December 2011

In an article at the New York Times, James Kirchick focuses on Texas congressman Ron Paul's "penchant for conspiracy theories":

It’s an article of faith among many Republicans that Mitt Romney is the most electable candidate in the GOP field. But it’s not clear that this assertion is actually true. In fact, if one were going to design a Republican opponent tailor-made to President Obama’s liking, that opponent would be…

Des Moines

Marshalltown, Iowa

Now that you have read the results of the various economic forecasting models that have served so many so badly in recent years—they are predicting the U.S. economy will grow in 2012 at an annual rate of between 1.5 percent and 2 percent—let me offer an alternative way of looking at things. It is…

SaintPetersBlog: "Latest Florida poll: Mitt Romney 27%, Newt Gingrich 26%; no one else in double digits"

Des Moines

Mitt Romney leads Newt Gingrich by just 2 percentage points (26 to 24 percent) in Gallup’s most recent national polling (which extends through yesterday). That’s well within the 4-point margin of error.  Ron Paul is a distant third, with 11 percent support, while all other GOP candidates are in…

Oh Schadenfreude, you capricious sprite:

As Jonathan Last pointed out, John H. Sununu, the former chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush and a top adviser for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, recently told the New Hampshire Union Leader that "Iowans picks [sic] corn and New Hampshire picks Presidents."

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released yet another ad, though today's is targeted at New Hampshire, the state that holds the first in the nation primary:

The Virginia Republican Party is apparently planning to require voters in the March 6 Virginia GOP presidential primary to sign a form that says, “I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president.”

The Mitt Romney campaign is doing double duty this weekend, airing this new TV ad in New Hampshire markets while the candidate himself physically stumps in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Watch below:

NBC reports on its latest Iowa poll: 

Los Angeles Times: "Ron Paul: Sanctions against Iran are 'acts of war'"

We’re just a few short days away from the Iowa caucuses. And with that in mind, here are five big points to consider about the caucus, and what they mean for the GOP nomination battle.

Mason City, Iowa

Rick Perry’s presidential campaign released a tough new ad Thursday targeting Rick Santorum and his history of supporting earmarks in Congress. Why is Perry attacking a candidate who has been mired in single digits in Iowa despite living there for most of the past several months?

CNN: "Romney's Iowa confidence grows"

Another country has calculated that Christmas time is a good time to launch a crackdown on human rights. Following China’s harsh sentencing of two writers on subversion charges, Egyptian security forces today rolled up to several prominent democracy and human rights NGOs in Cairo and shut them…

The latest poll from Rasmussen seems to confirm that Rick Santorum is on the move in Iowa:

From the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry seems to be offering his closing argument for caucusgoers in Iowa in this 30-second television spot:

Jon Huntsman has a new web ad out hammering Ron Paul's racist, anti-Semtic, conspiracy-minded newsletter:

Talk about a tight race: The latest Insider Advantage poll of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers shows Ron Paul at 17.3%, Mitt Romney at 17.2%, Newt Gingrich at 16.7%, Rick Santorum at 13.4%, Michele Bachmann at 11.8%, and Rick Perry at 10.5%. The RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls shows Romney…

Big news from Rasmussen for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: 

Mitt Romney released the following Iowa ad this morning, in advance of the Iowa Caucus next week:

CNN: "Romney on top, Gingrich fading & Santorum rising in Iowa"

Des Moines

Des Moines

Politico: "Mitt calls Newt ballot fail 'more Lucille Ball' than Pearl Harbor"

Des Moines

The latest CNN poll of Iowa and New Hampshire Republicans show Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, in the lead in both states. The New Hampshire poll confirms Romney's long-held advantage over his GOP opponents at 44 percent, 9 points up from a similar poll conducted by CNN earlier…

Human rights group U.N. Watch sends out this photo of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva flying its flag at half mast for the funeral of dead North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il:

The New York Times reports that "President Obama will ask Congress this week for $1.2 trillion in additional borrowing authority, which would raise the federal debt limit to $16.4 trillion and avoid the need for further increases before the 2012 elections, administration officials said Tuesday."

As Allison Hoffman details in Tablet, the Obama administration seems to believe folks don't think it's pro-Israel because of a concentrated campaign from a small group of conservatives:

Kiev 

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Clouds so swift, rain won't lift.Gates won't close, railings froze.Get your mind off winter time.You ain't going nowhere. And so begins “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” the opening track of the Byrds’ classic album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and an apt description of the year that was 2011. 

Dyersville, Iowa

PPP's latest Iowa poll: 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that a Newt Gingrich newsletter from April 2006, the month that Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts health care bill into law, praised Romneycare. "The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts," read…

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday afternoon, Newt Gingrich unloaded on Ron Paul's extreme foreign policy views and the conspiracy theories, racism, and anti-Semitism in Paul's newsletter. Asked if he could vote for Paul if he were the GOP nominee, Gingrich initially says, "No." But…

Newt Gingrich has released a 30-second ad that will air on television in Iowa starting on Wednesday. The ad focuses on his jobs plan and reminds Iowa Republicans of Gingrich's strong debate performances this past fall. Watch the video below:

Politico reports:

With all this talk about how Israel needs to get to the "damn table," one could be forgiven for forgetting about the nature of the other side. But as Palestinian Media Watch reports, "At a ceremony marking the 24th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniyeh…

In 2006, Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation published a "Newt Note" on Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan. "The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts," the note began. "The health bill that Governor Romney signed into…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should follow her successful Burma initiative with a visit to Taiwan before next month’s presidential election.

A new poll of New Hampshire primary voters show Mitt Romney in a solid position nearly two weeks out from the “first in the nation” primary on January 10. A Boston Globe survey of 538 likely GOP primary voters released yesterday shows Romney with 39 percent support in New Hampshire. Newt Gingrich…

A former Ron Paul staffer named Eric Dondero, who worked closely with the Texas congressman and presidential candidate over the course of 15 years, has issued a statement in which he both defends his old boss from charges of racism and anti-Semitism and reveals damning new details about about the…

The Cuban regime has just announced a prisoner release, at the very end of 2011. This is partly an effort to get some positive publicity before the scheduled visit of the Pope, and partly a cold-blooded move by the regime to release older prisoners who are a burden on their prison system.

The Communist Party sends more greetings of the season. A Guizhou court today sentenced another mainland activist, Chen Xi of Guizhou, to 10 years, on subversion charges for his writing. Chen Xi's sentence follows the 9-year sentence on similar charges for Chen Wei passed down by a Sichuan court on…

Mitt Romney's latest television ad is airing in Iowa a week ahead of the January 3 caucuses. The thirty-second ad focuses on Romney as a "conservative businessman" and features his promise to "get rid of Obamacare." Watch the video below:

With the Iowa Caucus set for next week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today released this ad, "Conservative Agenda," which will air in the Hawkeye State:

The late Murray Kempton famously said that “a political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.”

We are a little over 10 months from Election Day, and the Christmas hope of many conservatives is that voters next November will deliver a decisive rebuke to President Barack Obama. Obviously, a lot can happen in 10 months. Nevertheless, many of the fundamentals of the race are already in place.…

"A man attending a wife-swapping party without his wife.” So a very annoyed French negotiator at the latest European summit characterized British prime minister David Cameron’s refusal to trade the future of his nation’s financial center for the approval of the 26 other members of the European…

Sioux City, Iowa

"One way of describing him, as well as of valuing him, would be to say that he was a man at war.”

If I thought of Dwight Macdonald every time I came across a PBS pledge drive, I would think of Dwight Macdonald much more often than I do. But I do think of him now and then, and the pledge drive is usually the occasion for it. When America stares wide-eyed as its intellectual public TV network…

Mrs. Johansen always complained. She’d whine about newsprint smearing. She’d grumble that I folded the paper wrong. Never mind that I was delivering to all her neighbors; she knew that some of them, most of them, were waiting for a chance to steal her newspaper, and she’d make me wedge the…

Washington, D.C.

Last week the Obama administration’s point man on Syria, Frederic Hof, went to Capitol Hill to apprise the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East of recent developments. Nine months into the uprising against a regime that has already killed 5,000 protesters, Bashar al-Assad, said…

Wayne MacDonald, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, has a general message for presidential candidates as the January 10 Granite State primary approaches: “Time’s a-wastin’.” MacDonald’s warning might as well be directed straight at Jon Huntsman’s New Hampshire campaign,…

The conventional wisdom holds that a housing finance system built on the bedrock of long-term, fixed-rate mortgages—the sensible, historic, ostensibly free-market way to buy a home—is the key underpinning of the country’s residential real estate market and the economy as a whole. A closer look,…

A great English comic novel celebrates its centenary. The funniest femme fatale of all time turned 100 this year.

The new version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—John le Carré’s 1974 novel made into an indelible 1979 miniseries with Alec Guinness—isn’t really a piece of storytelling. It’s more of an art installation, a series of beautifully conceived and executed pictures designed to convey the mood of le…

The thrill is gone. Enthusiasm fired by the Republican sweep in the 2010 election has faded as fear of blowing the opportunity to defeat President Obama in 2012 has grown. Republican control of the House has produced tense relations between GOP leaders (plus many members) and conservative groups…

The Republican Jewish Coalition announced this month that congressman Ron Paul would not be among the six guests invited to participate in its Republican Presidential Candidates Forum. “He’s just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization,” said Matt Brooks,…

Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis has written an impressive biography of George Kennan, the Cold War strategist, Soviet expert, and intellectual icon of the liberal establishment. Well worth reading, it nonetheless raises the basic question of whether Kennan’s concrete contributions justify the many…

The Washington Post has an interesting story on the escalating verbal attacks from theChinese government on America's top diplomat in Hong Kong, Stephen Young. (The Wall Street Journal Asia editorial on the subject here: “Paranoia in Hong Kong.”) The Post’s Andrew Higgins reports that the Hong Kong…

In the latest issue, Kim and Fred Kagan ask, "Is Iraq Lost?"

The Washington Post's "5 Myths" series continued this week with a holiday-themed "5 Myths about Christmas" as elaborated by James Martin, S.J. (a prolific fellow, though not to be confused with my late friend Father James Martin). For starters, Martin rightly reminds us that for Catholics,…

Were you returning from a year off, you might think you hadn’t missed much. Stock markets must have been boring: The S&P index of 500 shares is ending 2011 at about the same level as it ended 2010. As for currency markets, not much action there: At the end of last year it took $1.30 to get you a…

Charles Krauthammer: "The GOP’s payroll tax debacle"

Just in time for Christmas, the RNC has a gift for political junkies: a comprehensive document* that explains how each state (and territory) will award its delegates through the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. 

A new organization that offers college students an alternative to the hook-up culture has been created. The Love and Fidelity Network (LFN) is based on the simple principle that marriage, family, and sexual integrity – defined as “sexual fidelity to your future spouse,” or what was once called…

ABC News reported this morning that, according to "multiple" anonymous sources, prominent Iowa social conservative Bob Vander Plaats "was soliciting as much as $1 million from Santorum and other [Republican presidential] candidates" while he was considering endorsing one of them. In a phone…

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s comments concerning Iran’s nuclear program have caused quite a stir. In an interview aired on Monday, CBS News’s Scott Pelley asked, “So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?”

He would side with Josh Block, who blew the whistle on rabidly anti-Israel and borderline anti-Jewish statements on the left, and who for his efforts has been expelled from membership in the Truman National Security Project.

NBC journalist Chuck Todd reportedly asked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney whether he’d release his tax returns this election cycle. “I never say never,” Romney responded, according to the New York Times. “I don't intend to do so.”

For China’s communist leaders, Christmas is a time for repression. Liu Xiaobo, the writer, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was sentenced to 11 years for “incitement to subversion of state power” on December 25, 2009.  The indictment listed several of his essays, as well as his role in the…

In response to press reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died, the White House issued a statement on December 18th that said, “we remain committed to stability on the Korean peninsula, and to the freedom and security of our allies.” So, with the North Korean regime at perhaps its weakest…

He was an inspiration to us all—Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger was told he didn't have the grades to get a transfer into Notre Dame. And he was too little to make it onto Ara Parseghian's heralded football team. But as we all know from the movie, Rudy made it onto campus and then onto the field. Was there…

National Journal: "House Republicans Agree To Payroll Deal"

National Journal: "McConnell Breaks With Boehner, Says House Should Pass Payroll Extension"

For the fans of Top Chef: Texas who were hoping for a long, drawn-out struggle between outspoken chef Heather Terhune and Beverly Kim, last night's episode was disappointing. The Chicago chef's "braised" beef, a tribute to her mother, was judged the worst dish of the lot. Guest judge Patti LaBelle…

In the Washington Post, George Will writes that Newt Gingrich’s “campaign against courts repudiates contemporary conservatism’s core commitment to limited government.”

Jamie Kirchick writes about Ron Paul's newsletters in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Interestingly, Paul's response has been, essentially, to say that he never read them before they were published and then to say he "disavows" the newsletters anyway. This is just what he did…

Two employees of the Sofitel hotel in New York walk into what appears to be a storage room, exchange a few words, and then break into a “dance of joy” – as it is has been termed in the French media – ending with an emphatic shoulder bump. The entire sequence, captured by a Sofitel security camera,…

KCRG in Iowa reports: 

A reader sends along this video of Korean journalists visiting a haredi yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Israel:

In one of my few real conversations with President George W. Bush, I was struck by the degree to which he seemed always to have given thought to this question: How would what he said, and what his subordinates said, affect the morale of those fighting for our nation, and their families? Bush was…

I first met Václav Havel in 1988, shortly after he had been released from prison and a year before he led his country out of the Communist abyss. As a young undergraduate in England I had decided to travel round eastern Europe that summer, and was given various books and other materials to smuggle…

Politico: "Payroll tax cut: GOP frosh dig in hard"

The great novelist John Updike once said he’d gotten to know so many writers over his years in the literary world that it limited the books he agreed to review. He didn’t feel comfortable criticizing the books of friends or acquaintances.  Updike said this, by the way, in a conversation with Nieman…

Wall Street Journal: "The GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco"

By any standard, the transition toward democracy and market economy in Central Europe was almost miraculously successful. For that, Václav Havel deserves a significant share of the credit. Besides displaying enormous personal courage and determination in opposing the mortally rigid regime of Gustáv…

The Hill reports: “Requiring people to have health insurance is ‘conservative,’ GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.” The Hill adds: “The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he…

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich blasted Mitt Romney this morning because of ads a super PAC that supports the former Massachusetts governor is running in Iowa.

Rasmussen's latest Iowa poll: 

The Obama campaign would very much like for you to start a new holiday tradition–haranguing your Republican relatives about voting for Obama. Nothing creepy here, nosiree:

One of the costliest tax deductions in the IRS code is the one that allows homeowners to deduct their mortgage interest from their income. The $477 billion in deductions taxpayers claimed last year (which includes second homes and home equity loans, and covers mortgages up to $1 million) is highly…

The latest Gallup poll of registered voters, conducted late last week and over the weekend, shows Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney trailing President Obama by identical tallies — 50 to 48 percent. Gallup interestingly writes that it “finds a slight improvement in Gingrich’s standing versus Obama, but…

This morning, the White House released a statement regarding further atrocities committed by the Syrian regime.

The Mormon role in politics is explained by David Campbell, a Notre Dame professor and a Mormon himself, who recently delivered a presentation on the subject at an Ethics and Public Policy Center event titled "Mormonism and Politics: Historical and Contemporary Issues."

John Hinderaker has a great catch from Obama's latest 60 Minutes appearance with a line that is, even by our president’s own standard of self-regard, jaw dropping:

Palestinian news sources reported earlier this month that Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised $300 million to the Gaza-based terrorist organization Hamas. If true, this pledge would cover nearly half of Hamas’s reported $769 million budget next year, and would make Turkey its…

New York Times: "New Focus on Incendiary Words in Paul’s Newsletters"

With last week’s GOP presidential debate, we have virtually come to the end of the pre-primary season--that 12-month process of posturing and policticking between the various candidates leading up to the first contests in January. This cycle’s experience has been a sour one for me, as I have come…

President Obama has a trait that Republicans should appreciate. He’s utterly transparent. His motives are anything but hidden. No matter what he says, it’s abundantly clear that he has one thing in mind these days: getting reelected.

Politico: "Will Ron Paul kill the caucuses?"

Today, after deliberating for less than ten hours, a federal jury found Tarek Mehanna guilty of the most serious charges leveled by federal prosecutors against him, including providing material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill in a foreign country, and lying to counterterrorism officials.…

So the liberal punditry woke up today to find that PolitiFact has declared the "Lie of the Year" to be Democrats's claim that Paul Ryan's budget will "end Medicare" or "end Medicare as we know it." They're having quite the collective freakout—see Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Brian…

Here, in full, is Joe Klein's response to Elliott Abrams's piece "Blaming the Jews—Again":

Manchester, N.H.

Rick Santorum, who is tied in Iowa for fourth place with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry at 10 percent according to the latest PPP poll, gets a boost from a leading social conservative. The New York Times reports:

You can't just say that the Great Leader died of a heart attack. Instead, here is how North Korea's official news agency originally explained it: "In the whole period of his protracted revolutionary guidance, he valued and loved the people very much and always shared weal and woe with them. He…

Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department, had some rather nice things to say about the reclusive Kim Jong Il, the dictatorial leader of North Korea who died a few days ago. She had met the rogue dictator, Josh Rogin reports, when Sherman "served as State…

The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics. How many other non-monarchical regimes have managed to retain power through immediate succession for three generations?

William McGurn, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

If you were an anti-Semite dedicated to spreading your hatred of Jews, what charges exactly would you make in 21st century America?

Andrew Stiles: "House Republicans Postpone Payroll Tax Vote"

Robert J. Samuelson: "Bye-bye, Keynes?"

Ron Paul may be peaking at just the right time. With two weeks to go until the January 3 Iowa caucuses, two new polls show the libertarian congressman narrowly leading Mitt Romney for first place in Iowa.

White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about Vice President Joe Biden's comments on the Taliban earlier today. "Look," Biden said in an interview in Newsweek, "the Taliban per se is not our enemy."

The boss, Lee Smith, and 47 other foreign policy experts signed a letter to President Obama urging action on Syria. Specifically, they recommend "the following immediate actions to bring an end to Assad’s brutality": 

Tuna salad or chicken salad? Why not ask your friends on Facebook? It's freezing outside. Shouldn't your friends know it's freezing, too? If you answered no to the above, you're not alone. A poll conducted by Real Simple magazine reveals the Facebook updates we find most annoying, all of which are…

The Obama administration is still pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, even if it doubts a viable negotiating partner sits across the table. And, as part of this ad hoc diplomatic effort, the administration is considering the transfer of Taliban members held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan.…

Buried in a recent New York Times profile of Attorney General Eric Holder is this revealing tidbit:

Via Bad Rachel, a picture of Syrian protesters:

Nancy Pelosi, who's been much criticized recently for using her political clout to enrich herself, doesn't appear to be too worried about crony capitalism: 

Vaclav Havel, who died yesterday, will perhaps be remembered most of all for his role in the civic initiative Charter 77, which led to his country’s Velvet Revolution and inspired dissidents throughout the Soviet bloc to defeat communism. Decades later, “living in truth” – his famous phrase from…

In an interview with Leslie Gelb in Newsweek, Vice President Joe Biden says: 

Over at the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein reacts to a Romney video Ben Domenech highlighted this weekend. In the clip, Mitt Romney, who is responding to a young Mike Warren’s question at Vanderbilt, talks about the similarities and differences between Romneycare and Obamacare and says, among…

Plaistow, N.H.

We interrupt President Obama’s celebration of keeping a campaign promise to bring you news from Iraq, where a political crisis has been unfolding since just hours after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta departed on Thursday. The ethno-sectarian settlement achieved at such cost to Iraqis and…

The latest PPP survey shows six Republican candidates with double-digit support in Iowa but no one with even 25 percent support. The poll shows Ron Paul leading with 23 percent support, followed by Mitt Romney at 20 percent, Newt Gingrich at 14 percent, and Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick…

Washington Post: "In Iraq, sense of relief is chilled by political crisis"

Is it possible that the people who run the Obama administration aren’t as smart as we’ve been led to believe?

Show business memoirs, at least in the present age, tend to fall into one of two categories: confessional stories of addiction and rehab, to which creative endeavor is at best peripheral; or uneven and occasionally amusing glosses on the artist’s entry in IMDb. 

Mary Ann Glendon begins her chapter on Rousseau by recounting the story of Napoleon’s visit to the grave of that worthy on the estate of the Marquis René Louis de Girardin at Ermenonville and saying, “It would have been better for the peace of France if this man had never lived.” When the marquis…

This thoughtful and useful book is misnamed: It should be called Italy, a Historical Portrait of a Failed State. But David Gilmour’s timing is impeccable, giving us this affectionate profile just as Italy raced to the brink of self-destruction. If you want to understand better how and why Italy…

They wouldn’t have much to say to each other at a dinner party, but there are few more delightful young women in modern literature than Miss Lorelei Lee and Miss Flora Poste, the indomitable, and conniving, heroines of two of the best comic novels of all time, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and…

"It seems . . . that we are in fact dealing with a new form of right-wing extremist terrorism,” German interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich announced last month, following the revelation that a trio of neo-Nazis from Jena had been responsible for the murder of nine “foreigners” in Germany, as…

The Descendants

In the last century, Republicans have posted large gains in midterm elections during the first term of a Democratic president five times. The elections of 1914, 1946, 1966, 1994, and 2010 all reflected popular disenchantment with big-government liberalism, and with the newly elected (or in the case…

In his history of the long-running conflict between Iran and America, Kenneth Pollack writes of the “two clocks” that measure time as it relates to what he calls (in the title of his book) the Persian Puzzle. One, of course, is the countdown to a nuclear Iran. No one knows for certain how much time…

If you’ve ever found yourself engaged in a futile, one-sided argument with a politician on your TV screen, you’re hardly alone in your frustration. However, if you’re inclined to jot down such intemperate outbursts, and have the chutzpah to charge people for your services​—​you might have what it…

"God, I love ’em,” wrote Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post not long after the glorious dawning of Occupy Wall Street, saying that the protests “arise at just the right moment and are aimed at just the right target” to grow into something quite big. Apparently, the stench from McPherson Square…

There are three basic theories to explain why Mitt Romney hasn’t been able to build support above the 30 percent level, despite being the heavily favored frontrunner for most of the past six years: (1) Republicans distrust Romney because of his history of flip-flopping. (2) Republicans view Romney…

It’s an old saw to call someone’s life worthy of a novel. Yet when several obituaries used the phrase to describe the life of Lana Peters, an 85-year-old retiree who died in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in late November, the phrase rang true. Mrs. Peters, reclusive in recent years, was known in her…

Some friends and I went hiking in White Oak Canyon in the Shenandoah Valley the other Sunday, and we stopped to take pictures at the foot of a tall cliff. Someone said we should climb it. I hesitated for a moment, then fell in behind the group. We made it to the top and were rewarded with glorious…

Republicans are paying a high price for allowing their presidential race to be dominated by nationally televised debates. The GOP candidates have reduced themselves to supplicants whose weak points are probed by media questioners. Meanwhile, they’ve given President Obama a free pass to set the…

The archbishop of Canterbury is going to resign next year. At least that’s the story making the rounds of newspapers in London, and the interesting part is not that the 61-year-old Rowan Williams should be willing to give up another decade in the job. Or even, if the Telegraph is right, that the…

One way to gauge the present state of European unity is to know that Turkey, which has energetically sought membership in the European Union for the past decade, is now having second thoughts about the enterprise. According to the German Marshall Fund, in 2004, three-quarters of Turks thought EU…

Osawatomie, Kansas, is where Theodore Roosevelt famously announced his embrace of progressive politics​—​from atop a kitchen table, no less, displaying the irrepressible verve that led Henry Adams to call him a “steam engine in trousers.” President Barack Obama, not famous for irrepressible verve,…

There are going to be a lot of institutional GOP folks doing a spit-take over this:

From the Associated Press:

On Friday, President Obama addressed the Union for Reform Judaism's convention. As Jen Rubin notes, "A good two-thirds of the address was devoted to liberal nostrums, reflecting his confidence that no matter how badly he treats the Jewish state, liberal Democratic Jews will stick by him."

If you're looking to commemorate Václav Havel's death you could do worse than read this piece by Anne Appelbaum on the famous Czech from THE WEEKLY STANDARD archives, "Rebel with a Cause: Vaclav Havel from dissident to president." It's a warts-and-all assessment, but Appelbaum notes that Havel's…

Former Czech president Václav Havel died Sunday morning in his home in the northern part of the Czech Republic. Havel was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, serving in the latter office from 1993 to 2003. But Havel will be best remembered as the…

For the November 1993 issue of Washingtonian, Andy Ferguson profiled Christopher Hitchens:

In February 2009, Christopher Hitchens got into a fight with fascists in Beirut. Visiting the country as part of a delegation of foreign journalists hosted by Lebanon’s pro-democracy March 14 movement, Hitchens was walking through the Hamra district with two colleagues when he saw a plaque…

Two very important changes have occurred in America, and indeed in other Western economies. My guess is that they will prove to be permanent phenomena, just as permanent as the changes introduced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

A Senate source tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that congressional leaders have worked out a two-month budget deal that includes a fully-funded extension of the payroll tax cut. The deal will also require the Obama administration to decide within 60 days on whether or not it will approve construction of…

Barack Obama, in a speech today at the Union for Reform Judaism convention:

On November 29th the Icelandic parliament voted to recognize Palestine as a state. Yesterday, a ceremony was held in Reykjavik in the presence of the Icelandic and PLO foreign ministers.

MY FIRST encounter with Christopher Hitchens was a memorable one. It was February 2004, my girlfriend and I were in the elevator at Hitchens’s Dupont Circle apartment building. We’d come from a swank affair at the Hilton hotel nearby, and had been invited to an after party in the apartment of a…

In a fundraising letter sent out this afternoon by the Democratic National Committee, Will Crossley, counsel and voter protection director, asks folks to support his party because, he implies, Republican efforts to suppress voters are worse than Jim Crow-era laws.

John McCain blasted President Obama earlier this week for pulling out of Iraq for strictly political reasons. "[Obama] has always reaffirmed his campaign promise to end the war in Iraq and withdraw all of our troops," McCain said, suggesting the president was not considering the facts on the…

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) sends out this merry holiday card, perhaps proving once and for all that the Occupy Wall Street movement has jumped the shark:

The New York Times asked Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to write a piece for its op-ed page. Ron Dermer, an adviser to Netanyahu, "respectfully decline[d]." Here's Dermer's full letter to the Times editor who reached out: 

...I highly recommend starting with this Vanity Fair piece where Hitchens confronts the consequences of his support for the Iraq War, and in the process pens a moving tribute to a fallen soldier:

Although the the new Medicare reform unveiled Thursday by Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Ron Wyden has received some criticism from conservatives in the press, Ryan says he hasn't heard any objections from his Republican colleagues--quite the opposite, in fact. "I've briefed many members on this,…

Ethan Wingfield, a 26-year-old businessman from North Carolina, is considering a bid to run against congressman Heath Shuler, one of the last remaining so-called Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives. Wingfield told Roll Call in an interview that he was "seriously exploring" running…

I wasn’t a close friend of Christopher Hitchens—more like a friendly acquaintance—but he was so outsized a presence, had so fertile a mind, was gifted with such a bold personality, and was altogether so much larger than life that I already feel his loss deeply. I lack the gifts to convey what…

Nikki Haley, South Carolina's Republican governor, has endorsed Mitt Romney, according to a campaign release.

Mitt Romney had a strong performance Thursday night in the final debate before the January 3 Iowa caucuses. From Medicare reform to foreign policy to the economy, Romney provided mostly succinct answers within the mainstream of Republican ideas. And because he did not spend much time engaging his…

New York Times: "U.S. War in Iraq Declared Officially Over"

1. I thought Newt Gingrich did not do well. Not just when he defended his (essentially indefensible) work at Freddie Mac, but also when he cited FDR as a model for how he would handle the court. Terrible argument, one that any self-proclaimed constitutional conservative should be concerned about.

Sioux City, Iowa

No secrets are being divulged when I report that Christopher Hitchens liked a drink every now and then. Preferably now. He wasn’t sloppy about it. In fact, he always seemed in perfect control. (I once saw him steer a beach bike through the streets of Key West without spilling his Scotch.) He just…

Christopher Hitchens, arguably one of the most rhetorically gifted writers in the English language and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, has passed away at age 62. I say "arguably," because if there's one thing he was good at, it was provoking arguments over his very public opinions on…

Matthew Continetti predicted earlier today that tonight's debate could be “Michele's Moment.” He may well prove to be right.

Newt Gingrich recently attacked Mitt Romney for "bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain Capital"—a charge the former Speaker walked back earlier today. Nonetheless, Romney was asked about it at the debates. Romney defended his business experience, noting that Obama…

Your Paul Ryan-Ron Wyden Medicare Round-up: Josh Barro urges "On Medicare, Save Money Now"; Ben Domenech has "Eight Answers from Paul Ryan"; Phil Klein discusses "Ryan's bombshell Medicare compromise"; and James Pethokoukis on "My Q&A with Paul Ryan on his new Medicare reform plan."

Brian Beutler reports at TPM that Nancy Pelosi and the White House are pushing back hard against a new bipartisan Medicare reform proposed by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin: 

During an interview on Dennis Prager's radio show today, Daniel Henninger elaborated on his piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying that he doesn't think Mitt Romney is yet ready for the challenge of taking on President Obama. Henninger, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page,…

If you haven't already, please excuse the shameless self-promotion and read my story in THE WEEKLY STANDARD on the media establishment's obsession with "fact checking." Therein I note this pernicious trend highlights the media's general bias and incompetence in roughly equal measure. 

Sioux City, Iowa 

On last night's episode of Top Chef Texas, the name of the game was game—namely, elk,venison, and quail. The contestants were divided into teams of two, but the combination of Beverly Kim and Heather Terhune was like oil and water (or in the words of judge Hugh Acheson, "ammonia and bleach"). Their…

Former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, a Democrat, was served with papers today on Capitol Hill. Here's video:

American Crossroads and the 1600 Project released a video today featuring its senior advisor Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff. In the video, Rove breaks down the electoral college map, laying out what it will take for the Republican nominee to retake the White House in…

Most eyes will be on Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich during tonight's debate on Fox News Channel. But I'll be watching Michele Bachmann.

1. Will “New Newt” reappear, thereby showing that even in the face of increasingly frequent and effective attacks, the Newt Gingrich of 2012 can convey the maturation, the positive message, and the commitment to fighting President Obama, that has marked his unexpected rise to date?

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain blasted President Barack Obama on the Senate floor yesterday for the commander in chief’s handling of Iraq. “All I will say is that, for three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently…

Rasmussen finds what other pollsters have found in Iowa: A tight race in which Newt Gingrich is slipping, Ron Paul surging, and Romney holding steady: 

"Why does the Obama administration treat Israel like a punching bag?" That's the question the Emergency Committee for Israel is asking today in five full page newspaper ads across the nation: 

Well, Scott Rasmussen's been busy since he stepped off THE WEEKLY STANDARD cruise last week. Take a breath:

The Washington Examiner comes out today and, in a bit of a surprise, endorses Mitt Romney for president:

CNN: "Obama, Dems drop millionaire surtax to pay for payroll tax cut"

The Wyden-Ryan alliance on Medicare is "unholy," and the plan will "infuriate other Democrats, all the way up to President Obama," according to a major liberal news outlet that reliably conveys Democratic thinking -- it's called Talking Points Memo for a reason.

Dueling Republican front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been trading barbs on money and wealth the last few days. After Romney said Gingrich should return the $1.6 million he received from Freddie Mac, Gingrich shot back by saying Romney should return the money he made at Bain Capital…

My better half stumbles across some interesting reports from people in New Hampshire:

The New York Times reports:

George Will: "Newt Gingrich commits a capital crime"

Our friends at the Claremont Institute have published their annual list of recommended reading. Contributors include familiar names such as Hadley Arkes, Cheryl Miller, and Mark Blitz, along with Christopher Caldwell and yours truly. Here's Chris:

The New York Times reports:

A new poll from Rasmussen Reports shows Newt Gingrich declining further in a hypothetical matchup against President Barack Obama. Among the 1,000 likely voters surveyed on December 12 and 13, 49 percent say they would vote for Obama while 39 percent would vote for Gingrich.

A new survey from Evolving Strategies, a Republican polling firm, has determined primary preferences among GOP voters are “unstable” and “susceptible to small changes in information.” Conducted between December 6 and 8, the survey found that Newt Gingrich is “highly vulnerable to attack” from…

As the race between Mitt Romney and ‘Not Romney’ approaches Iowa, THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Jonathan Last reveals a serious problem with Romney’s electoral history. Romney is a one-term governor who's lost 17 of 22 times his name has appeared on a ballot. "Aside from getting votes, he's a great…

Can't seem to find the right gift for your loved ones? Although there are only 11 days left before Christmas, there's no need to panic: Simply click over to the Obama 2012 store—a magical place where hope and change are alive and well. A place that sells $5 bumper stickers proclaiming "Veterans…

Paul Ryan and Newt Gingrich have had a bit of a testy relationship over the past year. Gingrich called Ryan's plan "right-wing social engineering" on Meet the Press in April. "With allies like that, who needs the left?" Ryan shot back the next day.

Tom Friedman has a troubling column today in the New York Times. "I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics," Friedman writes. "That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."

According to the latest Gallup poll, support for Newt Gingrich has dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent in just the course of a week. He still maintains a comfortable lead over Romney, whose support has held steady at 22 percent in Gallup's poll. However, the rapid drop suggests that maybe some of…

Senator Mark Kirk is pushing for the U.S. to engage in deeper strategic cooperation with China on drugs, terrorism, and Afghanistan. Speaking yesterday at the Foreign Policy Initiative’s annual conference at the Newseum, the Illinois Republican argued that the U.S. should build a supply line to…

Quin Hillyer writes: 

With still about a month until its American release, controversy is beginning to swirl around the new Harvey Weinstein produced Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady. That a Hollywood film about the life of one of the 20th Century’s great conservatives might play fast and loose with the facts…

Steven Amarnick reviews Gertrude Himmelfarb's The People of the Book in the Wall Street Journal:

Now is the time to undermine Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. With major protests going on in response to the recent fraudulent parliamentary elections, with Mikhail Prokhorov announcing that he is likely to challenge Putin for the presidency in the next election, and with major ferment in Russia,…

Jonah Goldberg: "Newtzilla to the rescue"

One of the classic tropes of romantic movies is meeting atop the Empire State Building or some other famous landmark. That, of course, is what is supposed to happen in An Affair to Remember, when Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr planned to meet there six months after a whirlwind romance. The concept has…

In recent weeks the White House has been pushing a new argument about the economy: "We didn’t know how bad it was."

The Hill: "Dem lawmaker blasts ‘Professor Obama’ as arrogant, alienating"

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that we do not know who the GOP presidential nominee will be:

Yesterday, a rocket fired from southern Lebanon missed its target in Israel. Instead it wounded a Lebanese woman, hinting at a possible pattern of things to come. While Hezbollah contends that its weapons are to protect Lebanon from Israel, the reality is that the arms used to defend the…

The boss this morning took the stage with Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Smiling, and in good cheer, the boss noted that he and Ayotte had a “tough act to follow—Vice President Rubio and Secretary of State Pawlenty.”

Many commentators who are friendly to the conservative cause have rightly argued (for example, see here and here) that independent voters will likely determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. With exit polling in 2010 having shown an electorate comprising 35 percent Republicans, 35…

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper is reporting that the Japanese government is close to settling on the F-35 Lightning as the much-needed replacement for its F-15 fighter.  That’s exceptionally good news for a program that’s both key to preserving American military preeminence and at a lot of risk due…

Robert Zarate recently noted that nuclear disarmament folks are exagerating defense spending numbers in order to appeal to fiscal hawks. Today, Eli Lake writes about the main group behind this effort, the Ploughshare Fund:

Senator Joe Lieberman spoke this morning with reporters at a Christian Science Monitor about the president's decision to withdraw from Iraq. “If I had my druthers, we would have some of our troops staying,” said Lieberman. But, he added trying to remain “cautiously optimistic,”  “we’re going to be…

My report last Friday on the planned South Korean towers that resemble the World Trade Center enveloped in an explosive “cloud” on 9/11 provoked an angry message from a spokesperson for MVRDV, the Dutch architectural firm that designed the towers. In my article, I quoted MVRDV spokesman Jan…

The Iranian regime recently responded to a WEEKLY STANDARD blog post. "Last week the Weekly Standard magazine reported that a Washington district court has alleged that both Iran and Sudan were culpable for the al-Qaeda's 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania," the Iranian regime's official…

Politico: "Romney: Newt's the front-runner"

John Merline: "The Richest 1% Get $10 Billion A Year From Uncle Sam"

Newt Gingrich has adopted an anti-free market argument—a favorite of the political left—to criticize Mitt Romney. Gingrich accused his rival of making money by “bankrupting companies and laying off employees” in his years at Bain Capital.

Jen Rubin makes the case today that the anti-piracy bills pending in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), are likely unconstitutional. The bills essentially call for censorship of online speech in such a way, and with so little…

Fred and Kim Kagan write:

In a press conference today, Barack Obama was asked:

As Salon reports, President Obama is trying to raise money on his campaign website by suggesting that he is more pro-Israel than the Republican presidential candidates. Because if  you care about Israel, the Obama campaign wants to suggest, you're going to support the president over the current…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by the whopping margin of 20 percentage points — 55 to 35 percent — Americans support the repeal of Obamacare.  This marks the continuation of a striking trend:  Since Memorial Day (just over six months ago), Rasmussen has taken 21 polls on…

Vladimir Putin’s official launch of his presidential campaign late last month coincided with the publication of a damning new dossier of evidence relating to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the whistleblower attorney who has become a martyr to anti-corruption efforts in Russia.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said this morning on Fox News that unemployment has not been increasing under President Obama:

Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal write in the Washington Post that President Obama is now trying only to contain Iran:

However poor his health condition, Hugo Chávez must have enjoyed a certain measure of satisfaction earlier this month when leaders from across the Western hemisphere gathered in Caracas for the first meeting of the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a hemispheric forum…

First Read: "Gingrich opens up big leads in South Carolina and Florida"

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Until quite recently it was generally believed in the West that an acquaintance with the ancient classics was the mark of a civilized individual, one whose personal views were grounded in the moral and cultural norms of a long tradition.

The conventional wisdom about blockbuster movie sequels is that the second acts are seldom as good as the originals. The exceptions, like The Godfather: Part II or The Empire Strikes Back, succeed because they build a bigger backstory and add dimensions to the original characters. The sudden…

How many rhapsodic adjectives can be summoned up to describe Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s new movie in 3D? Well, perfect comes to mind, which is saying something about a film that runs two hours and seven minutes. As I think back over it, there’s not a second that seems out of place, not a performance I…

A lot of intelligent money people think this is make-or-break week for the euro. They say that by Friday, December 9, either there will be a path toward resolution of Europe’s debt crisis, or events will accelerate toward a breakup of the single currency. One such is Morgan Stanley analyst Arnaud…

Readers outside of Washington may or may not be aware that there has been a more or less continuous movement, since the late 1960s, to grant statehood to the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital city. It came about as close to success as it ever will during the Carter administration (1978),…

In the last words of this book, the author quotes her brother Milton Himmelfarb in one of his last essays: “Hope is a Jewish virtue.” Nobody embodies that virtue more felicitously than Gertrude Himmelfarb, who over a long and fruitful life of scholarship has given hope to all who have encountered…

Marines are known for their bluntness, so it was not surprising to see the matter-of-fact honesty of General James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, on display when interviewed by the Associated Press during a recent trip to visit Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Asked about the…

I was at the clock-repair shop when a friend called with the news that Marion had slipped away—Marion Montgomery, the great Southern critic and teacher. I was dropping off my grandfather’s broken watch when the call came. I was standing at the counter, holding a run-down timepiece, when my friend…

Mitt Romney erased any doubt that he’s playing to win the Iowa caucuses when he rolled out his first campaign ads in the Hawkeye State last week. A glossy paper mailer pitched Romney to socially conservative Iowans as “the strongest Republican to beat Barack Obama and protect our values.” Romney’s…

There are good days and bad days, but even on the good days the abyss is never too far away. The eurozone’s dangerously original mix of innovation, incoherence, and unaccountability makes it difficult to identify a single event that could finally push it over the edge. But, with confidence already…

Dr. James Roberts, professor of marketing at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, exhorts us to curtail our consumer spending. Here’s a place to start. Don’t buy this book.

Bluffton, S.C. It’s a cold, overcast afternoon near Hilton Head in South Carolina’s low country. Newt Gingrich is making his way from a barbecue joint to his brand new campaign office, his sixth in the state. The walk is only about 300 feet down the street, but the former House speaker takes his…

The New York Times reported last week that President Obama decided not to apologize to Pakistan about the U.S. airstrikes that killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in part because he did not want to be seen to be overruling his military commanders yet again. How ironic that the…

The storming of the British embassy in Tehran last week by the Islamic Republic’s Basij loyalists is evidence that fevered paranoia is now part of the Iranian regime’s decision-making process. In Washington, a confrontation between a Democratic senator and Obama administration officials over Iran…

The New Yorker, like New York itself, is always better in the past. In the present, it seems always to be slipping, never quite as good as it once was. Did the magazine, founded in 1925, have a true heyday? People differ about when this might be. The New Yorker’s heyday, it frequently turns out,…

“The phrase ‘I do not know’ becomes inexpressibly bitter once one has proclaimed oneself to be a pundit, if not a polymath, especially when station, office, and dignity seem to demand that we should know.”

Who knew? Here we were aboard the cruise ship, engaging in a little late night gambling—winning a hundred bucks at craps, losing sixty at blackjack—and reassuring ourselves that what happens on the Nieuw Amsterdam stays on the Nieuw Amsterdam. Who knew that big-time gambling was going on at the GOP…

Tonight’s Republican debate in Iowa was the first one since Newt Gingrich moved into first place in the polls. The focus was mainly on him, the former speaker of the House. It was also the smallest debate of the GOP primary, featuring only six candidates—Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Ron…

We all spend so much time trying to make sense of the daily data deluge—retail sales, jobs, exports, deficits, political polling—that we often overlook more durable shifts in the underlying economy. Two are worth considering.

Now that runoff results are in from the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, it’s clear that the Islamists are running the board. As Samuel Tadros writes in the National Review, that includes not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also one faction of the Salafist Alliance that the State…

Marc A. Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post:

During the Obama presidency (still less than three years old), the number of Americans who think their country’s best days are in the future, rather than in the past, has taken a 33-point turn for the worse, according to a newly released Rasmussen poll. The weekend before President Obama took…

The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers…

The Senate passed the Kirk-Menendez amendment last week—which would sanction the Central Bank of Iran and other financial institutions—by a startling 100-0 vote. The Obama administration opposed the legislation and is currently working to weaken the sanctions as the bill as now in conference. Josh…

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is hosting its annual forum next week at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. It's being called: "2011 FPI Forum: Maintaining America's Global Responsibilities in an Age of Austerity." The all-star lineup includes Senators Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk, and…

Mitt Romney has an ad out today that goes after Newt Gingrich for something the former speaker of the House said . . . in May:

New York Times writer Nate Silver picks up on pieces by  Rhodes Cook and Josh Putnam and says, "I think there is a small but nontrivial chance that the Republican nominee could be someone like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie. (In fact, I was speculating about…

Rep. Adam Kinzinger defends America's mission in Afghanistan on the House floor. "The greatest disinfectant to terrorism is freedom," Kinzinger says.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD cruisers, back from excursions on shore today in Roatan, Honduras, are talking about the new Fox poll, just out this evening.

At tonight's Hanukkah party at the White House, President Obama seemed to slip a little off script when he told party goers that "we never need an excuse for a good party." All his guests laughed.

A thoughtful cruiser commented to us today he wasn't so sure that Mitt Romney was in fact more likely than Newt Gingrich to beat President Obama in the general election (a point that others are also making). He said that the first election he voted in was 1948, that he remembered that contest…

A new Quinnipiac poll shows that President Obama is now trailing both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney among independents in the crucial swing states of Florida and Ohio. The poll shows that, among independents, Gingrich leads Obama by 4 percentage points (45 to 41 percent) in Florida and by 1…

Crony capitalist extraordinaire T. Boone Pickens has an op-ed in Politico today pressing the case, once again, for the NATGAS Act, which is now pending before Congress. The bill itself would offer a slew of subsidies for those companies producing natural gas, converting trucks and cars to natural…

Mitt Romney released a new ad Tuesday that touted the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has been married to the same woman for 42 years and has been a member of the same church his entire life. 

The Boston Herald reports on the latest Massachusetts Senate poll: 

Andrew Ferguson, along with Wall Street Journal deputy editor in chief Gerard Baker, appeared on Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge to discuss journalism:  

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, who's responsible for breaking much of the news in the Fast and Furious scandal, has yet another new scoop. New emails point to a possible motivation for why the Justice Department was handing over thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs—they were going to use the…

This morning on Capitol Hill, Attorney General Eric Holder was asked whether he lied to Congress about the Fast & Furious gun-running scandal: 

The always thoughtful Rhodes Cook writes:

Governor Chris Christie gave a compelling critique of President Obama yesterday at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting:

Spike Dolomite Ward’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times has been getting a fair amount of attention.  Ward, a private citizen and an on-again, off-again supporter of President Obama and his party, is now thankful for Obama because Obamacare helped her get health coverage for cancer when she didn’t…

Thomas Donnelly, Danielle Pletka, and Maseh Zarif of the American Enterprise Institute have an important (and timely!) report on Iran, titled "Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran: Questions for Strategy, Requirements for Military Forces."

Disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a U.S. district court judge. Reuters reports:

Panel discussions, dinner conversations, and Crow's Nest expostulations have continued apace on THE WEEKLY STANDARD Caribbean cruise, as we depart Grand Cayman and make for Honduras. But most of the buzz—apart of course from the topic of Vic Matus’s miraculous comeback from a bout of mal de mer and…

Last night, on Fox News, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich reiterated his belief that Howard Gutman, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, should be fired for his remarks on anti-Semitism:

The Obama administration is using an internal budgetary review of the Department of Defense as cover to undertake what amounts to an off-schedule Nuclear Posture Review—one that ices out Defense and State Department experts usually consulted on nuclear issues. It is also beginning a new round of…

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is pushing as hard as he can to keep U.S. troop strength up in Afghanistan until at least 2014. The problem is, the White House is bound and determined to announce further significant cuts…

Standard & Poor’s warning that no less than fifteen eurozone states, including Germany, could lose their AAA credit rating has been met with howls of protest from leading German politicians. The general secretary of the Social Democratic party (SPD), Andrea Nahles, described the Standard and Poor’s…

Ben Smith has an important piece in Politico today about the anti-Israel left:

Two of the most respected Muslim academics in Bosnia-Herzegovina have given lengthy interviews in which they condemned Wahhabism, or “Salafism,” as the Arab-financed Islamist ideology is also known. Their sharp criticism was published in the aftermath of the October 28 shooting attack at the U.S.…

Tonight, ABC News will broadcast Barbara Walters’s interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The network hasn’t released the full transcript yet, but so far press releases suggest that the big news is that Assad is denying any responsibility for the almost 4,000 Syrians killed since the…

Portraying President Obama’s U.N.-centered foreign policy as consistent with American values or pro-Israel has become increasingly difficult for administration officials. The result has been a steady stream of inaccurate accounts of goings-on at the organization.

Gallup’s polling of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now shows Newt Gingrich with a 15-point lead over runner-up Mitt Romney — 37 to 22 percent. In the previous Gallup poll, taken three weeks ago, Gingrich led Romney by just 1 point — 22 to 21 percent.  Gingrich appears to have…

Today marks the 70th anniversary of a date that has indeed lived in infamy: December 7, 1941 — the date on which the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and thrust America into World War II.  The next afternoon, before a joint session of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, to thunderous…

Today, Senate Republicans succeeded in continuing a filibuster of Caitlin Halligan's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The cloture vote on Halligan (who previously served as New York's solicitor general) fell six votes short of the necessary sixty.

The Washington Post writes that “some Democratic strategists worry that the combative [Newt] Gingrich presents some challenges for the Obama campaign that would not exist if Romney were the GOP candidate.” Chief among these are the enthusiasm that Gingrich could potentially generate among…

Democratic congressman Steve Rothman just released the following statement regarding the comments on anti-Semitism made by Howard Gutman, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium: 

As we sail past Guantanamo Bay at mid-day Tuesday (the ship's captain turned down a request from team TWS to stop there to pay our respects), we thought we'd report who's leading in some of the award categories so far:

A lot of fair-minded Republicans and conservatives are saying that the GOP candidates should avoid the presidential debate moderated by Donald Trump.

John McCain tweets: 

The American Jewish Committee responded today to remarks the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, made about anti-Semitism last week in Europe.

The Washington Post reports that, under President Obama and his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Food and Drug Administration is considering letting “anyone of any age buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves without a…

The latest poll out of South Carolina, conducted by Winthrop University: 

Former vice president Dan Quayle today endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, Quayle outlines the "four criteria [he] use[s] in determining who [he] will support for president. These are: leadership, character, conservative philosophy and…

On Saturday night, while most sensible people were happily flipping back and forth between the Big Ten championship game, the ACC championship game, and the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game, the Republican presidential candidates (save Jon Huntsman) appeared at a televised presidential forum in New…

Fred Barnes reviews ACC Basketball by J. Samuel Walker in the Wall Street Journal: 

As the Holland America cruise ship the ms Nieuw Amsterdam set sail Monday afternoon from Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas, the 464 guests on the eighth WEEKLY STANDARD cruise convened in the ship’s showroom for the first panel sessions of the week.

Rick Perry is the latest Republican presidential candidate to call for the firing of Ambassador Howard Gutman. The Texas governor announced his decision in a statement released this evening:

The last thing State Department spokesman Mark Toner says about Ambassador Howard Gutman, the U.S. diplomat in Belgium, at today's press briefing is: "We have full confidence in him."

A new poll from Gallup today finds that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents find Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney "acceptable" nominees for the GOP. For Gingrich, 62 percent of those polled said the former House speaker was an acceptable Republican nominee, while 54 percent…

In a piece subtly entitled, “The Bomb Buried in Obamacare Explodes Today — Hallelujah!,” Rick Ungar gleefully writes in Forbes that a rarely discussed provision of Obamacare will put us on “an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans….”  The provision to which Ungar refers is…

Glenn Harlan Reynolds has an excellent piece on the college bubble in the Washington Examiner:

Randy Babbitt, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, was arrested Saturday for drunk driving. He was "spotted driving on the wrong side of Old Lee Highway, according to the arresting officer," the Washington Post reports. Babbitt was arrested in a suburb of Washington, D.C. The Post…

The new Des Moines Register poll shows Newt Gingrich with a 7-point lead in Iowa over Ron Paul, and a 9-point lead of Mitt Romney.  “It’s a three-person race, but there’s a clear leader,” says J. Ann Selzer, the Register’s pollster. The last poll conducted by Selzer — the recognized expert in Iowa…

The New York Times reports that Iran's missile program has been setback: 

The entire text of President Obama’s ambassador to Belgium’s remarks on anti-Semitism is a useful case study in the genre of pseudo-sophisticated liberal apologia for Muslim anti-Semitism. Below, Ambassador Howard Gutman says that Israel, the Jewish state, is responsible for a new wave of…

"Iowa frontrunner Newt Gingrich’s first TV advertisement will begin airing in Iowa on Monday – and it’s just the beginning of a series of ads that will run before the Iowa caucuses, his spokesman said tonight," Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register reports. "The Gingrich campaign is spending…

The results of the latest NBC News/Marist Poll:

Given the everlasting cascade of books about Abraham Lincoln, is anything at all left to be said? Perhaps. We sometimes overlook Lincoln’s pivotal role as a cause—or at least a provocation—of the war. Without his election, would hostilities have broken out? A hypothetical question, of course, but…

The “realist” case for Bashar al-Assad—and before him, for his father, Hafez—was that he was supposedly a pillar of stability. The Assads, we were told, were all that stood between Syria and chaos. If that was ever true, it definitely is not true now. Assad’s heavy-handed attempt to repress a…

Rex Stout, asked his opinion of writers who take over a deceased colleague’s fictional characters, compared them to vampires and cannibals and said they should “roll their own.” But that didn’t stop Robert Goldsborough from writing several new cases for the team of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin…

In 2010, Republicans won control of the House by offering to resist the Obama agenda. But their victory left open the question of whether they would also confront the grave fiscal challenges facing the country, and move beyond mere opposition to present an alternative governing vision to that of…

Just as incoming American presidents are given the atomic “briefcase” by their predecessors, along with the codes for launching a nuclear attack, perhaps Spanish prime ministers will henceforth receive a begging cup and a German phrasebook. It was al Qaeda that made José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of…

There are many reasons why people go to bars: to find a date, cheer on a team, or simply to get stewed. But the best reason to be in bars is that you’re with friends. The best bars—free of televisions and background music, with an agreeable burger, good local draft beers, and well-informed…

The question asked in Simon Goldhill’s new book is why someone who enjoys an author’s books would want to examine the house where he wrote them. The Victorians were the first people to turn writers’ houses into pilgrimage sites, and Goldhill—who is a Cambridge scholar of the Victorians as well as…

In 1909 Henry James took thousands of letters that he had received over the years into his garden at Lamb House in Rye and committed them to a great bonfire. In his last years what time he could spare from refining his ever more rarefied fiction he devoted to confounding his biographers. Indeed, he…

Lots of cultural writing these days, in books and magazines and newspapers, relies on the so-called Chump Effect. The Effect is defined by its discoverer, me, as the eagerness of laymen and journalists to swallow whole the claims made by social scientists. Entire journalistic enterprises, whole…

The King James Bible—the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture, dedicated to James I as “principal mover and author”—is not really a triumph of translation. Not, at least, if perfect accuracy and re-creation of the original narrative voice are the proper goals of translation.

To figure out what is taking place today in a closed society such as northwest China, sometimes you have to go back a decade, sometimes more. 

Towards the end of 1812 there’s a key passage. It contains a response by the Duke of Wellington to his prime minister’s suggestion that he go to Canada and take over the land war along the Canada-U.S. border. At that point Wellington had demonstrated his skills in the field in the Peninsula war…

Few historians write about the long era of the American Revolution with greater authority than the author of the essays collected in this volume. One of the best-read scholars of his generation, for over roughly half a century Gordon Wood has written with a kind of infectious enthusiasm about what…

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, has been under fire for saying that Israel is responsible for Muslim anti-Semitism, comments he made last week at a European conference on anti-Semitism.

The AP reports on Herman Cain's announcement:

Herman Cain, the Georgia businessman, announced at an event in Atlanta on Saturday that he is suspending his presidential campaign. From the New York Times:

In his capacity as chairman of the Emergency Committee of Israel, Bill Kristol released the following statement today in response to Ambassador Howard Gutman’s remarks at a conference in Europe and Leon Panetta’s comments in Washington:

On November 30, Newt Gingrich sent out a fundraising letter promising to elevate contemporary political discourse and to lead “the kind of nuanced debate worthy of our national history.” Gingrich wrote: “The people who are standing with this campaign have rejected reality TV politics…”

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, recently told a conference hosted by the European Jewish Union that Israel is to blame for growing anti-Semitism harbored by people of Muslim faith.

In a little noticed ruling on Monday, November 28, a Washington, D.C. district court found that both Iran and Sudan were culpable for al Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings. As is typical in state sponsorship of terrorism cases, neither Iran nor Sudan answered the plaintiffs’ accusations. But in a…

“[A] U.S. recession caused by the fiscal crisis in Europe would be very costly and could throw millions of Americans out of work.” So says the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank that numbers Pulitzer Prize winning, generally liberal economists Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow among…

The Hill: "Huntsman skips Trump, will debate Gingrich in unmoderated format"

Kim Strassel has an excellent piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on Herman Cain’s underappreciated contributions to the GOP race.  She writes, “[U]nlike Mrs. Bachmann, or Mr. Perry, or the no-shows [who didn’t run], Mr. Cain has fundamentally altered the dynamics of the GOP primary. In the…

Former Iowa governor Robert Ray has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Ray is a moderate Republican who served as governor of the Hawkeye State for 14 years. "I want our next president to be someone whose character and judgment I respect and whose ideas are valid for our country," Ray said in a…

Earlier this week, on Monday, the advocacy group USA*Engage sent a letter to each of the 100 Senate offices. The organization’s intention was clear: to prevent the U.S. from imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

The GOP members of the Joint Economic Committee respond to today's unemployment numbers:

The other day, in Iraq, Joe Biden made the following statement:

At his Chicago restaurant Chilam Balam, Chuy Valencia serves up a salmon-goat cheese dish that is popular with his customers. But on this week's episode of Top Chef Texas, it was anything but popular. "Smoked fish is paired with cream, which is why mild cream cheese works with lox," writes head…

Jake Tapper: "Gingrich Tells ABC News: ‘I’m Going to Be The Nominee’"

In South Carolina earlier today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said "that America’s health is a matter of national security and that she’s optimistic the Supreme Court will uphold the nation’s health care reform law," the Associated Press reports. 

Politico: "Romney preps Gingrich attack"

Earlier in the week Israel Hayom reported that the new Tunisian constitution may include “a section condemning Zionism and ruling out any friendly ties with Israel.” Yesterday Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of al-Nahda (Revival), the main Islamist party that won more than 40 percent of the seats in…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters — which shows Newt Gingrich with a 21-point lead over runner-up Mitt Romney — suggests that Gingrich is uniting the Tea Party and establishment wings of the Republican Party.  The poll shows that among likely Republican primary voters who do not consider…

Peter Schweizer's book, Throw Them All Out, has been a topic of much discussion in Washington, in no small part because of shocking details about how congressmen trade stock based on their private knowledge of how legislation will affect markets. Amazingly, this is completely legal. As I put it in…

In a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill today, New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez blasted the Obama administration for opposing stricter sanctions on Iran:

Mitt Romney removed any doubt that he's playing to win the Iowa caucuses when he rolled out his first campaign ads in the Hawkeye state this week. As his first ad made clear, Romney needs to appeal to some of Iowa's "values voters" if he hopes to have a chance. The glossy paper ad arrived by U.S.…

A new national poll of likely Republican primary voters from Rasmussen Reports shows Newt Gingrich with a 21-point lead over Mitt Romney. According to Rasmussen, this is the largest lead held by any GOP candidate this cycle. Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed prefer Gingrich while only 17…

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel soon to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for a discussion of border disputes and trade relations, reports the Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Ira. Ahmadinejad will meet with KRG president Massoud Barzani, who visited Tehran at the end of October…

The Los Angeles Times describes the emptied Occupy Los Angeles encampment: 

Last night, at a campaign fundraising event in New York City with Jewish donors, President Obama had this to say about his record regarding Israel:

Jim Geraghty: "Newt Gingrich Said What?"

Joel Gehrke: "Tina Brown: Professor Obama 'doesn't like his job'"