March 2011

If Guantanamo were really one of al Qaeda’s principal recruiting tools, as President Obama and members of his administration have repeatedly claimed, then the facility would probably be referenced regularly in the terror group’s propaganda. It is not. Instead, other themes dominate Osama bin…

Beirut 

With a whopping 3.8 million votes now having been cast, Paul Ryan (1st) and Chris Christie (2nd) continue to lead the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll.  Ryan and Christie have said that they are not planning to try to unseat President Obama, but the American people, or at least the significant…

Some Indian states have banned a new biography of Mahatma Gandhi after U.S. and U.K. reviews carried the implication that the revered leader had a sexual relationship with German-Jewish bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in India in 2009.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu took a question at a press conference on Tuesday about the disappearance of another dissident. Her response, which quickly pinged around the Chinese online community and its English-language China-watching counterparts, was to blithely assert: "I have…

Bureaucrats, like all of us, love cupcakes. But is it always appropriate for them to accept cupcakes, especially when the gift-givers clearly want to curry favor? The notion that someone could sway millions – and perhaps billions – of dollars worth of business in their favor simply by delivering a…

Two days ago, I wrote that Republicans should be bold on entitlement reform. They should aggressively and sensibly make the case that, with mandatory spending by itself now surpassing total federal revenues (for this year, according to the president’s projections), we cannot in good conscience…

Here in the United States, there is never any doubt about the date of the next election: The Constitution provides the schedule. But our northern neighbors don’t have it so easy. Right up until the parliamentary vote that toppled the government of Canada last Friday, pundits debated whether…

American Action Forum president Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a must-read post at the Corner. Holtz-Eakin asks a crucial question: Is it worth risking political capital in a righteous stand over budget cuts in the remaining months of fiscal year 2011, or is it more important to accept limited victories…

Uh oh. First, Russ Feingold came out swinging at General Electric for not paying any taxes and now The Daily Show tears into NBC for not covering the scandal involving their parent country. It seems that Obama's favorite CEO is officially in hot water on the left:

The Obama administration made the correct decision earlier this week to impose sanctions on Belarusneft, a subsidiary of the Belarusian petrochemical company Belneftekhim, for doing business with Iran. But it’s small beer – Belarusneft is hardly a major player in Iran’s energy industry. And this…

Questions continue to arise about the propriety of having Justice Elena Kagan hear a constitutional challenge to Obamacare. Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general for 14 months, and as the Department of Justice (DOJ) website puts it, “The task of the Office of the Solicitor General…

An American intelligence official based in South Asia recently told me, “It has been a long time since we captured a senior al Qaeda leader.” His point was transparent: Without detaining and interrogating terrorists who know what is going on inside the clandestine al Qaeda network, American…

Thanks to the Nanny State we have low-flow toilets, dishwasher soap that doesn’t work, encroaching bans on plastic bags, and a looming mandate outlawing good light bulbs. But wait—there’s more!

Ohio passes bill restraining public sector unions.

Senator Marco Rubio offered his full-throated support Wednesday for the U.S. intervention in Libya and called on President Barack Obama to be clear that regime change is the objective of America’s involvement. In an interview yesterday afternoon, Rubio said that failing to remove Libyan leader…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained the text of a letter freshman senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent tonight to the Senate majority and minority leaders. In it, Rubio proposes that the Senate authorize the president’s use of force in Libya, and that the authorization state that the aim of the use of…

"President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday."

My Reaganite heart leapt and skipped when I read this article, “Obama authorizes secret support for Libya rebels,” wherein we learn that “President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar…

Russ Feingold speaks truth to power. He calls out one aspect of the Obama administration’s crony-capitalist, big-government-corporatist, welfare-state liberalism—the relationship between the Obama White House and its favorite pet CEO, GE’s Jeffrey Immelt. Russ has a petition—see below—calling on…

From the official transcript of President Obama's speech on energy earlier today:

Western military support for the Libyan resistance has raised urgent questions about the character of those fighting against the Qaddafi dictatorship. Barack Obama’s speech on the Libya mission on Monday night did not specifically mention the rebels, as was quickly pointed out in an Associated…

Lee Smith writes at Tablet: 

In a recent call with liberal college groups (at 6:14 on the podcast), Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, regarding Obamacare: “Now, it’s really disappointing that some in Congress are still trying to repeal the law and argue the results of the last two years.” Hmm. Well,…

Hollywood loves writer's block more than it likes writers who write. Laura Miller thinks the recent flick Limitless is implausible. But does she have a solution? "Yes. It's called a mortgage."

As the Hill reports, Joel Ario, director of Obamacare’s newly created Office of Health Insurance Exchanges, says, “If it plays out [that] the Exchanges work pretty well, then the employer can say ‘This is a great thing. I can now dump my people into the Exchange and it would be good for them, good…

The 39-year-old freshman Republican senator from Florida has waited over two months since taking office to give national media outlets interviews. But now that he's hit the media circuit, it's clear that Marco Rubio is an effective spokesman for limited government conservatism.

Beirut

For the 54th-straight week, Americans support the repeal of Obamacare—and for the 25th-straight week, they support it by double-digits, according to Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters. This week’s Rasmussen survey shows that Americans favor repeal by the whopping margin of 22 percentage points: 58…

This video of Delaware authorities removing basketball hoops from a suburban neighborhood has been making the rounds:

Planned Parenthood president Cecille Richards recently said on CNN that if federal funding is cut off to her organization "millions of women are going to lose access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning, you know, mammograms...."

A new poll has been released this morning by the Tarrance Group, on behalf of Public Notice, an advocacy group that aims to curb government spending, which shows that American voters are concerned with regulations and the impact they have on both businesses and the nation’s economy.

The last time that Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman made international news, he was needlessly provoking a crisis in bilateral relations with the United States over a routine military-training exercise. A few weeks earlier, Timerman had accused the U.S. government of operating “torture”…

No one's paying much attention, but things in Ivory Coast continue to deteriorate.

On the Fox New Sunday panel last weekend, there was an interesting discussion about Obamacare, a year after the controversial bill became law. Nina Easton said:

"You know what? I’m gonna call it. Bill Maher is the de facto leader of the Democratic Party."

While Democrats did well throughout the state of California in last November's election, they didn't everywhere: San Diego took a slight turn to the right.

This Wednesday, the Senate is likely to vote on a measure from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants. The vote will be among the most consequential of this decade.

As John McCormack noted earlier, Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., got caught on a conference call directing fellow Democrats to always use the word "extreme" when discussing budget cuts. There's just one problem -- Americans apparently know that the situation is very, very dire. Based on this poll…

Hollywood loves a controversy: Ballerina Sarah Lane says that Natalie Portman only danced about five percent of the full-body shots in Black Swan, for which the actress was given an Oscar. Director Darren Aronofsky responded that Portman danced in about 90 percent of the shots. In any case, Lane…

Israel's ambassador to America, Michael Oren, has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, which considers how things would be different if Libya hadn't given up its nuclear program:

Always be mindful of the mute button: 

A liberal group called the Greater Wisconsin Committee has been running an attack as vicious as it is misleading against Wisconsin supreme court justice David Prosser, who faces off against liberal assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg in an April 5 election. The stakes are quite high in…

Illinois senator Dick Durbin opened his Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing this morning on civil rights for Muslims by quoting George Washington. "In this land of equal liberty, it is our boast that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws," Durbin said, making it…

There's a pretty good chance that you are one of the 63-million-plus (and counting) people who have watched 13-year-old Rebecca Black's video version of "Friday," a three-minute pop number recorded in January and posted on YouTube earlier this month. Rebecca Black is a California middle school…

Robert Kagan roundly praised President Obama for his speech last night on America's intervention in Libya: 

According to Al Jazeera, "Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has accepted the resignation of the country's government, following two weeks of anti-government protests that have gripped Syria."

The Wall Street Journal reports that "President Ali Abdullah Saleh has backed away from a deal struck over the weekend that would have him step down from power immediately but keep his relatives in charge of the country's elite counter-terrorism forces."

Great minds and all that: "Did the left blow its cover on the war on the Kochs?"

As Republicans contemplate what sort of budget they should propose (real budget solutions, not continuing resolutions), it's important to realize that they are in a somewhat enviable position: What is clearly best for the country is also likely best for them politically.

Earlier this evening, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty was asked for his opinion of Syria on the Hugh Hewitt radio show. “Bashar al-Assad is a dictator,” said Pawlenty, a prospective Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 election, referencing the Syrian strongman who is brutally…

A statement from Senator John McCain:

I knew pretty early on during tonight’s speech that President Obama had rejoined—or joined—the historical American foreign policy mainstream. It was when he mentioned Charlotte (the city, not the spider):

President Barack Obama is delivering the following remarks on Libya tonight at National Defense University in Washington, D.C. The White House sends out the transcript:

Note to Republicans: Don't take unsolicited advice from Harry Reid.

Steve Clemons -- foreign policy wonk, notorious DC name-dropper and author of "what I can confidently describe as the most self-absorbed blog post I've ever read" -- goes all out for GOP Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman in yesterday's Politico profile:

Illinois senator Dick Durbin will convene a hearing tomorrow on anti-Muslim bigotry, which he says will renew our nation's commitment to civil rights for Muslims. Today, New York congressman Peter King, who was roundly criticized for focusing on American Muslims at his recent hearing on homegrown…

The Supreme Court heard arguments in McComish v. Bennett today, which the SCOTUSBlog describes as a case determining "whether the First Amendment prohibits a state from giving additional money to a candidate who accepts state funding for her campaign whenever: (a) an independent group spends more…

Andrew Biggs and Eileen Norcross write this letter to the editor in response to Eli Lehrer's "Pensions Aren't the Problem," which appeared in the March 28 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

The New York Times has launched its new online subscription plan today. And Lisa Belkin of the Times parenting blog, Motherlode, is dutifully advertising the great opportunity readers have to pay for online content in her post today.

Washington institution Politics and Prose has settled on a buyer. The owners of the bookstore insisted they would only sell to someone with whom they felt comfortable. That's turned out to be a Bethesda couple, both of whom worked for the Washington Post and various Democrats.

Reuters reports that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad has deployed his army to subdue protesters: 

Over at Politico, Kenneth Vogel has his second piece in just a few days reacting to Matthew Continetti's cover story in THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the left's obsession with the Koch brothers.

The problematic expansion of D.C.'s Metro train system into suburban Fairfax County, Va., has encoutered one more obstacle as the new Silver Line plans to open in 2013: How will the riders actually get to the new line? From today's Washington Post:

George Will devoted his Sunday column to Andrew Ferguson's latest book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College:

Fred Barnes writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In what is likely a response to Rep. Peter King's relatively tame hearings on Muslim extremism and homeland security earlier this month, Senator Dick Durbin will be holding a hearing this Tuesday to investigate the supposedly growing problem of anti-Muslim bigotry in America. USA Today reports:

President Barack Obama released his federal budget for the 2012 fiscal year. It begins with this sentence: 

President Obama picked the four #1's to go to the NCAA Final Four. In this, he was in accord with conventional wisdom, which had the #1 seeds likely to be even more dominant than usual. So we have a Final Four with a #3, #4, #8, and #11.

Why am I not surprised to be typing this headline?: Joe Biden apologizes for locking a reporter in a closet.

The catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is being regarded as the atomic power equivalent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which set back offshore oil drilling just as it appeared on the brink of a substantial expansion. This means we’ve now come…

Beirut

London

The American Revolution A Concise History by Robert Allison Oxford, 128 pp., $18.95

The crisis in Libya provides a useful reminder that the world’s demand for American power is rising. This is clearly the case in the Muslim world, which was in turmoil long before the current “Arab spring.” As Senator Richard Lugar recently fretted, “Libya might not be the last of these cases.”…

Schools for Misrule Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America by Walter Olson Encounter, 296 pp., $25.95

Let me bore you with some numbers. Employment dipped to 137,960,000 in December 2009. That may seem like a lot of Americans with jobs, but it happened to be the low point in the recession that began before President Obama took office the prior January.

Battle: Los Angeles Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him.

Liberals deny that they are unconcerned about Islamic terrorism.

Three years ago, Morton Sobell gave an interview to Sam Roberts of the New York Times that surprised readers and stunned many who continued to believe that Sobell and his more famous codefendants, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were innocent victims of political persecution who had never spied for the…

Richmond, Virginia

Yesterday, Ben Smith at Politico reported that David Brock's Media Matters For America group is basically abandoning all pretense of being a media watchdog group and is just going to concentrate on fighting "guerilla warfare" and "sabotage" against Fox News.

I confess that I'd never heard of Pakistani actress Veena Malik until I saw this video of her tearing into an Islamic cleric for his hypocrisy and twisted moral oppression. She's awfully attractive to begin with, but her courage somehow makes her irrisitable: 

Elliott Abrams, writing in the Washington Post, argues that the Syrian regime will be the next one to fall in the region:

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the controversial collective bargaining bill passed by the Wisconsin state legislature and signed by governor Scott Walker was published as law on Friday, despite a county judge's temporary restraining order:

The president and his team have one goal – reelection. Nothing ignoble about that. They know their chances of achieving that goal depend heavily on getting the unemployment rate to turn down, sharply and soon, leaving enough time for the feel-good factor to take hold before November 2012. Nothing…

"Why is Barack Obama like a Teamsters business agent?"

On Wednesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) executive director Melanie Sloan called conservative nonprofit Crossroads GPS "highly secretive" and hypocritical for not revealing their donors. Yesterday, CREW told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that it did not discuss its own list…

Organized religion will all but disappear from nine countries, mathematicians predict -- even in traditionally Catholic Ireland.

Over at the New Republic, Ed Kilgore has an interesting and perfectly reasonable piece about Tim Pawlenty's electoral challenges in the 2012 presidential election. (Kilgore's read tracks somewhat with Jay Cost's, though he's a little less bullish on Pawlenty's prospects.) But one moment in…

Via Claire Berlinski, I see that things in the Ivory Coast are starting to get bad. Really, really bad:

It’s not war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” The United States has been in the lead, but will be stepping back, ASAP, in favor of command (supposedly) by a squabbling coalition of the not-so-willing. The objective of the “kinetic military action”—which is going to last days,…

Another note on the Koch money funding Democratic campaigns. While Harry Reid and the DSCC try to raise money off the liberal animus against the Koch brothers, the DSCC and a handful of Democratic senators have given no indication that they are willing to give back the thousands of dollars their…

Washington lawyers are marking their calendars for the D.C. Courts' 36th Annual Judicial Conference.  The theme this year is, "Implicit Bias: Recognizing It and Dismantling It."

The situation with the Japanese nuclear reactors, which were badly damaged as a result of the devastating 9.0 earthquake earlier this month, seems to be getting worse. The New York Times reports:

General Electric paid no American taxes in 2010, the New York Times reports:

Al Jazeera reports:

NATO agrees to oversee no-fly zone.

There are three significant issues or factors that will keep President Obama from forging a coalition of almost-everybody, à la Reagan in 1984 or Johnson in 1964, in the 2012 election. The first is the continuing weakness of the economy. Obviously, jobs remain a problem – and this weakness is also…

This has got to be a metaphor for something, right?

Want another example of how unions--even public sector ones--are on the decline? According to Inside Higher Ed, the university faculty union in Florida is scrambling to recruit more members:

Ben Smith reported this morning that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising email, signed by Harry Reid, that tries to ride the anti-Koch bandwagon. Here's the relevant part of the email:

Back in 2007 I wrote a long-ish piece on the Google Books project. The stripped-down conclusion was that Google's attempt to scan and digitize every book ever written would be determined in the courts because, fawning tech writing to the contrary, Google's scheme represented two structural…

Manama, Bahrain

"When Right Is Wrong" -- a piece about Broadway actors who feel their politics hurts their careers. "Being a conservative in this industry is equal to being a leper to some people," one says.

Over at Foreign Policy, David J. Rothkopf is trying to understand the Obama adminstration's objectives in Libya. Specifically, he's trying to parse this statement from Ben Rhodes, the White House's foreign policy speechwriter:

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Yesterday, Michael Shear of the New York Times wrote a one-sided report on Crossroads GPS, the conservative nonprofit founded by the left's bogeyman, Karl Rove. Crossroads recently launched wikicountability.org, a website that aims to push the Obama administration to respond to Freedom of…

Reuters reports that the "main hospital in the southern Syrian city of Deraa has received the bodies of at least 37 protesters who were killed in a confrontation with security forces."

CNN reports:

The Monroe Doctrine

"U.S. must take sides to keep the Arab Spring from Islamist takeover"

In the pre-reform age of presidential nominating politics (1831-1968), when the quadrennial convention was actually a meeting of party leaders to select a nominee, a guy like Tim Pawlenty might have been an ideal compromise choice between various factions of the Republican party. Here is a two-term…

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.: "America Waking Up to Perils of Obamacare"

Gene Simmons, a cofounder of the rock band Kiss, recently returned to his native Israel, after a 52-year hiatus. Unlike other entertainers who have boycotted the Jewish state, such as Elvis Costello, the Pixies, and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Simmons expressed his support for Israel. “The countries…

Yesterday, news outlets reported that Senator Scott Brown (R, Mass.) does not support the Republican proposal to defund Planned Parenthood. But Anne Fox of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life wrote in an email to supporters last night that those reports got it wrong:

Politico reports that the Obama administration’s pro-Obamacare Andy Griffith TV ad cost taxpayers $3.66 million, according to records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. Actually, there were at least three such ads (here, here, and here), so it’s not clear whether this was…

On Monday, Bill Kristol met Huffington Post purveyor Arianna Huffington at Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a rip-roaring debate about media and the middle class. (You can watch video of the debate here. And debate moderator Ben Smith of Politico has his own write-up here.) 

On the one year anniversary of President Obama signing Obamacare into law, Mitt Romney writes at National Review: “If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and…

Michael Warren has a piece in the Life section of today's Washington Times. He details how the 1980s hit film Red Dawn is being remade -- and how the remake is being remade. The movie as filmed has China as our enemy. But producers are now scrubbing all references to the Communist state and are…

Today's blast outside Jerusalem's central bus station shattered a long period of relative peace and security in Israel's capital and largest city. Jerusalem had not been hit by a bomb for nearly seven years, since the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade killed two Israelis on September 22, 2004.

Today's blast outside Jerusalem's central bus station shattered a long period of relative peace and security in Israel's capital and largest city. 

Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011. Let's remember Taylor in her glorious youth, with her one Time cover, from August 22, 1949. The accompanying story discusses the business of art and the aging of the sex symbol -- prescient in this case.

Republican senator Ron Johnson, from Wisconsin, has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, marking the first anniversary of the passing of Obamacare. Johnson writes that under a more bureaucratic system, the sort of medical innovations that 27 years ago saved his newborn daughter's life would be…

Crossroads GPS, the policy arm of Karl Rove's American Crossroads PAC, just dropped a lawsuit on the Obama administration:

Comedian Lewis Black, last night on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show":

A new CBS poll finds that 68 percent of Americans support President Obama's airstrikes on Libya, while only 26 percent disapprove. CBS reports:

A bomb exploded near two buses in Jerusalem today, wounding at least 25. Haaretz reports:

Nowhere has the Obama administration been more reluctant to embrace the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East than in Yemen. This is, in part, understandable.

Dictator from Neptune says capitalism killed life on Mars.

If you're shocked by this, you haven't been paying attention: "CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America"

Last week, the partners at Howrey, LLP, voted to dissolve the 55-year-old firm. Most of the top brass have already been snatched up by other firms like Winston & Strawn and Baker Botts. Those who have yet to find new jobs will supposedly be paid until May 9. (Yet eerily, the firm's website is still…

Last week, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), composed of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain, sent Saudi soldiers and UAE police across the causeway from Saudi territory into Bahrain, as supporters of a Sunni Muslim monarchy, against massive protests by the…

At the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza lays out a four-point path for Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who announced yesterday his exploratory committee to run for president in 2012. Of the four points, Cilizza's first might be most compelling:

Here's your eye-popping statistic of the day, courtesy Stephen Losey at Federal Times:

Whenever political reality crashes headlong into liberal dogma, it's always fun to pull up a lawn chair and grab some popcorn. So here we have The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss -- a foreign policy blogger (and former Lyndon LaRouche devotee) -- writing about why Obama went to war:

June 7, 1944

The Seattle Times has an interesting interview with Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. After being one of corporate America's most prominent supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Schultz is now having second thoughts about the law:

Catherine Herridge reports:

Historian and poet Robert Conquest discusses five books on communism.

According to CNN, "Japan's national police say 8,928 people are confirmed dead after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami March 11 pulverized entire towns, leaving broken wood beams and massive piles of rubble where organized neighborhoods once stood."

Another leader of an Arab nation seems to be on his way out. This time, it looks like it will be Yemen's leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh is currently trying to negotiate his departure with opposition forces. The New York Times reports:

Polls show that Obamacare, which was highly unpopular at the time of its passage, is even less popular today. And Gallup’s most recently released poll offers further evidence to that effect. However, the poll’s headline—“One Year Later, Americans Split on Healthcare Law” — suggests otherwise and is…

The New York Times reports: 

"No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S."

Giuliani: "We Cannot Create Another Iraq"

The spring issue of National Affairs has just come out, and it's packed with great articles. Here are a few highlights:

In response to Bill Kristol's editorial in the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, former ambassador, deputy secretary of Defense and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz sends in the following note:

In a conference call with reporters, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill just disclosed that she failed to pay $287,000 in property taxes related to her co-ownership of a private aircraft. This scandal comes quickly on the heels of recent revelations that McCaskill improperly billed taxpayers for use…

Former governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican, just announced in a video posted to Facebook that he is forming an exploratory committee for the 2012 presidential election. The video, which does not seem to be embeddable, is available here.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is already out with two new ads for the 2012 election -- one attacking West Virginia's longtime Democratic congressman Nick Rahall, and the other targeting chief Blue Dog Heath Shuler of North Carolina:

"Escapism is overrated," Lisa Kennedy declares. Instead, we should seek out films that engage us in the real world around us -- such as the powerful French film Of Gods and Men, which just opened in DC.

It's only been a few weeks since Manchin last made a stink about Obama and his fellow Democrats' total lack of leadership. Well, Manchin's not done putting his party through the wringer yet:

Where the political shockwave inspired by Tunisia's democratic rebellion will lead we don't yet know. We do know what set Tunisia's revolt in motion: the end of Arab fear. When an oppressed people snap fear's psychological bonds, they shatter the tyrant's most potent weapon.

One year ago today, the then-Democratic House of Representatives openly disregarded the cool and deliberate sense of the people and rammed Obamacare down the American people’s throats. At the time, the Democrats claimed that their bill would become more popular once Americans found out what was in…

Andrew Ferguson's latest book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, was reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The Wall Street Journal interviewed hedge-fund manager Paul Singer over the weekend:

Dan Senor, adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, appeared this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss the war in Libya, adding some much-needed expertise to the discussion. Watch the video below:

Ross Douthat offers a prudent assessment of the pitfalls inherent in the war in Libya:

"The Arab League wanted our help. Until they got it."

Selected Prose Works

The uprisings sweeping the Middle East have started to blow down some very dark doors​—​the doors that lead to the dungeons and prisons where Arab security services do their work.

Anyone who’s been to a gas station recently knows the feeling. There you are, about to refuel, when you see the price of regular gasoline: about $3.52 per gallon, up 77 cents since 2010. Your pulse quickens. Your stomach sinks. Because this is not a dream. The days of $4.00-a-gallon gas are about…

Since the beginning of 2009, oil prices have almost tripled, gasoline prices are up about 50 percent, and basic food prices, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat, have almost doubled around the world. Cotton and copper prices have reached all time highs; major rises in sugar, spice, and wheat prices…

Scott Walker was finished. 

The Adjustment Bureau

London

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) is the most important organization in Washington you’ve never heard of. Its new leader is a former wrestling champion, and he’s one reason its influence is surging.

It is difficult but often advisable to resist the temptation to comment on media bias. Any rational consumer of media, let alone those with conservative leanings, knows such bias exists. To comment on every example would amount to an exercise in necro-equine sadism. There are times, however, when…

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone’s a little bit Irish. And like many Americans, I actually have some Irish blood. 

Reforming Our Universities

Unless It Moves the Human Heart

Ever wonder why health costs have risen so fast? Jim Capretta offered a thorough and informative answer to that question during recent congressional testimony before the House Budget Committee. Here’s the short answer: Federal programs and tax policy have created a situation where — whether their…

As many Americans are learning these days, no job is truly “safe” anymore, so it’s wise to have some back-up plan or alternate skill set to turn to. Former professional football players are not exempt from this lesson, and with an NFL lockout looming, current stars may need to exercise their…

Cairo -- Polling places are packed today as Egyptians are casting their votes to ratify six amendments to the country’s constitution in what may be Egypt’s freest and fairest election ever. Because the military is running the show, penalties are stiff for voter fraud, and very few seem tempted to…

Already responsible (along with Congress) for $3.3 trillion in actual or projected deficit spending in just his first two years in office — thereby breaking the prior record of $3.2 trillion for an entire presidency — President Obama has proposed an unserious budget that, even according to his own…

Amid the crisis in Japan and conflict in Libya, President Obama is scheduled to take a trip to South America this weekend. The President undoubtedly has a lot on his foreign policy plate, but while he's in the region the administration ought to give pay some needed attention to what's going on…

Actor and author Harry Shearer was in town last week promoting his upcoming documentary, The Big Uneasy, about Hurricane Katrina—less a natural disaster than one created by the Army Corps of Engineers. During an interview with the Washington Post's Dan Zak, Shearer talks about his obsession with…

The disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and the upheavals in the Middle East are the sort of events that send economists back to their forecasters’ drawing boards. As usual, there is a tendency to confuse the long-run and the short-run, and to blame developments that were due to…

"How Obama turned on a dime toward war"

Here's video from the Foreign Policy Initiative's event, "Democratization in the Middle East? Implications of the Arab Spring," which was held earlier this week in Washington, D.C.:

After weeks of failing to provide even strong rhetorical support for the uprising in Libya — an uprising in pursuit of liberty and against a United States adversary — President Obama has now apparently decided that he has sufficient international authorization to act.  This begs two questions:…

National Democrats are hoping they can benefit from the wave of discontent with Republicans among their union base in the Badger State by heavily targeting freshman GOP congressman Sean Duffy. As Politico reports, the party's strategy is to characterize Wisconsin's axe-wielding Republican as,…

ABC's Sunlen Miller reports: 

Big retailers are out to make you pay more taxes. Walmart, Target, and others are working to force Amazon.com to collect sales taxes.

Here's the transcript of President Obama's remarks at the White House earlier today on Libya: 

Wisconsin Republican state senator Dan Kapanke has been the subjecte of death threats and vandalism, the LaCrosse Tribune reports: 

C-Span has the video. Here's the New York Times write-up:

Cairo

Thousands took to streets today in a number of Syria cities following Friday Prayers protesting the prevalence of oppression and corruption in the country, and calling for reform. In Damascus, and in an attempted to prevent planned march from the historic Umayyad mosque in Old Damascus, authorities…

Of course, the answer to that particular rhetorical question is obvious: Economic reality. Still, the brazen hypocrisy here is, well, delicious. The Newspaper Guild is calling for unpaid Huffington Post writers to strike:

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: 

Jay Cost wrote this morning that some of the most important polls to watch this early (and it's still very early) in the 2012 campaign are those which ask the question, "Does Barack Obama deserve Reelection?" In that strain, National Journal has a new poll out today of registered voters that, if…

The following email arrived last night from Sterling Barbour, Gov. Haley Barbour's son, in response to a blog post by William Kristol:

Harry Reid is deeply concerned about the House vote yesterday to defund National Public Radio. The Senate majority leader wants to know: Where will Americans in the Lower 48 hear about sled dog racing? From the Hill:

Perhaps one of the most impressive victories in the November 2010 election was when Vicky Hartzler unseated Ike Skelton, a 17-term congressman and then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in Missouri’s Fourth Congressional District.

Hmmm:

CNN reports:

Boy, those Tea Baggers sure are violent. Wait, did I say Tea Baggers? I meant to say Wisconsin unions.

The invisible phase of the presidential campaign is upon us, as prospective GOP nominees are travelling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, meeting with donors, and of course making appearances on Sunday news programs to deny that they have any interest in the party nomination. And with all…

The three senators have just released the following statement:

Ann Althouse has some big fans in the Wisconsin union movement.

Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) starred at today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. This is from James Rosen's report: 

If you want to see how liberals age, visit Washington D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. Conservative columnist David Brooks braved the crowd there Wednesday tonight, touting his latest book, The Social Animal. Brooks’ favored-son status among the liberal intelligentsia slightly diminishes the…

Two former officials from the Oakland County, Mich. Democratic Party were charged today for forgery and perjury relating to a political scheme hatched in the last election. According to the Detroit Free Press, the officials have been accused of placing Tea Party candidates on ballots without those…

Last week when the Wisconsin state senate passed a modified version of the budget repair bill, Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent wrote: "Wisconsin Repubicans took the drastic step of breaking up the budget repair bill and passing only a measure rolling back the collective bargaining rights of…

Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced tough interrogation today during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee. Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions asked some of the same questions…

In the past I've been fairly unsparing in my criticism of the Washington Post's Greg Sargent, but before I register my displeasure again, let me say I do think he works harder at reporting than most in the blogosphere. So I hope that the following is taken in constructive manner.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians and management take their labor dispute to Facebook.

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the use of social media like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter by museums to foster online communities built around common interest in art:

“It was more than a hobby,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann says, talking about his interest in politics. “It was a passion.” From an early age, Fleischmann volunteered on political campaigns, “knocking on doors, passing out pamphlets,” he explains.

The Wall Street Journal reports,

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is understandably exasperated and angered by the Obama administration's "lack of leadership and the vacillation" on Libya, to say nothing of their "weakness and incompetence." I couldn't agree more with his exasperation and anger—and reading team Obama's juvenile…

Cairo

A disheartening report from Josh Rogin on the G8 foreign ministers' meeting on Libya. "Inside the foreign ministers' meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's campaign against the Libyan rebels and the…

Of all the developments worth following these days, from the vigorous Republican insurgency to the apathetic Obama presidency, I’d like to add another: the relationship between the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Republican freshman Allen West of Florida.

Forget Wisconsin, Miami's mayor is recalled by voters angry about tax hikes.

So Obama filled out his NCAA bracket -- we hear he's picked Qaddafi to go all the way.

While there had been some speculation that Sharron Angle, the Tea Partier and 2010 Republican Senate candidate who lost to Harry Reid, would make another run for the Senate, she announced today that her intention is to run for Congress in Nevada's second district: 

The Israel Defense Forces has released a list of the contents of the intercepted ship Victoria, which was headed to Hamas in the Gaza Strip:

Hillary Clinton tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she doesn't want to serve another term in the Obama administration. Oh, she also doesn't want to run for president. At least that's what she says:

Larry Summers, the just-departed White House economic adviser, says today’s credit crunch has a new culprit. “In the early days of the crisis, there was clearly a problem with lenders being unable to lend even to creditworthy borrowers,” he says in an interview in The International Economy…

A new study by the National Endowment for the Arts finds that the omnivore is an endangered species. These people -- who attend a wide variety of cultural events and attend them often -- are becoming an ever-smaller proportion of the population. Report author Mark J. Stern is optimistic about what…

This YouTube video shows a protester in Bahrain being shot multiple times at point-blank range by security forces. Warning: this video is extremely graphic. 

Beirut

Benjamin Weinthal reports for the Jerusalem Post:

Beirut

On February 7, I published a piece in the Guardian that answered the question, Will Syria be next? That is, would Syria be the next Arab country to witness a popular uprising after Tunisia and Egypt? My answer was, no. The ground was not ready due to the complexity of the Syrian situation, I…

Berlin

The Mayaguez Incident

We have now gotten to the point — as I noted yesterday — where if national defense, interstate highways, national parks, homeland security, and all other discretionary programs somehow became absolutely free, we’d still have a budget deficit. The White House Office of Management and Budget projects…

Uh oh. Even the "No Labels" crowd has turned against public sector unions.

As the world goes topsy-turvy, what has President Obama been doing lately? One thing is for sure: the president has not been hammering out a compromise on the deficit:

That headline should be the policy mantra of sensible politicians. Unfortunately, President Obama believes he has to do something to get prices down lest he pay a terrible price at the polls. Equally unfortunate, Republicans are using high gas prices as a stick with which to beat the president.

Harvard Law School professor William Stuntz passed away on Monday at the age of 52. He was widely admired by faculty and students, but readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD would know him better as an author of essays. In September 2006, at the lowest point in the Iraq War, in the face of ever-increasing…

Mitch Daniels and Medicaid: Michael Cannon for the prosecution, Tevi Troy for the defense.

Earlier today, Wisconsin GOP state senators voted to lift fines imposed on the Democrats and drop contempt charges, thus allowing the Democrats to vote in committee hearings again.

While the rest of the world is obsessed with trifles like the slaughter of the anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya and the calamity in Japan, the Obama administration is showing impressive message discipline. Here's what's playing at WhiteHouse.gov:

Michael Shear reports: 

Last Friday night, March 11, Palestinian terrorists broke into a home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed to death everyone they found inside. The father, Udi Fogel, and his three-month-old daughter, Hadas, had their throats slit in bed. The mother, Ruth, was stabbed as she came out…

Democrat Tim Cullen, one of the 14 Wisconsin state senators who fled to Illinois in order to prevent a vote on Scott Walker's budget repair bill, wants to make sure that the tactic he employed cannot be used in the future to hold up state business. The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Despite opposition from some conservatives, including Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan and Senator Marco Rubio, the House agreed today to a continuing resolution that will keep the government running for three more weeks and cut $6 billion. 54 Republicans and 85 Democrats voted "no."

Hillary Clinton is a big booster of Internet. Indeed, she is making Internet the central – and as best one can tell, the only – thrust of the Obama administration’s democracy policy. But even she acknowledges that in the wrong hands, technology is “not an unmitigated blessing,” as Clinton said in…

French foreign minister Alain Juppe "suggested in a radio interview Tuesday that events on the ground in Libya have already outpaced diplomatic efforts," according to the AP.

"The Intellectual as Courtier": Paul Rahe looks at the history of thinkers seduced by tyrants -- including those who have defended the autocratic Qaddafi.

General David Petraeus testified earlier today at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Afghanistan. The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan sounded optimistic, yet cautious:

A bipartisan group of foreign policy experts today sent a letter to President Obama, urging “the United States and its allies [to] stand with the men, women and children of Libya who seek a future of peace and dignity.”

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, president of Z Street, has done some excellent reporting on the recent 2011 J Street conference in Washington. J Street, an invention of Obama allies, has been feted at the White House, and addressed by senior Obama administration officials. It’s Obama’s favorite Jewish group.

Politico reports that, despite all the grandstanding around the creation of the deficit comission, Obama's M.I.A. when it comes to the issue:

For the first time since the passage of Obamacare last March, the Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that most Americans (51 percent) “strongly” favor Obamacare’s repeal, while fewer than a quarter (24 percent) “strongly” oppose it. Eighty percent of Republicans “strongly” favor repeal, while…

Again, I'm still utterly baffled that the White House wants to have a national conversation on gun laws. I can't forsee this issue doing him any good at all in next year's election. Unless of course, Obama's is giving up on blue-collar and rural Democrats and just trying to shore up the base. In…

It's hard to tell how many protesters are in the streets of the Syrian capital, but it's hardly surprising that, after Egypt and Libya, the regime in Damascus might be next in line. Bashar al-Assad and his security chiefs guessed as much, which is why the last few weeks they warned the foreign and…

Andrew Ferguson's latest book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College , was reviewed in the Boston Globe:

How much is entitlement spending the real source of our budgetary woes? Here’s a stat for you: In President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimates (in Table S-4) that mandatory spending this year (2011) will be $2.194 trillion, while total federal…

"Saudi Troops Enter Bahrain to Help Put Down Unrest"

"Is the Imperial Presidency Inevitable?"

A Western New England College poll on Massachusetts senator Scott Brown's reelection chances in 2012 finds the Republican polling quite well:

March 11, which social-networking Saudi dissidents had chosen for a “Day of Rage,” has come and gone without the emergence—so far—of a massive and turbulent reform movement like those seen in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Demonstrations by members of the Saudi Shia community in the Eastern Province,…

The New York Times had an eye-opening story about abuses in state-run homes for the elderly and disabled in New York this weekend. In particular, the article highlights how unions are aggressively defending those workers accused of very serious crimes:

Sometimes the New York Times is hard to believe--on March 12, for instance.

Yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," White House chief of staff William Daley had this to say about America's war in Afghanistan:

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times has a piece today about former Minnesota governor and likely GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty. The premise of the story is a tad thin--Pawlenty seems to be trying to appeal to multiple cohorts of Republican primary voters--but it contains this puzzling…

Some 60 percent of Americans want to see more offshore oil production according to the latest Gallup poll. That's up 10 percent from last May. And that's not all:

The Charlotte Observer notes that the DNC have struck quite a deal to host their convention next year:

The Democratic leadership in Maryland's House of Delegates announced Friday night that it didn't have the votes to pass a gay marriage bill. The Associated Press reports:  

Al Qaeda launches its own Cosmo for the jihadist set, which offers advice on "marrying a mujahideen" and keeping your face looking young (by wearing a niqab, of course).

Barack Obama has been holding several events at universities in critical swing states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's a not-too-subtle indication that the president, looking ahead to 2012, wants to reconnect with his base: college students. The Washington Post reports:

Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield reviews Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule's The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic in the New York Times:

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton writes in the Daily that “President Obama’s indecisiveness has unquestionably limited American options, making almost any potential intervention riskier and less likely to succeed.”

The New York Times reports:

Some reassuring news for Republicans, in a piece in Roll Call today:

"Why Is PBS Linking to Fake Biographies of Conservatives?"

I was briefly a political prisoner of the regime of Tunisia’s now-deposed President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali—which I hope will convince my readers that I’m not carrying water for him, or for his similarly deposed Egyptian fellow dictator, Hosni Mubarak, when I say that the nearly eight weeks I spent…

Beijing

The Spirit of Vatican II

In recent months, in response to a series of austerity measures, we have seen civic unrest in the streets of London, Athens, and other European capitals. Some of the cuts that sparked the chaos are quite moderate. In France, for example, violence broke out over the government’s proposal to raise…

"I am not a naïve neoconservative who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet,” said British prime minister David Cameron last month. Like most of Europe’s political class, Cameron has a long track record of criticizing neoconservatism. What makes Cameron’s latest criticism…

Drive Angry 3D

Paris

If Washington is apt to see the recent uprisings in the Middle East—against U.S. allies like Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as well as adversaries like the Islamic Republic of Iran—in terms of challenges to and opportunities for U.S. strategic interests, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez sees…

For decades, Hollywood has been waiting for the full-service artiste—writer, director, producer, screenwriter—who can lay claim to the scepter of Renaissance Man once held by Orson Welles. Woody Allen couldn’t quite pull it off. Neither could Mel Gibson or Spike Lee. But now, in James Franco, who…

ROTC Returns to Harvard

From Battlefields Rising

In his underdog bid to retain the presidency in 1948, Harry Truman ran hard against the “Do-Nothing Congress,” so much so that his put-down of the Republicans who controlled Capitol Hill became a permanent part of the political lexicon, far more resonant today than anything Truman ever said about…

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

After three weeks, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s ruthless response to the Libyan uprising has resulted in upwards of 3,000 deaths, according to a Paris-based human rights organization, while a Libyan organization believes the fatalities are more than twice the French estimate. And yet, if it is clear…

Nocturne

During the lame duck session of Congress in December, Democrats sought to take advantage of their large majorities on Capitol Hill one final time before the Republican takeover of the House. Earlier, they had packed a 2011 budget with enough pork and earmarks to increase discretionary spending to…

Just because the government spends a lot of money on something doesn’t mean a lot of new jobs are being created. In fact, long-delayed, poorly executed projects can end up destroying jobs. And I happen to know of just such a project.

House Republicans scored major points last week when President Obama agreed to $4 billion in cuts for fiscal year 2011. The spending reductions were part of a stopgap continuing resolution that will fund the government through March 18. True, $4 billion may seem small when compared with a $1.5…

CNN:

Over at Pajamas Media, WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Jeffrey Anderson takes note of the surprising results of Tea Party poll:

For college hoops fans, this evening is much anticipated. On CBS we will hear that all-too-familiar chime signaling the beginning of March Madness. The NCAA committee will announce which 64 (65? 68? 84?) teams are going to the Big Dance. And through it all, we'll wonder whatever happened to the ACC?

An interesting passage from this New York Times story, "Democrats See Wisconsin Loss as Galvanizing":

Over at the Washington Post, Greg Sargent blogs that the Cato Institute is claiming that a new advertisement by Crossroads GPS, a conservative non-profit founded by Karl Rove, “distorts” the libertarian think tank’s data. The ad comes in response to the Wisconsin public-sector union battle and…

Is Mitch Daniels going to run for president? It may be a while before we know for sure, but there are a few reasons to believe he’s moving closer to a decision in the affirmative.

For almost 20 years, Jeffrey John Shaw (nicknamed Jay) has been living in Idaho. Neighbors describe him as someone you can count on, even if he "was never a natural rancher." Everyone knew Shaw was a transplant from Boston. But no one would have guessed his real name was Enrico Ponzo and that in…

There’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Just a thin ray, and at the end of a very long tunnel littered with government and private debt.

And the top five suggestions for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's new bumper sticker are:

The Weekly Standard's own Kelly Jane Torrance reviews two new films for The Washington Examiner. First, up is the Sci-Fi war flick, Battle: Los Angeles:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that House Republicans are going to bring a bill to defund NPR to the floor next week. Colorado representative Doug Lamborn will be the sponsor.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., have just issued a statement about ongoing events in Libya:

So, uh, this happened yesterday. In case you were wondering about how to shut up the confrontational Christie, you might try calling him "hot and sexy":

State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley was asked for his thoughts on Bradley Manning's imprisonment. Here's the exchange, reportedly:

Hundreds have already been confirmed dead, following the earthquake that struck Japan. The quake measured an 8.9 on the Richter scale. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Jennifer Egan beats Jonathan Franzen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. The Los Angeles Times still leads its story with a picture of the over-hyped Franzen.

After Hosni Mubarak’s fall in Egypt, there was a whorl of ambiguous media commentary that either tried to present the Muslim Brotherhood as a conciliatory Islamist movement posing no threat to Egypt, its neighbours (read: Israel) or the West, or tried to challenge the Brotherhood about its core…

Oh, Almighty Google Machine--I kid! We know you're not evil. You're the most benevolent algorithm ever. But every once in a while, Google (which owns YouTube) drops a little data point about how it sees the world.

The president has wistfully been thinking about how easy it would be to be the leader of the People's Republic of China, the New York Times reports. And one unnamed official told the Times's reporters that "No one is scrutinizing [Chinese leader] Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square."

“Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’”

President Obama’s average annual deficit spending (including his proposed deficit spending for 2012) has been 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) — more than double the tally of any other president since World War II.  In the wake of Obama’s spending spree, it’s therefore a bit…

Send your prayers across the Pacific.

Modern presidents are often most remembered for single, iconic moments. Some are good. FDR's inaugural address proclaimed we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Kennedy's challenged us to ask not what we can do for ourselves, but for our country. Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanded…

“These are not Muslim-bashing hearings,” Abdirizak Bihi, the uncle of a radicalized Muslim teenager, said to reporters immediately after testifying at this morning’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing. But according to some Democrats, the hearing was an act of discrimination against Muslims…

James O'Keefe has a new NPR video out and SPOILER ALERT: It's also really embarassing.

“Strategic reticence” is how the Obama administration is characterizing their own approach to the turmoil in the Middle East, according to a background quotation from an administration official featured in David Ignatius’s column at the Washington Post on Sunday.

During debate in the Wisconsin state assembly on the budget repair bill today, Representative Elizabeth Coggs, a Democrat from Milwaukee, called on the federal government to "intervene" in the state in order to "get some real justice" because "Wisconsin right now reminds me of Mississippi back in…

The Wisconsin state Assembly just passed the budget repair bill as amended by the senate last night. The vote was 53-42. Scott Walker is expected to sign the bill soon.

During his annual address to the Tibetan people on March 10, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet announced that he wished to complete his decades-long effort to divest political authority from the Dalai Lama’s own institution. While the media has characterized this as a retirement announcement, it…

I should explain, at the outset, that I am agnostic on the subject of public broadcasting. It's obvious that NPR suffers from a left-wing bias—so obvious that it seems not to be noticed by NPR—but the fact is that I seldom listen to its programming except the classical music on one (WETA) of the…

On March 2, militants gunned down Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister. They left a leaflet signed by al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab warning that the “targeted killings” would continue until “the infidels and the Satan are eliminated.” Bhatti had long opposed…

Steinway enters the Smithsonian--not the piano, but the family behind it, with a diary that’s a New York treasure trove. “He wanted to get away from the unions and the anarchists.”

It is not always bad to be offensive. And offending terrorists, for instance, strikes me as a pretty good example. But this point seems lost in our politically correct culture -- and it seems especially lost on New York Times columnists.

Via Charlie Sykes, someone has sent the following email to Wisconsin senate Republicans threatening to kill them:

Per WisPolitics, "Roll call is underway. The protesters who have been let into the building can be heard chanting, shouting and whistling." The assembly will vote on the state senate's version of the budget repair bill, which includes a few minor tweaks from the original legislation. It should be…

Well, it was inevitable. Chris Christie was becoming more well-liked by the American people than any GOP politician rightfully should be. Thank goodness the Paper of Record is around to cut him down to size. We wouldn't want him to have a credible chance of running for president and defeating Obama…

As the secretary of the extreme left-wing group Socialist Forum during her student days in the mid 1980s, Australian prime minister Julia Gillard put her name to pamphlets advocating the end of the ANZUS alliance with the United States and the scrapping of the U.S.-Australian Pine Gap military…

"[I]t is a parody of political correctness to argue that a hearing on domestic terrorism cannot focus solely on the Muslim community to be acceptable." Now there's a sentence you might expect from Charles Krauthammer. Except he didn't write it. Rather, these are the sentiments of Washington Post…

While Democrats are now outraged that the state senate voted last night on the budget repair bill without Democrats present, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett encouraged Republicans to do just that on Monday night.

The Obama administration has been recklessly cautious -- and has even go so far as to say that the president "doesn’t want to fall into a Libya trap." But the trap in this case might be to do nothing at all.

The majority Saudi-owned and Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) provides its subscribers in the Arab states with a large number of channels, including movies, music and other entertainment, but is best known for Al Arabiya, the 24-hour satellite news network. And it is Al Arabiya…

This morning on the Charlie Sykes radio show, Wisconsin state senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald explained how his caucus decided to end the month-long standoff over the budget repair bill last night.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius professes to have acquired a newfound concern for Medicare Advantage, the popular program from which the Obama administration would loot more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during Obamacare’s real first decade (2014 to…

You know, for all the Soros money shoveled at Media Matters for America, it's really quite a monument to what a bunch of hapless ideologues run the place that they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Here's the scene in the Wisconsin's capitol building tonight: 

Some Democrats, such as state senator Julie Lassa and leader of the Assembly's Democrats Peter Barca, are claiming that the vote Wednesday night on the budget repair bill violated the state's Open Meetings Law because the senate did not give 24 hours notice before convening. But Wisconsin's Senate…

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has an op-ed in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Apparently, it was filed before tonight's events transpired--he writes that the bill passed Wednesday evening "awaits a vote in the Senate." 

Wisconsin state senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald issued the following statement on the senate's vote on the budget repair bill tonight without Democrats present:

Update 7:33 p.m.: As I was writing this up, the state senate voted 18-1 to pass the bill described below. 

NPR is the "Worst Of White Condescension"

President Obama announced today that Commerce secretary and former Washington state governor Gary Locke--a third generation Chinese-American--will replace possible presidential candidate Jon Huntsman in April as the U.S. ambassador to China. The Associated Press reports:

Ah, January of 2009. Hope was in the air, but more importantly, gas was under two dollars a gallon. Since then gas prices, have gone up 67 percent and it's an ominously upward trend. Interestingly enough, the Heritage Foundation also took a look at the first 26 months of Bush's presidency -- gas…

White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday that the Obama administration is “actively considering” imposing a no-fly zone over Libya in response to the ongoing regime-backed attacks on the population there. Although the White House has consistently said that all options are on the table,…

All 47 Republicans and 11 Democrats voted against the Democrats' continuing resolution that would have cut $4.7 billion in spending through the end of the fiscal year. 

Like most Americans, I suspect, I have no strong feelings in any direction on the subject of Charlie Sheen. I am neither a fan nor habitual detractor.

James O'Keefe, whose undercover video forced the resignation of National Public Radio's CEO today, tells NewsMax that he's got even more compromising videos of NPR that could be released:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

There may be people in journalism who will be missed more than David Broder, the great political writer for the Washington Post who died today at 81. But off the top of my head I can’t think of any.

While the New York Times editorial board is hyperventilating over Rep. Peter King's Homeland Security Committee hearings radicalization in the American Muslim community, liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus sounded a much-needed reasonable note in her column today. Marcus recounts Attorney…

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is willing to concede on a few points of his budget repair bill, while keeping the core of its collective bargaining reform intact:

Mary Katharine Ham wonders if Krugman's Ph.D. is in Epistemic Closure, not economics. After reading this squib from Krugman, it's a legitimate question:

Dan Joseph reports:

Andrew Ferguson -- with his son Gillum -- discusses his latest book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, on Reason TV: 

As a result of an undercover video of now-former executive Ron Schiller playing into anti-Semitic canards, talking about how the federally funded news station could do without government money, considering accepting a donation from a fake Islamist group, and indicating a deep disregard for…

The Washington Post reports today that "The United States and its European allies are considering the use of naval assets to deliver humanitarian aid to Libya and to block arms shipments to the government of Moammar Gaddafi..."

Crossroads GPS, the policy arm of the Karl Rove-backed  American Crossroads PAC that was instrumental in the 2010 election, has just started running a national ad attacking the link between public sector unions and Democrats. You can bet this is just an opening salvo in what will be a significant…

The New York Times reports: 

CIA pension plan has $6.4 billion in unfunded liabilities. How am I supposed to sleep at night if these guys can't even suss out the threat posed to their own retirement plans, let alone terrorist plots?

On Monday, Jim Geraghty offered a thought experiment about the nascent candidacy of Jon Huntsman:

"Rep. Pete King is right, say feds and cops: We don't get many tips from Muslim community"

It was true then, and with each new bit of historical understanding we continue to realize it was more evil than we previously knew.

NPR reports that its executive Ron Schiller, who was caught bashing the alleged racism of conservatives and lamenting over the self-perceived Zionist control of newspapers in an undercover video produced by James O'Keefe and associates, has been fired:  

The Foreign Policy Initiative will hold an event in Washington, D.C. next week, titled, "Democratization in the Middle East? Implications of the Arab Spring." It will be from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. on March 16 at the National Press Club. Here's the lineup:

Continuing to show his confusion over the proper role of government, Mitt Romney has now compared Obamacare to the Post Office. In his first appearance in New Hampshire since before last year’s election, Romney said, "Obamacare is bad law constitutionally, bad policy, and it is bad for America's…

THE SCRAPBOOK is pleased to note two fine reviews of the new collection of Irving Kristol’s essays, The Neoconservative Persuasion, reviewed in our pages a month ago by James Ceaser.

THE SCRAPBOOK is pleased to note two fine reviews of the new collection of Irving Kristol’s essays, The Neoconservative Persuasion, reviewed in our pages a month ago by James Ceaser.



House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has just issued a statement on the NPR controversy:

As a Democratic Senator somehow elected last year in a state where Barack Obama has some of his lowest approval ratings, Joe Manchin is a curious bellweather. The more he has to run from Obama and the more he feels empowered to publicly criticize the head of his party, the more Obama it suggests…

Eighty-two-year-old Donald Hall, former poet laureate and all-around man of literary distinction, was one of the recent recipients of National Medal of Arts at the White House, and is seen here in a photograph with President Obama:

The brewing civil war in Libya is likely to drag in much of the region, Central Africa as well as North Africa and the Middle East. Already rumors suggest that this is coming true.

In mid-February, a mysterious posting on a Chinese language website called on Chinese citizens to take to the streets for low-risk meet-ups at locations with heavy pedestrian traffic throughout the country, starting on Sunday February 20 at 2 p.m. (Beijing local time). Labeled by the organizers as…

The crisis of the Libyan dictatorship has shamed a number of prominent personalities in academia and culture, who benefited from Qaddafi’s random, but typically excessive, spending on whatever he and his family desired. London School of Economics (LSE) director Sir Howard Davies resigned from his…

President Obama’s controversial plan for a high-speed rail system took a hit Tuesday as the top California member of Congress, House majority whip Kevin McCarthy, voiced strong opposition to building a new rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

So the latest video by James O'Keefe has been released. Bear in mind that there's always the matter of context when watching video stings and not all of O'Keefe's endeavors have been, uh, "winning" as one fomer sitcom actor might be inclined to say. You live by gonzo journalism, you die by gonzo…

So the latest video by James O'Keefe has been released. Bear in mind that there's always the matter of context when watching video stings and not all of O'Keefe's endeavors have been, uh, "winning" as one fomer sitcom actor might be inclined to say. You live by gonzo journalism, you die by gonzo…

Rasmussen is out with a new poll showing that likely Wisconsin voters remain opposed to "weakening collective bargaining rights" by a 57 to 39 percent margin.

Jim Capretta writes that Obamacare would raise Americans’ taxes and eventually ration their health care. Furthermore, “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” (that’s Robert Gibbs’s description, not Capretta’s) would do so in stealth fashion — by breaking from the…

He isn't the one they've been waiting for: "White House memo notes shortage of applicants for contest to have Obama to speak at high school graduation"

On February 22, several days into the Libyan regime’s campaign of terror, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked whether the U.S. was going to stand by while Moammar Qaddafi and his military slaughtered their fellow countrymen.

The left is very upset that up to 22 states with GOP-dominated legislatures are now looking to "disenfranchise" voters they don't like for the upcoming 2012 elections. Republicans lawmakers in states like New Hampshire and Wisconsin say their proposed changes to how and where college students can…

The New F***ing Tone Is Here.

The Washington Post had an fun piece on Sunday about the somewhat friendly fight between North Carolina and South Carolina over the right to call their state the birthplace of Andrew Jackson:

The Hill reports that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius added another 126 Obamacare waivers on Friday, bringing the tally to over 1,000 in the less than 12 months since Obamacare’s passage. Ed Morrissey aptly writes, “That’s one of the fundamental dangers of Obamacare. It’s…

The Scrapbook couldn't help but notice this little gem from today's New York Times article, cheekily headlined "A Libyan Leader at War With Rebels, and Reality":

Public Policy Polling has a new survey out showing that, if given the choice, Wisconsin Republicans would choose to nominate their favorite son, Paul Ryan, in a presidential primary: 

The new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare.  This marks the 22nd straight week that Americans have supported repeal by double-digits.

Iain Levine of Human Rights Watch responds to Michael Weiss's piece "Human Rights Watch and Libya":

Because it worked so well last time around:

Roll Call reports:

After suggesting that they'd return to Madison soon to allow a vote on Scott Walker's budget repair bill, state senate Democrats backtracked and then proposed a meeting with Republicans "near the Wisconsin-Illinois border."

The American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, and Heritage Foundation have teamed up to study China -- and how the Pentagon should respond. The result is a white paper, titled, "China's Military Build-up: Implications for U.S. Defense Spending." Here's the conclusion: 

The Washington Post ran a cover story in Saturday's issue about New York Republican congressman Peter King, the chair of the House Homeland Security committee. King, who has started a series of hearings investigating homegrown terrorism and the federal government's response to it, has been accused…

Last week Fred Barnes, Robert Poole, and I all wrote about how highways work and how government planning types often try to “improve” them. None of this, however, is new. A friend sends along Joan Didion’s wonderful 1976 essay “Bureaucrats,” concerning the imposition of car-pool (or High-Occupancy…

It was really only a matter of time. And sure enough, in the current issue of Parade was the full-page ad from the Danbury Mint featuring the Princess Kate Bride Doll. She looks radiant. Her smile is beaming. And for only $159 (plus shipping and handling) you can have her all to yourself!

Terry Eastland reviews In the Time of Bobby Cox by sportswriter and Atlanta Braves fan Lang Whitaker. The book chronicles the Cox era in Atlanta, when the Braves won a record 14 consecutive divisional titles and Cox solidified himself as, among other things, the most ejected manager in major league…

The New York Times reports that airstrikes continue to pound rebels in Libya:

U.S. and allied efforts to curb Iran’s developing nuclear capabilities are failing. Today, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convenes its quarterly meeting, where Iran’s nuclear activities will once again be a key agenda item. The IAEA reported in its latest assessment that Iran’s…

Wisconsin Fleebaggers give up

On February 15, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of several Libyan cities demanding the departure of the strongman who has ruled the north African nation for more than four decades. The Libyan regime immediately ordered state-backed militias and mercenaries to put down the violence,…

Red Star Over the Pacific China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy by Toshi Yoshihara & James R. Holmes Naval Institute, 304 pp., $36.95

Modern Life Edward Hopper and His Time Whitney Museum of American Art Through April 10

In 2008 the Virginia Department of Transportation began work adding a fourth lane to the six-mile stretch of I-95 between the Springfield interchange and the exit for Virginia State Road 123. This is likely of very little consequence to you, but it was a life-changing moment for me: I live not far…

Back-alley butchers. That was the catchphrase. And 10,000 women a year killed in illegal abortions, that was another. Coat hangers were what those butchers used to perform their grisly trade, and the only thing American women wanted was medical safety on the rare occasions when they made the…

At last Wednesday’s White House briefing, CNN’s Ed Henry asked new flack Jay Carney why it had taken President Obama so long to speak out about the violence in Libya.

Kiev

The Oxford Companion to the Book edited by Michael Suarez & H. R. Woudhuysen Oxford, 1,408 pp., $325

Poor Anna Wintour. It’s going to be a very good month for her enemies, because the latest issue of Vogue shows the rail-thin cultural icon and style arbiter to be well behind the curve on the biggest international fashion trend of the year. Arab democracy is in, and what’s out are Arab…

It is still striking, two months into the Great Arab Rebellion, how timorously many Westerners greet the region-wide uprising. Recognizing that democratic aspirations may be only a small factor in all the tumult, many would prefer to focus on the particulars of the revolts—the Shiite-Sunni split in…

For most Americans—make that most of mankind—the car is an instrument of mobility, flexibility, and speed. Yet officials in Washington, transportation experts, state and local functionaries, planners, and transit officials are puzzled why their efforts to lure people from their cars continue to…

Madison, Wisconsin

Philadelphia

Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s new governor, has brought on a showdown with public sector unions and their Democratic allies in his state. He seeks to get most state workers to pay for their pension and health benefits, to narrow collective bargaining to wages, to stop the state from collecting union…

If you've been reading the news on Libya lately, you've noticed that news organizations don't exactly agree on one essential aspect of their coverage.

In the Washington Post this morning, Dana Milbank tells of his woes refinancing his mortgage:

As the faceoff in Wisconsin enters its most critical stage, America finds itself bombarded with an array of polling data designed to provide insight into the thinking of citizens (not always registered voters) on the standoff between Governor Scott Walker (and the state’s Republican legislators) on…

According to Politico, President Obama will be forced to abandon his controversial nomination of Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Politico reports that “Senate Democrats have given up on confirming Don Berwick as CMS administrator in the…

A local NBC affiliate in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Republicans in Wisconsin are worried that a few GOP state senators are "wavering" or "going wobbly" and may be willing to strike a deal with Democrats on the budget repair bill. 

Rich Lowry makes a good point about federal district court judge Gladys Kessler’s recent decision, which held that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is not unconstitutional.  (That’s the appropriate terminology; judges have no more authority to declare laws “constitutional” than juries have to declare…

In case you missed it, the Washington Post ran a fascinating story on the D.C.-based Howrey law firm, whose annual revenue once swelled to more than half-a-billion dollars but is now on the verge of collapse.

Pity the poor economist trying to create a coherent picture of the U.S. economy from the bits and pieces of the data jigsaw puzzle, the most recent piece of which was Friday’s jobs report. Non-farm payrolls were up 192,000 in February, and the estimates of the previous two months’ jobs growth were…

Hmm. A big Rory Reid (as in son of Harry) campaign scandal.

Where governments and statesmen can afford to be cynical about trade relations and security agreements with rogue regimes, human rights groups are supposed to operate at a higher level – the ultimate goal being for those regimes to alter their behavior. When NGOs traffic in realpolitik, it has a…

Rasmussen released the job approval rating for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker today, and it's not pretty: 

 Harvard President Drew Faust and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus just signed the agreement officially welcoming ROTC back on Harvard grounds.

Ben Smith writes: 

Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have just issued a joint statement on Libya. "We strongly support President Obama's declaration yesterday that Colonel Qaddafi must go," the senators say. "The President is correct that Qaddafi and those loyal to him – unleashing horrific violence against the…

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, stop whatever irrelevant busywork you're engaged in and take a moment -- well, half an hour -- to read one of the greatest of presidential utterances. If your busywork won't wait half an hour, skip to the last paragraph. It's…

Andrew Ferguson (with his son Gillum) was on Fox News's "Red Eye" earlier this week to discuss his latest book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College:

Columbia University’s Task Force on Military Engagement just released its full report on ROTC. As previously reported, the student survey went in favor of bringing ROTC back to campus: Sixty percent of students approved restoring the program. A quick look at some of the findings:

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel confirms that's how much the average Milwaukee teacher will be paid in salary and benefits in 2011:

What do participants in J Street's national conference believe in? Here's a glimpse:

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Hey everybody--it's the Age of the Electric Car! Sales numbers for the Chevy Volt are out and you'll never guess how many of these future machines consumers gobbled up in the month of February. Go ahead and try. I'll wait.Is that your final answer? Okay. Well the real number is:

The return of ROTC to Harvard might be (as the Politico’s Mike Allen notes) “the most underplayed story.” At the Washington Post’s website, the news has been relegated to a mere blog post, while the New York Times webpage is giving better play to a story about James Franco’s studies at Yale. (In…

J Street’s second annual conference – at least, that’s what it was called until the organizers realized it had actually been two years since their first annual conference – took place this past weekend in Washington, D.C. For the liberal lobbying group, which proudly (and falsely) calls itself…

Disconnect 

Goo Goo for Gaga. That would be one way to describe local reaction to a London shop that sold ice cream made from a mother's breast milk. Produced by Icecreamists, the flavor was named Baby Gaga and consisted partly of breast milk, vanilla pods, and lemon zest. Founder Matt O'Connor tells the…

Hmm. "President signals he is weighing rebels' request for no-fly zone"

This item from Reuters caught my eye:

Great news: Harvard University will officially recognize its Naval ROTC program tomorrow. The agreement – to be signed by Harvard president Drew Faust and Navy secretary Ray Mabus – marks the end of the school’s 41-year ban against the program.

Has England lost its nerve?

A smart friend writes: "As a federal contractor, I'm prohibited from contributing to candidates or parties in federal elections. Am I breaking the law by funding Democrats via public sector unions when I pay my taxes?"

In November, Maryland defied the national trend and elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature. A bill legalizing same-sex marriage was expected to sail through the legislature and be signed into law. Indeed, earlier this week, the state Senate passed the gay marriage bill 25 to…

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner reviews Andrew Ferguson's latest, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College:

President Obama has, at long last, publicly called on Col. Moammar Qaddafi to end his 42-year tenure as dictator of Libya.

In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion…

Regarding the battle over the budget and public employee unions in Wisconsin, the state's voters support the Democrats over Republican governor Scott Walker by eight points, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

When Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA operative was revealed in 2003, Bush administration critics were adamant that a serious crime had been committed, that American national security interests had been put into jeopardy, and that the exposure warranted nothing less than the prosecution of a wide…

Arif Uka is a 21-year-old German-Albanian Muslim whose family came from the ethnically divided region of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. He is being held by German police after the shooting deaths Wednesday of two U.S. Air Force members, and injury to two more—one seriously—in a group headed for…

Having utterly failed to convince the American people to embrace Obamacare, and facing a steadfast House of Representatives that has passed a bill to repeal Obamacare by a margin of 56 votes, the Obama administration — always probing for weakness — is now testing the resolve of Republican…

The New York Times's latest Guantanamo editorial has been rightly criticized for failing to grapple seriously with the problems created by the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush. In that case, the Supreme Court created a constitutional right for detainees to directly challenge…

Can anyone beat President Obama when he runs for reelection? The question seems to be on the minds of people whose job, or avocation, it is to ask. In other words, the people who write for, and read, Politico.

Wisconsin voters support the Democrats over Republican governor Scott Walker by eight points and the unions over Walker by 15 points, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

In today's Examiner, Mark Tapscott discusses William F. Buckley's banishment of John Birchers to the fringe of the conservative movement decades ago and how it relates to today's conspiracy mongering on the left. In particular, the bleatings about the influence of Koch Industries have run…

Speaking to more than 10,000 supporters in Duesseldorf on Sunday night, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once again the source of some controversy across Germany when he called on his “compatriots” – many of whom hold German passports and were born there – to strongly resist…

This story got a bit lost in the shuffle yesterday, but unions just suffered a big blow in Michigan. Now that the state is controlled by a Republican governor, they just put a stop to one of the most egregious examples of union overreach in the country.

Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation that seeks to improve government transparency, has obtained two important Guantanamo-related documents from the Department of Defense via a Freedom of Information Act request. One of the documents is a draft presentation dated February 4, 2004. Reading…

Libyan rebels calling for international help.

Two U.S. Airmen shot in Germany, terrorist link probed

Greg Jaffe has a poignant story today in the Washington Post: "Lt. Gen. John Kelly, who lost son to war, says U.S. largely unaware of sacrifice"

Many questions have been raised about Julian Assange’s and WikiLeaks’s association with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Israel Shamir. (See, notably, Michael Moynihan’s detailed exposé on Reason.com here.) Among other things, Shamir defends the “veracity” of The Protocols of the Elders of…

Today, petitions were filed to recall four Republican state senators in Wisconsin (recall petitions have already been filed against four Democratic state senators). That means that Democrats, union members, and friends have 60 days from today to get enough signatures (at least 25 percent of the…

The Texas legislature is likely to approve a measure that would allow students with pistol permits to carry guns on college campus.  Although the proposed law would do nothing to change the requirements for getting a permit—one would still have to be over 21, have no criminal record, no record of…

Murad Warfally, of the University of Benghazi, talks to Al Jazeera about today's fighting in the town of Brega in Eastern Libya:

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing,” Mississippi governor Haley Barbour said this morning to an audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “And the main thing is economic growth and job creation.”

One of the oddities of “the realist” school of international relations in America is how profoundly unrealistic its proponents’ policy prescriptions typically are. The latest example of this phenomenon is found in the new issue of Foreign Affairs in an article written by Charles Glaser of George…

While the debate about curbing government spending continues, allow me to propose a modest but important cut: the Library of Congress’s Employee Art show. Or can we at least cut out artwork that praises communist revolutionaries?

Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi just can’t accept the fact that anyone other than al Qaeda wants him gone. CNN reports:

“No continuing resolution to fund the government that fails to reduce spending will pass,” Alabama senator Jeff Sessions said yesterday at an education spending hearing. “It won’t pass the House or the Senate. We are going to fight for spending cuts this week, next week, next month, and next year.”

Mary Katharine Ham reports: 

Why the wait? That's the question ACTA president Anne Neal is asking Harvard about restoring ROTC to campus. As she points out, providing official recognition to ROTC – as opposed to establishing a new unit on campus – is an action that the university can and should undertake immediately.

Eight years ago, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was wrestling with the fact that America did not have a comprehensive energy policy.

This morning at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Spectator, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan talked about what he's looking for in a Republican presidential candidate, reiterated he won't seek the White House, and left the door wide-open to accepting a vice presidential nomination.

In the weekend Wall Street Journal, bestselling foodwriter Michael Ruhlman reviews Gabrielle Hamilton's cooking memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Ruhlman prefaces his essay by saying the book "is not the usual 'chef memoir' in our era of…

Paris's twice-annual Fashion Week began yesterday, but no one in the City of Light is talking about the clothes. Dior designer John Galliano was first suspended, then sacked, from the couture house as allegations he has, more than once, engaged in anti-Semitic rants in a Paris bar have come to…

When I was in Cambridge yesterday, a mysterious dark lady approached me in Harvard Yard. She pressed a sheet of paper into my hand, said she was a poet and a WEEKLY STANDARD reader, and asked me to share this effort, apparently based on Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," with our readers.

Imagine the outrage if Tea Partiers had done this, Part MCLVII: "Wisconsin GOP Senator Glenn Grothman chased, trapped by hecklers, saved by Dem. Rep. Hulsey"

For a politician whose previous career was in public relations, David Cameron cannot have picked a more polarizing subject, or less opportune time to address it, than his recent speech on the failure of state multiculturalism, which he delivered in early February at the Munich Security Conference.…

This story from Politico on Monday has been making the rounds:

Wisconsin protests raise questions about medical ethics under Obamacare.

In August 2010, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the U.S. government on behalf of al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The two organizations questioned the government’s right to put Awlaki on a “kill list” and argued that the “government’s…

Alleged rapist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now being accused of being a Jew hater. The New York Times reports:

In Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's budget speech, which just got underway, the governor announces plans to cut taxes and expand school choice--two proposals that could become new flashpoints in Wisconsin's budget battle. 

A New York Times/CBS News poll never lets you down.  Today’s survey features a skewed sample (36 percent Democratic, 26 percent Republican), tricky questions, and an emphasis on results likely to thrill liberals and Democrats.

Via Allahpundit, Wisconsin GOP assemblywoman Michelle Litjens talked to Fox News today about what it was like to hear Democratic assemblyman Gordon Hintz yell "You are f---ing dead!" while the assembly was voting to pass the budget repair bill:

Time's Jay Newton-Small reports: 

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's office has released excerpts of a speech later today in which the governor will unveil his biennial budget. “This is a reform budget," Walker will say. "It is about getting Wisconsin working again – and to make that happen, we need a balanced budget that works --…

In an editorial published yesterday (“A Right Without a Remedy”), the New York Times complained that the D.C. Circuit Court “has dramatically restricted” the Supreme Court’s Boumediene ruling, which granted Guantanamo detainees the right to petition federal courts for their habeas corpus rights.…

Eric Holder, earlier today at a House hearing, expressed skepticism on whether Gitmo would be closed before the president finished his first term in office:

In this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Daniel DiSalvo writes that the big underlying concern of the union officials and Democrats about Scott Walker's budget repair bill is that it would bleed unions dry by making union dues optional and requiring annual secret-ballot union elections. That's…

Congressman Steve Chabot (R, Ohio), in a hearing today on Capitol Hill, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the U.S. response to Libya. In his question, Chabot said that the “initial U.S. response” has been “tepid,” and went on to compare the greater response from the British and even…

Progressives may have decided that businessmen and libertarian political benefactors David and Charles Koch are the latest harbingers of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but they could be shocked to learn that several Koch Industries subsidiaries have been working closely and productively with…the…

Jon Huntsman is about to leave the People’s Republic of China after less than two years as Washington’s ambassador. Human rights activists say he did a good job, at least by comparison with his predecessor, Clark J. Randt, Jr. That's not saying much. However, ambassadors planning a presidential…

An absolutely must watch video today -- Corporal William Lottering, USMC by way of South Africa, gives a tour of the schoolhouse in Garmsir, Afghanistan. The headmaster of the school fled the school and didn't come back to teach until the Marines arrived and started providing security. When the…

In his opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, Senator John McCain expressed his support for the protesters across the Middle East. “[T]he historic changes now reshaping the broader Middle East are a direct repudiation of al-Qaeda and its terrorist allies,” McCain…

This past November, two anti-American governments each committed an act of aggression against the island territory of a neighboring democracy. North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing two soldiers and two civilians. Nicaragua’s well-staffed and armed military forces…

For 50 consecutive weeks, Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters has been asking Americans whether (and how strongly) they support or oppose the repeal of Obamacare. Fifty times in fifty weeks, the majority of Americans have said that they support repeal. In 49 of those 50 weeks, Americans have…

Jane Russell, the famous pin-up and self-described "teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist," is dead at 89. R.I.P.

Americans looking for strong, assertive leadership have had to look abroad for an adequate response to Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal crackdown in Libya. That’s because the Obama administration’s response to the conflict has been weak and confused.

The Daily Caller reports:

The Iranian government thinks Olympic logo is some sort of anti-Semitic Rorschach test.