TOO MUCH POWER FOR A PRESIDENTEDITORIALNEW YORK TIMES[T]he Defense Department is currently killing suspects in Yemen without knowing their names, using criteria that have never been made public. ... [U]nder Mr. Obama, scores of suspects have been killed but only one taken into American custody. The precedents now being set will be carried on by successors who may have far lower standards. ... To provide real assurance, President Obama should publish clear guidelines for targeting to be carried out by nonpoliticians, making assassination truly a last resort, and allow an outside court to review the evidence before placing Americans on a kill list. And it should release the legal briefs upon which the targeted killing was based.WISCONSIN REACHES FOR THE LAST RESORTBY E.J. DIONNEWASHINGTON POSTThe paradox of Wisconsin is that, although recalling a governor would be unusual. Wisconsin has had successful conservative governors before, Republican Tommy Thompson prominent among them. They enacted conservative policies without turning the state upside down. They sought to win over their opponents rather than to inhibit their capacity to oppose. Walker seems to enjoy a slight advantage in the polls, having vastly outspent his foes up to now. ... This recall should not have had to happen. But its root cause was not the orneriness of Walker's opponents but a polarizing brand of conservative politics that most Americans, including many conservatives, have good reason to reject.
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MONTANA BUCKS THE COURTBY GEORGE WILLWASHINGTON POSTLast year, Procter & Gamble, America's largest advertiser, spent $2,949,100,000 - more than will be spent by the Obama and Romney campaigns and super PACs supporting them. The fact that more is spent to influence Americans' choice of their detergent than of their president is as interesting as this: The collapse of liberals' confidence in their ability to persuade is apparent in their concentration on rigging the rules of political persuasion. Their problem is that the First Amendment is the rule.CHURCH IS STILL NOT STATEBY DANIEL HENNINGERWALL STREET JOURNALThe Obama administration is effectively saying that all the practices and beliefs embedded in the Obama health-care law are established in America and consent is required, no matter what some religion purports to believe. It is this attempt to displace religious belief with an alternative belief system that goes against the American grain and has Catholics up in arms. Perhaps the Catholic-myth people are right that most Catholics are OK now with abortifacients. And maybe the pundits dripping ridicule and bile on New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan have got the modern American Catholic pegged right. I doubt it. Not yet.TIME TO JOIN THE LAW OF THE SEA TREATYBY HENRY KISSINGER, GEORGE SHULTZ, JAMES BAKER, COLIN POWELL & CONDOLEEZZA RICEWALL STREET JOURNALMaritime claims not only in the Arctic but throughout the world are becoming more contentious. As aggressive maritime behavior increases, the U.S. military has become more, not less, emphatic on the need to become party to this treaty. Current and past military leaders are firmly behind accession, because while nothing in the convention restricts or prohibits our military activity, it is the best process for resolving disputes. We have been on the sidelines long enough. Now is the time to get on the field and lead.