At my office, I am going through old magazines (personal subscriptions, professional, alumni, etc.), legal research and seminar files, and miscellaneous other accumulations (clutter).
Some of the topics in one saved publication, the “National Review,” May 25, 2009, Vol. LXI, No.: 9, included the editor’s observations on national debt, Iran’s dealings with America and Americans, same-sex marriage, and national healthcare. (Unless otherwise shown, all quotes are from the “This Week” section of that issue, pages 4 – 12.)
In 2009, the “Tea Party” conservative social and political movement was coming about. Its members were voicing concerns about unchecked national debt.
“Thousands of Americans who are [alarmed about the fast-rising national debt] have been attending ‘tea parties’ across the country to protest the new potlatch. Tea parties are homely affairs with handmade signs and crowds taking breaks from day jobs. [The national media response, e.g. CNN’s Susan Roesgen, Anderson Cooper and others, has largely been ridicule.] A savvier analysis came from the Democratic Strategist [on-line website], which saw tea parties as an ‘authentically grass roots movement’ reflecting the ‘common sense understanding of the world of small business.’” Id.
Update: The national debt was $10.02 trillion when President Obama took office in January 2009. At $19.57 trillion, it had nearly doubled when he left and President Trump came into office. On August 18, 2026, the U.S. Treasury reported that the nation’s debt had surpassed $40 trillion, having risen over $20 trillion during the Trump and Biden administrations between January 2018 and May 2026. (Source: AI and Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “America’s National Debt Challenge,” at pgpf.org/our-national-debt/.)
Comment/opinion: In a nutshell, the reason for the nation’s poor financial situation is the same as for individuals, households, and businesses that fall into debt - - spending exceeding revenues; which is what the Tea Party was concerned about in 2009. It seems that neither political party can point a blaming finger at its opposition. This reminds me of the joke about the fellow who wanted a bank loan to “tide him over” until he could get some credit cards.
A journalist, Roxana Saberi, had dual American-Iranian citizenship. In 2009, she was arrested while working in Iran and charged with being a spy.
In a “one-hour trial,” at which no evidence was presented to substantiate the charge of espionage, she was handed an eight-year prison sentence. “The mullahs want to test whether Obama [who was 100 days into his first term in office] and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will limit themselves to the feeble bleats about ‘disappointment’ [or]show resolve to defend an American citizen who is the victim of injustice. Iran’s next step will be to deliver a bigger and more confident slap” (emphasis added). Id.
Update: An Iranian appeals court reduced the charge and her sentence to a suspended sentence, and she was released from prison after 101 days. Saberi is now a CBS journalist.
Comment/opinion: Iran started “slapping” Americans and America when it took over the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Over the past 40-plus years it has financed and guided the operations of murderous international terrorists. It was on the brink of reaching nuclear weapons capability and already able to deliver such a warhead on targets as close as Israel and as far away as London when the U.S and Israel initiated the conflict that began on February 28. Iran’s publicly declared end goal is not to slap, but to eliminate Israel and the United States. With nuclear weapons it would have the ability to do so.
Carrie Prejean, Miss California, was a contestant in the Miss USA pageant in 2009.
Prejean was asked by “gay gossip columnist Perez Hilton, a judge of the Miss USA pageant . . . what she, as Miss California, thought of gay marriage. She responded: ’Marriage should be between and a man and a woman. No offense to anybody . . . , but that’s how I was raised.’ [Subsequently, she was viciously ridiculed for her answer by Hilton, Keith Olbermann, and others in the media.] If you do not embrace same-sex marriage you will be dragged through the mud. This is the operational position of the same-sex marriage movement. . . If this is how they behave when the issue is still up for public discussion, think how they will conduct themselves when they hold the whip of law.” Id.
Update: The U.S. Supreme Court provided “the whip of law,” if you will, in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015 (576 U.S. 644), legalizing same-sex marriages nationwide.
Comment/opinion: This story seems to be repeating itself in controversies over biological males playing in biological female sports. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. BPJ and Little v. Hecox, __ U.S. ___ (2026), that states can ban men from competing in women’s sports, a blow to men who “identify” as women. Under Title IX of the federal statute, schools are permitted to “provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex.” The court recognized that “safety and competitive fairness” are “important interests” under the law. The controversy continues in the WNBA, which doesn’t fall under Title IX. The women’s professional basketball league refuses to define its policy on player eligibility when it comes to defining “women.” In this era when medical doctors and supreme court nominees cannot define the term at congressional hearings, I have no opinion about where this is going.
Healthcare in the United States was the magazine’s main topic, but I’m out of space.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
