August 2010

Tim Pawlenty urges state agencies not to accept Obamacare money.

Robert Barro's Wall Street Journal op-ed from Monday convincingly argues that unemployment benefits won't help the economy and won't improve unemployment levels. Here's a sample:

The Anchorage Daily News is live-blogging the counting of 25,000 absentee and questioned ballots in the Alaska Senate GOP primary between Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski. Miller started off the day with a 1,668-vote lead. After 6,000 ballots were counted, his lead now stands at 1,294.

Sarah Palin writes on Facebook:

In this past weekend's Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard senior editor Robert Messenger reviews Daniel Swift's Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War. Yes, much of the book grapples with the moral justifications for strategic bombing (the author himself reportedly does not take sides).…

Tom Gross compiles a little list of competing media memes regarding Gaza: 

House Republican leader John Boehner is delivering a speech on Iraq today at the American Legion's national convention in Milwaukee. Boehner doesn't declare victory, but credits the troops and Generals Petraeus and Odierno for the success that's been achieved in Iraq. "At this hour, 50,000 U.S.…

A few miles up the road from Ground Zero, the Obama administration recently submitted its account of the United States human rights record to the United Nations Human Rights Council.  The administration’s report, the first ever submitted by this nation to that body (whose members include Libya and…

Nate Silver, the left-leaning statistician recently hired by the New York Times after running his own polling blog for several years, is warning Democrats not to dismiss the GOP generic ballot lead as a mere outlier.

Steve Schale, the state director of Obama's 2008 campaign in Florida, writes that Charlie Crist can't win. Schale is a supporter of Democrat Kendrick Meek, but he makes a pretty persuasive case:

Never before has there been such a candidate of integrity, moral certitude, and iron spine:

Where was Sarah Palin last Friday night, before coming to Washington to speak at the Glenn Beck gathering Saturday?

Newsweek turns on the president.

Legal activist groups filed an extraordinary lawsuit yesterday to prevent the U.S. military and CIA from undertaking the "targeted killing" of persons suspected of posing a terrorist threat to the U.S. The filers are asking the court to block not merely the targeted killing of U.S. citizens…

Joseph Bottum on the Ground Zero mosque.

TWS literary editor Philip Terzian discusses his book, Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century, with C-Span's Brian Lamb:

Uncertain whether the last 18 months of dismal health-care speeches and rallies had entirely destroyed the myth of the Obama administration as gifted, uplifting message mavens, Kathleen Sebelius bravely ventured into the rhetorical orchards and brought forth this rotten fruit:

Via Hot Air, a new Gallup poll shows "Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic…

Today, Wesley Clark is campaigning for Alexi Giannoulias. Interestingly, though, it is Giannoulias’s opponent in the Illinois Senate race, Republican congressman Mark Kirk, who goes back a long way with the former Army general, Clark. 

According to a new Rasmussen poll, the West Virginia Senate race has significantly tightened up:

Last Friday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, at least one hundred guests were sickened by toxic fumes emanating from the pool complex, some 1,500 guests were then evacuated from the vicinity, and 26 were hospitalized for respiratory problems. Luckily, none of the victims' injuries were…

Joe Miller may feel a little bad for comparing the Alaska Libertarian to prostitutes on Friday.

The latest in a running series:

The Emergency Committee for Israel has put out an ad targeting New Jersey congressman Rush Holt:

Could the voters that sent Dick Gephardt to Washington 14 times ever vote for a Republican? 2010 would be the year to do it, and Ed Martin says he’s the Republican who can win Missouri’s Third Congressional District.

Mr. President,

The British author-diplomat Duff Cooper once divided the ages of man into arbitrary three-decade increments: From birth to 30 is youth, and from 30 to 60 years is middle age. Early last month I descended, irrevocably, into old age.

Vienna

Pacific County, Washington 

Eating with the Enemy

Scottsdale, Arizona

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. 

Paul Bedard reports:

"Bewitched, bothered and bewildered," warbled Ella Fitzgerald, among others. That old song, written in 1940 by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rogers, just about describes what is going on in the American economy. When seven of the seventeen officials of the Federal Reserve Board dissent from the…

In an interview with a local Florida TV station, governor and independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist says "I would have voted for" the national health care bill:

The news out of Canada is that authorities have broken up a terrorist cell that had more than 50 electronic circuit boards that could be used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The details of the plot are still a bit cloudy, but Canadian authorities were quick to point out that the plotters…

Ryan T. Anderson writes at the Public Discourse:

A rare note of European journalistic optimism in the aftermath of Israel's naval interception in May of a flotilla headed for Hamas-ruled Gaza: BBC Panorama, an investigative TV program, aired several weeks ago a remarkably hard-hitting exposure (“Death in the Med”) of what unfolded on the Turkish…

Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington state, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee, issued the following statement in response to the EPA's decision to review a petition to ban lead bullets:

The NRA was certainly tempted to endorse Harry Reid, as TWS reported, in order to keep a gun-control backer like Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin from becoming Senate Majority Leader, but the gun-rights group is announcing today that it will not endorse Reid in his re-election bid in Nevada. Why not?

The Huffington Post reports, "CBO warns Republicans that repealing health law would increase deficit by $455 billion." What the CBO actually says is that if Congress repeals Obamacare's $455 billion in "savings" (cuts) to Medicare and other federal health programs through 2019 (the CBO says that…

The Obama administration has delayed the trial by military commission of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the mastermind of the USS Cole attack, according to the Washington Post. The Defense Department denies this, saying in a statement that prosecutors “are actively investigating the case against Mr.…

Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan

Upon posting the YouTube clip yesterday of a Chris Christie press conference, I remarked how Christie had impressively turned the tables on an issue that could have embarrassed him. A clerical error by his education department--failing to list 2008-2009 funding levels--resulted in the loss of $400…

Christian Science Monitor reporter Gail Russell Chaddock wrote this story yesterday about Democrats' tough sledding heading toward November, and specifically the congressional race in Virginia's 11th congressional district between incumbent Democrat Gerry Connelly and Republican challenger Keith…

Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections? 

Here's the transcript:

Jerusalem

NRSC sends lawyer to help Lisa Murkowski with imminent Alaska Senate recount.

A politically experienced friend of TWS writes:

Greetings from northern climes! I have been on the ship for about five days, and I believe we're traversing the St. Lawrence River at the moment on our way to Quebec City. This being my first cruise experience, I have enjoyed the intelligent conversations with our WEEKLY STANDARD cruisers, the…

A source reports from Moscow that Mikhail Schneider, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, has been jailed for three days in connection with a demonstration on Russia’s Flag Day, which was held on August 22. He follows to jail Lev Ponomarev, a well known human rights activist, who also…

Via Daniel Foster, in this YouTube video New Jersey governor Chris Christie takes what could easily be an embarrassment for himself--a clerical error that cost New Jersey $400 million in education funding--and manages to turn the issue on Obama administration bureaucrats without sounding like he's…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD previously covered PharmAthene, reporting:

My stringer reports that cruisers had a chance to vote for a 2012 GOP nominee, with the understanding that it's far too early, etc.

Via Jennifer Rubin, Rasmussen shows Marco Rubio with a 10-point lead over Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race:

Iranian authorities first arrested Shiva Nazar Ahari in 2001, when she was seventeen. Her ‘crime’ was attending a candlelight vigil in Tehran that commemorated the victims of 9/11. Since then, she’s taught Iranian homeless children and Afghan refugees' children. In 2006, after she became the…

According to President Obama, "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what." You can keep your plan, that is, if your employer doesn't decide to dump it in the wake of Obamacare's passage (as many major employers are…

For nearly 30 years Richard Cizik represented the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C. During the George W. Bush administration, he tilted increasingly left and embraced global warming as his iconic issue. A Vanity Fair magazine spread admiringly portrayed him walking on water,…

Partisan polarization seems like it purchased a lifetime pass in this city. 

Yuval Levin and Adam Keiper on Stem Cells, Life, and the Law.

Eli Lake has more on the Obama administration's  29-page report  to the UN Human Rights Council:

In a lawsuit filed in federal court today, the pro-Israel group Z Street alleges that it has been discriminated against. Z Street says, in its complaint, that was "informed explicitly by an IRS Agent on July 19, 2010, that approval of Z STREET’s application for tax-exempt status has been at least…

Senator Max Baucus, 'author' of Obamacare: “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language.”

In his widely quoted memorial address for Daniel Pearl at an Upper West Side synagogue, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said, "not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one." But that's only the part that's getting all the attention. 

(Language Warning)

The Anchorage Daily News reports:

Supporters of the "Ground Zero mosque" have been oddly obsessed with the idea that the proposed Islamic center shouldn't be called a "mosque." As Frank Rich wrote last Sunday in the New York Times: "It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room."

After being off-air for months, GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio rolls out this spot to introduce himself to Florida voters for the general election:

In 2000, there was Kailey. Today, there’s Debbie. 

Jodie Evans is a terrorist sympathizing, America and Israel bashing extreme left-wing activist in California. Evans, also, is a supporter of Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. And, apparantely, Brown is a supporter of Evans.

(Update: On Tuesday, August 31, Lisa Murkowski conceded to Joe Miller following the counting of most absentee ballots.)

The United States has been engaged in anti-submarine exercises with South Korea to demonstrate resolve in the aftermath of the sinking of a South Korean vessel, the Cheonan, by the North Koreans. The USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered super-carrier, was set to take part in the second phase of…

Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, offered the following justification for not traveling with his gay partner to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries: "We want to encourage the idea of tolerance around the world but we don't want to achieve the opposite either by acting imprudently."

With 33 percent of precincts reporting, Joe Miller, the Sarah Palin-backed veteran and former judge, is leading incumbent Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican Senate primary 51.2 percent to 48.8 percent--or 21,364 votes to 20,362 votes. As John Fund reported Tuesday, Miller was "closing…

John McCain has defeated former congressman J.D. Hayworth in the Arizona GOP Senate primary. With 40 percent of precincts reporting, McCain is clobbering Hayworth by 27 points.

In Tuesday's Florida Senate primary, Democratic congressman Kendrick Meek defeated billionaire Jeff Greene by more than 20 points. This is good news for Republican Marco Rubio, who fares better in a three-way race with Meek and Charlie Crist than with Greene and Crist. Meek does more to cut into…

Shirley Sherrod says 'thanks but no thanks' to new job at the Department of Agriculture.

Not to be outdone by the Obama Democrats, local and state governments are doing their best this summer to annoy you with new taxes and regulations.

In April, President Obama reminded Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev that "we too are working on our democracy."

The Hill's Elise Viebeck reports:

Claudia Rosett discovers that Feisal Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, will be going to the Middle East on a State Department trip to perform "public diplomacy." Of course, Rauf, the organizer behind the Ground Zero mosque, is currently on his own controversial State Department funded trip to perform…

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, has a new poll out showing Marco Rubio in the lead in a three way race versus independent Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek. Heading into today's primary, Meek is leading his Democratic primary opponent Jeff Greene by double digits--which is good…

Reuters reports:

Yesterday, Ron Paul issued a statement saying that opposition to the Ground Zero mosque "is all about hate and Islamaphobia," and is driven by "the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it."

The president's chief advisor on counter-terrorism related issues, John Brennan, famously referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al Quds, and publicly defended jihad. But when it comes to answering questions about his defense of jihad, well, he doesn't really have a compelling answer. Instead,…

The expiration of tax credits for homebuyers is said to be largely responsible for July's unexpected 27% drop in existing home sales. But economist (and TWS contributor) Larry Lindsey says there's more to it than that.

My stringer aboard the New England/Canada WEEKLY STANDARD cruise emails today from the town of Sydney on Cape Breton.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Are sanctions on Iran working? Clearly, what the U.S. and the European Union have done so far is having an effect. Iran’s ability to import gasoline is sharply down, causing pain on the Iranian streets that might in turn cause pain to the clerical regime.

Worried the Obama administration won’t do enough to spur the economic rejuvenation of the Gulf region, a new organization of state and local officials and businessmen is seeking to have federal funds that might be spent elsewhere redirected to states suffering from the oil spill and a series of…

Reuters reports that a judge has ruled Obama's embryonic stem-cell policy runs afoul of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which bans federal funding for killing human embryos:

As part of his defense before a military commission at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr’s attorneys filed a motion claiming that his confessions were the product of torture. Khadr made incriminating statements (including that he killed an American serviceman) only after he was subjected to various…

Christopher Hitchens doesn't oppose the Ground Zero mosque, but he does want to draw attention to the endorsement by Feisal Rauf, the Ground Zero mosque imam, of Vilayet-i-faqih in Iran:

My stringer aboard the Canada/New England WEEKLY STANDARD cruise reports today that while normal cruisers enjoyed the beautiful sights, nature walks, and public gardens in beautiful clear weather in Halifax, Nova Scotia--Bill Kristol and Phil Terzian were happy as clams in an incredibly cluttered…

Australians went to the polls on Saturday to elect a new government, and as Monday morning dawns, they still have no idea who won. Instead, the two major parties fought to a tie, with both falling just shy of a 76-seat parliamentary majority.

Via the Corner, Anti-war Republican Ron Paul has issued a statement saying that the opposition to the Ground Zero mosque "is all about hate and Islamaphobia."

Ground Zero, New York City

The AP reports:

Ground Zero, New York City

“U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent” was the headline in the New York Times last Thursday. The article reported that U.S. officials were telling Jerusalem not to worry. It “would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a…

Ground Zero, New York City

The stark white landscape of the Salar de Uyuni in the Potosí department of Bolivia is punctuated only by pink flamingos and salt pyramids being slowly shoveled and loaded onto llamas by the Quechuá Indians. It is an unlikely place to be at the forefront of the future of the world’s energy supply.…

Leo and His Circle

The Democratic strategy in the 2010 election is simple: Change the subject. And given the subject on everyone’s mind, who can blame them? That subject is the economy and related matters like spending, the deficit, debt, and President Obama. These are the last things Democrats want to talk about.

When liberals get in trouble, it’s never their fault. Two fresh examples: President Obama and the Senate. Obama’s poll numbers have dipped at a record pace. He’s now under water, his performance as president more disapproved than approved. But wait! Obama isn’t to blame. Todd Purdum explains in…

Immortality

More than any other sport, professional tennis is a caste system. The top players are invited to tournaments as “seeds.” Players with lower rankings apply for wild cards or exemptions into the field. Further down the food chain are players who must participate in “qualifier” tournaments—the winners…

Contested Will

Declaring a “Recovery Summer” victory tour at the start of June must have looked like a pretty safe wager for the Obama administration. The economy seemed to have shifted firmly into gear during the spring. Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, told the Financial Times in…

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

While Charles and David Koch try to keep a low profile, their influence on conservative and libertarian organizations around the country is far from a secret. But you wouldn’t get that impression from reading this sensationalist profile by Jane Mayer in this week’s New Yorker, “Covert Operations:…

In an effort to clarify ambiguous language in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Obama administration is asking Congress to pass a measure that would allow the FBI to gain access to an individual’s web browsing history and email traffic record (not the messages themselves, but the list…

The mainstream media have recently discovered the misdeeds of the voting section of the Obama Justice Department. But the dismissal of an egregious case of voter intimidation against the New Black Panther party (over the objections of the veteran trial team) by Obama political appointees and the…

Via The Hill, former DNC chairman and Vermont governor Howard Dean ripped into the Obama White House this morning on CNN and said that the Democrats' fate in the midterm elections rests on Obama's shoulders. Asked about Obama's bad poll numbers, Dean said:

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes at The Atlantic's website:

Peter Baker reports in the New York Times--"As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama"--that President Obama has so far marked the official end of America's combat mission in Iraq only with a written statement, and one sentence at a pair of fund-raisers: "We are keeping the promise I made…

Despite worsening poll numbers for the president, his party, and his policies, Vice President Joseph Biden has been dispatched to assure fellow Democrats that things aren't as bad as they seem.

In this weekend's Wall Street Journal, Dilbert creator Scott Adams explains how his earnest attempts to go green were thwarted by reality, impracticality, even aesthetics.

If it were ever true that we Americans are provincial -- the charge made by European elites and pundits -- it no longer is. True, only about one-in-three American adults have passports, but then Europeans can drop in on neighboring countries by hopping on a train, whereas Americans face a longer,…

A Washington state Senate race poll conducted after Tuesday's primary shows that Republican nominee Dino Rossi has jumped out to a 7-point lead over incumbent Democrat Patty Murray. According to the SurveyUSA poll, Rossi leads Murray 52 percent to 47 percent. This is a significant change from three…

Karen Hughes: "I suspect that the terrorists themselves might celebrate [the Ground Zero mosque's] presence as a twisted victory over our society's freedoms."

Miss USA Rima Fakih, a Muslim from Michigan, tells Inside Edition that the Ground Zero mosque should be moved:

Al Qaeda really wants to kill Prince Muhammad Bin Naif Bin Abdul Aziz, who is the Saudi deputy interior minister and oversees the Kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts. According to the Saudi Gazette, al Qaeda has tried to kill the prince four times since 2004.

The AP and New York Times have decided to avoid using the term the "Ground Zero mosque." Why? Well, because the proposed 'Islamic cultural center' is not just a mosque (though it would contain a mosque) and because it's not right at Ground Zero (but a whole two blocks from Ground Zero).

A savvy friend with lots of political experience writes:

When Marco Rubio said he was open to raising the retirement age for Social Security eligibility, Charlie Crist's campaign attacked Rubio's proposal as "cruel, unusual and unfair to seniors living on a fixed income"--and that was back in March when Charlie Crist was still a Republican.

When Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar threw his support behind the Ground Zero mosque, it became clear that what started as a political controversy is also a national security issue. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says it is wrong to ask where Imam Feisal Rauf is raising money for his project,…

Ground Zero mosque backers can legally build the proposed mosque mere blocks from the worst attack from Islamist terrorists in this nation's history. That's not in dispute.

Many American and British bands – as well as other entertainers – have been waging an ongoing cultural-boycott-war against Israel. Grammy award winner Carlos Santana pulled the plug earlier this year on his Israel concert. And in the aftermath of Israel's May interception of the jihadist-controlled…

Perhaps the most comprehensive account of the Rod Blagojevich trial comes from ... Taiwan's NMA News:

Politico has released a piece that begins as follows: "Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to 'improve it.'"  This is a truly remarkable…

Ben Smith reports:

AP doesn't want its staff to call the Ground Zero mosque the "Ground Zero mosque." 

In March 2009, a Pew poll found that 11 percent of Americans incorrectly believed President Obama was a Muslim. A new Pew poll shows that that number has increased to 18 percent. Does this seven-point jump have any significance? Maybe. Maybe not.

We might as well enjoy this sort of excruciating scholarly adoration of Barack Obama before the November elections, at least. This is from a new Princeton University Press release on 'Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition' by James T. Kloppenberg:

The consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster continue: The soil in places like Bavaria, Germany, still has a measurable amount of Cesium, which in turn is being passed on to the wild boar population, which feeds on truffles and mushrooms. (And it doesn't help that by nature they tend to stick…

Yesterday Howard Dean came out against the Ground Zero mosque and, for his trouble, was criticized for throwing in his lot with Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Assorted Evil Monsters, et al. Today, Dean's own grassroots organization has come out against him. The group Democracy for America (which was…

Lee Smith considers the concept and implications of sharia in his latest column for Tablet:

The former DNC chairman, governor, and presidential primary contender writes at Salon.com:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee responds to the Democratic charge that the GOP is extreme:

The controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has breathed new life into Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. In the early 1990s, Huntington argued that:

New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, is the kind of guy that doesn't take anything from anyone. He's no nonsense. He's blunt. Sometimes gruff, not always smooth, but always himself.

Eli Lake writes on the news that the final U.S. combat brigade is leaving Iraq:

Via Hot Air, here's a video of Rudy Giuliani talking about the Ground Zero mosque. He says the mosque backers have a right to build it, but they shouldn't. Watch:

The AP's Matthew Lee reports:

In a dangerous world, what is the best way to keep the peace? Deterrence is the name of the game. But what exactly is it?

I had the pleasure of traveling to California last week, a place D.H. Lawrence once described as “crazy sensible” because its people think about “just the moment: hardly as far ahead as carpe diem.”

For Republicans, poll numbers have never looked better prior to a midterm election than they do today. “You’ve got to pinch yourself every time you look at the data,” says pollster Neil Newhouse. A Republican victory “could be bigger than anyone thinks.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday said: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded."

Harry Reid and Sharron Angle tied at 47 percent, according to Rasmussen.

News item: "COLUMBUS, Ohio-- Despite criticism from Republicans and others, President Barack Obama said Wednesday he has 'no regrets' over the comments he made about the right of Muslims to build an Islamic center near the former site of the World Trade Center in New York."

In a radio interview posted on YouTube, former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential primary contender Howard Dean says that the Ground Zero mosque is "a real affront to people who lost their lives, including Muslims" on 9/11. Dean says, "I think another site would be a better idea."

Via William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, a 1993 YouTube video of Harry Reid railing against birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants:

Opponents of the Ground Zero mosque have tried to use analogies to show that their opposition to the mosque is not rooted in anti-Muslim bigotry. For example, a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor would be provocative and insensitive, even though many Japanese Americans fought and died in…

The executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, Noah Pollak, argues in Politico that the Obama administration should leave the UN Human Rights Council:

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias made waves earlier this week when he announced his support for the Ground Zero Mosque. Giannoulias’s support for the mosque isn’t particularly surprising; he’s far behind his Republican opponent, Mark Kirk, in the money race and can’t afford to…

You knew it was inevitable that following the success of Avatar, there would be a pornographic film aiming to become the first in 3D. It's a competition as fierce as the race to the moon.

I tend to chafe when Michelle Obama and a "panel of experts" tells me I need to reduce my caloric intake. And I get downright nervous when these experts start telling restaurants how much they should be allowed to serve us. But the case against the nanny state has just been dealt a blow in the form…

Nancy Pelosi yesterday: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded."

In Washington state's open "jungle primary," the top two vote getters of either party advance to the general election. In the Senate primary, with 60 percent of precincts reporting, incumbent Democrat Patty Murray has 46 percent of the vote. This is pretty bad news for the Democrats. Sean Trende at…

Via Daniel Foster, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tries to one-up Obama with her own Ground Zero mosque gaffe:

Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover article in the Atlantic about the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran has provoked fierce debate. One key issue is the likely timing of Israeli action, if it is to occur at all. Goldberg reports a consensus among the officials he interviewed that “there is a better than…

Blago convicted on 1 of 24 counts.

How unpopular has Obama's economic agenda become? Democratic Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal--in deep blue Connecticut--says he would have opposed the stimulus. Via The Hotline's Josh Kraushaar, the Connecticut Mirror reports:

Philadelphia

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias split with Senate majority leader Harry Reid and the majority of Americans in favor of Barack Obama's position on the proposed Ground Zero mosque. Here's the AP: 

Rasmussen has a new poll out showing that the Obama administration nuclear policies are strikingly at odds with public opinion.

TWS readers in Massachusetts seem particularly energized this year. Yesterday, one had interesting advice for GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker. Now another e-mails about the race in Massachusetts’s 5th Congressional District:

Jewish money counter Rep. Mike McMahon (NY - 13) has come out against the proposed Ground Zero mosque, according to a statement released by his campaign:

A column (h/t, MEMRI) in the August 16, 2010 London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV and the paper's former editor, “A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?” should mean the end of plans for a mosque near Ground Zero. Mr. Al-Rashid supports…

After the 2008-2009 war in Gaza, Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued reports documenting Israeli “war crimes.” Amnesty’s was titled “22 Days of Death and Destruction.” Human Rights Watch issued three under the titles: “Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White…

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania today. Perhaps Bloomberg, an independent Republican with a strong pro-Israel record, is there to help cover up Sestak's tarnished record on Israel. But in reality, Chuck Hagel, a former…

Menomonee Falls, WI

The Hill reports:

Via Legal Insurrection, same-sex marriages will not be recognized by the state of California while Perry v. Schwarzennegger is appealed. Pending an expedited appeal, the 9th Circuit has granted to stay Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Bill Roggio to the Washington Times: "The Taliban and al Qaeda already have safe havens inside Afghanistan, despite a U.S. presence...If we walk away from Afghanistan, instead of keeping them occupied with fighting us, they are going to be free to do what they did prior to 9/11, which is plan…

The Ground Zero mosque controversy has reawakened concerns about some Islamic Centers in the United States and their funding sources. As Claudia Rosett recently noted, we really don’t know where Feisal Abdul Rauf found $100 million to fund his mega-project in lower Manhattan.  Congressman Peter…

A statement from the Emergency Committee for Israel, on Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the Cordoba Initiative and the man behind the Ground Zero mosque:

Jim Manley, Harry Reid’s press secretary, has announced that “The First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.”

Feisal Abdul Rauf is in the news primarily as the sponsor of the Ground Zero mosque. But leave aside the planned mosque. What about the fact that Rauf is now touring the Middle East on a trip sponsored and paid for by our State Department? Is he delivering the message we want foreigners to hear…

On Twitter, CNN's Ed Henry posts a statement from Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesman:

Another very interesting nugget from the Foreign Policy profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells Foreign Policy magazine that he'll step down sometime before January 2012, but says he'll be sticking around until we "know whether the strategy is working in Afghanistan"

Ambassador Dore Gold corrects the record with respect to "the 1967 borders" -- the one which Palestinian leaders, and even some American leaders, are so keen to suggest will solve years of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It's worth a read here, in the Washington Examiner: 

Here is Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking at a U.S. Strategic Command conference last week, making the case for Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty:

On Friday night it seemed very clear that President Obama gave moral support to the Ground Zero mosque builders, but on Saturday he appeared to backtrack, saying: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very…

Here’s an e-mail from Alex Vuckovic, a TWS reader from Massachusetts who was way ahead of the curve last December when he wrote to say that, yes, Scott Brown could win. He has some advice for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in his state, and it seemed worth passing on:

Don Juan

Two weeks ago, the FBI released 423 pages from its files on the late radical historian Howard Zinn. The bureau kept tabs on him for over 25 years, long before he became the bestselling author of A People’s History of the United States. Followers of Zinn’s career will not be surprised to hear the…

Farewell

The Hebrew Republic

President Obama is under water in public opinion polls, judged more unfavorably than favorably. He now pops up in Republican campaign ads that link Democratic candidates to his unpopular administration. And a growing list of Democrats would rather he stay away while they are running for office this…

The Unreal D.C.

The millions visiting World Expo in Shanghai find no mention at the China pavilion of Mao Zedong. Nor did those attending the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 encounter any mention of Chairman Mao. Yet while the Communist government tries to present an apolitical and…

American Cicero

Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and…

Farnborough Airport

The Hotline's Steven Shepard reports that a new Mason-Dixon poll shows congressman Kendrick Meek leading partyboy billionaire Jeff Greene 40 percent to 26 percent in the Democratic Florida Senate primary.

Sarah Palin responds to the president's comments on the Ground Zero mosque:

Former Florida House speaker and current GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio just put out the following statement on the Ground Zero mosque:

Speculation about a possible attack on Iranian nuclear sites has reached a fever pitch over the summer.  The talk is so wild that even level-headed commentators on the right like Michael Barone opine aloud that perhaps Israel won’t be the instigator; rather the Obama administration might order a…

Today in Florida President Barack Obama "backed off" (as Politico’s Carol Lee put it) his defense of the Ground Zero mosque. Obama now claims that last night he was only defending the legal rights of the organizers: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision…

Penetrating commentary on President Obama's remarks last night on Islam, 9/11, and Ground Zero is already available.

During a Friday night dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White House, President Obama weighed in on the proposal to build a 15-story Islamic center two blocks from the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamist terrorists on 9/11:

The American economy is in serious trouble, and the remaining weapons we have available to prevent a double dip are few indeed. We will try to avoid a long period of deflation of the sort that doomed Japan to a lost decade, but are not confident we can. That’s a free translation of what the Federal…

Peter Wehner refudiates The New Republic’s Keith Olbermann.

Liberal blogger Nate Silver takes a look at a new poll on gay marriage conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling:

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a very interesting column this week examining the signal sent by GM’s purchase of AmeriCredit.  The short answer: GM looks like it’s trying to revive the old patterns of demand before the recession.  It’s doing so by following some of the same business practices that led to…

The pressure on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, from human rights groups continues to mount. One day after five human rights groups critized WikiLeaks and Assange for endangering Afghans who cooperated with Coalition forces and the Afghan government by leaking more than 76,000 U.S.…

President Barack Obama's handpicked general, General David Petraeus, presently leading the war effort in Afghanistan, will soon ask the commander-in-chief for more time, the New York Times reports. This comes nearly 9 months after Obama courageously decided on a surge in Afghanistan, adding 30,000…

In the Florida Senate Democratic primary, billionaire partyboy Jeff Greene and Congressman Kendrick Meek are neck and neck in the polls. Here's a story from the St. Petersburg Times's Adam Smith that shows why Meek, whatever his own faults, is a stronger candidate than Greene:

Omar Khadr’s trial before a military commission at Guantanamo has reportedly been delayed once again. This time, Khadr’s attorney has suffered some illness and the trial has been put on hold for thirty days, according to Agence France-Presse.

WikiLeaks is now promising to release the remaining 15,000 classified Afghan war documents it has in its possession. The Pentagon is asserting that grave harm will result. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell is calling the prospective publication  the "height of irresponsibility."

The New York Times the other day had a piece pointing out that White House staff members are, well, exhausted. Long days, a grueling schedule, and high pressure are to blame, we're told. Here's Victor Davis Hanson's take:

The Daily Caller points out that Democrats were for pro-wrestling before they were against it:

Charles Krauthammer writes:

For retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, Republican candidate for Congress in Florida’s 22nd District, one word seems to sum up his campaign, his career, his life: “leadership.”

With little fanfare, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Carter Doctrine, when President Jimmy Carter warned against “outside” control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The U.S. effectively enforced an implicit corollary to that doctrine—to prevent control by a regional power—in the Iraq wars…

Douglas Murray on how the 'Ground Zero mosque hurts Islam.'

The Emergency Committee for Israel has released another political ad, this time taking aim at Democratic Connecticut congressman Jim Himes. Greg Sargent has the scoop and quotes Bill Kristol: "You can't just say you're pro-Israel, you have to be pro-Israel." Here's the spot:

I'll say this for 'em. Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel are not going out without a very public fight, bordering on Blagojevichian levels of boldness. Rangel took his case to the House floor this week, hijacking the get-together Pelosi planned to bail out the states and unions with a 37-minute…

The death this week of 82-year-old Dan Rostenkowski of Chicago, Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the Reagan years, reminds me of Cokie Roberts, of all people. And leads me to think that Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters – and congressional Democrats in general – are…

A couple new polls out in the California and Colorado Senate races today:

I always like it when we can notch a win for the non-cheaters, even if it is 10 years too late. Earlier this spring, the International Olympic Committee disqualified the 2000 Chinese women's Olympic team for having an underaged competitor. China placed third in the Sydney Olympics, with the…

From George Will's latest column:

News sources reporting that a new Chinese ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-21D (DF-21), has the capability of hitting a moving aircraft carrier (up to a range of 900 miles away) heralds the demise of the aircraft carrier as the dominant force at sea, undermining the ability of the U.S. Navy to…

Jean-Francois Poinard, a rather prominent chef in Lyon, had been missing for some time. Then authorities were tipped off about a chest freezer inside the apartment Poinard shared with his girlfriend.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reacted indignantly when members of the press, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen questioned the wisdom of releasing more than 77,000 classified memos without making an effort to remove information that could…

Via Keep America Safe, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley defends the decision to spend tax dollars on a Middle East junket for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man spearheading the Ground Zero Mosque initiative. Crowley says Rauf was first selected for the program under the Bush administration and…

The New York Times has published an article by Jeremy Peters, who whines about the military’s media tours at Guantanamo Bay. (Note: I was on such a tour in December 2009.) This (news?) piece begins with a bit of snark: “Welcome to Guantánamo Bay, where your tour guide will never leave your side but…

The Obama administration has bent over backward in its attempt to reset relations with Russia. The result? The White House secured an agreement on START. It got Russia to sign on to U.N. sanctions against Iran. Russia also agreed to permit overflights into Afghanistan.

Nevada TV news reporter Nathan Baca presses Harry Reid to explain his comment that "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican." Watch the video here:

On his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman attacks a story on Paul Ryan in the news pages of the New York Times:

On his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman attacks a story on Paul Ryan in the news pages of the New York Times:

Here is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday making the case for Senate ratification of the new START agreement with Moscow:

Chris Moody at the Daily Caller discovers that the teachers bill, which brought Congress back from its August recess for an emergency session this week, wasn't really for the teachers after all. How do we know? Well, according to Moody, states that don't need it will receive money from the federal…

For now, it seems that Nobel laureate, Princeton professor, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is giving up in his fight against Republican congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

On Monday, German authorities announced that they closed down the Taiba mosque in Hamburg. The mosque achieved infamy as home to several of the 9/11 plotters under its previous name -- Al Quds.

The View’s hostesses probably won’t invite Senator John Thune on the show to discuss his new budget proposal. Ideas this thoughtful rarely attract pop culture media attention.

Ground Zero Mosque planners reject Gov. Patterson's offer to help move the mosque elsewhere in NYC.

The Foreign Policy Initiative has organized a group letter to President Obama on Russia and human rights, focusing on the recent arrest of Russian activist Boris Nemtsov. Bob Kagan, Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, Elliott Abrams, and others are signatories. Here's the full text of the letter:

I look forward to the national media asking every New Hampshire Democrat and every leading national Democrat to denounce this sort of thing immediately. After all, words matter:

The State Department is finally explaining why it decided to publish on its affiliate website, www.america.gov, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech, which endorsed the building of the Ground Zero mosque two blocks from the site of an Islamist terrorist attack that claimed the lives of…

Maybe if Rory Reid weren't having to distance himself from his father to the point of forgoing his last name, Harry Reid would be more familiar with the idea of a Nevadan, Hispanic Republican. In his quest for the Nevada governorship, Rory Reid is getting trounced in polls at the moment by Brian…

The mainstream liberal media: "Primary night yields good news for President Obama and Democrats" (John F. Harris, Politico).

Harry Reid's campaign is spinning his statement--"I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican"--claiming that Reid wasn't making a racial argument.

CNN polls registered* voters on the Ground Zero mosque:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

The party of ideas, folks. After proclaiming that their skin color should prevent people of Hispanic descent from voting any which way they please, Reid isn't backing down:

A central theme of Barack Obama’s national security policy is that nuclear-armed states should reduce their reliance on such terrible weapons. If the United States and the other nuclear states set an example and take progressive steps toward the ultimate goal of zero nuclear weapons, others will…

Bennet and Buck bring home wins in Senate primary in Colorado.

Yesterday, Harry Reid said: "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican."

In Colorado, the GOP gubernatorial primary between Scott McInnis, who's been plagued by a plagiarism scandal, and businessman Dan Maes is too close to call.

Osh, Kyrgyzstan

While campaigning in Nevada Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told an audience of mostly Hispanic voters: "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay. Do I need to say more?" Watch the video here:

Claudia Rosett was first to report on Friday that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man spearheading the Ground Zero Mosque initiative, is about to take a month-long trip through the Middle East sponsored by the U.S. government:

The Emergency Committee for Israel has today released another political ad. This time the pro-Israel group targets Virginia congressman Glenn Nye. Here's the spot:

Marc Thiessen: "[Julian] Assange's illegal disclosures are helping the Taliban to undermine Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy before it has a chance to work."

Washington was hot today, and Democrats were tearing at each other's hair like a clatch of tween frenemies fighting for the front row at a Justin Bieber mall appearance.

From Matt Labash's latest "Ask Matt Labash" column at the Daily Caller:

In the wake of the death of Ted Stevens, "Alaskan of the Century" Sarah Palin pays tribute on her Facebook page:

Looks like Charlie Rangel took the boss's advice.

The Taliban's responsibility for the vast majority of civilian deaths is perhaps the most underreported story from Afghanistan since the war began. A United Nations report, which was released today, shows that more than three-fourths (76 percent) of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over the past year…

The Department of Justice last Thursday unsealed indictments charging 14 individuals – mostly American citizens – of allegedly supporting, or attempting to support, the al Qaeda-linked Somali terrorist group al Shabaab. Only two of the 14 individuals named are currently in U.S. custody – the rest…

It seems that New York governor David Paterson has taken Dan Senor's line on the Ground Zero mosque: "...of all possible locations in the city..." The New York Post reports on Paterson's offer:

In what appeared to be an implicit endorsement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's own endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque, the State Department published the entire text of the New York City mayor's speech on its affiliate website, www.america.gov. I called the State Department to receive comment, and…

The Illinois Senate race has taken on a new meaning: It's no longer just a regular election -- it's also a special election. What this means is, there will be two elections on the same ballot for the same Senate seat, but for different terms. One will decide who will be seated in January, along…

KTUU, Anchorage's NBC affiliate, confirms that former Alaska senator Ted Stevens was killed last night in a plane crash:

Scott Johnson follows up on a TWS Online profile of GOP congressional candiate Sam Meas ("From the Killing Fields to Congress?"):

Back in April reports surfaced that Syria was shipping long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.Lebanon’s prime minister, Sa’ad Hariri, denied the presence of the weapons on Lebanese territory. Israel issued warnings. UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, denied…

Yep, Greg Gutfeld wants to open a gay bar in the property adjacent to the Ground Zero Mosque, as a celebration of tolerance.

Georgia Republicans head to the polls today to vote for their party's nominee for the governorship. Former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel, one of Sarah Palin's "Mama Grizzlies," currently leads her primary opponent, former congressman Nathan Deal, 47 percent to 42 percent, according to…

Ground Zero mosque imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, on terrorists: "'They feel the need to conflagrate,' he says of Muslims who feel they’ve been 'humiliated' and 'ignored.'"

Talking late this afternoon with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Republican congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin blasted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for his "intellectualy lazy" attack on Ryan's fiscal "Roadmap." In his Friday column, Krugman called Ryan a "charlatan" and his plan to reform the…

The Free Agia Sophia Council of America seeks to free the Agia Sophia church in Istanbul, Turkey from the blockade Turkey has placed on the church. According to the founder's message, the group hopes "to restore the great church of Agia Sophia located in Istanbul (Constantinople), Turkey, as a…

Call it another manifestation of the extraordinary disconnect between the “Ruling Class” and the rest of the country.

Time magazine's cover, featuring a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears were chopped off by her Taliban husband for dishonoring him, has sparked plenty of outrage from folks who should be rising to the young woman's defense. Time's cover, and the accompanying article, is seen as a propaganda ploy…

The people of Pakistan, and Muslims as well as non-Muslims around the world, were horrified when, at midnight on July 1, three bombers struck the Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore. Sufis often perform their rituals, known as zikr or “remembrance of God,” on Thursday nights, in preparation for the…

A few weeks ago, Alexi Giannoulias’s Illinois Senate campaign claimed, “Every proposal outlined by Alexi includes a counter-part offset to ensure that it is deficit neutral.”  But a closer examination of Giannoulias’s economic plan reveals it would increase America’s debt by more than $200 billion. 

Public Policy Polling shows Colorado lieutenant governor Jane Norton leading

Whatever Arnold Kling writes, I read. So I made sure to read his essay in AEI's American, "When Labor is Capital." So should you!

California Rep. Maxine Waters has been formally charged by the House Ethics Committee with three ethics violations:

At a Washington, D.C. event earlier this week, Gulf State residents feeling neglected by policies that punish workers in the oil and gas sector sent Congress a simple message: “My Job Matters.” A new amendment put forward by Democratic Senator Max Baucus and added ironically enough to a small…

There once was a time when Roberto Donna was the toast of the town. The Turinese chef and restaurateur ran the flagship Galileo, Bebo Trattoria (a favorite of Justice Scalia's), and, over the years, places like Il Radicchio, Arucola, i Matti, and Primi Piatti. That was then.

So desperate is the United States Congress to spend $26 billion to bail out state governments—ensuring state governments have no incentive to stay within budgets, so that we can bail them out repeatedly until the end of time— that they didn't even name the bill.

A headline in the LA Times: "Democratic candidates all but ignore their legislative successes: Avoid bragging, strategists advise, and warn against putting Republicans back in charge."

In recent days, Chile and Mexico became the latest Latin American countries to reestablish formal diplomatic relations with Honduras, which (unfairly) became a pariah after the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya last summer. The holdouts, not surprisingly, include Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and…

A new Quinnipiac poll indicates that maybe GOP Senate candidate Rob Simmons's decision to suspend and then restart his campaign wasn't such a good idea:

Keith Hennesey explains who advises the president on economics.

The Fourth Part

So maybe Americans aren’t so different from Europeans after all? If you read a lot of the opinion press—poor lamb—you might be getting the idea that we’re all social democrats now. This would be sad news for Republicans. 

The Next

Martin Amis’s most recent novel told a story about the summer of 1970 from a modern standpoint. Strange fact: The Pregnant Widow revealed, without exactly meaning to, that cultural attitudes have gone virtually nowhere in the last 40 years. 

Orlando

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

The Rage Against God

Not long ago, I took my three-year-old son to the doctor. I was reading to him in the waiting room when an old man and his wife sat on the couch directly opposite ours—the only seats that weren’t occupied on that busy morning. The man introduced himself, and we began chatting. As we spoke, I…

The state of California, a major player in the American textbook market, introduces its students to Islam in the seventh grade. For this purpose, the California State Board of Education has recommended the use of, among others, a world history textbook entitled History Alive! The Medieval World and…

The Scrapbook confesses that it takes a certain unhealthy interest in recent accounts of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez’s exhumation of the corpse of Simón Bolivar. No disrespect to the Liberator is intended here, of course; but the details could hardly be invented.

A failed presidency is a terrible thing to witness. A failed presidency with more than two years left to run is also dangerous for the country. So, even though it would be easy for The Weekly Standard to allow your administration to continue on its current path to perdition, thereby ensuring…

America runs large and persistent trade deficits. Our partners figure out how to make lots of things we want, and we can’t figure out how to produce an equal amount of stuff they want—or are permitted by their governments to buy. 

Last year I was talking to a literary agent and friend about the dire manuscripts I am sometimes asked to read by neighbors, troubled youths, swains of hairdressers, and the man in the dark trench coat who stands at the back of the room at every book-signing, and then thrusts a grimy manuscript…

In dealing with our current economic crisis, we might remember that a recession is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Although economists differ on just what constitutes a recession, there have been some 47 in the United States since 1790. There have been 11 since 1945, and they have averaged 10…

Earlier this decade, Colorado progressives pioneered a political strategy for electing Democratic majorities in what had once been GOP strongholds. Since then, the strategy has been quietly deployed in at least 18 other states in time for the 2010 election cycle. And while nothing may be able to…

Changes in the earth’s atmosphere, the additional greenhouse effect and the resultant changes in the climate .  .  . represent a global danger for humanity and the entire biosphere of the earth. If no effective counteracting measures are taken, dramatic consequences are to be expected for all of…

A successful work of pop culture is usually the result of a happy series of accidents that bring together a bunch of disparate, often disharmonious, people who nonetheless manage collectively to produce something notable and enduring. Producing a good movie, or a good TV show, or a good mass-market…

Republicans were on a roll in Colorado. Now they’re not. After losing badly to Democrats in 2004, 2006, and 2008, Republicans were optimistic about winning the governorship, a Senate seat, one to three House pickups, and any number of state legislative seats in the midterm elections in November.…

Neda Bolourchi, whose mother was murdered during the 9/11 attacks, wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend:

If my ears didn't deceive me, I heard Juan Williams say this morning, seated only a few feet away on Fox News Sunday, that "everyone likes Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels." He said this, of course, as a prelude to arguing that Christie and Daniels are much more reasonable than those wacky…

On Friday, liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking Republican congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Ryan's fiscal "Roadmap." In what could have easily passed for a bit of clever self-parody, Krugman angrily denounced Ryan a "charlatan" and a "dope," whose plan is a…

Christopher Caldwell writes on the Ground Zero mosque in the Financial Times:

There is gloom enough to satisfy Eeyore. The president promised the country that his massive $787 billion stimulus package and other spending would reduce the unemployment rate to 8 percent; with the loss of 131,000 jobs in July, it is stuck on 9.5 percent, and would be higher still had more than…

From Sam Stein (former member of Journolist!), in the Huffington Post:

Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam won yesterday's GOP primary for governor in Tennessee, the Tennessean reports:

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments about U.S. interests in the resolution of competing claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea caused Beijing to lash out at what it perceived as unwarranted U.S. intervention in a matter outside its…

The cover of Time magazine shows the shocking image of a young Afghan girl named Aisha who was disfigured when her husband sliced off her nose and ears. But rather than serve as an example of intolerable spousal abuse, this is instead a sample of the Taliban's justice: Aisha’s husband was acting…

Via Obamacare Watch's eBrief, Kevin Hassett on how "ObamaCare Only Gets Worse Upon Further Review:"

Thomas Joscelyn reported on the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009, and noted Iran's support for terrorist groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. Just two days prior to Foggy Bottom's long-delayed report, the U.S. Treasury Department designated two top officers in…

CNN's Peter Hamby reports the holidays will be a little less crazy for political junkies next year:

The New York Sun editorializes:

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center argues persuasively that the Ground Zero mosque shouldn't be built so close to the site of the worst terrorist attack in our country's history:

President Obama’s Gitmo problem (that is, his inability to shut the facility down, even though he wanted to do so in just one year) is in many ways a Yemen problem. The Yemeni detainees accounted for roughly 40 percent of the Gitmo population when Obama took office. But his administration has…

When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, some argued that what really mattered in the decision were Walkers findings of fact--which supposedly prove there is no…

Only days after Israel took the unprecedented step of agreeing to participate in a UN investigation on the Gaza flotilla incident, assurances given by the Obama administration have proven to be empty. The episode paints a disturbing picture of the administration's actions in pushing for this…

Should the press publish the names of American officials who have interrogated captured al Qaeda operatives? That question came sharply to the fore in 2008, when the New York Times went ahead, against strenuous CIA objections, and disclosed the identity of a CIA officer who interrogated Khalid…

Megan McArdle on the new jobs numbers:

Polling on inside-the-beltway legislative issues is fraught with challenges because it requires translating Washington-speak into a language voters can understand.

Cut through the bluster in Paul Krugman's New York Times column on Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) and his fiscal "Roadmap, and you're left with four seemingly substantive criticisms.  Each one is empty.

Sam Meas could teach President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick a thing or two about hope. But unlike them, he hasn’t written tomes about himself, which is too bad because you’d want to read his life story. 

At the Capitol on Thursday, three United States senators weighed in on the decision to build an Islamic cultural center mere blocks from the site of worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. When questioned about the proposal by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Senators Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.), Olympia Snowe…

The State Department has finally released its Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009. Foggy Bottom’s analysis, which details terrorist events in the previous calendar year, was supposed to be provided to Congress by April 30. But this year the report was not published until August. So, we are just…

Barack Obama is still a bigot.

A Quinnipiac poll out yesterday shows GOP Senate hopeful Linda McMahon of Connecticut gaining some momentum against Democrat Dick Blumenthal, the state's attorney general. According to the poll, Blumenthal leads McMahon 50 percent to 40 percent, a seven point gain for the Republican, who trailed by…

Here's a video of ranking judiciary committee Republican Jeff Sessions making his closing argument against Elena Kagan:

David Ignatius writes in today's Washington Post on a briefing Obama and his advisers held for a small group of journalists:

The University of Chicago is a great school. And academic freedom is a great principle. But should there ever be limits on who can teach what?

Solicitor General Elena Kagan was confirmed as a United States Supreme Court justice on a 63 to 37 vote this afternoon.

As Sam Stein reports at the Huffington Post, the Emergency Committee for Israel is out today with a hard hitting ad on Ohio congressman Mary Jo Kilroy:

Charlie Cook writes at the Cook Political Report (subscription required):

The Washington Post reports:

The president is holding a fundraiser for Democratic Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias today in Chicago. A reader passes along this photograph of the protesters, welcoming Barack Obama and "mob banker" Giannoulias: 

A new poll from Siena finds that 61 percent of New York residents and 56 percent of New York City residents oppose the proposed Ground Zero mosque. Only 33 percent of NYC residents support it. Here's the breakdown:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to comment on the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero Mosque this morning. "I don't have any thoughts about that. I assume it will be worked out in New York," the Kentucky Republican told reporters at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Christian…

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy recently argued at National Review Online that the federal government has reason to investigate Rashid Khalidi, an activist Middle Eastern studies professor at Columbia University.  What prompted this?  Khalidi’s efforts to raise $370,000 for a new sea vessel…

The Washington Post reports today on the posthumous rehabilitation of Air Force General John D. Lavelle. In 1972, Lavelle was forced to retire with a reduced rank in disgrace for conducting unauthorized bombing missions in North Vietnam, and then covering it up.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says the Obama administration can't double-count Medicare savings as simultaneously paying for Obamacare and strengthening Medicare's future. The Congressional Budget Office says the administration can't double-count Medicare cuts.

What next for California's gay marriage case? The facts matter.

It sounded very easy in theory. With the biggest tax increase in history set to go into effect on January 1, 2011, Democrats were poised to win the middle class rock heroes award.

The economic recovery, to the extent there’s been one, has stalled. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent and may go higher. The housing crisis endures. What is President Obama’s remedy? More jobless benefits, more money for governors to pay Medicaid bills, more funds for teachers and…

As this map at the Missouri secretary of state's website shows, all 114 counties in the state voted against Obamacare's individual mandate yesterday in a referendum called Prop C, while only the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City supported the mandate. Three of Missouri's four Democratic…

"Former Gitmo detainee turned Taliban leader threatens Afghan elders."

The leader of the “Ground Zero mosque” project in New York, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is commonly portrayed as a moderate and a sincere believer in interfaith dialogue. Typical is a profile in Time that described Rauf and his wife as "the kind of Muslim leaders right-wing commentators fantasize…

In 2000, 61 percent of California voters supported a ballot initiative that declared: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Then, in May of 2008, four of the seven state supreme court justices ruled that this ballot initiative violated the California state…

Former Democratic New York City mayor Ed Koch tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he supports the legal right to build mosque near Ground Zero but believes the mosque is "insensitive" to 9/11 survivors and their families.

Recently Michael Barone pointed out that President Obama has a concentration problem:

Will Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska be the only Democrat to vote against the confirmation of Elena Kagan? It looks increasingly likely as two other red state Democratic senators announced their support for Kagan yesterday. Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas told Politico that she'll vote for…

ABC was first to report at the end of July that at least some of the oil spewed by the Deep Horizon well seemed to be breaking up, evaporating, and dispersing on its own— so much so that cleaning crews were having trouble finding the slick.

Recently the FT's Ed Luce spent some time with families in Minnesota and Virginia and concluded that we're pretty much done for. The American Dream, Luce says, has become "America's Fitful Reverie." His article is worth reading in full; in fact, it's the best summary of the decline argument that…

The story has been buried by the Western press, but Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy brings it out in an important policy paper.

It's hard to get more than 70 percent of Americans to agree on anything, but 71 percent of Missourians voted yesterday for a referendum opposing the centerpiece of President Obama's signature legislative initiative. In the first official vote by the American public on Obamacare, Show-Me state…

Barack Obama, July 29: "The one thing that does frustrate me sometimes is the sense that we shouldn't be campaigning all the time. There is a time to campaign and then there is a time to govern. What we've tried to do over the last 20 months is to govern."

On the road to passing Obamacare, Democrats made it their business to dismiss the concerns of the majority of Americans who opposed the bill.

"U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk," reports the New York Times.

Israeli military intelligence is often thought to be the best in the world. Given the neighborhood Israel lives in, it needs to be. Nonetheless, at key junctures in its history, it made critical failures. It can ill afford one now.

Obamacare mandate loses in Missouri referendum, 71.1-28.9. No worries It's not like it's a bellwether. Oh.

On Tuesday, Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman called for a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year. "I’m hesitant to see taxes go up in the middle of a recession," Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told reporters at the…

Senate Republicans have blocked a vote on President Obama’s nominee to fill the Director of National Intelligence spot, James Clapper. Why? They want more transparency from the most transparent administration in history.

Marc Thiessen on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and national security. 

As the proposal to build a 13-story Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero moves forward and controversy surrounding the plan grows, top New York Democrats are maintaining radio silence on the matter.

According to the Washington Examiner, Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has issued a formal opinion recognizing that state and local law enforcement officers have authority to "inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested." The opinion, issued in response to a question…

If not repealed, Obamacare would be financed through a combination of Medicare cuts, tax increases, and deficit spending.  But to hear the Obama administration talk, Obamacare would instead improve Medicare coverage, lower taxes, and cut the deficit. The administration's amazing claims beg the…

In July 1994, Michael Barone raised the possibility that the Republicans might capture the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Sixteen years later, Barone is revisiting his methodology and seeing what it may portend for November 2, 2010. As you probably already know, things do…

If you haven't already done so, make sure to stop by the new group blog / discussion forum Ricochet, founded by the estimable Rob Long and Peter Robinson. The site is a lot of fun, and features great posts by its editors and John Yoo, James Poulos, Claire Berlinksi, Jim Pinkerton, and many more.…

The government of France is joining Britain in taking a tough stand on Pakistan for its double-dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. From Reuters:

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the massive leak of more than 90,000 classified documents, he claimed that he was exposing “thousands” of possible American war crimes. The documents show nothing of the sort. Some of the documents do detail the brutality of war, and the unsurprising…

That was the question debated by Douglas Murray and his interlocutors on the BBC. It makes for great television: 

Is that sound you hear the bottom falling out of Barack Obama's approval ratings?

The Hill's Michael O'Brien reports:

Since last year, Hezbollah has been rounding up Lebanese who are believed to be spying for the state of Israel. Just yesterday, a senior official at a Lebanese telecommunications firm was arrested, making it the fourth this year. The arrest is part of broader campaign that has led to some 50…

Amid the controversy arising from the federal district court's decision to strike down portions of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, one must keep in mind the fact that the case is at its most preliminary stage. Judge Bolton, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, did not issue a final…

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by Dan Senor, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque: The location undermines the goal of interfaith understanding."

The last two polls from Gallup showed Democrats with a lead on the generic congressional ballot, but now Gallup's numbers have snapped back into line with most other pollsters showing a Republican lead. The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows the GOP with a 6-point lead. 

Barone on the Democrats' problem: Too many Dems highly concentrated in too few districts.

The quote from the Center for American Progress:

President Obama was believed to be avoiding Alexi Giannoulias. Why? Well, Giannoulias, who is vying for Obama's old Illinois Senate seat and is a former basketball buddy of the president, has become something of a political toxin. It became public that the former banker serviced loans to mobsters…

The Department of Health and Human Services is spending your tax dollars to let you know that Obamacare is great for the elderly and will make Medicare even better!

The Washington Post has a front-page story on Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.) and his fiscal "Roadmap." The piece focuses on the reluctance of GOP party leaders to embrace Ryan's plan, which is fair enough. While Ryan's plan for reforming Medicare and Social Security--or something like it--is necessary…

Somehow I missed yesterday's This Week on ABC, which marked the debut of the show's newest host, Christiane Amanpour. But Tom Shales caught it. And he didn't much like it. One of the problems, according to Shales, is that "[Amanpour is] miscast for the role, her highly touted global orientation…

Via Politico's Maggie Haberman, here's Rudy Giuliani on the Ground Zero Mosque:

Some heartening news out of the defense procurement world today:

Classic Hitchens:

President Obama has offered this patronizing advice to Rep. Charlie Rangel:

A Democratic victory is projected in Connecticut’s fifth congressional district in Western Connecticut. But Sam Caligiuri, the party-endorsed Republican challenger, isn’t deterred.  He insists he can dethrone two-term Democratic incumbent Chris Murphy.

Holland, Ohio

Inception

Fork Union, Virginia

When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for…

"Decaying industrial cities" are no longer a blot on the American landscape. What we have now is decayed industrial cities. From a certain vantage point—the consumerist one—the empty shells of these places are more pleasant than the actual, living cities were. Factories, tanneries, and high schools…

In Washington, D.C.’s convention center they danced the horah, sang Hebrew songs, and waved American and Israeli flags. Charlie Daniels played Hatikvah on his fiddle. It wasn’t a bar mitzvah, or a gathering of the pro-Israel group AIPAC. It was the fifth annual summit of an even larger pro-Israel…

Just before noon on Sunday, July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin enriched the English language. Referring to the planned Islamic center near the 9/11 site in New York, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims,…

The Scrapbook, like any patriotic American, always enjoys those European Union anecdotes that show up occasionally in the news: You know, the ones about the Italian-born bureaucrat in Brussels who fines a neighborhood butcher in Cornwall for not preparing Cornish hens according to EU…

During Fox News Sunday's online "Panel Plus" segment, Juan Williams made the case against building the 13-story Islamic center a couple blocks from Ground Zero. Although the imam who owns the land has a right to do what he wants with his own property, Williams said, as a matter of decency the imam…

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, on WikiLeaks: