moving while standing still
September 8, 2005	•	Stormy Weather • Seamlessness • Liberal Fundamentalism Socialism without end • Catholics who refuse to think, talk, and act like Catholics • But who needs nuance when you’re dealing with religious loonies like Aristotle?
September 1, 2005	•	Day of the Jackass • Finishing the Job • Encouraging Word Conservatives’ skepticism often disappears when it comes to the military and the CIA. • President Bush should listen to his father. • Our brave colleague
August 18, 2005	•	Paul Weyrich’s Ordeal • Reservations about Roberts • Down with Darwin! • Revisiting the Population Crisis A real conservative • Roberts has some explaining to do. • Materialism can’t explain us, but we can explain materialism. • Things have reached a desperate pass when liberals are warning us that even Communism can’t save us.
August 11, 2005	•	Religious Tests? • The Sins of Alec Guinness Whether the U.S. Constitution forbids states to restrict or forbid the practice of abortion is a factual question. • He seems never to have regarded his vice as defining his “identity.”
August 4, 2005	•	Roberts’s Religion In a better world, it would be good for everyone to hear the nominee’s frank views on the Constitution.
July 28, 2005	•	Bush’s Pick Ted Kennedy and his allies are always willing to get as ugly as it takes.
July 21, 2005	•	Is It War? • The Court and the Wolves The prospect is more of the same, on both sides ... endlessly. • State legislatures have no “check” on a federal court.
July 14, 2005	•	After O’Connor • Is the Pope Roman Catholic? Principles are the only thing worth fighting for. • I just don’t like the word.
July 7, 2005	•	Bush’s War • Curbing the Court A mind more comfortable with melodrama than with tragedy • Limits on independence
June 30, 2005	•	So Sorry • Back to Rome? • Graham’s Retirement The strength of American national vanity • The climax of an old tragedy • The press takes notice.
June 23, 2005	•	Not Guilty? • Graham Cracks What’s so bad about pedophilia anyway? • I wish I’d said this.
June 16, 2005	•	Two Popes and the War • Instruments of Darkness • Something to Crowe About The value of moral wisdom • Do we sufficiently consider the possibility that our rulers may be “instruments of darkness”? • The “muscular” Sobran
June 09, 2005	•	Further Medical Notes • Olivier and the Old Testament • The End of the Story I’m not trying to make medical history. • Wait until you hear what he could do with the King James Bible! • For better or worse, a formative moment for this generation
June 2, 2005 A reprint from the Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications	•	Calling All Grown-Ups A device for shirking and concealing responsibility.
May 26, 2005	•	Covering the Papacy Vanity Fair and The New Yorker have some things to say about the papacy. Some of them are even surprising.
May 19, 2005	•	C.S. Lewis versus the Church Some new biographies look at C. S. Lewis and Catholicism.
May 12, 2005	•	Bringing Down the (White) House • Missing Person • The Pope and his Enemies A trend I don’t care for • Another trend I don’t care for • No wonder his enemies don’t quote him!
May 5, 2005	•	Benedict’s Doctrine Would these malcontents be paid to write assaults on the Church if they didn’t identify themselves as Catholics?
April 28, 2005	•	Bad News for Liberals • Thank You To understand Catholicism in merely political terms is not to understand it at all. • A hiatus in my flamenco dancing
April 21, 2005 *The Wanderer* used a reprint sent out by the Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications	•	“In Our Hands” What Israelis can say that Americans can’t.
April 14, 2005 *The Wanderer* used reprints sent out by the Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications	•	How Many Enemies? • The Government We’re Stuck With It’s possible to be absolutely in the right and stupid at the same time. • The fateful decisions have already been made for us, and all that’s left is a little wiggle room.
April 7, 2005	•	More on Mr. Schiavo • The Same Old Pope • That Memo • Sola Scriptura? I keep crediting my fellow Americans too much. • Learning from a dying Pope. • Turns out, it was a lie. • It’s unbiblical.
March 31, 2005	•	Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo Terri Schiavo was sentenced to die in 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right to choose supersedes the right to live.
March 24, 2005	•	Slick Jurisprudence • The Mother of God • Deep in History The authors of state constitutions hadn’t the faintest intention or notion of mandating future liberal agendas. • Once the holiness of the mother is forgotten, the holiness of the Son follows. • It’s all or nothing.
March 17, 2005	•	Changing the World • Benign Neglect • The Fatal Compromise We now take for granted things that, if predicted a few decades ago, would have made our blood freeze. • The United States hasn’t faced even a small foreign invasion in nearly two centuries. • Just embrace the Sexual Revolution.
March 10, 2005	•	Not Again! Despite its semblance of the rule of law, the federal judiciary, like the federal government itself, is essentially lawless.
March 3, 2005	•	Francis and His Enemies When Sam died, we found that his enemies were well aware of his existence, and felt that he still had to be dealt with, if only by defamation.
February 24, 2005	•	Sam Francis RIP When a seemingly unbelieving man surrounds himself with Catholic friends, there is something going on that does not meet the eye.
February 17, 2005	•	The Bush Legacy • Thoughts on Evolution • Islam and the Future “Big-government conservatism” is achieving what Bill Clinton failed to achieve. • Where are the rough drafts? • The coming collision of the world’s two largest religions
February 10, 2005	•	Building Democracy • Thoughts on “Choice” If “the hard work is still ahead,” as Secretary Rice says, doesn’t that imply that the 1,400 American deaths in Iraq are just the beginning? • You can learn a lot by listening.
February 3, 2005	•	From Bush to Burke • Rice and Race • Slick Hillary • Gibson’s Courage Bush sounds like the French revolutionaries Burke was warning against. • She says just what the boss wants her to say. • Hillary moves to the right. • If they gave awards for guts, Gibson would be a shoo-in.
January 27, 2005	•	Which Sex Is Smarter? • Inaugural Buzz Men are not the measure of women. • How Bush annoys his enemies
January 20, 2005	•	Ending with a Crash • The Root of the Problem I was never able to see Dan Rather as a liberal ogre. • How can the government be expected to solve a problem it has itself caused?
January 13, 2005	•	The War in Proportion Something less than a tsunami
January 6, 2005	•	Tragedy and Politics • Bin Laden and Islam • Voice of the Sixties Left The state’s money always goes to politically powerful interests. • If bin Laden is mad, how do other, presumably normal Muslims regard him? • A leftist intellectual who recovered more of her sanity than most of her generation