Nov, 21, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters? Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank Nov, 20, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto Nov, 19, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them? Nov, 18, 2008 Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster? Nov, 17, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit? Nov, 14, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead Nov, 13, 2008 Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla Nov, 12, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks Nov, 11, 2008 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad? Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate Nov, 10, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built? Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist Nov, 7, 2008 Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy Nov, 6, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes Nov, 5, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie Nov, 4, 2008 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East Nov, 3, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart? Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything? Oct. 31, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Our Immutable Noble Essence Caroline B. Glick: Running against Bush Oct. 30, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: The End of the Special Relationship? Steve Lipman: 'Kid Kosher' Gets A Title Shot Oct. 29, 2008 Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: GET US THE TAPE THE L.A. TIMES REFUSES TO RELEASE, AND WE'LL GIVE YOU CASH! Dr. Ari Korenblit: Making The Write Choice for President Oct. 28, 2008 Mona Charen: Denial runs through American Jewry Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Sell-off to capitalism or sell-out to Islam? Oct. 27, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Are tax deductions for charitable donations moral? Jonathan Mark: The Mystery Of The Arab-American Vote Oct. 24, 2008 'Why aren't all religious people vegetarians?': Response by Miriam Kosman Caroline B. Glick: Testing Obama's mettle Oct. 23, 2008 Daniel Pipes: Obama Would Fail Security Clearance The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A fast chicken dish with an Asian accent Oct. 20, 2008 Gary Rosenblatt: Still One Torah Jonathan Tobin: Government 'Gifts' Are Not Free Oct. 17, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: Sukkos and the Great Meltdown Caroline B. Glick: The disappearance of law Oct. 16, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Copying DVDs: RIP OR RIPOFF? Cal Thomas: Blaming the Jews (again) March 22, 2007 J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 9, 2006 / 9 Teves, 5766 K Sera, Sera: Lobbyists will always be with us By Michael Barone http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There are probably a few Washington old-timers left who remember when K Street, Northwest, was lined with mansions  —  but there can't be many. K Street is now lined with stolid, 130-foot-high office buildings  —  Washington has a height limit  —  filled with trade associations, law firms and lobbyists. I'm not sure who first used K Street as a shorthand term for Washington's lobbying community, but it might have been me, back in 1971, when I was promoting my first Almanac of American Politics and told the publisher the prime market was "K Street"; I don't remember having heard the term before, but I probably borrowed it from somebody else. Anyhow it has stuck  —  as we are reminded by the news stories about the guilty pleas entered by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who seems never to have had an office on K Street itself. The Washington lobbying community goes back a long way. The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances": Lobbyists, like the clergy and the press, are a profession protected by the Constitution. You can bet there have been lobbyists working Washington since the days when Daniel Webster pocketed retainers from the Second Bank of the United States and Stephen Douglas sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act  —  which led proximately to the Civil War  —  as part of his project to anchor the transcontinental railroad in Chicago. When government makes decisions that affect private individuals and firms and industries, the representatives of those individuals and firms and industries are going to exercise their constitutional right to try to get the decisions to come out their way. Government is especially likely to make such decisions in time of war. During World War I, when Woodrow Wilson's government nationalized the railroads and seized control of the shipping industry, a Chicago lawyer named Edward Burling moved down to Washington to become chief counsel of the Shipping Board. He made the observation that there was business to be had in litigating wartime claims and joined former Maryland congressman and judge Harry Covington to form the firm of Covington & Burling. Today C&B is one of many large Washington law firms, with distinguished lawyers who will surely tell you that they don't do any lobbying  —  and they certainly don't do the kind of things Jack Abramoff did. But they do on occasion try to affect government decisions, whether by administrative agencies, administration officials or Congress. And why shouldn't they? It's a perfectly legitimate business. K Street came to take on some resemblance to what it is today in the 1940s, when some of Franklin D. Roosevelt's talented young aides who, he insisted, must have a "passion for anonymity" left government and set up their own law firms and lobbying shops. They were all Democrats, of course, and usually liberal Democrats, but they were happy to advise business clients and willing to use their administration and Capitol Hill contacts. It helped their business that Democrats would hold the executive branch for 20 years and would have majorities in Congress for almost all the time from 1932 to 1994 (the House for 58 of those 62 years, the Senate for 52). Among the most famous were Thomas G. "Tommy the Cork" Corcoran and Clark Clifford. Corcoran was the subject of a fine recent biography, "Peddling Influence," by David McKean, John Kerry's chief of staff. Brilliant and charming, he helped negotiate the government financing of Henry J. Kaiser's shipyards and steel factory in World War II. Clark Clifford, once Harry S. Truman's top aide, went into law practice in 1950 and helped negotiate the legislation minimizing DuPont's taxes on the sales of its controlling share of General Motors stock. Corcoran and Clifford never built big firms. Others did. Like Arnold, Fortas & Porter, which dropped the middle name in 1965 after Abe Fortas was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lyndon B. Johnson (a man who knew how to deal with lobbyists). Or firms that specialized in things like defense contracts, communications law, drug regulation, securities litigation, antitrust, tax law. Over the years there was more and more work to do. When I was in law school in the 1960s, no Washington law firm had 100 lawyers and most out-of-town firms with Washington offices had only one or two lawyers there. In today's Washington dozens of firms, many of them originally based in other cities, have 100 or more lawyers. One of the reasons that Dean Acheson said "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss," after Hiss was convicted of perjury for lying about spying for the Soviets, was that Hiss's brother was one of Acheson's very few law partners at Covington & Burling. Today if a Washington lawyer's partner were convicted of something, he might be able to say truthfully that he had never met the person. Washington lobbying in the 1940s and 1950s was a wild and wooly world where campaign contributions did not have to be reported and sackfuls of cash would be gratefully received. Thanks to a variety of reforms  —  and to the fact that lobbyists like Mr. Abramoff do most of their work by e-mail  —  K Street is a different and ultimately more transparent place today. It is also more bipartisan. After Republicans won majorities in Congress in 1994, Republican leaders, notably then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, launched what they called the K Street Project. The lobbying community, they argued, was made up mostly of Democrats. They steered their clients toward policies favored by Democrats, they charged, and they sent the bulk of their campaign money to Democrats  —  which of course made good business sense when it seemed that Democrats would run Congress forever. The purpose of the K Street Project was to make the lobbying community first bipartisan and then predominantly Republican. This can be defended on process grounds: Those who want to move government in a Republican direction are as entitled to try to move K Street as well as Congress in their direction. But it is not necessarily an attractive process. Corcoran, Rowe, Clifford, Arnold, Fortas and Porter attracted little national attention (although Harry Truman was hurt by disclosures that lobbyists gave administration officials a mink coat and a deep freeze). Republicans got more attention when they criticized the Electronics Industries Association for hiring Democratic former Rep. Dave McCurdy and got the EIA and Microsoft to hire Republicans. And then there is Jack Abramoff. A close associate of Messrs. DeLay and Norquist and a longtime Republican activist, he seems to have been determined to make gigantic sums of money. Not content with the $1 million or so a year he could easily have made, he squeezed Indian tribes for tens of millions (Indian gambling laws have created a class of naive clients) and engaged in some very shady dealings in the gambling cruise ship business. There will always be such individuals: Abe Fortas, a lawyer of the highest intellectual caliber, was not content with a Supreme Court justice's salary and arranged for outside income from a former client, the disclosure of which led him to resign from the court. There is a fine and sometimes indistinct line between bribery, which requires a specific quid pro quo, and legal mutually beneficial conduct. Mr. Abramoff's guilty pleas have both parties scampering to offer up lobbying reform; as fervent a Republican as he was, he made sure his clients gave money to Democrats too. His testimony could end the careers of some members of Congress and could threaten the Republicans' House majority. But there will be no end to lobbying: It is protected by the Constitution, and people will always seek to affect the decisions of a government that can have such great impact on them. Over the last 35 years, I have watched as more and more office buildings have been going up in Washington. K Street, the prime market for my Almanac, has been spreading  —  metastasizing, some would say  —  and for every new 1,000 square feet some calculable number of my books will be sold. None of these buildings will be torn down, except to be replaced by new buildings with ever gaudier marble lobbies, even if Jack Abramoff resides for a time in public housing. The poor we may or may not always have with us. But we will always have K Street. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. BARONE'S LATEST Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future   America is divided into two camps, according to U.S. News and World Reports writer and Fox commentator Michael Barone. No, not Red and Blue, though one suspects Barone may taint the two groups in the hues of the 2000 presidential election. Barone's divided America is one part Hard, one part Soft. Hard America is steeled by the competition and accountability of the free market, while Soft America is the product of public school and government largesse. Inspired by the notion that America produces incompetent 18 year olds and remarkably competent 30 year olds, Barone embarks on a breezy 162-page commentary that will spark mostly huzzahs from the right and jeers from the left. Sales help fund JWR. JWR contributor Michael Barone is a columnist at U.S. News & World Report. Comment by clicking here. Michael Barone Archives © 2005, US News & World Report

Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Rod Dreher  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  David Harsanyi  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  James Klurfeld  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Jonathan Last  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  The Medicine Men  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Jonathan Tobin  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Jeff Stahler  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  Marybeth Hicks  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Nutrition Myths  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works