Top Items:
Randy E. Barnett / Wall Street Journal:
News Flash: The Constitution Means What It Says — Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in yesterday's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is historic in its implications and exemplary in its reasoning. — A federal ban on an entire class of guns in ordinary use …
RELATED:
Orin Kerr / The Volokh Conspiracy:
JUSTICE BREYER AND THE CULTURE WARS: I think it's illuminating …
JUSTICE BREYER AND THE CULTURE WARS: I think it's illuminating …
Discussion:
Of Arms and the Law
New York Times:
Lock and Load — Thirty-thousand Americans are killed …
Lock and Load — Thirty-thousand Americans are killed …
Discussion:
Los Angeles Times, TigerHawk, The Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post and Broadband Politics
Jay Newton-Small / Time:
Obama Lead Tight Over McCain — Illinois Senator Barack Obama enters the General Election with a tight lead, 43% to 38%, over Arizona Senator John McCain, according to a new TIME Magazine poll of registered voters. The poll shows Obama gaining only a slight bounce from Hillary Clinton's departure from the campaign early this month.
Discussion:
The Daily Dish, Taegan Goddard's …, Swampland, TIME.com, The Other McCain and Real Clear Politics
RELATED:
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Time poll: Virtual dead heat — Those Newsweek and LA Times polls look more and more like outliers or worse. With both Gallup and Rasmussen showing either outright or virtual ties in their presidential tracking polls, Time offers even more evidence that Barack Obama has failed to pull away …
Discussion:
Weekly Standard Blog
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
When Anonymity Fails, Be Nasty, Brutish and Short — Throughout the Bush presidency, he toiled in secrecy deep within the White House, a mysterious and feared presence who never stepped into the sunlight of public disclosure. — Until yesterday. — There he sat, hunched and scowling …
RELATED:
Sara Just / Political Radar:
Tensions Remain Among Clinton Donors — ABC's Kate Snow reports: The crowd's mood was but strained but supportive at Thursday's meeting between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and about 150 of Clinton's top donors at a Washington hotel. — The former rivals appeared upbeat …
RELATED:
David Brooks / New York Times:
The Sam's Club Agenda — Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene. — These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude.
Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal:
Let McCain Be McCain — The big political headline this week, of course, involves John McCain's endless and humiliating attempts to placate Mitt Romney by bowing to demands he hire his operatives and pay his campaign debt. So far all he's got is a grudging one-sentence endorsement from that rampaging rage-aholic Ann Romney.
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Sadr's army dissolving? — According to the Middle East Times, Moqtada al-Sadr's militia has begun to disintegrate after a series of confrontations with the Iraqi Army throughout the south of Iraq. The remnants of the Mahdi Army have gone underground, forming an armed network on a much smaller scale.
RELATED:
Gerard Baker / Times of London:
Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror — Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited. Not a bad haul — “My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”
Choe Sang-Hun / New York Times:
North Korea Destroys Tower at Nuclear Site — SEOUL, South Korea — In a gesture demonstrating its commitment to halt its nuclear weapons program, North Korea blew up the most prominent symbol of its plutonium production Friday. — The 60-foot cooling tower at the North's main nuclear power plant collapsed …
RELATED:
Dan Frosch / New York Times:
Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects — DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
Matthew Yglesias:
Have You Heard McCain Was a POW? — Candidates whose biographies provide compelling campaign material use that fact to their advantage. And John McCain's biography does just that. Not only is it regularly mentioned explicitly by his supporters, but it underlies many of the implicit themes of the campaign.
Discussion:
The Carpetbagger Report
Joe Klein / ADL:
Media Watch … Dear Mr. Foxman, — I respectfully disagree with your assessment of my position. First of all, I have never said that Jewish neocons were the primary reason we went to war in Iraq. The reason we went to war was that George Bush was foolish and uninformed …
RELATED:
Binyamin Appelbaum / Boston Globe:
Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy — The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair. — CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings …
Michael Falcone / The Caucus:
New Ad Hits Obama on Abortion — The lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, the conservative Christian organization, is going on the air in several cities on Friday with a television ad featuring a personal note from the group's president, Tony Perkins, to Senator Barack Obama.
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Fuels on the Hill — Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth. — Right now, the welcome mat …