PostPartisan - Quick takes by The Post's opinion writers - January 30, 2011

So does Mubarak stay or go?

MUNICH -- So does Mubarak stay or go? President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said that the transition to democracy in Egypt must begin immediately, but they have been careful not to say whether that requires...

By Fred Hiatt | February 5, 2011; 2:56 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Hiatt | Tags: Fred Hiatt
Save & Share:

Republican debt limit threats: Empty or deranged

House Speaker John Boehner engaged in more dangerous political brinkmanship over the national debt limit Friday, using new unemployment numbers -- the rate is down to 9 percent -- to insist that President Obama's spending policies have failed and...

By Stephen Stromberg | February 4, 2011; 2:15 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (86)
Categories: Stromberg | Tags: Stephen Stromberg
Save & Share:

Friday p-Op quiz: 'Fight the Power' Edition

Admit it, a week ago you couldn't find Tahrir Square on a map. In fact, you probably thought it was the name of a new high-end shopping center outside Detroit. Not anymore. We've all been enthralled by Egyptians trying...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 4, 2011; 9:50 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Democracy's unlikely look

Dictatorships almost always seem impregnable, until the day they suddenly become improbable.

By Fred Hiatt | February 4, 2011; 9:37 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Hiatt | Tags: Fred Hiatt
Save & Share:

Hey, it's my Constitution, too!

The serious news, such as it was, out of President Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast concerned the escalating violence in Egypt. The fun news was his description -- and do I ever identify with this one --...

By Ruth Marcus | February 3, 2011; 4:07 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (80)
Categories: Marcus
Save & Share:

Give me liberty or give me health care

Judge Roger Vinson's ruling striking down the health-care law's individual mandate and, with it, the rest of the statute, may or may not stand up in higher courts. But it's more convincing than some arguments I've read on the...

By Charles Lane | February 3, 2011; 3:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (92)
Categories: Lane | Tags: Charles Lane
Save & Share:

Mubarak: 'I care about Egypt'

ABC News's Christiane Amanpour scored the journalistic coup of the Egyptian crisis: an interview with President Hosni Mubarak. And in a series of tweets from her colleague Jake Tapper, we're finding out that embattled leader is as defiant and...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 3, 2011; 2:45 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

In China, 'Egypt' and 'Cairo' have vanished

Imagine typing "Egypt" or "Cairo" into a Web portal's search engine and seeing no stories about the massive protests in Egypt over the past week. That's what's happening in China right now. It's a sign that the Chinese government fears...

By Sarah Lovenheim | February 3, 2011; 12:24 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Lovenheim
Save & Share:

Hyde and seek on 'forcible rape'

My long wait for a definition of "forcible rape" ended last night with a 7:49 p.m. e-mail from Jeff Sagnip, press secretary to Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.). "The term 'forcible' is going to be replaced with the original language...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 3, 2011; 11:29 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Obama should just shut up on Egypt

When it comes to crises like the one in Egypt, the trouble with the White House is structural. It has a briefing room. (So does State.) When you have such a room, the pressure is to have a briefing....

By Richard Cohen | February 3, 2011; 11:18 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (84)
Categories: Cohen | Tags: Richard Cohen
Save & Share:

Did Republicans overpromise on health bill repeal?

The Senate Wednesday declined to repeal the health-care law. And, notably, not a single Democrat voted to annul President Obama's signature reform, demonstrating the sort of solidarity that may make it difficult to undermine the law in ways short...

By Stephen Stromberg | February 2, 2011; 9:01 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (38)
Categories: Stromberg | Tags: Stephen Stromberg
Save & Share:

Still waiting for a definition of 'forcible rape'

After leaving a voicemail this morning, the silence from the office of Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) on my request for a definition of "forcible rape" in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" -- or H.R. 3 -- ended...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 2, 2011; 4:34 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Mubarak unleashes chaos

Just hours after promising that he would give up power seven months from now, Hosni Mubarak unleashed the "chaos" he had warned Egyptians was the only alternative to his autocratic regime. The regime's thugs ran riot in the center...

By Jackson Diehl | February 2, 2011; 1:21 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (32)
Categories: Diehl | Tags: Jackson Diehl
Save & Share:

No fairytale ending for Egypt

Tweet from Howard Kurtz of the Daily Beast at 9:30 a.m.: Turning ugly in Cairo with pro-Mubarak agitators. Egyptian protests had a certain storybook quality, until now. For some reason when, Mika Brzezinski interrupted an interview on "Morning Joe"...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 2, 2011; 10:56 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Right-wing bloggers defend Sarah Palin's fake history

According to the right-wing blogosphere, Sarah Palin knows more about history than I do. Last week, I wrote that Palin got some history wrong when she claimed that the Soviets incurred crippling debt in their effort to launch Sputnik....

By Stephen Stromberg | February 2, 2011; 8:14 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (141)
Categories: Stromberg | Tags: Stephen Stromberg
Save & Share:

Amid Cairo protests, stubborn Mubarak borders on farce

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's refusal to resign is beginning to seem like a farce. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur fights the Black Knight, proceeding to sever each of the knight's limbs. Yet after every amputation,...

By Stephen Stromberg | February 1, 2011; 10:28 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Stromberg | Tags: Stephen Stromberg
Save & Share:

Barbara Bush, gay marriage & Obama

Presidents have secret meetings all the time to help them figure out what to do about thorny issues. And they'll even meet with some unlikely folks to get insight they might not get from members of their own party...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 1, 2011; 5:03 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (33)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Day one of the Sarah Palin moratorium

I survived Day One of my February Sarah Palin moratorium, defeating the evil plans of ABC News's Rick Klein. Only 27 days to go... Update, 12:35, Feb. 2: The sentence as written above was posted by an editor, not Dana....

By Dana Milbank | February 1, 2011; 3:45 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (62)
Categories: Milbank
Save & Share:

Europe's dangerous death penalty gesture

According to political stereotypes, Europeans are worldly, realistic moral relativists while Americans, with our "exceptionalism" and periodic crusades to democratize the world, are comparatively idealistic. On one issue, though, the roles are reversed. America retains the death penalty, with...

By Charles Lane | February 1, 2011; 2:39 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (18)
Categories: Lane | Tags: Charles Lane
Save & Share:

Egypt's revolution will not be organized

If Hosni Mubarak falls, what's next? Nobody can expect that a well-functioning, democratic government will suddenly emerge and operate flawlessly in Egypt. A government created hastily could be as oppressive as the current regime. Experts say it will take at...

By Sarah Lovenheim | February 1, 2011; 1:58 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Lovenheim
Save & Share:

Why Abbas and Abdullah are scrambling

Even as Hosni Mubarak continued to resist the hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathering in the center of Cairo Tuesday, two of his Arab counterparts -- Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- were scrambling to...

By Jackson Diehl | February 1, 2011; 1:15 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Diehl | Tags: Jackson Diehl
Save & Share:

Illegal immigrants: Here to stay

Two new studies on illegal immigration are out this week, looking both at demographic trends and at the enforcement efforts, mostly by local governments, to contain the problem. Here's the headline: Illegal immigrants are here to stay, no matter how...

By Lee Hockstader | February 1, 2011; 12:15 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (93)
Categories: Hockstader | Tags: Lee Hockstader
Save & Share:

What is 'forcible rape' exactly?

The intent of H.R. 3 -- a.k.a. the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" -- is clear. What's not clear is what, under the act, would still qualify for a taxpayer-funded abortion. Federal law already prohibits federal dollars from...

By Jonathan Capehart | February 1, 2011; 10:02 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

Murder in Uganda

While the eyes of the world have been transfixed on the doings in North Africa, tragedy unfolded in Central Africa. David Kato, considered founding father of the gay rights movement in Uganda, was beaten to death with a hammer...

By Jonathan Capehart | January 31, 2011; 3:08 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Capehart | Tags: Jonathan Capehart
Save & Share:

2012: The Year of the Mormons?

Will America see a Mormon GOP presidential nominee after all? Some conservatives are already looking around for the not-Mitt-Romney candidate -- which is ominous for the former Massachusetts governor's inevitable run. But the White House now expects that Jon...

By Stephen Stromberg | January 31, 2011; 2:20 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (58)
Categories: Stromberg | Tags: Stephen Stromberg
Save & Share:

Network News

PostPartisan: January 30, 2011 - February 5, 2011