November 2011

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler debunks the false claim made by supporters of nuclear disarmament that the United States will spend $700 billion on nuclear weapons programs in the next decade.

The latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters — which shows Newt Gingrich beating Barack Obama, 45 to 43 percent — also shows Gingrich beating Obama among independents for the first time. In fact, the poll shows that Gingrich is now clobbering Obama among independents — 50 to 32 percent.

And here's the second poll out today showing Newt Gingrich with a whopping lead over Mitt Romney in Florida:

At the American Spectator, Joseph Lawler draws attention to this Kathleen Parker column about Mitt Romney's pro-life conversion:

The November Kaiser Health Tracking poll shows that Americans have an “unfavorable” (44 percent), rather than a “favorable” (37 percent), view of Obamacare — including 29 percent “very unfavorable” to 17 percent “very favorable.” What’s most remarkable about Kaiser’s survey, however, is that it…

The latest Rasmussen national poll has Newt Gingrich up over Barack Obama in a hypothetical general election match-up, 45 percent to 43 percent. That difference in within the 3-point margin of error, in a survey of 1,000 likely voters, but it shows a significant swing in support for Gingrich among…

Rep. Allen West, a Tea Party favorite from Florida, tells radio station WMAL that Herman Cain is a "distracter":

Reuters reports that, in response to the Iranian attack on Britain's embassy in Tehran yesterday, Iranian diplomats have been booted from London and British diplomats in Iran have been brought back home:

And to think that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide, right?:

The Florida Times-Union reports: 

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough talked about President Obama’s terrible poll numbers and said that some think “David Plouffe is now acting as president of the United States."

Last night, the cities of Los Angeles and Philadelphia, both of which are led by Democratic mayors, cleared the Occupy encampments in their cities. The New York Times reports: 

Nate Silver: "The Buyer’s Remorse Primary"

Across a series of news articles (e.g., this story by Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler and this one by Jim Rutenberg), blog posts (e.g., this piece by Thomas Edsall and this one by Josh Kraushaar), and analyses (e.g., this paper by Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers), it has become clear how Team Obama…

Via Jen Rubin, the House Armed Services Committee released this video today "decrying defense spending sequestration":

Via Maggie Haberman, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels says he won't endorse a GOP candidate during the primaries:

Curiouser and curiouser. Iranian “students” sack the British embassy in Tehran. The Quds Force contracts with a Mexican “Zeta” cartel hit man to assassinate the Saudi ambassador whilst dining in Washington. Computers in Iran’s nuclear complex are struck by a “Stuxnet” cyber-weapon. A “mysterious…

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian “parliament” voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity. The attack—complete with an invasion of the grounds, looting, and a brief hostage-taking—is an always useful reminder of the…

Bluffton, S.C.

Chris Christie's office sends out this video of the governor criticizing the war on drugs (and making a play for Ron/Rand Paul's 2016 supporters?): 

Minnesota Public Radio reports, “A loophole in the federal health care overhaul would allow many employers to game the system by dumping their sicker employees [into] public health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.” Such “targeted dumping” of sicker…

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of The Beatles's George Harrison. To mark the occasion, you would do well to read Andrew Ferguson's story on George Harrison's religious faith in the Novemember 21 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Here's the opening:

Yesterday, a woman from Atlanta said that she and Herman Cain carried on an affair for 13 years. 

Robert Costa reports that Herman Cain is reassessing whether he'll continue his presidential campaign after a woman yesterday alleged having a 13-year long affair with the businessman:

For the first time, Newt Gingrich has moved into first place in Gallup’s net favorability ratings. Here are the candidates’ respective tallies among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents:

Chris Christie rips President Obama for allowing the supercommittee to fail:

A care package drive for deployed U.S. troops is receiving national notice after a professor at Suffolk University Law School criticized the operation. 

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans as a whole, and independents in particular, want Obamacare to be repealed. By a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), respondents support Obamacare’s repeal.  Among independents, the margin is even higher — 19 points (57…

From a CBS/AP report: 

Time: "Christie to Obama: 'What the Hell Are We Paying You For?'”

In the aftermath of a reported explosion earlier today in the Iranian city of Isfahan that may have targeted a uranium enrichment plant, at least three katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel's western Galilee overnight Monday. The Israel Defense Forces returned fire, and said it holds…

James Pethokoukis: "Income inequality myths: No, the rich didn’t steal all the money"

Because of the so-called supercommittee’s inability to recommend just over a trillion dollars of savings from the federal budget over the next ten years, $600 billion worth of cuts to military spending will automatically be sequestered beginning in 2013. Republican presidential candidate Mitt…

The Syrian opposition to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is gathering steam. Syrian soldiers, as Max Boot writes in this week's issue, "are defecting to the Free Syrian Army, which in recent days has reportedly attacked an intelligence headquarters outside of Damascus and a Baath party…

Despite the violence from street protests that left some 38 people dead over the last two weeks, Egyptians went to the polls today for the first round of parliamentary elections. As the website for the semi-official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram notes, there will be three rounds of elections for the…

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a book review of some new volumes on the history of the KKK. The author, Ohio State University professor Kevin Boyle, begins the review thusly:

Last Wednesday's episode of "Top Chef Texas" was all about chili. And Padma Lakshmi riding atop a stallion. But really it was about chili. During the Quickfire Challenge, chefs chose a chili pepper to cook with—each pepper had a monetary value depending on its heat according to the Scoville scale.…

Remember those ads with a Paul Ryan-lookalike rolling granny’s wheelchair off a cliff? Well, just a few short months later, the New York Times writes: 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes, “Here’s one good way to consider the vote in 2012: It’s about whether to re-elect President Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which these days runs most the U.S. economy.”  The Journal observes that the Obama EPA has now…

Former LAPD detective and bestselling novelist Joseph Wambaugh notes that UC Davis officials are "negotiating a price with the Kroll security firm in New York for none other than former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton to fly West and tell us what went wrong on the day that students were pepper sprayed." In…

Over a year and a half ago, a former staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, the then-chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, took a job with Goldman Sachs as the financial firm’s top lobbyist in Washington, D.C. The staffer had helped write legislation while he was working in the House of…

Via Politico, the Democratic National Committee has a preview of the sort of advertisement strategy it will take against Mitt Romney if he is the GOP nominee next year. The latest ad hits Romney for switching positions on abortion and health care reform:

Last night, the tail end of Thanksgiving weekend, Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer made a major announcement. “Senator Joe Lieberman’s reputation as a reformer and a man of integrity is unrivaled in American politics,” Roemer said in a press release sent out by his campaign. “He is…

Financial Times: "The eurozone really has only days to avoid collapse"

For years, the media touted the promise of embryonic stem cells. Year after year, Geron Corporation announced that its embryonic stem cell treatment for acute spinal cord injury would receive FDA approval “next year” for human testing. And year after year, the media dutifully informed readers and…

Should Mitt Romney be the nominee of the Republican party for president in 2012? Perhaps. Should voters support him because he’s the “inevitable” nominee? No.

There are important discoveries to be made when you see J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s new film about the progenitor of the FBI. I’m not referring to the movie’s wild speculations about Hoover’s supposed homosexuality, of which there is not a shred of proof—but the bald assertion of which allows…

Niall Ferguson’s newest book is chock-a-block with striking comparisons. For instance, if the Soviet Union was able to manufacture warheads, it could surely have produced blue jeans. But satisfying the desires of its citizens was not part of its agenda. Nor, adds Ferguson, of the other competitor…

We are just past the halfway point between the last congressional election and the next one, and the conventional wisdom is that the upcoming election will be all about the economy. Elections during the Obama presidency, we are continually assured, are not about profligate federal spending, federal…

Zuwarah, Libya

The post-World War Two partition of British India was a blood-drenched mess. Since partition, India has prospered. Bangladesh, the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war’s bastard child, remains wretched. For three decades a low-grade civil war has afflicted Pakistan, pitting urban-based modernizers against…

Bashar al-Assad is finished. The Arab League has condemned him, as have former allies Qatar and Turkey. One time Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal says Assad’s exit is inevitable. Perhaps most significantly, King Abdullah II of Jordan felt sufficiently confident of Assad’s fall to call for…

Before you dismiss Newt Gingrich for having too much “baggage” to win the Republican presidential nomination, much less the presidency, consider this:

Osage, Iowa Newt Gingrich says he’s not a traditional politician. He certainly isn’t running a traditional campaign for president. What the former House speaker lacks in campaign infrastructure, money, and a conventional rationale for his candidacy, he’s made up for in words—lots and lots of them.…

In retrospect, we probably should have paid more attention when, around 2005, activists shifted their primary vocabulary from global warming to climate change to describe the impact of human beings on this biosphere we call the Earth. Both phrases had been around for a while, of course. Global…

For nearly 40 years, William Gavin’s calling was as “speechwright.” He says he prefers the term to speechwriter because “a wright is someone who puts things together from. A speechwright puts together a speech out of separate pieces. .  .  . Authors of books and essays write to make something…

In an editorial today, the New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed Newt Gingrich for president. Here's an excerpt:

The Obama administration has moved to assert America’s Asia policy by vigorously engaging Southeast Asian nations concerned about China’s recent posture. On his trip to the region earlier this month, the president affirmed that the United States is, and will remain, a Pacific power. He made the…

Greece and Italy may be ungovernable, but America is ungoverned. The president ducked out of the country for an Asian tour while the supercommittee tried to reach agreement on a plan to cut the deficit. But the Democrats refused to offer specific cuts in entitlement spending, despite a Republican…

Thankfully, most Americans were probably too busy with the holiday to read the preposterous editorial yesterday in the New York Times. The Grey Lady examined the Solyndra scandal and concluded Republicans are really off base for having the temerity to complain about throwing taxpayer dollars down a…

Yesterday, three American students were arrested in Cairo for participating in riots that have to date killed 38. A spokesman at the justice ministry claims that the three were throwing Molotov cocktails from the top of an American University in Cairo building near Tahrir Square. The three are…

Berlin

The Washington Post has a hard-hitting editorial on the Obama administration's "half-measures" on Iran:

“GOP rivals differ sharply on security issues.” This was the page one headline for the Washington Post's coverage of the pre-Thanksgiving Republican presidential debate focused on foreign and defense policy.

Via Hot Air, here's the latest ad to come from MSNBC's ballyhooed publicity push. Those on the left like to disdain Fox News, but their chief alternative is a network that's hired a former cocaine dealer and agitator of race riots to deposit nacre like this before the porcine trough of the…

General Wesley Clark, a liberal advocate who eventually endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, praised the Republican candidates for an "excellent debate" in an appearance on MSNBC this morning:

The Associated Press crunches the numbers and finds that Occupy protests have "cost local taxpayers at least $13 million." 

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent claims to debunk the conservative argument against raising taxes on wealthier Americans, by drawing attention to “how much the share of their own income they are paying in taxes” and observing how much that share “has shrunk” (italics in original). But the facts…

Real Clear Politics: "Gingrich May Have Inside Track on Palin's Endorsement"

Throughout this pre-primary season, I’ve argued that the number one priority for Republicans is to find a conservative who can articulate the party’s beliefs in a way that appeals to independent, middle-of-the-road voters. Now that Newt Gingrich has surged to the top of the polls, it is fair to ask…

Phil Elliott reports that Senator John Thune will endorse Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney:

During Tuesday night’s national security debate on CNN, Newt Gingrich said he was “prepared to take the heat” for his position that immigration laws ought to be enforced “humanely” in order to avoid unnecessarily breaking up families.

Watts Up With That?: "Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!"

Jon Ward has a piece in the Huffington Post that details Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's foreign policy critique of President Obama. The focus is primarily on Iran.

It’s becoming increasingly hard to say whether Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, the two leading Republican presidential candidates, would fare better against Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Gingrich trailing Obama by just 6 percentage points — 46 to 40 percent. Less than…

Greg Sargent reports "that the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] is sticking by Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, the DCCC is now raising money off that recent report of a GOP-connected corporate lobbying firm’s proposed smear campaign against the movement. Nancy Pelosi has authored a…

President Obama hugs an increasingly unpopular, vulgar, and lawless movement. The Hill reports that after President Obama was heckled by protesters at an event in New Hampshire, he said: 

I’d never gone to a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery until this morning. But through a friend I was invited to attend the interment of retired Captain John Cooper Jr. who served in the United States Navy during World War II and remained active in the reserves for the next several…

The Commerce Department has revised its estimate of economic growth to 2 percent, down from the previous estimate of 2.5 percent. CNBC reports:

It's hard to say what's taken so long for a GOP presidential candidate to start talking seriously about the Fast and Furious scandal. One, it's an outrageous and appaling scandal that appears to have led to the deaths of American law enforcement agents. Two, there's no better example of Obama…

The failure of the supercommittee marks a good time to highlight just how out of control our federal spending really is. To see the matter in a clearer light, let’s leave aside all disputes over tax revenues for the time being, and focus purely on spending.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry sat down last night with Bill Kristol, Juan Williams, Charles Krauthammer, and Bret Baier for a roundtable interview:

Washington Post: "Bloomberg rebukes Obama over collapse of debt talks"

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Reagan, have joined Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign as members of his national security advisory team.

On November 7, Republican senator Pat Toomey proposed a compromise on taxes to members of the supercommittee tasked with cutting the deficit. “There was a moment there, a 24-hour period, when several Democrats expressed a great deal of interest in the framework I laid out,” Toomey tells THE WEEKLY…

New York Times: "The Deficit Deal That Wasn’t: Hopes Are Dashed"

Democratic and Republican members of the supercommittee announced earlier today that they would be unable to recommend $1.2 trillion in deficit reducing cuts by the Wednesday deadline. Congressman Jeb Hensarling, a Republican, and Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, the co-chairs of the…

CNN reports on its latest poll: 

Masscahusetts senator John Kerry admitted today that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will result in a "major tax increase." Kerry is a member of the so-called supercommittee.

Newt Gingrich was asked this morning on Bill Bennett's Morning In America radio show about MSNBC's response to his views on Occupy Wall Street. (Over the weekend, Gingrich told the Occupy mob to "go get a job right after you take a bath." This morning, MSNBC pundits said the former speaker of the…

The latest Gallup poll of registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters shows Newt Gingrich in first place in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, edging Mitt Romney by 1 percentage point (22 to 21 percent).  Herman Cain is in 3rd place, with 16 percent support — followed by Ron Paul…

The talking heads this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe reacted to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's assessment of Occupy Wall Street. "All of the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything," Gingrich said over the weekend. "It's a pretty good symptom…

Are we living in “the decade of Latin America”? Inter-American Development Bank president Luis Alberto Moreno used that phrase in a July 2010 Financial Times op-ed. A year later, Mauricio Cárdenas, then a Brookings Institution scholar and now the Colombian mining and energy minister, raised the…

Paul Ryan was right to cast his vote against the Balanced Budget Amendment on Friday. We need an amendment that treats the disease (excess spending), not the symptom (deficits). We need an amendment that would limit government spending, not set a tax trap. Instead of a Balanced Budget Amendment, we…

Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen: "The Hillary Moment"

When Sam Howell woke up a year after a car accident left him in a coma, doctors believed the St. Charles, Michigan, man would never walk, talk, or eat solid food again. They were wrong, the Saginaw News reports. With care from his mother, a nurse, and a team of specialists, the 25-year-old can now…

If there were a truth-in-advertising regulation for exhibitions, this latest at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum would be in trouble. The exhibition is not in a hall, nor is it about wonders, nor really about art. What it is, sadly, is yet another example of how tone deaf this national museum…

As a reader who has compulsively consumed the ever-expanding body of Beatles literature for 40 years, I have trouble picking out a favorite anecdote or most memorable quote. Is it John’s “If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one”? Or the note Paul sent John one day in the waning days of the…

The tendency of liberals to define the Republican party, the conservative movement, and most recently the Tea Party movement as the latest iteration of the Old South has been persistent, if not always sane. It survived the failure to convince voters that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were…

Catch a wave, and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.

In April 2008, days after saying that voters in western Pennsylvania were inclined to cling to religion and guns out of bitterness, Senator Barack Obama sat down for an interview with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to try to fix some of the damage his remark had done to his…

Last week’s election indicates that the GOP marriage with the white working class is on the rocks. That’s bad news, since the epic Republican landslide in 2010 was fueled by record-high margins among these voters. It’s doubly bad for the GOP frontrunner, multimillionaire Mitt Romney, who is already…

By his own account, President Obama is the champion and protector of the little guy. He said last week he wants no one left “in a second-class status in this United States of America.” He’s “determined” to “make sure that nobody out there is going bankrupt just because somebody in their family is…

The Obama administration’s Iran policy rested on three pillars​—​the peace process, engagement, and containment. The first would win the newly elected president credit with the Arab people of the Middle East and empower the Arab states to gather in a robust coalition against Tehran. As for the…

Chug-a-lugging malt liquor and smashing things may be the Oakland way of expressing support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. But there are other ways. The movement’s English sympathizers seemed to be asking what Jesus would do. In London last week I decided to visit them. 

In the early 20th century the Pale of Settlement was home to more Jews than anywhere else in the world.

American energy policy is increasingly defined in terms of what is prohibited, not what is promoted. Coal, nuclear, and natural “shale” gas all have been hampered by the current administration. And the last three weeks have offered two more examples of how America’s byzantine energy laws and policy…

Reading the Iranian press last week after the International Atomic Energy Agency released its report on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program elicited a sense of déjà vu: It could have been the year 2002, when the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors for the Masses) revealed…

It now seems that one Jew is worth more than 1,000 Arabs—the rate of exchange established not by Israel, but by Hamas, and celebrated on the Arab street. The “prisoner swap” of more than a thousand Arab prisoners for the single Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped five years ago and held in…

In How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman posed a bold but credible claim. But there was a major omission: The game of golf, which, with steam engines and classical economics, also originated in the foggy reaches of the Celtic fringe. The royal and ancient game, moreover, suffers…

In an on odd exchange on Meet the Press this morning, Senator John Kerry, a Democratic member of the supercommittee, suggested that taxes should be raised because men and women have died fighting for America in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he seemed to equate the sacrifice:

At the Iowa family forum Saturday evening, Newt Gingrich took aim at the Occupy Wall Street movement: 

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Prominent Democrat and presidential campaign consultant Bob Shrum has an, uh, interesting column in The Week defending former Goldman Sachs CEO, U.S. senator, and New Jersey governor Jon Corzine. As you might also recall, Corzine has been in the news lately because his latest Wall Street venture,…

The average American family is not going to cancel a trip to Disneyland because of headlines about “something going on in Italy or France,” says James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. So he is guessing “The holiday season will be reasonable.” Pollsters support that view.…

Washington Post: No health care rationing here. Move along.

The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported yesterday that the UNESCO committee on human rights had accepted Syria as a member:

The House of Representatives voted down a proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the Associated Press reports. The House did not achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the amendment and send it to the Senate.

A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 74 percent of independents reject President Obama’s contention that (in the question’s wording) “the federal government [has] the constitutional authority to force everyone to buy health insurance.”  Only 18 percent concur with Obama’s reading of the…

A new poll shows that, over the past month, Mitt Romney’s lead over Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire has shrunk from 35 points to 2. A month ago, a Magellan Strategies poll (a Republican poll) showed that Romney had the support of 41 percent of potential Republican primary voters in the Granite…

Paul Ryan talks to AEI's Jim Pethokoukis about income mobility for the poorest Americans:

Should Mitt Romney be the nominee of the Republican party for president in 2012? Perhaps. Should voters support him because he's the "inevitable" nominee? No.

Mario Monti’s appointment as prime minister of Italy has given some hope to observers of the current crisis in the eurozone. Monti, a former student of Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin at Yale and president of the Bocconi University in Milan, has strong academic and policy credentials.…

The Daily Caller reports: 

CBS New York: "OWS Protesters Chant ‘Follow Those Kids!’ As Small Children Try To Go To School On Wall Street"

Earlier this month, I looked at the Democratic campaign argument. Today, I’m going to look more closely at the GOP’s.

Peter Suderman: "CBO on the Stimulus: 'A net negative effect on the growth of GDP over 10 years.'"

Sometimes you get a letter from a reader that's so well written, you just have to publish it. Here's something I received today from a reader in Maryland on Obama's trip to Asia:

There was another attack on Coptic Christians today as they marched through the Cairo neighborhood of Shoubra. Until the late 1960s, it was predominantly a Coptic district (today, some estimate, it is 40 percent Copt), which is why the rally’s organizers felt reasonably safe to march. Instead,…

A student at the University of Michigan sends this flyer over:

GE director of media relations Andrew Williams emails in response to this story:

Forty-seven-year-old gentle giant Keith Rhodes of Wilmington, North Carolina, was the first official casualty of Top Chef Texas. In last night's episode, much was made about Keith's buying precooked shrimp for a Quinceañera celebration, but in a phone interview, Keith explains it wasn't so much the…

For those hoping to get a confirmable job in some future Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney administration, today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing is a good reminder of why it’s best to get that job earlier rather than later. Attempting to get confirmed for a position in an area that already has…

Rasmussen:

Rick Perry released an ad yesterday attacking President Obama for saying that Americans have gotten a "little bit lazy." But ABC's Devin Dwyer writes that the Perry ad "distorts" Obama's words. How so? "Obama replied [in an interview] that 'we’ve been a little bit lazy' about actively trying to…

Defending Defense, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Heritage Foundation, notes that "The future of America’s national security hangs in the balance.  Facing a looming Thanksgiving deadline, a select bipartisan panel of 12 lawmakers is struggling…

General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn't pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

The Daily Show explores whether there is class division at the Occupy Wall Street encampment:

The latest Fox News poll shows Newt Gingrich leading the Republican presidential field, edging Mitt Romney.  Gingrich now has the support of 23 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 22 percent for Romney, 15 percent for Herman Cain, 8 percent for Ron Paul, 7…

Opposition forces stormed the parliament yesterday after marching on the house of the prime minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmed al-Sabah, to demand he resign. Protesters hold the prime minister responsible for failing to fight the country's growing corruption—this report from Al Arabiya's…

"Are you optimistic or pessimistic about America’s future?” asks our friend and colleague John Podhoretz in the November issue of Commentary, the august journal he edits. He solicited answers from 41 symposiasts, who replied with a diversity of approach and richness of reflection about the nation…

Washington Post: A picture is worth 1,000 words and... CAN'T UNSEE

The Atlantic magazine’s website reported what would have been a surprising bit of news. “Condoleezza Rice Blames Georgian Leader for War With Russia,” the headline for Joshua Kucera’s article reads. The sub-headline states: “The former secretary of state contradicts the view, held by many U.S.…

Tim Cavanaugh: "NYT Defines Obamacare Success: Fewer Options, but Better Coordinated"

The National Debt Clock now shows the national debt of the United States of America is higher than $15,000,000,000,000.00. According to the White House, when President Obama was elected — just three years ago — the national debt was less than $10 trillion (see table S-9 on p. 134).  At a campaign…

"Do something, don't just sleep in dirt," Rep. Peter King (R, New York) tells the Occupy Wall Street mob in a fantastic television interview.

Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on Iraqi security issues in light of the fact that, come January, there will be virtually no U.S. troops stationed there. In what can only be described as…

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans want repeal and that about two-thirds of those who want repeal think it’s “very important.”

One federal department Rick Perry can remember he wants to eliminate is Education. The presidential candidate has just revealed an overview of his approach to “wasteful, overbearing, and redundant” agencies, going into greater detail yesterday with a new policy document.

During a recent press conference, President Obama referred to Hawaii — his home state — as being in Asia.  One wonders what sort of press coverage would have ensued if, say, George W. Bush or Rick Perry had said that Pearl Harbor is in Asia. Here's video (around the 35:17 mark):

Who could have guessed that more than a month of altercations with police, shootings, public defecation, would lead to a drop in support for the "Occupy Wall Street" folks?  From Public Policy Polling:

Urbandale, Iowa

In a graphic video posted on CBS's website, an Occupy Wall Street protester threatens violence: “No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

The American, the online magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, has an article that's an absolute must read on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Obama's decision to postpone a decision on building it until after the next election has been in the news a lot lately, but precious little of that…

The latest PPP survey shows that Newt Gingrich’s recent gains haven’t just been among Republicans. Last month, PPP showed Gingrich faring 11 points worse than Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama, but this month that gap has closed to just 3 points. Last month, Romney was tied with Obama (at 45 percent…

Washington Post: "Supercommittee members face rising pressure from all sides"

We are just a few weeks from the first primaries and caucuses, when Republican voters will begin choosing a nominee. In light of this, I'd like to offer some advice for their consideration -- specifically, four enduring truths of American elections that conservatives and Republicans would do well…

Fox News: "Panetta Warns of Smallest Air Force Ever if Deep Defense Cuts Made"

The House Armed Services Committee flags this item in a recent Politico/GWU poll:

And all this time you thought freedom was just another word for your right to defecate in public. Less than a day after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg finally cleared out Zucotti Park, a New York judge has handed down a ruling that threatens to finally end the "occupation" of Wall Street:

Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing?  Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now he’s nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social…

On November 11, Al Jazeera announced from its home offices in Doha, Qatar that it had broadcast its first “Al Jazeera Balkans” news bulletin at 5 p.m., Bosnian time. A press release described Al Jazeera’s southeast European enterprise as “the first regional news channel,” which, the report…

Dealbook has a jaw-dropping report on how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lets billionaire investors duck transparency:

By a colossal margin, middle class Americans want Obamacare to be repealed.  The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, among those who make between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, a whopping 68 percent support the repeal of Obamacare, while only 27 percent oppose it — a margin of 41…

The Washington Post reports on newly released emails that reveal "the Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections"

Jefferson, Iowa

The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a challenge to the Obamacare ruling issued by a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  That appellate court panel struck down Obamacare’s individual mandate but not the rest of the legislation, despite the White House’s assertion that…

It is by now a familiar story: A Bolivian government has sparked massive street protests, and it has subsequently caved to the pressure. It happened in 2003, when President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned after a violent conflict over gas exports. It happened again in 2005, when his successor,…

Speaker John Boehner and Alberta premier Alison Redford met yesterday to discuss the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project--and how President Obama has delayed his decision on the pipeline until after next year's election. As the speaker's office explains:

Sean Trende: "What's Behind Obama's Uptick in Job Approval -- and Will It Stick?"

Justin Timberlake: "My Night At The Marine Corps Ball"

It’s been a lousy week for Bashar al-Assad. First came news that Syria was to be suspended from the Arab League despite the complicating fact that Assad still technically holds the presidency of the Arab League Council, the chief decision-making body of the organization. Then, last night, King…

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was asked a simple question by the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "So you agreed with President Obama on Libya, or not?" The response, nearly five minutes long, is painful to watch:

Jamie Kirchick, writing in the Wall Street Journal, examines Russia's ongoing support for Iran:

Frank Miller has a rant about Occupy Wall Street that’s going around this morning. It’s not a real shock—Miller has been on the side of law and order since The Dark Knight Returns and earlier this year he published a graphic novel, Holy Terror, about the clash of Islam and the West. So he’s been a…

Politico has a new report on a poll the paper conducted with George Washington University: "Post-allegations, the Cain drain." The strange thing is that the Politico/GWU actually shows Cain in first place, garnering the support of 27 percent of primary voters. That’s about on par with Cain’s best…

The crony capitalism represented by the failed “green energy” firm Solyndra has gotten a lot of media attention lately, but much lower on the public’s radar is a much bigger example of corporate pork over at the national space agency—and it’s bipartisan. Let’s call it Shuttlyndra.

A number of polls have shown Newt Gingrich surging in the polls, but Public Policy Polling's new survey is the first to show the former speaker of the House with a national lead: 

CNN reports the findings of its latest national Republican primary poll:

A bipartisan group of senators has formed to urge the Obama administration to determine whether American companies are helping the Syrian regime. Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL), Robert Casey (D-PA) and Christopher Coons (D-DE) earlier today sent the following letter to the secretary of state and…

Politico reports that a number of Democrats are holding back support for President Obama:

Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren gives a non-answer on Iran, saying that we should leave "all options on the table" and cheering the president's very "nuanced" foreign policy: 

Jammie Wearing Fools: "Biden: First Guy We Called for Economic Advice Was Jon Corzine"

Over the last few weeks the ground of American politics has shifted to the left. The process began when President Obama’s tour to promote his jobs bill improved his standing in some polls and forced Republicans to play defense. Next came Occupy Wall Street, which gave the media an excuse to put…

For the past three centuries and a half, Cardinal Richelieu has captivated students of politics. 

Last week the United Nations Population Fund released a report heralding the birth of the world’s 7 billionth person. The milestone is important, the United Nations explains, because their calculations now project that global population is likely to hit 9.3 billion by 2050 and could go as high as…

What if the two prominent grassroots movements of the day, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, joined forces to support an agenda that would be good for America? 

The swoony romantic drama, once a staple of the cinema, is all but nonexistent now. These movies—the ones that immortalized the longing glance, the furtive sigh, the agonized sob—have been superseded by purported comedies with no jokes in them, films in which stunningly attractive and successful…

For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to…

The other day I asked my five-years-younger-than-I brother—the wit in our family—if he had taken to using a Kindle. “My Kindle,” he said, “is at the cleaners.” I’m not sure why I found that funny, but I did, and still do, and take it that he means he would never think of using this new aid to…

Tripoli

My wife and I—we are in our early seventies—sit down in a local restaurant. After handing us menus, the waitress returns a few minutes later: “Are you guys ready to order?” she asks. The waitress, who is probably in her early twenties, could be my granddaughter, yet she calls us “guys.” A day later…

Have you noticed that whenever a newspaper columnist uses the phrase “full disclosure,” it’s primarily for purposes of self-aggrandizement?

Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture expounds Immanuel Kant’s defense of retribution as a duty intimately related to “respect, honor, and what it means to be a valuable person living a worthwhile life in a community of other moral persons. When,” on the other hand, “Rorschach…

Milledgeville, Georgia

Is this finally a Mitt Romney that conservatives can love? Or at least support?

London

The Palestinian Authority succeeded last Monday in becoming a member state in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The vote was 107 in favor, 14 opposed, and 52 abstaining, with France, Spain, Austria, and India among those supporting PA admission. Two of…

Kabul

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum had pretty credible performances in tonight’s CBS/National Journal debate in South Carolina. Tonight’s Republican presidential primary match-up was focused on foreign policy and national security.

Spartanburg, South Carolina

Greece is a far away country about which we know very little, as Neville Chamberlain described Czechoslovakia right before developments there brought the world closer to World War II. France has not been a great friend in recent times of America—remember Freedom Fries?—so its travails aren’t…

Wall Street Journal editorial: "If Iran Gets the Bomb."

Throughout the Obamacare debate, President Obama repeatedly promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Now, Gallup reports that from the first quarter of 2010 (when Obama signed Obamacare into law) to the third quarter of this year, 2 percent of American…

Obari, Libya 

From the Boston Herald: The story of Lance Cpl. Evan Reichenthal, an Afghanistan veteran: “It puts life into perspective when you almost die—when you really almost die, not just your cell phone is out of service or something. When I walked again, it was the best feeling ever."

I react to the allegations of child abuse and obstruction of justice at Penn State with a certain reserve. This is not because I regard pedophilia as a victimless crime, or worship at the shrine of Joe Paterno. It is because, as a staffer at the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, I witnessed the…

The Anti-Defamation League's latest national poll finds broad support for military action to prevent nuclear armed Iran.

Florida congressman Connie Mack IV is now the front runner in the Republican Senate primary race, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Mack, who has not yet officially announced his candidacy, leads all other Republicans vying for the spot, including former U.S. senator George LeMieux, who was…

There are a number of bizarre schemes unions have used to coerce dues out of public funds. For a long time, I thought the most appalling example was a Michigan scheme where the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees held a sham vote-by-mail…

A new national CBS News poll shows a close three-man race for the Republican nomination for president among Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. Cain received 18 percent support, while Romney and Gingrich are both tied at 15 percent. That shows a decrease in support for Cain and Romney, who…

Alan I. Abramowitz: "Why Barack Obama Has a Good Chance of Winning a Second Term"

The conventional wisdom about Barack Obama’s path to reelection is that, though the president is unpopular, he will run a strongly negative campaign against the GOP nominee – tarring him as a radical or (in the case of Mitt Romney) an unprincipled flip-flopper. Thus, voters who might not be happy…

What exactly do we celebrate on Veterans Day? To be sure, we mean to honor the brave men and women, living and dead, who have fought America’s battles, past and present. But honor them how, and for what? About these matters, we lack a clear national answer.

The Hill: "Obama officials to delay Keystone pipeline, likely until after election"

A newly released Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey of “usual Republican primary voters” in Ohio shows that Herman Cain is still leading — and by a fairly wide margin. Perhaps the survey’s most eye-catching result, however, is that Newt Gingrich has now moved into 2nd place in the Buckeye State. 

One Molotov cocktail was enough for Portland mayor Sam Adams to boot the Occupy mob from his city, Oregonlive.com reports:

The Burlington Free Press reports: 

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) on November 8 released a new policy that falls just short of urging total nuclear disarmament while surmising that reliance on nukes might be idolatrous.

Meet the latest thug to emerge from an Occupy protest: Oregonlive.com reports that "A 29-year-old man was arrested this morning inside the Occupy Portland encampment, police said, on suspicion of throwing a Molotov cocktail onto a staircase at the World Trade Center last night."

Florida senator Marco Rubio is introducing legislation today to reform the United Nations. The United States gives at least 22 percent of the U.N. budget, and consequently has much influence over the multinational organization. Rubio's bill is a companion to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s House bill,…

At CNBC's GOP presidential debate in Michigan Wednesday night, Rick Perry stumbled badly. "I have been watching presidential debates since the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, and it was the worst moment in a debate I have ever seen," Michael Barone wrote of Perry's brain freeze. Herman Cain,…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

Almost a month after law enforcement officials announced they had foiled a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in the American capital, there’s still some doubt in many U.S. policy circles that the Iranians could’ve been involved.…

Associated Press: "Obama donor discussed solar loan with White House"

Aaron Blake, a reporter who blogs at the Washington Post's political blog, tweets:

In Wednesday night's debate, Rick Perry said he would get rid of three federal departments when he is president. But in a cringe-inducing moment, he couldn't remember which three:

ABC News: "Obama Administration to Delay New 15-Cent Christmas Tree Tax"

Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman blasted President Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy for a "totally unacceptable, totally offensive" conversation about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Sean Hannity's radio show this afternoon, Lieberman said "it was very troubling."

In his Fox News “Center Seat” interview last night, Newt Gingrich highlighted (from 18:30 to 21:00) that “the first item” on his legislative agenda is “repealing Obamacare,” adding, “I think that’ll be the campaign theme in September and October of next year.”

In order to fool the U.S. intelligence community when it comes to a nuclear weapons program, all a rogue regime has to do is change the name of the government agency housing it. Although that may sound ludicrous, it is one way to read the IAEA’s newly released report on Iran’s nuclear program.

If you read the above headline and were hoping to learn about ways to cut pork-barrel spending, this is not that item. But if you're a fan of Top Chef, the best cooking competition on television, do read on.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a good piece by Philip K. Howard summarizing how corrupt many public employee unions have become. It starts by discussing the recent $1 billion fraud case at the Long Island Rail Road workers union:

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has recently been going around her home state of Florida trying to convince Jews that Barack Obama is in fact pro-Israel. As the Sun-Sentinel reports, “Democrats hope to avoid losing Jewish voters in South Florida.”

At National Review Online, Rich Lowry reports that Democrats on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka the supercommittee) rejected a potential compromise last night:

In a ruling released yesterday, a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t void any part of Obamacare, instead ruling that the health care overhaul doesn’t clearly exceed Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause. While concluding that Obamacare “seems an intrusive exercise of…

The trial by military commission of top al Qaeda operative Abd al Rahim al Nashiri is set to commence today at Guantanamo. Nashiri’s time in U.S. detention has been controversial because he was one of only three senior terrorists waterboarded by the CIA. Nashiri was subjected to other so-called…

Herman Cain's campaign manager Mark Block claimed last night on Sean Hannity's TV show that one of Cain's accuser's is the mother of a Politico reporter: 

Jackson Diehl notes it “is not exactly a bombshell” that “[Israeli prime minister] Binyamin Netanyahu seems to have been the target of some ugly — if off the record — barbs from President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”

In response to reports that the Herman Cain campaign may have violated campaign finance laws, the organization Americans for Prosperity launched an internal review of its own dealings with Cain and non-profit organizations that have been used to fund his campaign. The results of AFP's review,…

A ballot measure that StateImpact Ohio (a creation of local public media and NPR) describes as “a referendum on a constitutional amendment…aimed at keeping the national health care reform law from taking [e]ffect” won in all 88 counties in Ohio. In 81 of the counties, it won by a margin of at least…

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich sat down last night with Steve Hayes, Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, and Juan Williams for a roundtable interview:

David Kahane: "The Cold Civil War"

There is great consternation among many Republicans over the prospects of a Mitt Romney nomination. I’ve heard various opinions, ranging from “I guess I can live with him” to “I really can’t stand him!” Among the latter camp, there is widespread sentiment out there that the inevitability of the…

By a 59 percent to 41 percent margin, Mississippi voters defeated a measure Tuesday that would have amended the state's constitution to hold: "The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." But…

The Associated Press reports:

Associated Press: "Appeals court upholds Obama health care law"

Dubuque, Iowa

While perusing CNN.com, a headline along the right margin caught my eye: "Vote for your CNN Hero!" The teaser explained, "You can help choose the 2011 CNN Hero of the Year. Just select the individual whose accomplishment, impact and personal story inspires you the most!"

In a move that should startle members of Congress, a Palestinian sovereign wealth fund that has long received American taxpayer support will soon begin building houses for convicted members of terrorist organizations. 

President Obama announced today his plans to again unilaterally change federal education policy as part of a new “We can’t wait” campaign, charging Congress with “obstructing” his plans to reshape education and the federal budget.

A press release from Speaker of the House John Boehner's office announces "a list of 132 American economists who believe the job creation strategy used in the House GOP Plan for America’s Job Creators will do more to boost private-sector job growth in America in both the near-term and long-term…

CBS reports that "SoCal Street Cart Vendors Hurting After ‘Occupy’ Group Splatters Blood, Urine."

The restraint of this police officer, as an Occupy Wall Street protester screams racial epithets at him, is remarkable. (Warning: The language in this video is very disturbing.)

The Israeli news website Ynet reports: 

Three weeks ago, Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters showed Speaker Newt Gingrich trailing President Barack Obama by a whopping 27 percentage points (51 to 24 percent) among independent voters. Now, Rasmussen shows, Obama’s lead over Gingrich has shrunk to just 6 points (41 to 35 percent) among…

Politico: "Cain emails his list: 'Media obsessed' with harassment story"

Pushing back against some of the wagon-circling around Herman Cain, Bill Bennett writes at CNN that the charges against Cain are serious and must be addressed openly and honestly: 

Politico: "Allred: Cain offered client 'his idea of a stimulus package'"

Rasmussen polled Newt Gingrich against Barack Obama in potential a head-to-head presidential election matchup and finds that the former speaker of the House is inching closer toward the president:

When President Obama pitched his first stimulus, to the tune of $787,000,000,000.00, his administration famously claimed that such massive deficit spending was necessary to keep unemployment from reaching 8 percent and then to bring it below 7 percent by mid-2011. Yet for the past 28 months — since…

Even the Washington Post is beginning to worry about the defense cuts that might come out of the supercommittee. In a recent editorial, the Post writes:

Last week, Jordan's new prime minister Awn Khasawneh boldly announced that Jordan’s 1999 decision to deport leaders of the Palestinian jihadist group Hamas was a political mistake and a violation of the constitution. With U.S. regional influence in decline and Jordanian stability on the line, the…

Here’s what the four leading Republican presidential candidates (based on the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling) have to say on their websites, in total, about why it’s so important that we repeal Obamacare — and about how highly they prioritize that goal.  In both of these veins, one…

An alarming video of an Occupy Boston mob targeting the Jewish state's consulate with chants of "Long live the intifada! Intifada intifada!" 

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Obama administration has gone soft on Iran:

Bill Kristol, with Evan Bayh, Paul Gigot, and Juan Williams, yesterday on Fox News: 

Ohio voters go to the polls tomorrow to vote on approving a recently passed public sector labor law, and a new survey from Public Policy Polling finds that 59 percent of those voters are against the law. Senate bill 5, passed by the Ohio legislature and signed by Republican governor John Kasich,…

Ross Douthat: "Our Reckless Meritocracy"

The biggest impediment to economic growth is the housing overhang, a fact that’s beginning to be acknowledged by both parties. In the last three weeks Glenn Hubbard and Martin Feldstein​—​two former Council of Economic Advisers chairmen for Republican presidents​—​published op-eds with plans for…

Iraq is not Vietnam. There are certainly analogies: the length and unpopularity of the wars; the late escalation and increase in forces; the counterinsurgency success that came after public support for the effort seemed already exhausted; the decision to abandon the effort and thus snatch failure…

London

Opponents of abortion are rarely interviewed on television these days. “It’s much harder to get on TV than it used to be,” says Charmaine Yoest, who heads Americans United for Life. Bookers of guests for news shows tell her, “We don’t want to talk about abortion. We’re tired of it.”

Near the end of Moby-Dick is an indelible description of two boats lost to the White Whale: “The odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.” Reality rears its ugly, barnacle-encrusted head, and the mind retreats to cheerful…

Take Shelter

Fairfax, Va.

One intriguing, even unexpected, aspect of the race for the Republican nomination has been the emergence—perhaps we should say the reemergence—of the religious issue in presidential politics. Anyone who thinks that John F. Kennedy put it definitively to rest in 1960 in his famous address to the…

In the spring of 1958, Miles Davis was in search of a new piano player, and a new sound. He found both in an unlikely figure: Bill Evans, a shy, neatly combed, bespectacled white boy from Plainfield, New Jersey. Evans, who was 28 at the time, had been in New York for a little less than three years,…

The man often called the poet laureate of radio’s golden age died a few weeks ago at 101. His name was Norman Corwin, and he was a consequential figure who also happens to be unknown to most people.

There is a venerable tradition of conservative books on Hollywood’s pervasive liberalism. 

The threat against the life of the American ambassador to Syria comes during a bad streak for the Obama administration. First was the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies, while incurring perhaps hundreds of American casualties.…

It is generally recognized that the conceptual underpinnings for so-called stimulus programs lie in the theory developed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. That the practical results of these programs in recent years have been negligible, if not negative, while their costs have been high, may be…

For 13 years now, I have been a Yahoo! Mail customer. Notice I didn’t say a “proud” Yahoo! Mail customer. For if you use Yahoo! for emailing, there is nothing to be proud of. As Gmail or even AOL users will eagerly explain, Yahoo! has always had a down-market feel. It’s like buying your suits at…

n 1853, when William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) made his first lecture tour of America, Boston particularly pleased him because, as he said, its “vast amount of toryism and donnishness” reminded him of Edinburgh. Today, there may be precious little toryism or donnishness left in Boston, but…

Before Occupy D.C. protesters swarmed the Washington Convention Center on Friday night, Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered a speech to the free market faithful at the Americans for Prosperity conference. In his speech, he made the case that Barack Obama is responsible for the Occupy protests because of…

Although the polls show Ohio's collective bargaining reform headed for repeal in a referendum Tuesday, Governor John Kasich has no regrets he signed the legislation last March. “Everybody’s got to face this sooner or later,” Kasich told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in a phone interview. "This is part of an…

Supposing Wall Street were to be occupied . . . what then? Would the left’s occupation be brutal, like that of occupied Poland or France? Presumably not. Would it be a reluctant and benevolent occupation, like Israel’s of the West Bank? Perhaps. Or would its occupation resemble an occupied…

Tim Goeglein served more than seven years as special assistant to President George W. Bush and as deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. By his own account, his job involved no making of public policy. He resigned in mid-2008, after admitting charges of plagiarism in the…

This weekend marks another milestone in the history of intellectual dishonesty, for the so-called “Russell Tribunal on Palestine” meets in Cape Town, South Africa on November 5th and 6th.

On November 8, the citizens of Mississippi will vote on a controversial amendment that would define every human being as a person from the moment of conception. The measure, known officially as Proposition 26, is one of six personhood amendments proposed for addition to state constitutions around…

There are three sorts of economic news: good, hinting that a recovery might be around the corner; ambiguous, perhaps hinting that a double dip is unlikely; and bad.

New York Times: "As Regulators Pressed Changes, Corzine Pushed Back, and Won"

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a crowd of conservative activists Friday afternoon at the Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream summit in Washington that his goal is to “make government simpler, smaller, and smarter.” Romney outlined his own fiscal policy,…

Berlin

In Paul Ryan’s hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette, Grace-Marie Turner and Tevi Troy debate whether Mitt Romney is the right person for the job of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with real reform — reform that would lower health costs without amassing power and money in Washington at…

Independent Democratic senator Joe Lieberman recently visited the Heritage Foundation to talk about the Asia-Pacific: 

Earlier this week it was reported that the White House considered a last-minute taxpayer bailout of Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker that received a $529 million loan guarantee. One of the more interesting aspects of that deal—which would have had taxpayers purchasing as much as 40 percent of…

Economic theory and two century’s worth of observation tell us that the government cannot run a business nearly as effectively as a private owner, yet this inefficiency is used as a selling point by politicians defending the continued existence of state-run liquor stores.

While some of the Republican presidential candidates continue to focus almost exclusively on the economy, Politico writes, “Medicare-aged seniors could have the biggest impact on the 2012 elections — and that’s a bad sign for the person who just overhauled their health care, according to the LA…

In a USA Today op-ed on how he'd cut spending, Mitt Romney sketches out a plan to reform Medicare: 

In congressional testimony, Carnegie Endowment scholar Ashley Tellis blasts the Obama administration for setting deadlines for withdrawal from Afghanistan and offers policy recommendations:

During the past three weeks, the Republican presidential candidates have been involved in their most contentious debate — which included their most substantial exchange on health care — and Herman Cain has struggled on two fronts (explaining his position on abortion and responding to claims of…

New York Times: "Pro-American Militia Members Die in Blast in Iraq"

Over the last week, Barack Obama’s job approval rating has ticked up slightly, as this graph from RealClearPolitics shows:

Pajamas Media reports on the Herman Cain scandal and then makes retractions.

A new national poll of 1,000 likely GOP primary voters from Rasmussen gives Herman Cain a slight lead at 26 percent, with Romney close behind at 23 percent and Gingrich in third at 14 percent. The remaining Republican candidates all received less than 10 percent. Only 32 percent of those polled,…

Earlier this week, a group of Harvard undergraduates aligned with Occupy Wall Street protesters made a statement yesterday by staging a “walkout” of an introductory economics course taught by conservative professor Greg Mankiw. Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers for President…

I know what you're thinking. But he did everything right!:

Earlier this week, the majority of member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—whose self-stated mission is “to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education,…

On Friday, October 28, a 23-year-old Slav Muslim from Serbia named Mevlid Jasarevic fired an automatic weapon for 30 minutes at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the Washington Post, Jasarevic also carried hand grenades and had been arrested for theft in…

Politico reports:

Via the Twitter feed of Fareed Zakaria, a brief snapshot into the terrifying future of higher education. Currently, more American students are majoring in visual and performing arts than engineering:

Doug Feith, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explains the silliness of the proposed American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League "pledge for unity on Israel."

An interesting bit from White House reporter Tangi Quéméner's latest pool report from the G-20 in Cannes, France:

Poor Banished Children

Washington Post: "Obama administration considered bailout for Solyndra days before bankruptcy"

Fox News: "Arizona Sheriff Says 2 Guns Found in Bust Linked to 'Fast and Furious'"

Speaking Wednesday in Washington in front of the Key Bridge, which spans the Potomac River between the District of Columbia and Virginia, President Obama criticized the Republican House for not focusing on job creation. "You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That's not…

The AP reports:

Chris Wilson, a former pollster for the National Restaurant Association, told an Oklahoma radio station today that he witnessed incidents in which Herman Cain sexually harassed an employee at a restaurant.

When New Jersey governor Jon Corzine lost his reelection bid to Chris Christie in 2009, part of his defeat in a Democratic state was blamed on the post-Lehman mood. Having experience as a top executive at Goldman Sachs just didn't help. But in March 2010, Corzine returned to Wall Street where he…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points, Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s signature legislation. Among all respondents, 54 percent support the repeal of Obamacare, compared to 39 percent who oppose it. Independents support repeal…

Before the latest issue of the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo could even hit newstands, its office was firebombed. Apparently some did not find the humorists' depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to be very funny and decided to say so by throwing a Molotov cocktail through the office…

Thankfully, at least one man in the federal government has been awfully busy on behalf of the American taxpayer:

Though the Obama administration labor department had already stopped enforcing the requirement that union bosses fill out LM-30 forms listing potential conflict of interests, now we get word that the Obama administration is rolling back the relevant regulations altogether. However, the announcement…

A new poll from Rasmussen shows Herman Cain with a 10-point lead over Mitt Romney among 770 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters. Thirty-three percent of respondents prefer Cain, as opposed to 23 percent for Romney. Newt Gingrich polled third at 15 percent.

Yesterday, when the president was asked whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, he responded: "Well, you know, I think that we are better off now than we would have been if I hadn't taken all the steps that we took."

Mitt Romney's campaign pollster, Neil Newhouse, said this morning that 2012 looks like a "potentially wave election" and he believes it will be an "extension" of the Republican wave of 2010. "Republicans can't wait for this election," Newhouse said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science…

President Obama tells CBS that the economy is "always my responsibility." The president continued: "I am less interested in allocating blame than just making sure we are taking every step we need to move the economy forward."

Manu Raju of Politico has a piece today about retiring Virginia senator Jim Webb. The last three paragraphs read: 

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain sat down last night with Steve Hayes, Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, and A. B. Stoddard for a roundtable interview:

Capital New York: "Bloomberg: ‘Plain and simple,’ Congress caused the mortgage crisis, not the banks"

What to make of this whole Politico-Cain dustup?

In the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan encouraged voters to ask themselves, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Today, Barack Obama was asked a similar question by the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis--"If he felt that we were better off today than we were four years ago..."

Herman Cain reports a big online fundraising day yesterday.

Janesville, Wisc.

Classy as ever, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has been down in Florida campaigning for the President's reelection:

The Occupy Wall Street protests might be making things worse. A local Manhattan news outlet reports: 

Paul Wolfowitz and Michael O'Hanlon explore the Colombia model and how it might apply to Afghanistan:

Jonathan Karl of ABC says the latest ad from the Republican National Committee is a preview of how the eventual GOP nominee will try to frame the 2012 election. Watch it below:

Those on the left are wont to complain that government employees are under assualt these days because GOP politicians are going after public sector unions and generous deals they've leveraged through collective bargaining. The standard defense of civil service workers is, yes, they might have good…

New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve…

A shadow has darkened prospects for democratic reform in Saudi Arabia with the announcement that the most envied, loathed, and feared man in the country is now heir to the throne. Unless the present king, the elderly and ailing Abdullah, outlives him, the newly named Crown Prince Nayef – himself in…

Steve Hayes reviews Condoleezza Rice's new book in the Wall Street Journal: