PostPartisan - Quick takes by The Post's opinion writers - December 6, 2009

Big-government Republican

Ruth Marcus weighed in Wednesday about the peculiarly male sense of priorities that led a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to take up and approve a bill forbidding big-time college football from labeling the annual game...

By Harold Meyerson | December 10, 2009; 5:17 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (22)
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Something missing in Obama's Nobel speech

I agree with Ruth Marcus: President Obama’s Nobel speech was eloquent, stirring, high-minded. While accepting the peace prize, he offered one of the best defenses of war ever delivered by a modern political leader. Addressing the Western European audience...

By Jackson Diehl | December 10, 2009; 12:14 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (46)
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Obama shows maturity in Nobel speech

After a series of disappointing appearances on the rhetorical stage, President Obama’s Nobel Prize Lecture was complex and impressive. It is the only Obama speech I can recall when expectations were low, and he exceeded them dramatically. In a...

By Michael Gerson | December 10, 2009; 10:47 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (72)
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Obama's brilliant Nobel speech

President Obama made the smart decision to confront the dual conundrums of his Nobel Peace prize head-on at the start of his stirring address accepting the award. First, there was the uncomfortable fact that the president hasn’t actually done...

By Ruth Marcus | December 10, 2009; 9:55 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (52)
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Obama may grow into his Nobel speech

It is not Barack Obama’s fault that he won the Nobel peace prize before his time. It is not even his fault that he accepted the award when, in fact, he had done little to earn it. It was...

By Richard Cohen | December 10, 2009; 9:44 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (115)
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Plus ca change...

"proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.... "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth...

By William Kristol | December 10, 2009; 8:30 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (32)
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The intolerable TSA

I just got back from a trip during which federal security officials at the Orlando airport confiscated some peanut butter snacks from the family ahead of me. Two weeks ago, after flying back from Albany, I was distraught to...

By Jo-Ann Armao | December 9, 2009; 12:29 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (14)
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The crucial question of college football playoffs

With a hat tip to Dee Dee Myers, who wrote a book of the same name, more evidence of why women should rule the world: a House subcommittee has just voted on the earth-shattering question of how the college...

By Ruth Marcus | December 9, 2009; 11:33 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (5)
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Why not lower the minimum wage?

As I listened to President Obama declare war, figuratively speaking, on unemployment today, I was struck by how non-audacious his proposals really are. There’s more of the usual Keynesian tinkering -- more countercyclical benefits for jobless workers, some infrastructure...

By Charles Lane | December 8, 2009; 4:20 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (135)
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Good News in the health-care debate

Word that Senate negotiators are thinking of adding a Medicare buy-in to the health-care bill is good news in general, and it should be heralded by supporters of the public insurance option who are glum over the prospect that...

By E.J. Dionne | December 8, 2009; 12:32 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (35)
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The real embarrassment in Copenhagen

To read the headlines, you'd think that the climate-change confab getting underway in Copenhagen is a hotbed for scandal. British newspapers are declaring that the conference -- which will ultimately attract tens of thousands of government officials, activists and...

By Stephen Stromberg | December 7, 2009; 3:25 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (131)
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PostPartisan: December 6, 2009 - December 12, 2009