April 2011

Racine, Wisc.

One of these days when Hollywood needs a break from the superhero genre, they're going to make comic book movies out of Greg Rucka's fantastic Queen & Country books. Based on a small British MI6 team of agents, Queen & Country might be the most realistic spy series done in the last 20 years: The…

Glorious Army

People in nations with economic problems can be permitted to enjoy an occasional pause from contemplating their woes. Once there were circuses for diversion. Yesterday Great Britain chose a royal wedding as its relief from debt, benefits cuts, and taxes. And this week America was diverted by the…

"Paul Ryan Catches Lefty Astroturfer Changing Clothes Then Coming Back For Second Town Hall…"

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Kelly Jane Torrance reviews three new films this weekend for The Washington Examiner. First up is the French film The Princess of Montpensier:

Dana Milbank objects to some cognitive dissonance on behalf of his employer:

"High-culture unions that fight to hang on to an untenable status quo are shooting themselves in the head." Culture critic Terry Teachout writes a piece on the future of high art in America.

If there is a must-win state for President Obama, it’s Pennsylvania. The only time that Republican presidential candidates win Pennsylvania is when they don’t need it, while no Democrat has won the presidency without Pennsylvania in the past 60 years.

Medicare's chief Donald Berwick writes in today’s Wall Street Journal,  

There are two competing versions of former Guantanamo detainee Sami al Hajj’s story. The first, which has long been endorsed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and many other journalists/activists, portrays Hajj as an innocent Al Jazeera journalist who was wrongly swept up in the…

The way Alyssa Kent described the work of her school’s environmental group, Campus Greens, was almost quaint. “We’re building a garden, and we’re going to supply the lettuce that we grow to the school cafeteria,” said Kent, a junior at Wells College in Aurora, New York. “And we’re about to start a…

Charles Krauthammer writes, in the Washington Post: 

Predicting which Guantanamo detainees will, or will not, become a recidivist is a tricky business. The U.S. government – under both the Bush and Obama administrations – has transferred “high risk” detainees to third countries. In some cases, “high risk” detainees who have been transferred have not,…

Pursuant to the discussion of Superman's pending renouncement of his American citizenship, Claremont McKenna professor John J. Pitney goes all high-brow, quoting James Madison quoting Gouverneur Morris at the Constitutional Convention:

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas may not last very long. The last agreement, in 2007, failed and led to increased violence between the two groups—and finally to Hamas’s coup in Gaza. Hamas and Fatah militants have been killing each other for decades and reconciliation seems more a ploy for…

"Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'"

The conventional wisdom is that the emerging Republican field for 2012 is a very weak one. However, like so much else in the topsy-turvy age of Obama, the conventional wisdom on this one is completely upside down. The idea of a weak GOP field is almost as ridiculous as a debate about a…

Greenfield, Wisc.

Valerie Jarrett draws the line at releasing the president's college transcripts.

One of the Senate's rising Republican stars is today backing calls for the Obama administration to withdraw the U.S. ambassador to Syria. "Clearly, we should be on the side of the Syrian people longing for freedom and challenging the regime's corrupt and repressive rule," writes Senator Marco…

Read the books that have shaped the books of Ian McEwan, one of our best contemporary novelists.

Superman is about to renounce his U.S. citizenship. The nerd press is reporting that in a story written by David Goyer in Action Comics #900, Superman becomes disgusted with the U.S. government, renounces his citizenship, and becomes a “citizen of the universe.” Awesome.

Readers of a certain age may remember Phoebe Snow as a fabulously talented singer whose quirky hit "Poetry Man" topped the charts briefly in the spring of 1975. If she was less well known than she deserved to be, that is because, later that same year, she put her career on hold to devote herself…

In light of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s shameless ad saying that the Paul Ryan-authored House Republican budget would “end Medicare,” it is worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office says that, in 2030, the Republican plan would give the average senior $18,276 in…

A touching television ad from Pampers, the diapers company:

The folks at econstories.tv are back with round two of their entertaining and informative rap battle between economists John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek. Watch it below:

The geniuses at econstories.tv are back with round two of their entertaining and informative rap battle between economists John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek. Watch it below:

Cable television talking head Lawrence O’Donnell, of MSNBC, went on a gutsy tirade last night, blasting his employer's parent company for creating "a monster."

From a New York Times editorial today:

The death of Madame Nhu in Rome, at the age of 87, brings home one age-old lesson, and another we Baby Boomers increasingly appreciate: Fame is fleeting, and time passes with disconcerting swiftness.

Milwaukee

David Harsanyi: Hey, why isn't Obama celebrating high oil prices?

So apparently Newt Gingrich and the "World’s Best Blogger" are in total agreement that the President should have released his birth certificate a long time ago. I don't think that's the reaction the White House had in mind.

The pro-Israel group Z Street is hosting an interesting conference on Capitol Hill next week (on May 4 in the Congressional Auditorium at the Capitol Visitors' Center). Speakers include: George Gilder, Khaled Abu Toameh, Harold Rhode, and many more. The conference, which the organizers are calling…

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is out today with a new advertisement targeting freshman Republican House members from districts that had previously elected Democrats. The ad juxtaposes campaign ads and appearances from last year's election, when the GOP candidates said…

Globe and Mail television critic John Doyle notes that Laurence C. Smith's book, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, posits that northern countries will soon rule the world as a result of global warming, water shortages, and the need for oil. This spells great…

Via Tom Gross: Here's gruesome (and extremely graphic) video from the massacre in Syria:

The New York Times reports:

Just want to expand a bit to expand on the point about Paul Ryan's budget plan polling better with seniors mentioned in Jeffrey Anderson's post below. In fairly classic example of horserace political reporting run amok, Politico ran with a heavily touted story this morning, "Ryan plan puts elderly…

A Wall Street Journal editorial today makes the very valuable point that Syria is an enemy of the U.S. Given its role as a transit point for foreign fighters making their way into Iraq to kill American soldiers, its alliance with Hamas and Hezbollah, its alleged role in the assassination of…

To quash the conspiracy theory that he was not born in this country, Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate today that shows he was born in Hawaii. In 2008, Obama released his "certification of live birth," which is for legal purposes as good as his long-form birth certificate. But…

Recent polling shows that Americans think we have a spending problem, not a taxing problem, and that Republicans are the party they trust to deal with that problem. A USA Today/Gallup poll released this week shows that Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on the deficit issue by a whopping…

In an apparent attempt to quell rumors first propagated by Hillary Clinton's campaign for president, President Obama has released his certificate of live birth. It's accessible on the White House's website, here.

Now that Scott Walker has triumphed, even Democrats are trying to take advantage of the moment to rein in public unions:

Kenosha, Wisc.

A two-page assessment of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr is among the newly leaked WikiLeaks files. Khadr, of course, killed American serviceman Christopher Speer during a shootout in Afghanistan. His many advocates have turned him into something of a false martyr, however, claiming that Khadr is…

The Washington Post reports that Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Iraq, will likely be nominated to be the next ambassador to Afghanistan :

"It’s kind of a shame that [the firefighters union is] not going to urinate away another fifteen million in the next national election – although possibly the ordinary, decent fire fighters who get stuck with the bill being run up on the Democrats’ behalf might find this to be a distinction without…

In Obama’s speech on the budget deficit earlier this month, the president went out of his way to praise the free market, but balanced it against the need for collective action sponsored by the government:           

"Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like."

As Iran continues to flout United Nations Security Council resolutions on nuclear proliferation, policy­makers in United States and Europe have come to view tough economic and financial sanctions as perhaps the last peaceful means of bringing the Islamic Republic into line. It’s true that…

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell sat down with Byron York this morning to discuss "the country’s budgetary battle – one that reflects the local lessons learned in Virginia – and an examination of the tough choices that lie ahead." The event was hosted by e21 and the Manhattan Institute. Here's video…

The Spectator across the pond has taken inspiration from Washington. It offered a competition based on the Post's for the most "toe-curlingly bad analogies." The winners are here -- though I actually think this one is quite good: "The accountant had the world-weary air of a ferret that had been up…

In an important piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Lew Lehrman explains the connection between monetary and fiscal policy—fiscal policy will almost inevitably tend toward deficits and debt if the monetary authorities are (virtually) unconstrained in financing that debt. Until it all comes…

Twin Lakes, Wisc.

The Jerusalem Post reports that royal wedding fever has officially hit Israel: 

Who doesn’t love an animal logo? Allen Lane knew that, in 1935, when he published the first 10 Penguin books in London. The six pence paperbacks arrived in bookshops sporting the avian logo and no other graphics, just broad bands of color at the top and bottom. General fiction had orange bands;…

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that, in Syria, "At least 400 people are reported to have been killed since the protests began on March 15."

Rich Lowry writes, in National Review Online: 

Berlin—Many European reactions to the recent murders by radical Islamists of pro- Palestinian Israeli filmmaker Juliano Mer-Khamis and Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni replicate the typical recurrence of the same: Shift the blame to Israel in an a priori fashion without delving into existing…

A former Guantanamo detainee “was identified as an Iraqi intelligence officer who relocated to Afghanistan (AF) in 1998 where he served as a senior Taliban Intelligence Directorate officer in Mazar-E-Sharif,” according to a recently leaked assessment written by American intelligence analysts. The…

On Monday, the law firm King and Spalding reneged on its agreement to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court. Following the Obama Justice Department's decision not to defend the federal law in court, the U.S. House of Representatives took up the case and hired former U.S. solicitor…

Mitch Daniels is still toying with our hopes.

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell will sit down for a conversation with Byron York tomorrow at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event is being hosted by e21 and the Manhattan Institute. Here are the details: 

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour issued a statement this afternoon announcing that he will not seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination:

Article 7 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines "crimes against humanity" as "murder" and other "inhumane acts" committed "as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population." It would be hard to find a clearer case of such offenses…

The love affair of Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens continues. Amis has a long piece in the Guardian, discussing life and death, everything from the Hitch's way with women to his (unfortunate) love of puns. "The rebel is in fact a very rare type. In my whole life I have known only two others,…

In April, the president decided to give non-lethal aid to the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime. No, not Libya. Not Obama. Not April 2011.

By a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. According to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, Americans think Obamacare would increase the deficit, increase health costs, and reduce the quality of care—the direct opposite of President…

The Wall Street Journal:

Late last year, Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr agreed to a plea deal that will require him to serve a maximum of eight years, with just one of those years in Cuba. Khadr is then set to be returned to Canada – his family’s adopted home, which they left for the Taliban and al Qaeda’s Afghanistan…

CNN reports: 

Ron Paul's in.

"'People have to believe there’s a fundamental problem with Medicare that has to be fixed,' said Carl Forti, a veteran GOP strategist. 'If they don’t believe there’s a problem, then why would they support a change?'”

With the popular uprising in Syria completing its first month, protests against Bashar al-Assad’s regime have spread to encompass most Syrian regions and cities, including now the capital, Damascus. On Friday, April 15, crowds from surrounding suburbs swarmed the city, heading downtown to…

Gauguin: Maker of Myth

There’s a truism of budgeting that goes: The player who makes the first move always loses. That’s because the player with the second move has the opportunity to focus on the drawbacks of what the first player proposed. It’s one reason why some Republicans were nervous about House GOP budget…

In his budget speech last week, Barack Obama mounted his third attack on U.S. defense spending. In 2009 the White House directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to terminate more than $300 billion in weapons programs, including the F-22 Raptor, the world’s most capable aircraft, and the Army’s…

Paul Ryan, architect of the Republican budget for 2012, sat in the front row at George Washington University as President Obama delivered his thoughts on the deficit, debt, and Ryan’s spending plan. The White House had seated him there, directly in front of the president.

It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents, maybe one of yours, who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor…

As an editor, I pay a certain amount of attention to centennials, bicentennials, sesquicentennials, and the like. This year, for example, is the centennial of the birth of William Golding, Spike Jones, and Hubert Humphrey and the sesquicentennial of the firing on Fort Sumter. But I was momentarily…

Red Conspirator

Barack Obama’s budget address last week ranks among the most dishonest and dishonorable presidential speeches in generations. It contained an avalanche of false and misleading statements. It was shallow and bitterly partisan. Yet the speech served a useful purpose: It provided the American people…

The death of Sidney Lumet April 9 is a striking reminder of how little the American motion-picture industry today has in common with Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s—which were his heyday and, arguably, the heyday of the movies themselves. Lumet was unquestionably the most consistent and productive…

One of the most widely circulated photographs during the Wisconsin union battle was of a protester in Madison holding up a sign that read: “Dear Barack, Please put on your comfortable shoes. Love, America.”

During a span of 22 months the website WikiLeaks.org morphed from a digital anarchist demonstration project into a semisuccessful international campaign against the American government. WikiLeaks solicited classified documents and then orchestrated a global media typhoon around them. The…

Cairo

With all of the hubbub leading up to the royal wedding this week, it is hard not to get excited about the nuptials of the future queen! Check out Samantha Sault’s take on Kate Middleton’s effect on British Fashion Week, from our March 28th issue:

Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, sat down with Peter Robinson to discuss his book on Uncommon Knowledge:

Today's lead editorial in the Washington Post doesn't mince words in its assessment of President Obama's handling of the crisis in Syria.

Over two dozen Democratic members of Congress and Moveon.org have joined the religious left in a fast coinciding with Lent to protest federal budget cuts. Moveon.org executive director Justin Rubin announced earlier this month that he and other “progressive” groups were joining religious leaders to…

Yesterday was a big day for ROTC. Just three weeks after Columbia’s university senate voted in favor of engaging with ROTC, Columbia has announced it will reinstate its Navy ROTC program. The agreement between President Lee C. Bollinger and Navy secretary Ray Mabus marks the end of a 42-year ban on…

So the sovereign debt of the American government has been downgraded. Not last week by Standard & Poor’s, which merely put it on negative watch. But last November, by Dagong, China’s rating agency, which down-rated it from AA (its highest rating) to A+, and rated its outlook “negative.” Of course,…

"Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll."

Here's your least surprising news of the day, courtesy the Washington Post:

Kiev – At around 10 a.m. Moscow time on March 23, the world saw another example of just how dangerous it is to be an investigative reporter in Russia. Sergei Topol, a 55-year-old political journalist, was beaten by two men outside of his apartment building at 1 Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnaya—one of…

A proposed draft of an executive order that would require disclosure of political contributions by federal contractors has been circulating in Washington, D.C.:

Al Jazeera reports:

In his column today, Charles Krauthammer sizes up the potential GOP presidential candidates and concludes by noting there's a chance Paul Ryan could end up running in 2012:  

Staff Sgt. Jason Rogers, of the United States Marine Corps, was killed in combat earlier this month in Afghanistan. A heartbreaking YouTube video of the funeral procession in Brandon, Mississippi (located in Rankin County) has been posted:

In his column today, Charles Krauthammer sizes up the potential GOP presidential candidates and concludes by noting there's a chance Paul Ryan could end up running in 2012:  

Nevada Republican senator John Ensign is reportedly set to resign today. Here's the Las Vegas Sun:

Across the Great White North, "Human Rights Comissions" are running amok and making a mockery of the Canadian Charter of Rights, which guarantees "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."

Byron York reports: 

John Bolton: "Obama Wobbly on Libya."

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s First Read posed this question:

Obama from "hope and change" to "This is a big complicated messy democracy. Change is not simple.” Smells like a winning campaign slogan to me.

In response to Charlotte Hays's piece on the blog yesterday ("Royal Marriage: Ordinary People?"), a reader sends this letter to the editor:

Over at The New Republic, Bradford Plummer has an article about the near total political failure of the environmental movement in the last few years:

Under a headline reading, "White House may add politics to contract bids," Washington Technology Daily reports, "The Obama administration is determining how to require companies competing for government contracts to list their political contributions when submitting a contract bid." According to…

Yesterday, Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg told the president he was "cool" with higher taxes. In fact, a number of prominent wealthy liberals have been agitating for tax increases. There's even a group called "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength"  that are pushing the…

Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, announced today in New Hampshire that he's running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012: 

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has been running amok to do favors for organized labor under Obama, is now trying to tell Boeing where it can manufacture planes:

As we look ahead to Easter—Christianity’s greatest feast day, and the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead—there is much to pray for. We pray for those affected by economic strife, and those harmed by natural disasters and war. But let’s not forget the Christians suffering around the…

Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham has a column today, noting that Bay State taxpayers are funding some awfully questionable sex education programs:

Obama's townhall event at Facebook was quite the thing to behold. To say it was a friendly atmosphere for the president would be something of an understatement. The president enjoyed lots of softballs and applause and was never challenged on his answers. Based on his interaction with a local Texas…

Sean Trende, writing at Real Clear Politics, argues that "the results" of the 2012 presidential election "are far from foreordained." And though Trende is not predicting President Obama will necessarily lose his reelection bid, he puts the odds at "roughly 50-50, with perhaps more upside on the…

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels is taking on teachers' unions and working to expand charter schools. The Evansville Courier & Press reports: 

"Welcome to Potemkin, Iowa."

"But Other Than Being Shot to Death, Mr. Lincoln, How Did You Like the Play?"

On October 7, 2006 investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead near her home in Moscow. Five days later, Politkovskaya’s newspaper published her last complete article, a thorough dissection of the utter collapse of “Chechenization”—the Kremlin’s policy of turning over the…

Things got pretty radical at last weekend's Power Shift environmental conference in Washington:

One of my favorite Bill Rusher stories is from the 1984 presidential campaign, when he and Jeane Kirkpatrick faced off against Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank on the question of Reagan vs. Mondale. Poor Senator Dodd had to contend with this impossible query from Bill Rusher: “On the invasion of…

Over at the Washington Post for his guestblogging stint this week, THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Matt Continetti called up GOP campaign operative Mike Murphy and asked him to handicap the presidential candidates. The results are entertaining to say the least:

Jerry Seinfeld’s snide remarks on the upcoming royal nuptials have offended the Brits—and me.  Seinfeld thinks that Prince William and Kate aren’t “special people” and that therefore the pageantry surrounding their wedding will consist of “fake outfits, fake phony hats and gowns.” Meanwhile,…

Two random thoughts on the book biz, prompted by a couple of casual encounters with print this week.

The Washington Post reports:

In ancient Greece, Odysseus gave the city of Troy a magnificent, larger than life gift of a wooden horse. Though it appeared solid from the outside, it was hollow and contained the seeds of Troy’s destruction.

Victorino Matus writes in the Washington Post:

All it took was 50 years and tens of thousands of dead people: "Cuba's party congress agrees to allow private property."

Picture yourself, for a moment, in a version of John Rawls’s original position. You’ve been tasked with selecting the next president of the United States, only you have no idea what political party he/she is from, or his/her ideological beliefs. You only have knowledge of his/her background and…

Support school choice programs? Just go ahead and "drop dead."

The Washington Post reports:

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters once again shows double digit support for repeal (52 to 41 percent), and even higher support among independents (54 to 40 percent) than among likely voters as a whole. This comes on the heels of an AP/GfK poll that shows lower support for Obamacare than at…

In a move supposedly meant to placate protesters, Syria has abolished its 48-year-old ‘emergency’ rule law. But this isn’t a sign that the regime is totally giving in. (It seems instead that the regime just wants the world to think that it’s meeting the demands of the protesters, without actually…

In the New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses what he calls “a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio”—that 47 percent of Americans no longer pay any income tax. Leonhardt grants the point—“The 47 percent figure is not wrong”—but adds, “Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen…

The first men to die in the American Civil War fell on this day, 150 years ago, on Pratt Street in Baltimore. Troops en route to Washington were confronted downtown by rioters, and the fighting cost four federal soldiers and 12 civilians their lives.

Conservative sting artist James O'Keefe and friends produced a spoof music video of one sting that didn't quite work out as planned:

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by five Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo. A D.C. District Court granted the Uighur detainees their freedom inside the U.S. A D.C. Circuit Court ruling overturned the District Court’s decision. And so the Uighurs attempted to appeal…

Apparently Obama did not appreciate the tone of this reporter from Texas, who asked Obama some pointed questions and at one point corrected him on how badly he lost the Lone Star state in 2008. Obama testily concludes "Let me finish my answers" at the end of the interview:

President Obama said last week that “the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century.” Let’s assume that he based that claim on the 2009 tax year, when most people’s tax rates dropped significantly. If so, when you have negative economic growth for the first time in 60 years…

"In a strong statement this afternoon, Jon Kyl, the Senate's number-two Republican, says President Obama "should personally stand up and publicly condemn the attacks by the Assad regime on the Syrian people."

Boy that Obama budget speech last week sure reassured Wall Street, huh?

Haaretz reports:

The Hill:

Tax Day 2011 comes in the middle of President Obama’s push for raising taxes to tackle deficit spending. The president’s budget calls for raising both taxes and deficits. But last week, Obama said that we need to reduce deficits, and he announced his intention, as he put it, “to reduce spending in…

At Politico, Tevi Troy, a former senior White House aide under George W. Bush, comments on the Obama White House's failure to live up to basic promises on transparency:

WEEKLY STANDARD Opinion Editor Matt Continetti is guestblogging for Jennifer Rubin all this week at the Washington Post. Head on over to Rubin's blog, Right Turn, to read more. 

That was the explanation of Steven Hoag to ABC11-TV in Wilson, N.C. for how he remained preternaturally calm while narrating the approach of a tornado straight towards him.

The legislative version of the budget deal that President Obama struck with Speaker Boehner (and Senate Majority Leader Reid) to fund the federal government for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year includes the following language to deny funding for four of President Obama’s “czars” — those in…

In lieu of offering an actual budget to reduce deficit spending, President Obama has now given a speech saying that we should reduce deficits by raising taxes, cutting defense, and “strengthening” Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). But rather than signing on to Obama’s stated…

The Jewish holiday Passover begins tonight at sundown. Here, courtesy of the Jewish Review of Books and Commentary, are a few articles that might be of interest.

In its editorial denouncing the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his 9/11 co-conspirators before a military tribunal, instead of a federal court, the New York Times writes:

"Mean streak: Obama is not as nice as he looks"

Helsinki If you believe the members of the fastest growing political party in Finland, their country is the sucker, the sap, the patsy among the Nordic nations. Norway never joined the European Union. Sweden and Denmark opted out of using its currency, the euro. Finland, however, is a full member…

Art and Madness A Memoir of Lust Without Reason by Anne Roiphe Nan A. Talese, 240 pp., $24.95

Wayne County, Pa. The landmen who came here three years ago weren’t counting on Betty Sutliff. Representatives of energy heavy-hitters like Chesapeake, Hess, Newfield, and XTO came to northeastern Pennsylvania to get property owners to sign leases to allow gas exploration and drilling on their…

Just before 10 p.m. on April 20, 2010, disaster struck the giant Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Crew members aboard the rig were in the final hours of attempting to secure a “nightmare well” about a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico for temporary closure and later production. Undetected, a large quantity…

In a week when the news concerned taxes and spending, the Supreme Court happened to decide a case dealing with .  .  . taxes and spending. This was not a federal but a state case, from Arizona, and the good news is that in a 5-to-4 ruling the Court recognized its proper, limited role in our system…

And the Show Went On Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding Knopf, 416 pp., $28.95

Source Code Directed by Duncan Jones

In Search of Civilization Remaking a Tarnished Idea by John Armstrong Graywolf, 208 pp., $24

Hank Greenberg The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One by Mark Kurlansky Yale, 192 pp., $25

The squat old lady standing in the entrance to the café in Saint Petersburg was blowing cigarette smoke out of her nose. She had thick glasses and gave off an air of running the place. In fact, she gave off an air of having run it since the Brezhnev era. I had missed lunch and was starving. I asked…

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Baghdad last week on what was probably his last official trip to the country he helped save from devastating sectarian war. His visit was hardly a victory lap. His comments were as demure as they usually have been. That tenor was appropriate, for it is still…

Remember Barack Obama? He’s the president of the United States. As a candidate he promised hope and change. Now he defends the status quo. The fact that the status quo is clearly unsustainable doesn’t deter him. His budget’s endless deficits and rising debt takes us down a perfectly obvious road to…

Ilana Lewitan is a painter of questions too wide or deep for words, whose originality, intelligence, and painterly virtuosity make her one of the most significant surrealists in decades. Her work is now on show at the prestigious Galerie Noah in Augsburg. Possibly you weren’t planning to stop by…

When Andrew Liveris took over as CEO of Dow Chemical at the end of 2004, the company was in the midst of a wrenching reorganization that saw it shed 7,000 jobs​—​14 percent of its workforce​—​and close 23 older chemical plants in this country. Looking ahead to a new product cycle in a fast-growing…

Paul Ryan’s dissection of Obama- --care at the White House health care summit on February 25, 2010, elevated him to a stature in Washington rare for a House member. The summit dawdled along for seven hours. Six riveting minutes of analysis delivered by Ryan, as President Obama listened a few seats…

Late last month, Senator Charles Schumer of New York led a conference call in which Senate Democrats briefed reporters about the ongoing budget battle. At the outset, unaware that his comments were already audible to reporters on the line, Schumer provided some marching orders, advising his…

On the day Paul Ryan released his budget proposal, I went to Judson Memorial Church in New York City to gauge the left’s reaction. Judson Memorial was hosting “Fight Back USA,” where one could get tips on “fighting austerity, debt, and corporate greed” and listen to progressive superstars Frances…

To the astonishment of friends and foes of Israel alike, on April 1 in the Washington Post, Justice Richard Goldstone reversed himself. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly demanded that the United Nations retract the Goldstone Report, which, following its publication in September…

The name Lee Fang is far from a household name. However, from his perch at the Soros-funded think tank Center for American Progress, Fang has the dubious distinction of promulgating questionable Koch Industries political conspiracies perhaps more than any other person.

Apple is all about sleek design and minimalist beauty, but if a writer were to pose with his MacAir or iPad for a photo portrait, he’d be hard-pressed to look like he’s dripping with writerly intrigue. Besides, no one looks good in the eerie blue of computer screen light. 

Almost anyone who went to a high school in the United States has probably read Lord of the Flies. But very few have read anything else by William Golding. Michael Dirda reviewed William Golding: The Man Who Wrote 'Lord of the Flies' by John Carey last summer in the magazine, and the review is…

Washingtonian editor Garrett Graff recently published his second book, The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror. THE WEEKLY STANDARD recently had the opportunity to ask Graff a few questions about his book and the FBI's evolving role in national security issues.

At last night's opening of the 2011 Power Shift conference in Washington, an annual gathering of student environmental activists sponsored by the Sierra Club, former Vice President Al Gore ginned up the crowd of college students by noting how many more floods there were around the world in the last…

Derek Robinson is an English novelist, specializing in wartime tales of British pilots. Goshawk Squadron, his 1971 debut, is the story of a Royal Flying Corps squadron on the Western Front in World War I. Often compared to Catch 22, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize that year, losing to V.S.…

On Sunday, April 17, Andrew Ferguson will be on C-SPAN's Q & A with Brian Lamb to discuss his most recent book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College. The program will air at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST. Here are the details:

In case you are feeling the pain of the money you paid to the federal government this week, here is a treat from the National Gallery of Art—free audio and video podcasts! So if finances are forcing you into yet another stay-cation this spring break, you can at least enjoy some of the best cultural…

President Obama got it right when he said the budget is about “more than just cutting and spending. It’s about the kind of future we want. It’s about the kind of country we believe in.” And, at long last, after years of the president’s ostrich-like approach to the huge federal deficits, and after…

Steve Hayward on Obama's Re-Election Prospects.

The AP reports: 

Dave Weigel writes:

On the day Paul Ryan unveiled his budget, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait wrote a blog post titled "The Achilles Heel Of The Path To Prosperity." He wrote:

The White House just sent out this message, announcing that President Obama will "Hold Town Halls to Discuss his Vision for Bringing Down our Deficit Based on Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity":

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art opens the first major American exhibit on graffiti -- and promptly the neighborhood becomes victim to more graffiti.

About a week and a half into the battle over the 2012 budget, Gallup shows that only 41 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president, while 50 percent disapprove of him. Gallup writes that its “polling includes interviews conducted before and after Obama announced his…

Thirty-nine Republican senators sent a letter yesterday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that "the Administration should make clear in every engagement with Russia that it will have no say in the location, capability or timing of U.S. missile defense deployments with a NATO military…

Congressman Paul Ryan took to the House floor this afternoon to deliver final remarks before representatives voted on the 2012 budget that he wrote. Ryan began by discussing the 2008 financial crisis, calling to mind the dire days when the Treasury secretary and Fed chairman were warning of…

Best book I’ve read this year: Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress, by James Morris. Has any book ever come with a less gripping title or a more unappealing cover? But it turns out what say is true, at least in this case. It’s fantastic.

The House voted today 235 to 193 in favor of the 2012 budget resolution written by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Jen Rubin has the story about the New York Times's water-carrying for David Callahan, a co-founder and senior fellow at the left-wing group Demos. Callahan's op-ed in the Times on April 4 criticized the Koch brothers for their funding of 501c(4) groups, which don't have to disclose their funding.…

Yesterday, e21 sponsored an event Fred Barnes, executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, held a Q&A session with GOP Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan. The forum gave the congressman a chance to respond to the president's recent attacks on his budget proposal. You can watch the video below, and a…

Yesterday, e21 sponsored an event where WEEKLY STANDARD editor Fred Barnes held a Q&A session with GOP Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan. The forum gave the Congressman a chance to respond to the President's recent attacks on his budget proposal. You can watch the video below, and a transcript of…

Talk about a successful budgetary proposal: House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would cut 46 percent and $4.4 trillion from proposed deficit spending under President Obama’s budget, reform Medicare and Medicaid to put these programs on solid financial footing, and repeal Obamacare.…

While all of the attention has understandably focused on Rep. Paul Ryan's budget versus the President's "framework" -- that's not really a budget but wants to be taken as such -- there are actually a number of budgets floating around Capitol Hill. Democrats have the "People's Budget" from the…

Democrats sure seem convinced that the Tea Party is utterly toxic, but this CNN poll suggests otherwise:

During his speech on Wednesday at George Washington University, President Obama leveled the accusation that Republicans "want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs.  That’s not right."

Protesters in Syria are out on the streets again today, despite the severity of the force they were met with in last week's protests. The New York Times reports:

Charles Krauthammer puts the Ryan vs. Obama budget debate into perspective in his Washington Post column: 

Paul Ryan makes his case in today's Washington Post:

Given President Obama’s inference in his recent speech that, if only every other president had been as responsible on deficit spending as he has been, things would be great, it is well worth revisiting Obama’s actual track record versus other recent presidents (detailed more fully here). It’s also…

"U.S., allies see Libyan rebels in hopeless disarray"

Lately, I’ve been staying up late at night because I’m just too stressed over the state of the union. Unable to sleep, I often find myself toggling between scores of Excel spreadsheets, crunching all sorts of numbers to get my mind around the gaping budget deficit that is threatening the country.…

Donald Trump: "Always Had a Great Relationship With The Blacks"

The Senate vote to defund Planned Parenthood failed 42 to 58 today.

Yesterday afternoon, while the House Republican leadership was busy securing votes for the 2011 budget deal forged last week, a small group of House Democrats met to discuss with the press and the public their ongoing participation in “Hungerfast,” a nationwide hunger strike (which supposedly has…

Speaker of the House John Boehner will reach out to Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an invitation for him to address Congress when he visits America in May:

The May issue of the Atlantic features a new story by Stephen King. As part of its package on "How Genius Works," the magazine spoke to the master of horror about his creative process.

Just prior to the President's big budget speech, the White House released a fact sheet touting the fact that they were looking to strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) in the health care -- which is the primary mechanism in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act for…

Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on “Guantanamo Detainee Transfer Policy and Recidivism.” None of the witnesses claimed that Guantanamo is a major recruiting tool for al Qaeda. That omission is refreshing.

The continuing resolution that will fund the government through the end of September just passed the House of Representatives on a 260 to 167 vote. Fifty-nine Republicans voted against it, and 81 Democrats voted for it.

As noted earlier, Politico's David Rogers went deep into the weeds in order to try to explain the details of the suddenly controversial continuing resolution (CR). I wrote that the analysis is "a little" confusing, but a smart person writes in to call it "utterly incomprehensible." Let's try to cut…

The Wall Street Journal's editorial on the president's speech yesterday: 

I’m not a movie critic and I read Atlas Shrugged decades ago when I was in the Army. So it wasn’t exactly fresh in my mind when I attended a special screening in Washington this week of the film version of the novel by Ayn Rand. I had low expectations. But it turns out to be a terrific movie.

As noted earlier, Politico's veteran congressional reporter David Rodgers went deep into the weeds to try to explain the confusion over how much money the continuing resolution really cuts. One smart person writes in to call the analysis "utterly incomprehensible." So I'm going to try again to cut…

Mackenzie Eaglen, of the Heritage Foundation, writes:

Both the so-called Republican Forces loyal to the new Ivoirian president Alassane Ouattara and French officials have been at great pains to insist that deposed president Laurent Gbagbo was captured by Ouattara’s troops and not by French troops. This is not what was initially reported. But, in any…

Barack Obama responded to Paul Ryan's budget proposal yesterday, and the GOP congressman and chairman of the House Budget Committee will give his rebuttal today. The event is hosted by the think tank e21, and Fred Barnes will be the moderator. Here are the details: 

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranians are helping the Syrians with their crackdown: 

Let's assume for the purpose of argument that our friends at National Review are at least partly right in their analysis of the deal on the continuing resolution (CR) that's to be voted on today in the House of Representatives (but see John McCormack’s post for some context). In their…

Some conservatives were taken aback by the AP's report yesterday that the continuing resolution (CR) that cuts $38 billion will only reduce this fiscal year's deficit--i.e. reduce total outlays through September 30--by $352 million. 

Remember way back in 2010 when Obama said, "We're not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, ‘Well, you know, that's -- the other party's being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior…

Let me guess -- Nancy Pelosi was first in line.

In February, Defense secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded a cautionary note at a congressional hearing on the defense budget. "We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril," Gates warned members of Congress. "Retrenchment…

On the day Obama was inaugurated, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. Currently the debt is about $14.275 trillion. According to Obama's speech today, he's now proposing to cut deficits by $4 Trillion over 12 years.

House Budget chairman Paul Ryan just released the following statement in response to President Obama's speech on deficit reduction:

President Obama always lets you down. Just when you think he’s ready to deliver a lofty speech chocked with specifics on handling the spending and debt emergency, he offers up a hyper-partisan attack on the leading Republican proposal, gives practically no details of his own plan, and then…

In proposing to cut another $400 billion from U.S. defense budgets over the next ten years as part of his deficit reduction counter-offer, Barack Obama’s words were few. Yet they were revealing.

A statement from House speaker John Boehner on Obama's deficit speech today: 

Did NPR and PBS win the budget battle?

While delivering his do-over budget speech, President Obama spoke of Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. He said, "We're a better country because of these commitments." Then he said, "I'll go further: We would not be a great country without those commitments." So, is…

President Obama's speech at George Washington University just got under way. The White House sends out his remarks, as prepared for delivery: 

White House leaks indicate that President Obama’s upcoming deficit reduction plan will include about $400 billion in cuts from Pentagon budgets over the next 10 years. That might account for as much as 40 percent of the total spending cuts he proposes.

One storyline to emerge from the 2011 budget deal is that social conservatives were really the ones who lost. 

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a special section reporting on the paper’s recent conference entitled “Women in the Economy: An Executive Task Force.” One of the taskforce members was Geena Davis, the Academy Award winning actress and more recently founder of the Geena Davis Institute on…

The White House communications operation has expended considerable effort over the past week to portray President Obama as serious about dealing with debt and deficits. Most of their scrambling came after House Budget chairman Paul Ryan presented a 2012 budget blueprint that included significant…

According to a new treaty being drawn up by Bolivia at the U.N., "Mother Earth" would be given "the same rights as humans, including the right to life, to pure water and clean air." Both Ecuador and Bolivia have already incorporated the "rights of nature" into their constitutions.

Former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has reportedly been placed under detention in his hospital room in Sharm el-Sheikh. Mubarak has been there since last night, when he is thought to have had a heart attack. The AP reports:

The Daily Beast reports:

So much for the budget deal: "But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially 'score' as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit."

Presidential résumés have run the gamut -- from commanding general of the United States Army (Ulysses S. Grant) all the way down to collector of the Port of New York (Chester A. Arthur). Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new…

In the debate over defunding Planned Parenthood, supporters of legalized abortion and reporters point out again and again that federal law prohibits direct taxpayer funding of abortion.  

Oh goody: "Trump Will ‘Probably’ Run as Independent If He Doesn’t Win GOP Nomination"

While President Barack Obama apparently regrets his 2006 vote against raising the debt ceiling, some of the other Democratic senators who joined him aren’t as apologetic.

Reporters covering the ongoing popular revolt in Syria were recently introduced to a new term from the sociopolitical lexicon of the Levant—the shabbiha.

West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, criticized House Budget chairman Paul Ryan’s recently released budget plan this afternoon in the Capitol. “According to our analysis,” Rockefeller said, “the size of the federal government will be cut 40 percent of where it is today at the…

The think tank e21 announces:  

More on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, jailed by the regime a week ago: Communist officials first accused him of "economic crimes." Now they're charging obscenity and plagiarism. In his last interview before his arrest, he described the surveillance state under which he and other dissidents live.

Turkey is a member of NATO, and as such might have been expected to participate fully in the military campaign to curb Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal repression of his rebellious subjects. But from the beginning of international talks on Libya, the “soft-Islamist” Ankara government of…

It is always a bad sign when the only way to explain a government program or rule is with a joke.  Ronald Reagan was famous for collecting the jokes told by the Russian people about the infamous bureaucracy and inefficiency of the Soviet state. Now, in the critical area of health care, similar…

Fred Kagan and the rest of his Critical Threats team at AEI will begin to focus more directly on coming up with a U.S. strategy for Yemen. It will be called the Yemen Strategic Planning Exercise, and here's how Kagan describes the project: 

Donald Kagan has a great piece in the New Haven Register on why Yale (and other schools) should bring ROTC back to campus. The piece has a particularly moving passage on the heroism of the American soldier:

Today is Equal Pay Day, which supposedly "symbolizes how far into 2011 women must work to earn what men earned in 2010." But in today's Wall Street Journal, Carrie Lukas explains the disparity between average wages for men and women in economic terms:

In contrast to that CNN poll from today showing strong support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood, a poll conducted by Pulse Opinion Research for The Hill found much more mixed views:

Perhaps it's sour grapes, or perhaps it's a recent reawakening, but in a speech by Nancy Pelosi at Tufts University earlier this week, the former speaker of the House had some advice for her Republican colleagues in particular and some reflections on elections in general:

CNN polls 824 American adults: 

Chris Wallace’s interview with David Plouffe on Fox News Sunday suggests an administration that’s afraid to argue for what it really wants, isn’t sure what to say it really wants, and isn’t saying anything very well. During the course of the interview, Plouffe incorporated many of the…

The Washington Post reports:

Fiscal conservatives won big, and social conservatives lost in the 2011 budget compromise--or so the story goes, according to.... 

As Congress considers whether to raise the debt ceiling in the coming weeks, President Obama has had to respond to questions about his own prior votes on the debt limit when he was a United States senator. Obama's press secretary Jay Carney told reporters yesterday that the president "regrets" his…

Pethokoukis: "Why Obama’s tax pledge is bogus"

Not a parody: "NFL players need Obama's support"

Kelly Jane Torrance reviews Joe Wright's new movie, Hanna:

On CBS's Face the Nation yesterday, the number three Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, and the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, debated the budget. But of particular interest is their discussion of Paul Ryan's budget plan, which was…

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has announced on Twitter that he has formed an exploratory committee. Here's his opening video from his website:

As any baseball fan knows, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in the summer of 1941 is arguably the national pastime’s most hallowed record. But even Joltin’ Joe didn’t keep it up for 56 straight weeks.

Proposals to enact so-called "parent trigger" laws, where parents can choose to convert their failing school into a charter school, are gaining traction, and the teachers' unions and some liberal groups are unsurprisingly up in arms. In Ohio for instance, Republican governor John Kasich has…

Last week, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) unveiled its own budget proposal, which cuts over $3 trillion more than Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan over the next ten years. Despite all the media commentary about a divide within the Republican Party on the defense budget, the RSC proposal, like Paul…

Putting the greats on American Idol: Mischievious tricksters post David Foster Wallace's and Henri Cartier-Bresson's work as their own and watch the comments flow in.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin hits the nail on the head in a piece titled, “Obama’s do-over budget.” Rubin writes:

Newsweek’s Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau have published a list of the “12 of the most-hunted insurgent commanders on the front lines” in Afghanistan. The list is made up “of lesser-known lieutenants who include some of the insurgency’s most important and aggressive operatives.” But one of the…

The New York Times reports that Nick Ayers, the former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, will be joining the Tim Pawlenty 2012 team as its campaign manager. The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise to political insiders, since Ayers's successful tenure at the RGA came…

Ted Cruz, a conservative popular among Tea Party activists, has raised more than $1 million this year in his bid for the Republican nomination to succeed three-term Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is retiring in 2012.

Paul Ryan defended his budget proposal on Meet the Press yesterday:

Late last month I asked, who will interrogate top al Qaeda terrorist Umar Patek? Patek, who was captured in Pakistan, is wanted for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings, among other attacks and plots. He is easily one of the most important international terrorists captured in the past few years.…

Tom Cross, the Republican minority leader in the Illinois state house of representatives, emailed this letter to the editor in response to Eli Lehrer's article, "Pensions Aren't the Problem," which appeared in the March 28th issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Now that we've got a budget deal, who's up for a debt ceiling fight?

Did James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, utter an inconvenient truth last month when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China presents the greatest “mortal threat” to the United States?

Beirut

Deadly Choices

Conservatives are on the verge of victory—if only they can take yes for an answer. The situation on Capitol Hill is fluid, but it appears House Republicans will soon be presented with a choice: accept dramatic cuts in spending for the rest of fiscal year 2011 that, while less than the amount passed…

If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail”—touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the…

President Obama isn’t quite in hibernation. But he’s saying less, proposing less, appearing in public less, doing less, interacting with Congress less, plugging his health care plan less, and singling out a Republican demon less. It took two years and the harsh rejection of a midterm election for…

Sometimes the most important message of a speech is communicated by the atmospherics—timing, audience, venue. So it’s worth noting that, to mark the first anniversary of her Let’s Move! campaign against childhood obesity in February, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke not at a school or a kids’…

Modigliani

Tourism, it has been said, is a condition of moral rest. On a recent trip to New York—where I was lent a two-room time-share apartment on 56th Street across from Carnegie Hall—I invoked this maxim time and again. I ate what I pleased, saw what I wished, did no work of any substance, and achieved…

The Closing of the Muslim Mind

Limitless

How bad is McKinley Elementary School in Compton, California? Bad enough that in late 2010, over half its students’ parents petitioned the district to transform their inner city public school into a privately operated, publicly funded charter school. 

Apollo’s Angels

Spring isn’t what it used to be. Here, for example, is Robert Browning in 1841:

This morning on CBS's Face the Nation, Democratic senator Chuck Schumer indicated that his party's response to GOP congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan would be to raise taxes:

Makoto Fujimura is one of the best painters alive; there is no finer abstract painter at work today. He is a Christian who lives in New York and paints using the traditional Japanese Nihonga technique, and Crossway has just published an elegantly produced folio of the four gospels with Fujimura’s…

Michael J. Totten has just published The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel. From Lee Smith's blurb, on the back of the book:

House Democrats, in their depleted numbers and minority status, probably felt left out of this week's tense budget battle in Congress. Former House speaker and minority leader Nancy Pelosi even left town Friday. So perhaps fellow Democratic congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland felt like she had…

It’s not on the front pages of the Western press, and it’s not leading the hour for the main Arab satellite networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, but the Syrian uprising continues apace, while the Assad regime’s countermeasures are becoming increasingly brutal.

The Washington Post reports that Egyptian military forces broke up protests early this morning in Cairo's Tahrir Square. At least two civilians were killed and another 15 were seriously wounded. The protests followed a day of peaceful demonstrations, which continued after the 2 a.m. curfew and into…

A recent Fox poll vividly illustrates how little support or momentum any potential Republican presidential candidate has yet acquired.  This should not be viewed as a particular cause for concern for Republicans — it’s still 10 months until the Iowa caucuses and 19 months until the showdown with…

The Obama administration finally announced earlier this week an agreement on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, paving the way for its ratification. The Colombia FTA is long overdue, and President Obama’s change of heart is a welcome step for America and Colombia alike. As the White House notes,…

Whatever coordination existed between policymakers immediately after the world’s economic crisis is no more.

House speaker John Boehner has released a statement jointly with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Depending on what final deal the House GOP and Senate Democrats agree upon to avoid a shutdown, it's worth noting what Harry Reid made as their initial offer. Here's what Reid and other Senate Democrat leaders suggested in a February 8 letter to John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the GOP…

More of that vaunted "new tone": "Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said today that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress 'to kill women.'"

While the possible government shutdown means most federal employees, from the National Park Service workers to those handling your tax returns at the IRS, won't be coming into work, some bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are going to keep punching the clock. At the…

Book of the Week

Berlin

Even rock stars have to trim their budgets these days. After last summer's disappointing concert season, bands are lowering ticket prices and finding ways to tour on the cheap. A look ahead.

New tone:

The elections in Peru, which were held on April 10, are a stern lesson in Latin American politics and its complexities. Consider the following: Peru’s conservative president since 2006, Alán García, has been wildly successful at growing his country economically, especially during a time of a…

At a breakfast with reporters this morning, Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, praised House Budget chair Paul Ryan and his "Path to Prosperity" budget outline, which was released earlier this week.

Jim Moran (D, Va.), on message:

The Hill reports that Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said this morning that the GOP should "move on" from defunding Planned Parenthood in the current spending bill:

Update: Kloppenburg's campaign says she won't appear with Jackson.  

At least it doesn’t involve a mandate. The Obama White House has launched something called “The President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge,” the point of which is to advance “Interfaith Cooperation and Community Service in Higher Education.” The White House is “encouraging”…

Time magazine's Michael Grunwald writes a piece titled: "Profiles in Cowardice: How the Beltway Punditocracy Gets Paul Ryan's Plan Totally Wrong." It begins:

Al Jazeera reports: 

In The Week, David Frum claims that House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget “actually increases the debt over the medium term — by even more [than] President Obama’s budget would,” thereby “worsening … the debt situation over the period from 2012 to 2021.” In today’s New York…

Amid budget battle, Obama scraps planned trip to Indiana.

Donald Trump going after Obama on the Today Show strikes me as a big deal. A lot of the attention from the various Trump interviews has been directed at his unsubstantiated comments about Obama’s birth certificate. However, I think there is another angle here worth considering. Put those comments…

Enjoy:

WisPolitics.com reports that a Democratic official in Waukesha county vouches for her Republican colleague that an honest mistake led to 14,000 votes not being counted:

Prosser pulls it out?

Nate Silver, formerly of Daily Kos and now at the New York Times, tweets:

The Democratic leadership has said repeatedly that they reject the House GOP's one-week stopgap continuing resolution because of so-called "policy riders" that they say have nothing to do with funding the government and are only about furthering a conservative agenda. Republican senators Jeff…

Supreme Court justice David Prosser has picked up more than 7,381 votes in Waukesha County, a conservative county outside of Milwaukee, as part of the statewide canvass following the election for Supreme Court on Tuesday. The total gives Prosser a comfortable lead as the canvass continues Friday.

Mike Flynn at Big Government asks if military paychecks will be held in a possible government shutdown. Flynn fears the answer is yes, based on a draft guidance document from the Pentagon released last month, and he notes that this would differ from what happened under the Clinton administration…

As reported earlier in this space, Harry Reid and President Obama say they won't support a bill that funds the government for one week and the troops for the rest of the fiscal year includes policy riders. But there's only one rider they seem to object to in the stopgap bill: the ban on…

As Ben Smith notes, Mongolian president Elbegdorj Tsakhia correctly states in Foreign Policy that "so-called 'realists'" got the Middle East wrong: 

Your absolutely riveting read of the day is courtesy David Beamer, the father of Todd Beamer, hero of United flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. First, some context courtesy 9/11 Families for America: 

Tax tips from David Foster Wallace. GalleyCat reads The Pale King, the unfinished novel about IRS agents now postumously published, and shares the findings. Some seem obvious, but others aren't. Who knew auditors look for divorces?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: 

The Washington Post reports that some Federal Deposit Insurance Commission officials cried foul back in 2008 when Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters of California allegedly sought special treatment for a bank run by a close friend. According to internal emails obtained by the Post, one FDIC…

Earlier today, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said during floor remarks that he would support a "clean" short-term spending bill passed by the House, and President Obama indicated later that he would sign such a bill. The problem, Reid said in a press conference later, is all of the "riders" the…

During last year's election cycle, the Obama administration criticized conservative 501(c)(4) political action committees. President Obama himself called the existence of such groups a "threat to our democracy." The Democratic National Committee ran an ad speculating that Republicans taking…

A statement from Speaker of the House John Boehner:

The capital markets subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a markup on Tuesday for eight small bills related to reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the markup, congressional Democrats on the committee employed several parliamentary tactics to stall the votes. Democrats…

From a rough transcript of Democratic majority leader Harry Reid's remarks on the Senate floor this morning: 

When there’s nothing better to do (and even when there is), folks in Washington gossip about the human parade passing through the world’s most powerful jobs. For years, the departure date and replacement for Defense secretary Robert Gates has been a prime source of speculative entertainment, but…

The Brazilian magazine Veja is reporting that al Qaeda members have established an active presence in South America’s largest country, as have militants associated with Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. They are apparently engaged in fundraising, recruitment, and strategic…

Here’s what President Obama’s hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (which endorsed Obama in 2008), has to say about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budgetary proposal and how much leadership each of the two men is providing:

Senator Joe Lieberman issued the following statement on detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei:

Do we still get a subsidy if we trade in our president instead? "Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle."

Did Glenn Beck make some sort of announcement today?

In an interview, Time magazine's Jay Newton-Small presses Paul Ryan on some criticism his budget has received from the left. For example, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait writes that the "Achilles Heel" of Ryan's plan is that it cuts Medicare for future beneficiaries in order to pay for tax cuts…

It's standard operating procedure for political candidates to declare victory, no matter how small their margin is, before heading into a recount.

The New York Times has apparently come across photos that show atrocities Muammar Qaddafi and his henchmen committed on Libya's own people. "Some depicted corpses bearing the marks of torture," the Times reports, describing the photos they came across. "One showed scars down the back of a man…

Mike Pence has been one of the leading opponents of the short-term budget bills, but says he's on board for Boehner's proposed stopgap that will fund the government for one week and the Department of Defense for the remainder of the year:

As everyone waits with baited breath to see if there will be a federal government shutdown, few have closely examined one of the bigger sticking points in the budget debate: Funding for Planned Parenthood. In mid-February, the House voted to defund Planned Parenthood by a vote of 240 to 185.…

President Obama spoke in Pennsylvania today and told the audience, "the least we can do is meet our responsibility to produce a budget, that’s not too much to ask for." Here's the video:

Ezra Klein reports:

WTMJ 4 in Milwaukee reports: 

Is Paul Gauguin, proto-primitivist, evil? One crazy woman, who allegedly tried to rip one of his paintings from the wall where it is now on display at the National Gallery of Art, thinks so.

The Wall Street Journal reports that online music provider Pandora has been subpoenaed in a grand jury investigation of information sharing linked to its smartphone application. This is apparently part of a much larger investigation into the abuse of app capabilities, in which companies are using…

What if you passed a regulation, and nobody cared? Obesity is quickly emerging as a major policy issue, with related health costs consuming 10 cents on every health dollar – and rising. Policymakers, then, are eager for ideas. Top of the list: regulations to force chain restaurants to post calorie…

In an interview, Time magazine's Jay Newton-Small presses Paul Ryan on some criticisms he's faced from the left. For example, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait

At the Jazz Band Ball

The latest, according to the AP, gives liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg a 224-vote lead over conservative supreme court justice David Prosser. There are three precincts left to be counted: two in a part of Milwaukee County that broke for Prosser in the primary and one in Republican-leaning Jefferson…

Yesterday the speaker of the House issued a statement of support for Paul Ryan's budget, and today John Boehner reiterates his support, defending the GOP budget from the White House's attacks:

One of the reactions to Paul Ryan’s budget from the left and the press has been the canard that it doesn’t address the real elephant in the room – a supposedly bloated Pentagon. Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin said today that “When he doesn’t address savings in the Department of Defense and…

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: 

The Boston Globe reports:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz to head the DNC.

A media meme has developed about the economy and the 2012 election: if Barack Obama gets the unemployment rate at or below 8 percent, he will be well positioned to win reelection. To that end, the press greeted last Friday’s jobs report (the addition of 216,000 jobs, and unemployment falling to 8.8…

The Wisconsin supreme court race between conservative justice David Prosser and liberal assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg is coming down to the wire. With 99% of precincts reporting, Prosser has a 585-vote lead out of nearly 1.5 million ballots cast. The potentially bad news for Prosser…

"Has Ryan’s budget boxed in Obama?"

Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced his plans to run for reelection in 2012, 582 days before Election Day and before most major Republican opponents officially announced that they'd be entering the race. This is the earliest any incumbent president has officially signed up to run again.

White House press secretary Jay Carney: 

James Pethokoukis says that Paul Ryan's budget finishes what Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s:

Indiana governor and potential presidential candidate Mitch Daniels issues a statement on the House Republican budget: 

As one might expect, Slate's reliably liberal legal analyst Dhalia Lithwick has a lengthy jeremiad today: "Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong: The Obama administration's appalling decision to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a military trial."

China's best known artist, Ai Weiwei, is still missing after being taken by Chinese police.

Following on the heels of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, New York congressman Steve Israel, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is out with a statement on Paul Ryan's budget plan released today:

At his speech at AEI this afternoon, House Budget chairman Paul Ryan acknowledged that Senate Democrats and President Obama will likely choose not to adopt the House Republican 2012 budget, which offers sweeping, comprehensive reforms to Medicare and the federal tax code and pledges to cut over $5…

Texas senator John Cornyn plans to introduce a resolution in the Senate that would “[express] the sense of the Senate that United States policy should be to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya, and [cal] on the President to submit a plan to achieve that goal and to seek congressional…

In remarks on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell backs up his Republican colleagues in the House: 

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal had a fascinating article on a new book entitled, XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame, by Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani. These Canadian scholars have managed to devise a solution for obesity based on the free market philosophies of Friedrich Hayek and…

Hot off the transom from the Connecticut senator's office:

Budget committee chairman Paul Ryan is delivering a speech at AEI right now (watch it live here).

Connecticut senator and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, on Paul Ryan's budget: 

It seems to me that when Paul Ryan can get both David Brooks and Rush Limbaugh enthused, he's really on to something:

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson was interviewed for a Time magazine piece, "The Republican War on EPA Begins--But Will They Overreach?"   Earlier in the week, I ran my own piece on this topic, "EPA's War on American Industry."  War analogies are common in political discourse, but I would argue that…

President Obama says he wants to have an "adult conversation" about entitlement reform. So far, the most prominent Democrat to comment on Ryan's budget has resorted to juvenile sloganeering. 

Here's the PDF of the House Republicans' budget that cuts $6.2 trillion in spending compared to the president's budget over the next decade. Some excerpts from Paul Ryan's introduction to the budget: 

Paul Ryan takes to the Wall Street Journal as well as YouTube to unveil his budget proposal today: 

It has come as something of a surprise to many that Joseph Lelyveld's new biography of Gandhi -- Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (Knopf) -- seems to be causing considerable offense in Gandhi's homeland, largely because of Lelyveld's discussion of Gandhi's relationship with a…

Paul Ryan on the GOP's path to prosperity.

Jennifer Rubin: "Gates's spokesman does damage control"

The fate of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's Budget Repair Bill may hang in the balance Tuesday, when the state's voters head to the polls. The April 5 election, which pits conservative supreme court justice David Prosser against liberal assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg, will…

Ballet is dying, says the head of Britain's top dance venue. (To learn about the art form's past -- and another possible future -- read George B. Stauffer's review of Apollo's Angels in the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.)

The Obama administration made two announcements today: The first was that the president would seek reelection in 2012; the second was that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried by a military commission (instead of in New York City in a federal court). KSM is considered (by himself, experts, and…

Jeffrey Toobin writes in this week's New Yorker on the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. While some of it is merely disagreeable, his conclusion is arrant nonsense:

The last two months have been a giant Kopfschmerz for German chancellor Angela Merkel and her coalition government. On February 20, Social Democrats in Hamburg earned 48.3 percent of the vote, allowing them to govern with an absolute majority. (Merkel's Christian Democrats, by comparison, garnered…

In recent months, THE WEEKLY STANDARD discussed the military service of Hank Greenberg and Bob Feller during World War II. The latter piece addressed an important issue germane to Feller and other major league players who lost playing time during that conflict: “He might have put up even better…

House Homeland Security Committee chair Peter King of New York called the Obama adminsitration's decision today to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a military tribunal a "long-awaited step in the right direction."

New York Times editor Bill Keller finally responded to Gabriel Schoenfeld's argument that his paper has a duty not to publish certain state secrets. (Schoenfeld's argument was made in his latest book, Necessary Secrets, which previously received a favorable review by Alan Dershowitz in the Times.)

In his latest YouTube video, New Jersey governor Chris Christie recounts a letter he received recently from his kindergarten teacher:

CBS reports: 

The Los Angeles Times reports that radioactive water is now being dumped into the Pacific Ocean from the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan:

Georgia Republicans may be offering an example to other legislatures of how not to proceed with major budget reforms. Last week in Atlanta, where the GOP holds both houses of the general assembly and the governor's mansion, a plan to reform the state of Georgia's tax code nearly fell apart as…

In a post last week about the dramatically deteriorating human rights situation in China, there remained many questions about what had really happened to Dr. Yang Hengjun, the Australian citizen of Chinese descent, who disappeared one week ago and was believed to have been in Chinese custody.On his…

President Barack Obama, in an email to supporters, today officially announced that he's running for reelection in 2012:

Via Chris Cillizza, President Obama's reelection campaign kicks off this week with a slick video featuring a diverse coalition of Obama campaign supporters, from the plaided college student to the (presumably) single mother to the non-Republican Southern man from North Carolina. The video also…

"Libya’s rebel military struggled Saturday to explain an apparent rift within its highest ranks while acknowledging its soldiers’ role in a mistaken NATO bombing of rebel columns the night before."

Apocalipstick NOW 

Manama, Bahrain

Stalin’s Genocides

Raleigh

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,…

The War for Late Night

Social Security’s looming deficit can be handled, for the time being, by adjusting benefits a tad downward. Medicaid’s runaway spending can be restrained by giving state governors more flexibility in administering the program. These are modest solutions. Medicare is different. It needs a big…

The Alice Behind Wonderland

The Immortalization Commission

Walking a dog in a quiet suburban neighborhood is a good way to commune with your neighbors, and it’s a great way to squeeze in your daily exercise. But walking a dog in my Washington neighborhood of young single people is an altogether different animal. 

African Culture and Melville’s Art

A few years ago, on Turner Classic Movies, I came upon a 1952 MGM movie called Love Is Better Than Ever that was entirely unknown to me. It turned out to be a delightful romantic comedy about a fast-talking press agent whose head is turned by a young dancer. The press agent is always insulting the…

Even as they engage in heated battles over the budget and try to define a new agenda from their perch in the House of Representatives, conservatives clearly understand that the key to turning things around​—​to averting a debt crisis and defending the ideal of limited government​—​is winning the…

Critics of America’s intervention in Libya have wondered how much we really know about the antigovernment opposition. This is a legitimate line of inquiry. We should be thinking about the devil we may not know. But in Libya today there is also a devil we do know. His name is Muammar Qaddafi.

Three months ago, in this space, I half-jokingly suggested a Ryan-Rubio ticket in 2012:

The inherent contradictions between the Obama administration's stated policy aim of removing Moammar Qaddafi from power and the restrictions on the military operations now underway in Libya may be reaching a decisive point. (For more on what's going on in Libya, see AEI's Critical Threats website,…

In today's New York Times, there's an article, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out," that discusses the mounting pressure to recognize Palestine as a state:

Electric cars are expensive, inefficient, and unpopular. Take GM’s electric car, for instance, the Chevrolet Volt. It costs $41,000 (though consumers can get a $7,500 tax credit from the federal government for buying it), sold less than 600 in January and February combined (608 in March, according…

Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the college admissions process:

In the March 28th issue of TWS, Edward Achorn reviewed Robert Allison's new The American Revolution: A Concise History:

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Politico reports that House Republicans have taken action to try to keep Obamacare from letting people write off the costs of having an abortion on their taxes. Politico writes, “The House Ways & Means Committee voted along party lines to adopt a bill that would prevent women from deducting…

The Obama administration’s effort to draw an artificial distinction between the butchers in Damascus and the gangsters in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, has taken a bizarre twist: Syria is seeking a seat on the U.N.’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council. And, as part of the process leading…

The jobs market continues to improve: 200,000 jobs were added in March. Corporate profits are exceeding forecasts for about three out of four firms, and the quarter that ended yesterday is the best first quarter for stocks in twelve years. Real consumer spending (adjusting for inflation) is up a…

Maybe Time magazine should run a cover story accusing Afghanis of being freedom-phobic.

The top Republicans in each house of Congress are making the case, in their respective ways, that the holdout on passing a budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is Harry Reid and the Democratic majority in the Senate. Politico reports on the John Boehner strategy:

Baseball guru Bill James asks: "Why are we so good at developing athletes and so lousy at developing writers?"

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own Kelly Jane Torrance reviews three new films for The Washington Examiner.

The university senate at Columbia just passed a resolution, 51-17-1, expressing support for inviting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to campus.

During a radio interview earlier today, Democratic senator Joe Manchin discussed the Republican measure to restrict the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions. The radio host asked Manchin: "Wouldn't the state of West Virginia be better off" on the EPA issue "if McConnell were the majority…

Fox News reports:  

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: 

Earlier this week, Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said that funding limitations on the EPA and Planned Parenthood would be deal-breakers in budget negotiations:

Well, I hope you have an air-sickness bag handy. Here we have Indiana State Representative Dave Cheatham -- one of a number of Indiana Democrats that fled to Illinois to stop legislation aimed at reining in public sector unions -- comparing his total dereliction of public responsibility in order to…

Manama, Bahrain

At a breakfast with reporters this morning, Energy secretary Steven Chu spoke about the Obama administration’s dedication to researching and developing alternative sources of energy. Chu referred at one point to advances in electric vehicle batteries as a point of promising federally funded…

Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services and hence the administration’s highest-ranking health care official, has this to say about American medicine: “our outcomes look like we’re in a developing country.” In marked contrast, most of her fellow citizens…

Democrats have been mocking freshman GOP congressman Sean Duffy this week for saying at a recent townhall event in his northern Wisconsin district, "I struggle to meet my bills right now."

The headline was bracing: “Emails Catch Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Lying.” It came on a tweet from @ pwire, the Twitter account for something called Political Wire, an online news digest. The publisher, Taegan Goddard, takes the reports of others, adds links to their articles, and sends them out…

Here's Obama's first ad for his 2012 reelection campaign, courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee: 

A senior official at the United Steeleworkers union defends Koch Industries from the onslaught of attacks from the left. His reasoning? Boycotting Koch, as some on the left have been advocating, would hurt the people who work for Koch.

The Foreign Policy Initiative makes the case for intervention in Libya:

"Rubio defends plan for ousting Qaddafi"

It's difficult at this point to try to determine who has the best chance to be the Republican candidate in the 2012 election. Still, it's fair to say that Tim Pawlenty could pursue a potentially successful "Goldilocks Strategy" for the nomination.