PostPartisan - Quick takes by The Post's opinion writers - October 4, 2009

Obama Wins Booker Prize

The Mann Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, has been conferred for 2009 on President Obama, it was announced yesterday. Not only is this the first time the Booker Prize has gone to an American. It is the...

What Is Wisdom? -- With a Second Thought on Sotomayor

The magazine In Character, published by the John Templeton Foundation, kindly asked me to participate in its fall symposium on wisdom. You can read the entire symposium on the magazine's Web site. But many thanks to In Character editor...

Why Should We Care About the Nobel?

Why did they give it to him, did he deserve it, should he have accepted it, who else should have gotten it: The nation is speaking of nothing else except President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Here is a...

Why No Kudos for Obama?

Response to President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize seems to be falling into two broad categories: the overwrought and the overthought. Why not a simple note of congratulations? The right-wing blowhards, of course, are braying that this is some kind...

Where's Our Nobel?

You will recall that Time magazine has occasionally given its “Person of the Year” award not to individuals but to collectives: Smart, Well-Coiffed Young People; Financiers With Conscience (given collectively because no individual financiers with conscience could actually be...

The Real Reason Obama Won the Peace Prize

Many commentators have wondered how President Obama could have won the Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his first term. Has he made peace between anyone, anywhere in the world? But anyone paying attention to the White...

The Nobel Committee Comes Clean

At least the Nobel committee came clean this time. In awarding the peace prize to President Obama its chairman acknowledged that it did so because it agrees with and wants to promote his politics. "We are hoping this may...

A Nobel for a Good Two Weeks?

“Mom!” my 12-year-old yelled from the kitchen. “President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize!” I told her she had to be mistaken. This is ridiculous -- embarrassing, even. I admire President Obama. I like President Obama. I voted for...

Obama's Nobel and America's Popularity

The Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama seems so goofy -- even if you’re a fan, you have to admit that he hasn’t really done much yet as a peacemaker. But there’s an aspect of this prize that...

Palin, Vaughn, Rabinowitz Win Awards

In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of “Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention...

Not a Parody

The magazine I edit, The Weekly Standard, features a Parody each week. We had a pretty good one ready to go today (the magazine closes Friday). But now we’ll have to scrap it. Instead, we’ll do something we do...

Obama's Nobel for Good Intentions

Apparently, they now give out a Nobel Peace Prize for good intentions. Unless I have missed something, President Obama has not yet achieved a nuclear free world -- which was also, by the way, Ronald Reagan's good intention. He...

Obama Strikes Gold in Scandinavia

The breaking-news alert on my BlackBerry at 5:13 a.m. was stunning: President Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Time magazine's Mark Halperin said on "Morning Joe" that "not since Marisa Tomei won the Oscar" has he been...

Still No Spine on Gitmo

Maybe Congress took my advice? Well, not quite. On Wednesday, I lambasted Congress for confounding President Obama’s efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Among other things, I criticized the House for passing a nonbinding resolution on the...

Crossing Justice Scalia

Justice Antonin Scalia thinks it’s an “outrageous conclusion” that a six-and-a-half-foot-high cross only honors the “Christian war dead.” I think it’s an outrageous conclusion that Scalia doesn’t get the exclusionary symbolism of a cross. To back up: The Supreme...

Sheila Johnson's Macaca Moment

By Lee Hockstader If life is like high school, now we know who Sheila Johnson is: she’s one of the nasty girls who delight in mocking those she deems uncool. In a campaign appearance on behalf of Bob McDonnell, the...

Where's the Backbone on Gitmo?

"Saturday Night Live" mocked President Obama over the weekend for, among other things, failing to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay even though he promised to do so on his first day in office. But the real comedy...

Demanding Time to Read the Health-Care Bill

If reason and common sense always prevailed in Washington, a pending request from eight lawmakers who want to make the consideration of the Senate's health-care bill more transparent would be a no-brainer. But this being Washington, no such thing...

Rangel Should Just Resign Already

It’s unfortunate but hardly a shock that a Republican-led resolution to strip Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) of his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee until the conclusion of ethics investigations went nowhere. But at least it served to...

Wondering About Obama's Core

Commentators -- with pieces ranging from concerned to scathing -- seem to be scratching their heads lately about President Obama's character. Today brings four examples. George Will's op-ed, "An Olympic Ego Trip," raises questions about Obama's dash to Copenhagen...

PostPartisan: October 4, 2009 - October 10, 2009