The Washington Times

The United States has a major decision just ahead about the future of its relations with Europe. It’s the question of the next round of enlargement of NATO.

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The Washington Times

MENLO PARK, Calif. – There’s a fog in Silicon Valley. In the headquarters of the New Economy, the buzzword is “visibility,” and visibility is low. With the evaporation of nearly $4 trillion in stock market valuation as a result of the plunge in the tech-rich Nasdaq since the giddy highs of March 2000, and ample trouble signs throughout the rest of the economy, none of the corporate chieftains of high-tech here professes to know what lies ahead.

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The Washington Times

Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, Beijing 2008? Holding the Olympics in China eight years hence would indeed complete a picture. After all, of the three premier totalitarian regimes of the modern era, collectively responsible for the murder of scores of millions of people and the enslavement and subjugation of perhaps half the world all in all, only China has yet to enjoy the singular propaganda opportunity of basking in the reflected glory of the Olympic games.

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The Washington Times

Was that a major setback for the Bush tax cut in the Senate last week? Democrats certainly had reason to advertise it as one. They found traction with an argument that finally addressed their real policy concern, namely, that a Bush-size tax cut would leave the government starved of resources to address other important national problems – for example, Medicare funding. The Senate voted to trim Mr. Bush’s proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut to about $1.2 trillion, in order to allow for spending increases elsewhere.

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The Washington Times

It has, indeed, been interesting to watch the Senate debating campaign-finance reform in such grand style. One could almost be forgiven for taking seriously the chamber’s aggrandizing description as the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

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The Washington Times

The Bush administration’s decision no longer to submit names of judicial nominees to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary for advance evaluation of their qualifications represents a certain coming-of-age for conservatives in the GOP. The move reflects a new clarity of thinking about where conservatives fit in the scheme of things. Here’s the problem: The American Bar Association, as any conservative will tell you, is a left-leaning organization through and through. On any number of issues if not, indeed, on all issues on which it takes positions, from abortion rights to tort reform, the ABA is closer to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

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The Washington Times

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the commitment of Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold to the cause of campaign-finance reform, nor their belief that the current system is corrupting. But at the same time, the issue of campaign finance is obviously a great one for political posturing. I think that eventually some kind of reform legislation will indeed pass out of Congress and be signed into law by the president, if not this time around, then later. And each time the issue comes up and gets closer to passage, more of the interests underlying the principled rhetoric get exposed, thereby revealing more of the posturing for what it is.

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The Washington Times

Bill Clinton is off the front pages at last, so perhaps now would be a good time to take stock of the controversy surrounding his eleventh-hour pardons. What with the criminal investigation by a U.S. attorney in New York and Democrats’ fundamentally unresolved view of the former president, the controversy and the political fallout can hardly be said to be over. But it doesn’t look like there’s a lot more left to come out. Even some of the hard-core Republicans in Congress are losing their enthusiasm for the issue.

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The Washington Times

Tax cut watchers should keep an eye on this coming July. Sometime that month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release the six-month update of its Budget and Economic Outlook. That will include a revised 10-year projection for federal surpluses. And that could make for some pretty interesting politics.

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The Washington Times

It was supposed to have been the most exciting Senate race since Lincoln met Douglas, threatening even to eclipse the presidential contest for raw political interest. As early as 18 months before the November 2000 elections, all eyes were on New York as the singular, controversial Hillary Rodham Clinton descended on the state to seek the seat of retiring Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan.

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