88 articles
On a recent Charlie Rose program, New York Times columnist Abe Rosenthal's anxieties about the aggressive expansionism of China were " balanced" by a young Asian woman, Alice Young, who denounced such fears as imperialist and expressed doubt that China was even worth worrying about. Don't forget…
Last summer, articles by conseratives Robert Novak, John Fund, and Paul Weyrich accused Sen. Robert Dole's chief of staff, Sheila Burke, of using her position to promote her own liberal ideas. But just how severe was the criticism-and how massive was the backlash against the criticism?
WELCOME, MY FELLOW DEMOCRATS!" hollered ayor Marion Barry. It was meant to be an plause line, but the audience fell silent. Several of them looked as though they didn't want to be on the same planet as Marion Barry, much less in the same party.
The Democrats are fighting back. In a Democratic National Committee fundraising letter from General Chair Christopher J. Dodd, "loyal Democrats" are told that they must do three things to save America from "the conservative, hard-line, right-wingers on Capitol Hill." First, they must respond to…
It is mid-November, and every aficionado of presidential speechcraft knows what that means: the issuance of the Thanksgiving proclamation. This is a rare and wondrous species of rhetoric. It is homiletic and hortatory; historical and political; admonitory and prayerful. In it, the president has a…
AT LAST. AFTER MISSING MY CHANCE during the Nixon years, I've finally gotten myself onto an enemies list. True, this is a relatively trivial one, consisting merely of journalists and "sources" who have somehow antagonized Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary. But a "source" has to take such crumbs of…
THE USUAL PATTERN IS FOR REPUBLICANS tO win a squeaker election, while Democrats moan about the dirty tactics used to pull it off. That pattern was reversed with this November's races, when Democrats employed a campaign of" scare calls" over Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to halt…
You're feeling sorry for the Republican congressional leadership, aren't you? Last week they rushed their beautiful football -- the first legitimate budget-balancing plan in living memory -- headlong into a few presidential vetoes. And it looks to you like they got knocked on their cans. The…
In an increasingly conservative America, one political figure defiantly resists the historical tide. This .man still denotinces big banks and multinational corporations. Still unabashedly puts the interests of the American factory worker ahead of those of the so-called international trading system.…
AN UNEXPECTED PLAYER made a last-minute entry into the federal budget debate on November 10: The rating agency Standard & Poor announced that investors" faith in the U.S. government had already "diminished" because of the budget deadlock and that, if the United States were any other country, the…
pRESIDENT CLINTON'S INTUITION was wrong. He thought House Speaker Newt Gingrich would go for a quick budget deal that averted a government shutdown. Still, when Gingrich proved unwilling to compromise, Clinton and his aides were ready. For once, they had out-planned Gingrich. They put congressional…
ON NOVEMBER 9, THE SENATE considered linking the abolition of the Commerce Department to a debt-limit extension soon to be sent to the White House. A whip count showed that 14 GOP senators would oppose the measure, ensuring its defeat. This infuriated a group of House GOP freshmen, who marched over…
Not only did the vaunted budget crisis lead to the closing of the Grand Canyon; apparently there were a million other problem areas.
Closing up Crossfire in the wake of the Rabin assassination, Michael Kinsley made a plea for the survival of Israel's unique style of democracy. " Not only is ... dissent and disagreement crucial to a democracy," Kinsley said, "but the raucousness of dissent is in Some ways one of the glories of…
In recent years, the alarming increase in violent crime rates has proved resistant to the best efforts of police and politicians. These trends have also given us reason to reconsider the tried and true crime-control strategies that once kept American streets safe. In particular, it is time that…
Lynne Abraham doesnt scare easily. Abraham s I the no-nonsense Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia. The city's late tough-cop mayor, Frank Rizzo, baptized her "one tough cookie." The label stuck, and rightly so. Abraham has sent more mafiosi to prison than Martin Scorcese, stood up (all…
As the temperature drops on the East Coast and the winter begins in earnest, here are two short novels to read by the fire:
Editor's Note: Weekly Standard contributors have been in the news a lot this week. Former contributor and now undersecretary of State John Bolton was called "human scum" by the nice people who run North Korea and yesterday Arianna Huffington threw her chapeau into the ring and declared that she's…
LAST WEEK, NEWT GINGRICH SPOKE a few surprising words -- words that went astonishingly unnoticed, given their ominous ring. "We may lose next year," he told the annual meeting of GOPAC, the political-action committee he ran for nine years, "but in 11 months, working as a team, we made the tough…
The same week that O.J. Simpson got off, the U.S. Supreme Court was considering Gore v. BMW, the case of an Alabama doctor who found that his car had been partially refinished after suffering slight damage on the boat trip from Germany. An Alabama jury awarded $ 4,000 in compensatory damages and $…
Even the most enthusiastic proponent of the conservative political realignment must acknowledge that legislation alone will not be enough to ensure its ultimate success. Most successful political movments this century have been blessed with a great asset that conservatism -- in all its guises --…
GoldenEye, the first James Bond movie in six years, is a terrific surprise -- not only because it's the first entertaining American movie in months but because it does not defang, bowdlerize, or sanitize its lead character. Quite the opposite, in fact; Golden-Eye is energized by its decision to…
Earlier this month, the Village Voice celebrated its 40th anniversary with an enthusiastic tribute to itself. That's hardly surprising -- the New York weekly has always been one of the most self-obsessed publications going. What was almost surprising was the reminder -- in the form of dusted- off…
High atop a glass and steel Tower of Babble in Rosslyn, Va., Freedom Forum CEO Charles Overby welcomed us to "Publish or Perish," a panel discussion on the Unabomber manifesto.
Only the Russians, it would seem, are concerned about the promised change in the design of our paper currency. The C-note, the first to be altered, is the favorite in the old Soviet Union. There, no less than $ 15 billion circulate, mostly in $ 100 bills. By contrast, Americans have been…
IF THERE'S ONE THING that Pakistanis and Indians agree on, it is that the United States is to blame for all. all their troubles. In Kashmir an Indian army colonel explained to me, "All the militants, all these fundamentalists -- the Americans are giving them money. The CIA." In Pakistan one of the…
This may yet turn out to be the ugliest period in the history of modern Israel. For now, it is only the second ugliest.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON or November 8, Bill Clinton met with advisers in the Oval Office to discuss an analysis of the Senate's welfare legislation by the Office of Management and Budget. The study indicated that the bill -- which Clinton was on the record as supporting -- would push an additional…
And another thing about Powell. Forget Washington activists for a moment. What do -- or did -- ordinary Republicans and conservatives think about GeL. Powell's presidential possibilities?" Is he conservative enough to be president, or simply too liberal? Or a third possibility: Do his obviously…
Maybe we should call it Newt's Revenge: Colin Powell announcing the day after the 1995 elections in no uncertain terms that he is Republican and that his future lies with the Republican party. From his new party's point of view, Powell's timing was perfect. It dissipated most of the talk of the…
A FEW MONTHS AGO I was on a TV talk show I used to appear on fairly frequently. The host is a friendly, mild woman who tosses the assembled pundits softball questions and then ducks while we swing at them wildly. I liked being on this show a lot, and this particular day I didn't suspect trouble.…
It is the nature of assassinations that they do change the world -- but it is the nature of God's justice that the world changes in ways the assassin, wracked by rage or fury or madness or sociopathic self-interest, could never have anticipated. So it is with Israel's Yigal Amir. Amir's arrogant…
THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY in Los Angeles over-shadowed its political equivfilent in Washington: the forced resignation of Sen. Bob Packwood. The Oregonian lothario exited Congress quietly on October 1. There were no crowds or cameras, no white vans, but there was a deliciods double irony at work.…
Mourning for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will be more prolonged than for any bereavement Israel has yet known. The assassination of a democratic leader is a blow to whole nation at once. Unlike tile monarch or autocrat who imposes his rule on a people, the elected head of a democratic government…
Jerusalem
TWO MONTHS AGO, COLIN POWELL told Barbara Walters he was, at the moment, neither Democrat nor Republican. He had been unable "to find a perfect fit in either of the two existing parties," and was intrigued by the "idea of running for president as an independent, "if I were to consider a candidacy…
Our federal government continues to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. The November issue of the American Journal of Public Health contains a study titled, "Condom Use among the Female Sex Workers in Nevada's Brothels." Federally funded, of course. From the study's abstract: "Forty-one…
President Clinton, who once publicly acknowledged that "almost all Americans believe abortion should be illegal when "the children can live outside the mother's womb," is now quietly acting to thwart that popular will. The House of Representatives has already passed, by an overwhelming bipartisan…
THE WHISTLE-BLOWING EXPLOITS of Lt. Paula Coughlin, who went public with her complaint that a bunch of loutish, drunken Navy fighter pilots mauled her at the 1991 Tailhook convention at the Las Vegas Hilton, are now history. So is her subsequent multimillion-dollar trial-court victory against…
Last week's People magazine contained a special advertising section that should be of interest to all Beltway anthropologists. "Celebrity Fare: Great Dishes from the Stars" revealed favorite recipes of America's most glamorous celebs: plaintaiLs from Gloria Estefan, blackened catfish from Michael…
Miami
The tragedy in Israel has put us in mind of a few distinguished works about Jewish states past and present:
INTELLECTUALS ARE ABOUT AS SUSCEPTIBLE to fashion as car makers; a little less so than designers of ties. Currently "civil society" is as chic as it gets. The scholar to quote is Harvard political scientist Bob Putnam. From the headquarters of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City io the…
Has Frank Luntz been focus-grouping the word establishment?
Ah, the past, that warm and cordial land, where one Was so contented, so snug, and limitlessly happy, though one cannot remember just why. The past is the best of all places, no doubt about it, much superior to the present and, in the view of most people nowadays, certainly much to "be preferred to…
Woody Allen, who turns 60 this year, is a relic. He may still look young; he may continue to attend basketball games with the adopted 24-year-old daughter of his one-time consort, Mia Farrow; he may still be howered with Oscar nominations, "as he was in February for his farce Bullets Over Broadway.…
In June 1993, the Washington Post ran a story about a ballroom- dancing school for children called Mrs. Simpson's Dance Class. The article alleged that Mrs. Simpson's, by its invitation-only enrollment policy, had denied proportionally correct numbers of black students the opportunity to join…
JUST HOW MUCH DOES PETE DOMENICI, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, carea bout a balanced budget? Following the committee's approval on a party-line vote to settle Washington's accounts by the year 2002, he solemnly called the vote "the culmination of the my life work." That may be only a…
One conservative leader is so horrified by the possibility of Colin Powell's selection by Republican primary voters as the presidential nominee that he is considering a third-party run himself. No, not Pat Buchanan. James Dobson. Dobson is probably the most powerful figure in Christian radio; his…
The most interesting newspaper correction in weeks appeared in the $ IWashington Times on October 29. Under the heading "Explanation," the notice read: "The Washington Times regrets assigning Matthew Scully to review Jim Pinkerton's book. . . . The assignment was made without knowledge of prior…
In Edison, N.J., a man named Rick Sullivan has been producing a newsletter called the Gore Gazette for more than a decade. The Gazette is a typed and Xeroxed eight-page sheet devoted exclusively to ultraviolent movies -- the more repulsively, distressingly, sickeningly violent the better, in…
Fight the Right," beckoned the ad. "Decoding the Right," a four-part series, was to be held at the Social Action Leadership School for Activists ( SALSA). The sessions were sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington-based booster of Castro, the Sandinistas, and all practitioners…
The Gramm campaign woes continue, with one of those direct-mail screw- ups that have political professionals in stitches, give Jay Leno and David Letterman material for days, and generally leave the impression that all is not well. A letter signed by Gramm supporter Sandra Mortham to 3,400…
Forgotten the flag amendment? You shouldn't. The final Senate vote is imminent. Just a few uncommitted senators, Republicans and Democrats, will decide whether it gets the needed two-thirds support. It's been eclipsed, of course, by other matters -- the budget battle and, recently, race relations.…
IT WAS A SCENE FROM the Latin America of the 1950s, or, perhaps, the Europe of the 1930s. Near midnight, Jacques Parizeau, the heavyset, mustachioed premier of the province of Quebec, puffed to the rostrum to acknowledge his 50.5 to 49.5 percent loss in the October 30 referendum on secession from…
Up-and-comers who aspire to a listing in Who's Who have at least two hurdles to overcome: getting their names into the book and, then, making certain other people know they're there. It's not clear what's required to achieve the first step, though the more assertive are invited to call the…
Considering the president's recent telephone call to his critic, Ben J. Wattenberg, to apologize for his conduct as president after a cursory review of Wattenberg's new book, Values Matter Most, we thought Mr. Clinton might consider giving the following books a look and their authors a call:
On the day that James P. Pinkerton decided to become a futurist and political thinker, Madison Avenue missed its opportunity to recruit a copywriter of awesome potential. Ever since the day in 1990 when he emerged from the recesses of the Bush White House to proclaim the "New Paradigm" to a meeting…
WITH LITTLE FANFARE, THE WHITE HOUSE, in he person of Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, took another step in the direction of the GOP budget last week. He allowed as how a budget package offered by conservative House Democrats -- the 20-odd group that has dubbed itself the Blue Dog Coalition -- might…
COLIN POWELL TELLS a funny but humbling story about his post-military life in My American Journey, his best-selling autobiography. While driving an old Volvo on the Washington Beltway during rush hour, he ran out of gas. A traffc officer happened along and squirted a half-pint of gas in his tank.…
It takes a rude man to make a civil society. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani created a diplomatic contretemps late last month when he threw Yasser Arafat out of a concert the mayor was hosting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. For days, Giuliani had been saying that Arafat and…
Last week, Congress and the White House joined forces in the drug war. New guidelines from the U.S. Sentencing Commission would have equalized the treatment of crack and powder cocaine where federal sentences for drug trafficking are concerned -- by sharply reducing crack sentences, in effect.…
PRESIDENT CLINTON HAS VOWED that his administration will "mend" affirmative action. Thus, the axing of a $ 1 billion Pentagon set-aside program, announced on October 23, might well be mistaken for a sign of things to come. In reality, administration documents show that Clinton is bent on…
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is a beloved, canonical text; the urge to quote from it is understandably great. Politicians ever seek to demonstrate familiarity with it, from Bill Clinton to Pat Buchanan. One of their favorite quotes runs as follows:
EVEN IN DIGNIFIED VIRGINIA, it's the glitter races that get the attention and the money. In Charlottesville, Democrat Emily Couric, in an uphill fight against GOP state senator Edgar Robb, had fund-raising help from sister Katie of Today show fame. And near Mt. Vernon in the Washington suburbs,…
The first serious negotiations aimed at ending the Bosnian conflict begin this week in Ohio, but the debate over President Clinton's proposal to deploy 20,000 American troops to help enforce the as-yet-unachieved settlement has been raging for weeks. So far that debate has focused primarily on…
With the 50th anniversary of the U.N. now happily over, we offer the following One-Worlder pop quiz: See if you can match the former U.N. secretary-general with his memoir.
Hebron has always been a Jewish city, is a Jewish city, and will forever remain a Jewish city. And no amount of human effort will change the facts of God." That statement, made in Jerusalem's International Convention Center in mid-October by U.S.-born Eliezer Waldman, a leader of the 450 or so…
On a beautiful fall afternoon in Washington last Iweek, camera angles framing the Capitol dome, a bipartisan group of senators and House members gathered with "citizen activists" to decry the "swamp of corrupt campaign money" now engulfing Congress and destroying democracy. The solution? An…
No, it's not too early to talk 1998. So get this: Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham hates the Senate (and what rational person wouldn't?). He was happier being governor, a job that conveniently comes open in '98 because sitting Gov. Lawton Chiles can't run again. One problem for Graham: Lieutenant…
THE SAD THING ABOUT THE ELECTION, on November 7 is that Mississippi voters won t get to hear any more titillating campaign rhetoric. Kirk Fordice, the first Republican governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction, and his Democratic rival, Secretary of State Dick Molpus, have recently eschewed the…
On October 12, editors at the Columbia Daily Spectator, one of the nation's oldest and most fabled college newspapers, ran Sharod Baker's fortnightly "Blackdafide" column. Baker, current president of the Columbia Black Students Union, has a beef against Jewish "tricksters." There is " evilness"…
Lamar Alexander. Bill Clinton. Bob Dole. Newt Gingrich. Phil Gramm. Colin Powell. One of these six will almost certainly be our next president. Which will it be?
THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU by the Republican National Committee: Two months ago, Mike Foster was an obscure Democrat in the Louisiana State Senate. In September, he switched parties. Last week he won his state's non-partisan gubernatorial primary and is considered a shoo-in when Louisianans cast…
Unfortunately, unlike old soldiers, aging lounge singers don't just fade away; sometimes they meddle in academia. The latest evidence comes from Los Angeles, where the University of Southern California has just announced the creation of the Streisand Professorship of Contemporary Gender Studies.…
It was a bad night for Colin Powell last week at Washington s Omni Shoreham Hotel, where the American Conservative Union held its annual dinner. The General himself was nowhere to be seen. His transoceanic book tour completed, Powell was in seclusion deciding whether to seek the presidential…
With Colin Powell's book still topping the non-fiction charts, all those who are buying it and not even opening it might consider these genuinely great works of non-fiction by generals past:
HOW badly has Bob Dole been doing recently? He abandoned most of his prepared text and winged it at the convention of Ross Perot's United We Stand party in Dallas -- and bombed badly. Later, in Indianapolis, the Tele- Prompter broke as he spoke and Dole struggled through a speech endorsing English…
David Souter, stealth candidate -- that was the soundbite in the summer of 1990, when President Bush announced the unknown New Hampshire judge's surprise nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Stealth candidate" stuck to Souter throughout that summer and during his confirmation hearings. That tag…
NO EQUESTRIAN STATUE of James H. Lake will ever adorn a city square. He is a Washington lobbyist, not a war hero. Still, now that Lake has fallen into the hellish clutches of a special prosecutor, here's an idea for how his fellow Republicans could honor his long service to Ronald Reagan and their…
THE RHETORICAL OUTBURSTS in Beijing at the United Nations women's conference, directed against the Chinese government and answered by the Chinese regime in kind, are only the most recent exchange in a long-running argument between West and East. Whose standards about individual liberty and the sway…
The Clintonires have been accusing House Republicans of posing a threat to the very fate of the world itself, should the Gingrichites demonstrate their seriousness about getting the budget they want by tying it to the "debt limit" -- that is, the amount of money the federal government can borrow to…
For bored shoppers seeking titillation in the supermarket checkout line, the October i0 issue of the National Enquirer did not disappoint. Sandwiched between write-ups on Mexican wolf boys and Oprah's suicidal niece, one story stood out as the week's most lurid. hockingly, at least 600,000 children…
It would have given Kingsley Amis no end of pleasure to learn that his New York Times obituary gave him credit for writing a number of novels that made it to the silver screen, most notably Lord Jim. "Laziness," Amis told me one bright September morning in Wales, "laziness has become the chief…
If you picked up October's GQ magazine, the one with John Travolta on the cover, you probably assumed, reasonably enough, that you could read an article about John Travolta if you wanted. You would have been only half- right.
with the galleys of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III's diplomatic memoirs literally hours away from final deadline, I knew we were in trouble when the Sinologists at the State Department began their security review of the China portion of Chapter 31 by carping about, of all things, the…
Tell me what you think of [the 1960s], and I'll tell you what your politics are," once said Joseph Epstein, the editor of the American Scholar. Of course, you might make much the same point about the 1980s or the 1950s, but the 1960s stand out as a decade of particularly intense cultural and…