May 2012

Mitt Romney, with his wife Ann, met this afternoon in Los Angeles with former first lady Nancy Reagan to receive her endorsement. "Mitt and Ann Romney joined me at my home this afternoon for some lemonade and cookies and I offered my firm endorsement of his campaign for President," Reagan says in a…

Historian in chief?

A group of Cherokee Native Americans will be protesting Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren at this weekend's Massachusetts Democratic party convention in Springfield. The Boston Herald reports:

Maryland governor Martin O’Malley is lending last minute support today to Democratic Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett in Wisconsin, days before the June 5th gubernatorial recall election. O’Malley is chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, so trying to get Barrett elected is (at least part of)…

This morning Politico made the worst mistake a mainstream media outlet can make—acknowledging the blindingly obvious truth there is a pronounced media bias against Republicans, specifically Mitt Romney. Predictably, there has been some circling of the wagons. Woe be unto us if the the defenseless…

Waukesha, Wisc.

Max Boot wrote last year about a visit by a small group of us to Afghanistan in October. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was the day we spent with the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 10th Mountain Division:

The Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore offers a typically dyspeptic response to my piece about Clintonism in the Democratic party.

At the unveiling of former President George W. Bush's official portrait at the White House this afternoon, President Barack Obama joined his predecessor and their wives in delivering brief (and at times nice, cordial, and funny) remarks. But there was a seemingly out of place moment during the…

A new ad from Crossroads GPS ties Democratic senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri to President Barack Obama and his signature legislative achievement, Obamacare. The ad calls the pair "ObamaClaire" and reminds voters that McCaskill, who is up for reelection this November, voted for Obamacare in the…

America's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, unequivocally stated at the U.N. Security Council stakeout that Iran is "very much complicit in the killing that is going on" in Syria. Rice would not provide further details on how the Iranians are helping the Syrians suppress the protesters…

Actor and comedian Martin Short retells the story of mistaking the president's closest political adviser, David Axelrod, for actor Richard Kind:

A new undercover video released by the pro-life group Live Action shows a Planned Parenthood employee in New York City giving advice to an actress posing as a woman who wants to have an abortion if, and only if, the baby is a girl. 

Some people take to Twitter and Facebook to voice complaints. Others use social media for the greater good, offering advice to the complainers. But that sort of counsel is illegal—at least according to one state agency.

The Boston Globe reports that Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren admitted in a prepared statement that she told two of her employers that she was a Native American--after she was hired. From the Globe:

Politico's Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen have a story this morning that looks at media coverage of the candidates in the election thus far, "To GOP, blatant bias in vetting":

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren won’t get to face Scott Brown in November without a fight from a fellow Democrat.

Steve Hayes, with A.B. Stoddard and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Yesterday, we got word that Artur Davis, the former Democratic representative from Alabama’s majority-black Seventh Congressional District and failed 2010 gubernatorial candidate, jumped from the Democratic party to the Republican party. What to make of this?

Is it possible for New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg to be considered both a fascist and a national laughingstock? We're about to find out:

There was some speculation earlier this week about Vice President Joe Biden's vacation. Why was the vice president taking this week off? Was tension mounting between President Obama and his trusted surrogate? Had Biden embarrassed Obama one time too many?

"Behind the scenes."

The AP reports:

A union official from the Brown Deer school district in southeastern Wisconsin tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Act 10, the collective bargaining law signed by Governor Scott Walker last year, is working out just fine:

Even Democrats are now critical of President Obama's approach to Syria. Former Bill Clinton ambassador and adviser Marc Ginsberg writes:

Some have argued that last week’s massacre in the Syrian city of Houla, where Bashar al-Assad loyalists killed more than a hundred people, a third of whom were children, may in time come to mark the moment when world opinion turned irrevocably against the Syrian strongman, and the democracies…

Republican Senate candidate Denny Rehberg of Montana has a new television ad knocking his opponent, Democratic senator Jon Tester, for voting for Obamacare and Wall Street bailouts. Watch the ad, a sequel to Rehberg's first "Washington baloney" ad, below:

Mike Bost, a Republican member of the Illinois general assembly from Murphysboro, unleashed an explosive tirade on the Democratic-led legislative body for repeatedly bringing pension reform bills to a vote before giving lawmakers a chance to read them.

Milwaukee

A new poll by Marquette University Law school shows Wisconsin governor Scott Walker solidifying his lead over his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. Walker now leads Barrett by 7 points--52 percent to 45 percent. In the previous MU Law released two weeks ago, Walker led Barrett 50…

From Haaretz: Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders. ... "I not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it," Obama said, reminding his guests that all his friends…

President Obama met yesterday with "about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders, thanking them for the work they do to improve communities around the country and discussed their shared commitment to rebuilding the U.S. economy," Haaretz reports.

For all of the ink spilled over the federal government's haphazard reaction to the 2008 financial crisis, few authors match David Skeel's clarity and insight. In The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences, the University of Pennsylvania law professor…

The Foreign Policy Initiative announces their new Congressional Scholars Program:

On his personal website, former congressman Artur Davis confirmed at least some of the recent rumors surrounding him—that the lifelong Democrat, the man who endorsed Barack Obama for president early in 2007 and seconded his nomination at the Democratic party convention in 2008, now considers…

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed at an event in 2011 that she was the "first nursing mother" in New Jersey to take that state's bar exam. The Boston Herald reports:

In yesterday’s U.S. Senate Republican primary in Texas, lieutenant governor David Dewhurst won 45 percent of the vote to Ted Cruz’s 34 percent and Tom Leppert’s 13 percent. Dewhurst fell just a few points shy of the 50 percent, resulting in a runoff with Cruz. Yet Dewhurt's 11 percentage point…

This campaign season, President Barack Obama has run across the country – often on the taxpayer’s dime – to rail against the privileged station of the wealthy. It is Obama and the Democrats who will cut down on the power of the elite and restore the egalitarian ideals of the country’s founding.…

Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst will face former state solicitor general Ted Cruz in a runoff election for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on July 31. The Associated Press reports:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is projected to win today's primary in Texas, giving the former Massachusetts governor enough delegates to secure his party's nomination. The presumptive Republican nominee will of course face Democratic President Barack Obama in November's general…

The latest from Live Action, a pro-life group run by activist Lila Rose:

Out: Hope and Change. In: Fear!

President Barack Obama awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom today at the White House to Bob Dylan John Glenn, John Paul Stevens, Madeleine Albright, Shimon Peres, Jan Karski, John Doar, William Foege, Dolores Huerta, Juliette Gordon Low, Pat Summitt, and Gordon Hirabayashi. The award is the…

The New York Times reports: 

Consumer confidence falls to four month low.

Wisconsin Rapids, Wisc.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its first estimate of jobs created during the month of May. The consensus estimate is for about 150,000 total jobs to have been added to the economy, barely enough to keep up with population growth and certainly insufficient to reduce the…

The New York Times has a very lengthy article today on President Barack Obama's war on terrorism policy. Obama himself, at his weekly "Terror Tuesday" meetings, "[insists] on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list,' poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls…

At the beginning of John Heilemann’s sprawling, 6,500-word essay on Team Obama’s reelection strategy are these telling paragraphs:

Now that President Obama has brazenly claimed that “federal spending since [he] took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years,” it is worth succinctly revisiting his historic record of fiscal profligacy. Here are a few key facts, all based on official federal…

This morning's news summaries are full of the political jousting expected this week between the Romney and Obama campaigns. In particular, for President Obama, it’s business as usual—a Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House, meetings with advisors, travel, and so on. And the vice president,…

AFP reports: "Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month rejected an offer from United States (US) President Barack Obama for landmark bilateral talks at the White House, the Kremlin revealed on Tuesday."

Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has a new TV ad out today, which will air throughout the state. In the ad, Brown sits in a booth at a diner and touts his bipartisan record in the Senate.

In this video, obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Saudi women blasts religious police for harassing her in a public mall for wearing nail polish:

Mitt Romney's latest web ad targets President Obama's inability to create jobs, the failures of the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program, and "contracts steered to ‘friends & family.'" Watch here:

MSNBC host Chris Hayes has issued an apology one day after saying on national television that he is "uncomfortable" with calling fallen soldiers "heroes."

President Obama, an avid follower of left-wing media, is surely aware of the controversial remark by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who explained yesterday, in a discussion of Memorial Day on MSNBC, that he felt “uncomfortable” using the word “hero” for an American killed in battle: 

The White House announced today with the first female submariners that First Lady Michelle Obama will sponsor the USS Illinois. The newest submarine "is expected to join the fleet in late 2015," according to the White House.

Over the weekend, MSNBC host Chris Hayes told his viewers that he's "uncomfortable" with calling "war dead and the fallen ... 'heroes.'" Now, the Veterans of Foreign Wars group have responded by saying that Hayes's comments "are reprehensible and disgusting" and are asking for the MSNBC host to…

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 

There are many remarkable episodes in this compelling autobiography of Israel Meir Lau, the former chief rabbi of Israel. One in particular captures Lau’s character and shapes his future. Lulek (as he was called) was 5 years old in 1942 when he saw his father, Moshe, also a rabbi, beaten and…

We were struck last week by a pair of instances of Republicans doing what Republicans do—one encouraging, one not so much. On the encouraging side, we had Sen. Tom Coburn, who never fails to lift a faltering conservative heart. He gave an interview to a blogger for the Washington Post, though we…

As the perpetrator of two historical novels and other fictional pieces that place real people in imaginary situations, I can’t be sanctimonious about what follows. But my history genes are in turmoil over the new play about Joe Alsop, the late Washington columnist, and the commentary the play,…

Debtors of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your IOUs!

Every year, there is a movie that becomes an unexpected hit because it finds an audience among people the Hollywood studios resolutely ignore: the over-50 crowd. Last year, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris struck a chord loud enough among those who still dream of arrondisement-hopping with Gertrude…

Caledonia, Wis.

According to recent news reports, the Romney foreign policy team is trying to figure out what the presumptive Republican candidate thinks America’s role in the world should be. He’s been clear regarding the Iranian nuclear weapons program, promising that if he’s elected, Iran won’t get the bomb.…

Now that Mitt Romney has sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, the general election battle has begun. Team Obama obviously recognizes this; since Romney basically sealed the deal after the Wisconsin primary in April, the president and his team have launched a series of attacks designed to…

There is literal truth, grounded in fact; there is poetic license, which is truth stretched a little to make it seem stronger; and then there is emotional truth, which is what some people imagine must have happened, based on their view of the world. For an example of the latter, we go to Mutual…

In the midst of the current controversies over the Martin Luther King and Dwight Eisenhower memorials in Washington, it’s worth examining the human impulse toward memorialization, so that we can appreciate what is at stake in the inevitable battles—aesthetic and moral—over the shapes our collective…

In 2007, Mitt Romney, facing a surging Huckabee campaign in an Iowa caucus that was supposed to launch him to the nomination, delivered a speech about the role of faith in public life. As eloquent as the speech, entitled “Faith in America,” may have been, it did little to bolster his Iowa campaign.…

By the time he took office in 2009, President Obama had fashioned a reputation as an idealist committed to reforming the way business is done in Washington. But as president, he’s allowed this reputation to fritter away. And what’s left of it is now being destroyed by his harsh and misguided…

There is something very strange about the 2012 presidential race so far. The election comes at a time of extraordinary public unease, which clearly demands some response from the political system, and especially from the men running for the highest office in the land. But the two presidential…

Sex addiction may not exactly be an existential threat to the United States, but as this book makes clear, the cultural trend which created this farcical “illness” has much graver consequences. The medicalizing of what was hitherto seen as a moral issue and the promotion of a ridiculously broad…

The organization “Americans Elect” spent $35 million on a new “centrist” party and nobody came. In announcing that no presidential candidate had received the 10,000 online votes needed to qualify for its online convention, the group’s chief executive, Kahlil Byrd, said there was “an almost…

Five or six years ago I found the seats at classical music concerts becoming uncomfortable. I blame the seats, but in fact I had lost the Sitzfleisch—in German literally “seat meat,” in looser translation “bottom patience” —to sit through a concert. In concert halls my mind wandered, I counted the…

Graham Greene famously divided his books into two categories: novels, and what he called “entertainments.” He wished from time to time to indulge an appetite for pulp, and it was only fair to let his readers know what they were getting into. The joke, of course, is that, being Graham Greene, he…

This issue of The Weekly Standard features advice from Yuval Levin and Jay Cost for Mitt Romney in his presidential race. A Romney victory is devoutly to be desired. But a truly grand victory requires worthy opponents. Barack Obama is one. With all due respect to our affable vice president, Joe…

A fair number of Americans would probably tell you that Memorial Day is held to celebrate the Indy 500. And, even those who are aware of why, actually, the day has been set aside tend to honor it in the breech, if at all. On my way, every year, to the service in our town, I am struck by how many…

The latest Republican National Committee web ad asks whether President Obama's last week was the worst one he's ever had. Titled, "Worst Week Ever?," the ad concludes, "It's been a bad week for President Obama, but a bad three years for Americans."

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the Syrian regime's latest atrocities "horrific." He also said that "it is far part time for the United States ... to put an end to the Assad regime."

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has a post in his series, "This Day in Baseball History," reminding us that it was fifty years ago yesterday, May 26, 1962, that the Detroit Tigers defeated the Yankees 2-1 at Yankee Stadium: 

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, faced off last night in the first of two debates leading up to the June 5 gubernatorial recall election. There weren’t any fireworks, and it’s unlikely that the hour-long debate held on the Friday evening of…

A striking chart showing that, over the last decade, 65 percent of federal expenditures went to pay for entitlement commitments, not wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense, or national security: 

America is the best house in a run-down neighborhood: The famous BRICs are crumbling.

The Republican Senate primary in Texas has long been a battle between establishment favorite and lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, and the conservative challenger, former solicitor general Ted Cruz. But Dewhurst, who has lead in the most recent polls ahead of the May 29 primary, has launched a…

Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon: 

I received this smart email from a reader:

The successful have always been eyed with suspicion by the plain, decent old folk over at NPR, except for the once or twice a year when the alms cup comes out for a rattle or two. So it was a little astonishing to hear Garrison Keillor, the Clem Kadiddlehopper of the pubic airwaves, sing this smug…

Tom Manion has a moving article in today's Wall Street Journal, ahead of Memorial Day, explaining how he came "to fully understand the sacrifices of our troops and their families."

Matt Continetti reviews A Game of Thrones, and other books in the George R.R. Martin series, in the Claremont Review of Books:

This morning on CNN, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was asked, "Why is it not hypocrisy for the president to take campaign donations from private equity when he's attacking private equity making that an essential part of his campaign?"

Very preliminary returns in the first round of Egypt's presidential election suggest that the official Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate, Mohamed Morsi, came in first, with Ahmed Shafik in second place. Shafik is a former Air Force general and was briefly prime minister as the old regime was…

Steve Hayes, with Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News: 

The New York Sun editorializes:

In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson inaugurated his “War on Poverty,” he travelled to the heart of coal country in eastern Kentucky, one of the poorest regions in the country. It was, until recently, most reliably Democratic: In the 20th century when Democrats won the presidency, they almost…

Best political ad this cycle?

With just days until the May 29 Texas Republican primary for U.S. Senate, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz is focused on one thing: denying his opponent, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, the 50 percent share of the vote needed to win the GOP nomination outright. "Politically, the only…

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren refused to answer local reporters' questions about her claims to Native American heritage and minority status in a tense exchange in Brookline.

After the Lilly Ledbetter Act passed in Congress and was signed into law, President Obama and Senate Democrats were self-congratulatory.

Looking at the electoral map this cycle, the focus has mostly been on Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. But what about the Mountain West? The assumption is that Obama has a virtual lock on Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, but is this valid?

Mother Jones's Adam Serwer takes a look at the new Gallup poll showing "pro-life" Americans outnumbering "pro-choice" Americans by a 9-point margin and writes:

In an interview with Reihan Salam for Vice magazine, pornographer Larry Flynt reveals that he's now a hardcore supporter of President Obama's just two years after calling Obama an "ineffectual wimp" for giving in too much to Republicans.

Everybody is worried about the nation’s dismal employment situation, and that worry has prompted news organizations, pundits, market watchers, and others to focus intently upon any and all economic metrics that gauge the problem. On the first Friday of every month, the non-farm payroll report from…

On May 7, 2012, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest organization of rabbis in the United States, approved a resolution recognizing that the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that mandates employers provide access to contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilizations…

St. Cloud, Minn.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio said he was considering introducing legislation requiring insurance companies to let consumers cover adult children on their plans up to the age of 31, charging an additional premium if necessary.” Contrary to what you might suppose,…

More Democrats seem to be distancing themselves from President Obama. Politico finds this nugget from a debate between Democrat Ron Barber and his Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, in Arizona's Eighth Congressional District (Gabby Giffords's home district):

Increasingly, pundits are incorporating statistical models into their analysis of the 2012 election. While I was once a purveyor of such predictive models, I really am not anymore. I don't want to bore you with all the wonky details of my flip-flop, but I do want to give you an example of why you…

Hours after Tom Cotton won the GOP nomination for the open seat in Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District, and became a strong favorite to win the general election in a district that went 58 percent to 39 percent for John McCain in 2008, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a…

The belief that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is inches away or perhaps only one long negotiating session away never dies. Not even 64 years after the birth of the state of Israel and 45 years after Israel’s conquest of Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem in 1967. 

A new poll from Suffolk University shows incumbent Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts remains neck and neck with his Democratic challenger, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. Forty-eight percent of likely voters support Brown, placing him in a statistical tie with Warren, who…

Joe Biden's defenders have been awfully defensive lately about calls for President Obama to swap the current vice president for Hillary Clinton. "Vice President Biden is a big political plus for the ticket, and will make a real difference in the swing states this fall....  I've seen the connection…

President Obama was in Denver this afternoon for a fundraiser. But the event does not appear to have been quite the success the campaign was hoping for.

Kevin Ferris on presidents and their pasts.

LEXINGTON, KY (AP): Fifty-two-year-old Harrodsburg businessman Arnold J. Uncommitted, who had never before run for public office, stood before a delirious crowd of supporters at his makeshift headquarters here last night, basking in his near-upset of President Obama's reelection campaign in…

Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski just announced that Democrats will be bringing up a pay equity bill after Memorial Day, sometime in June. The thing is, Congress already passed pay equity legislation, and President Obama signed that bill into law--the Lilly Ledbetter Act--in January 2009.

M.D. Kittle writes at WisconsinReporter.com:

On June 6 at 9 p.m. on the Travel Channel, Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America will premier, with 30 sandwiches from around the country facing off March Madness-style, with a winner crowned by the host at season's end. The crab cake sandwich from Faidley Seafood is representing Baltimore while…

Yesterday, President Obama sent out a fundraising email to supporters that likened himself to former President Bill Clinton. “I ran for president because we lost our way as a country after President Clinton left the White House,” Obama said in the email.

On the Senate floor this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took exception to the Obama administration’s propensity to spend taxpayer money on pro-Obama propaganda. McConnell said, “There’s a pattern here that I, and I’m sure many other Americans, find pretty outrageous.”

An investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that since 2009 more than 500 incidents of violent crime in the city of Milwaukee were misreported as minor assaults:

The Washington Free Beacon reports that in a speech to the U.S. Air Force Academy today, President Obama called for "another great American century":

Via GOP 12, a new poll of Florida voters has some good news for Mitt Romney. On May 3, Quinnipiac showed Romney and Obama tied 44 percent to 43 percent, but the pollster now shows Romney leading Obama 47 percent to 41 percent. And picking Florida senator Marco Rubio as a running mate would increase…

After months of a national Democratic campaign trumping up a GOP "war on women," Gallup finds that the percentage of Americans who identify as "pro-choice" on abortion has fallen to an all-time low of 41 percent, while 50 percent of Americans identify as "pro-life":

The liberal group We Are Wisconsin released an internal poll on Tuesday showing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker leading his Democratic opponent Tom Barrett 50 percent to 47 percent. The poll, conducted May 19-21 by the Democratic firm Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner, was released to buck up dispirited…

Who could resist reading a blog post titled, “How Thomas Edison, Mark Zuckerberg and Iron Man are holding back American innovation”? Writing for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Suzy Khimm reports on a conference held by the New America Foundation on the grand topic of “How to Save America’s…

President Obama, envious of China’s economic model, proclaimed his admiration for the high-speed railways, bridges, skyscrapers, and solar panels that China is building.  (“That used to be us,” he famously said – a line apparently so powerful it became the title of a book.) But even the Chinese…

Spirit of America is a fantastic charity that raises money to help provide whatever American troops overseas need to complete their mission. Recently, they raised the funds necessary to pay for the cleft palate surgeries of two Afghan children at the request of U.S. special operations soldiers.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly tallies for the employment-population ratio.  That stat shows something rather straightforward:  Among those who are living in America and are free to pursue employment, what percentage are employed?  (The bureau excludes those…

The other day, on Jerusalem Day, the 45th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered the following remarks: 

There is dissension in the Democratic ranks on President Obama’s reelection strategy. His campaign team has decided to focus on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital – which ended over a decade ago – as an illustration of what a Romney presidency might look like. Loose-lipped Democrats like Harold…

War veteran Tom Cotton has won the Republican primary for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, the Associated Press projects. With 63 percent of precincts reporting, Cotton leads with 56 percent, while his primary opponent, Beth Anne Rankin, trails with 38 percent. 

Barack Obama has defeated John Wolfe Jr. in the Democratic primary in Arkansas. With 81 percent of precincts reporting, Obama, the president of the United States, has 59.5 percent of the vote while Wolfe, a lawyer from Tennessee, has 40.5 percent.

'Uncommitted' is keeping it closer than expected in the Kentucky Democratic presidential primary. With 104 of 120 counties counted, President Barack Obama leads 'Uncommitted' by only 20 percentage points. The tally so far: Obama with 105,487 votes (or 60.04 percent of the vote), while 'Uncommitted'…

The shrinking college work week.

If Barack Obama experiences an upset in Arkansas’s Democratic primary today, it won’t be for lack of trying. The Obama campaign and the Democratic party have spent significant resources in Arkansas, while an unknown primary challenger has threatened the president's ability to win the support of the…

So Batman is gay. Well, maybe.

Ted Cruz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas, has a new ad out highlighting the former state solicitor general as a "fighter." The ad focuses on Cruz's Cuban immigrant family. "Tortured and imprisoned by a Cuban dictator, Ted Cruz's father fought back, escaping to America," the voiceover…

Joe Biden, speaking earlier today in New Hampshire:

Could we be slipping into another one of those summers of Europe riding down the rails to catastrophe? A disaster that all can see coming but that none seems to have the tools or the will to prevent.

“We’ve had some small contributions, but the largest was, I think, maybe a hundred dollars,” says presidential candidate John Wolfe Jr., speaking to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I’m basically paying for this myself, dipping into my retirement account.”

My goodness. This story is just plain nuts:

In his latest fundraising pitch, President Barack Obama tries to piggy back on the legacy of former President Bill Clinton. "When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, I had just started a job registering voters in Chicago," Obama writes in an email to supporters. "I remember watching his…

The Hill reports that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has signed a $20 million deal with a public relations firm to produce a multimedia ad campaign promoting Obamacare this election season:

I really enjoyed the boss's argument for dumping Joe Biden from the ticket in favor of Hillary Clinton:

A new ad from Crossroads GPS, titled "Basketball," depicts a mom watching her young children play basketball--then watching them years later, as adults, still living at home and without jobs. "Obama added almost $16,000 in debt for every American," the voiceover says. "How will my kids pay that off…

For some reason, the ABC News/Washington Post poll really gets the tongues wagging. I'm not exactly sure why; as polls go, it is one of my least favorite, in part because it often has a ridiculous tilt toward the Democrats. I suppose because it is the Post poll, and that's the newspaper of record…

In the Daily Beast, Michael Medved encourages Mitt Romney’s campaign to take steps to avoid the “catastrophe” that would result from “the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.”  He adds, “Mr. Obama could prevail by…

Last Wednesday, Jay Cost was on Tom Ashbrook's NPR show On Point to discuss his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic. Here is the link to the audio, which lasts about 45 minutes.

Do you stand with Cory?

Politicians are notoriously evasive when asked to offer detailed plans of what they would do if elected. But Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who is challenging Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election, goes far beyond typical shiftiness in this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article…

Hillary Clinton's favorability with the American people remains near an all-time high, according to Gallup. Sixty-six percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Secretary of State, while only 23 percent view Clinton unfavorably, tied for a record low.

Way back in May of 2009, when President Obama was still selling himself to the nation as a post-partisan healer-in-chief, he was awarded an honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. The decision by the most famous Catholic university in America to honor…

Jay Cost, writing in the New York Post: 

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz last December called for promoting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the Saudi kingdom, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, into a unified body, which has been described as a “super-state.” The Saudis and the…

In the overall national poll, Obama was favored over Romney by double-digits on three fronts: handling living standards for the poor, the concentration of wealth and the cost of a college education. Romney was favored over Obama by double-digits on three fronts: dealing with the deficit and debt,…

Earlier this month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein made quite a splash with a lengthy piece that, when boiled down to essentials, blamed the Republican party for what’s gone wrong in Washington, D.C. This weekend, they were back with a list of reforms to fix the problem.

Reporting from Carrollton, Arkansas, the Washington Post finds some locals still upset with actions of a "Mormon militia" over 150 years ago. The Post reports:

The Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Texas is now within nine points, according to a new poll. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll shows Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst with 40 percent, while his challenger, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, is at 31 percent. Former Dallas mayor…

The other day, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the recall gubernatorial election.

The New York Times gushingly describes how President Obama’s unique background — he’s “a man from many worlds,” “a transcender of tribes,” and, yes, “a former constitutional law professor” — has allowed him to unearth a creative “middle way” on the question of redefining marriage.  That “middle…

Juba, South Sudan

The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies…

Richard Lugar’s long career in the U.S. Senate came to an end last Tuesday night in a primary election. Six years ago, running for a sixth term, he not only faced no opposition within his own party, he ran essentially unopposed in the general election. So this is a bad, undistinguished, and forlorn…

In the early 1980s, Midge Decter famously explained to an acquaintance surprised by her unapologetic embrace of American conservatism, “There comes a time to join the side you’re on.” One could say that last week President Obama followed—as so many of us have!—in Midge’s footsteps. He joined the…

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman. And to some extent he has—explaining…

The Obama-Biden campaign made quite a splash recently when it released a new web ad called “The Life of Julia.” This unusual piece of campaign propaganda tracks the life of a fictional character named Julia and enumerates the benefits she would receive from the government at successive ages should…

Whit Stillman did not get the memo. 

It’s always a little discomfiting to hold a minority opinion of a universally admired cultural artifact. The very possibility of such discomfiture is part of the process whereby a cultural artifact becomes universally admired. A groundswell begins and people eager to be early adopters of the…

On the first day of his trial, Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist who murdered 77 people last July in Norway, entered an Oslo courtroom and offered a raised fist to the gallery. The gesture was variously reported as a Knights Templar military salutation, a variant of the Nazi Sieg Heil, and a…

We are entering the age of the psychopundit (we can thank the science writer Will Saletan for this excellent word). Thomas Edsall, for example, is a veteran political reporter widely admired by people who admire political reporters. He has become very excited by social science, as so many widely…

Much of the loyal opposition’s response to President Obama’s new position in favor of gay marriage centered on the back-and-forth in which he has indulged over the years getting to it. He was for it; he was against it; now he’s for it again (not that he apparently proposes to do anything to advance…

Many of the Founders revered their Puritan ancestors, who had braved the deadly Atlantic, endured bitter winters, and fended off Indian attacks and starvation to establish a new society in New England, free from the oppression of the British crown. When it came time to fight the slide toward…

On July 24, 2008, candidate Barack Obama toured Europe and drew 200,000 spectators to a rally in Berlin. On May 5, 2012, President Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign—which he unofficially launched over a year ago—but couldn’t fill a 19,000-seat basketball arena in Columbus,…

A philo-Semite is an anti-Semite who happens to like Jews. 

Bill Kristol, with Karl Rove, Joe Trippi, and Evan Bayh, earlier this morning on the Fox News Sunday Internet-only after show, Panel Plus: 

Florida senator Marco Rubio slammed President Barack Obama in a South Carolina speech delivered last night to a large gathering of Republicans. 

The Milwakuee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin, has endorsed Republican governor Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election:

Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon has won the endorsement of the Connecticut Republican party in the race for the U.S. Senate. The New Haven Register reports:

This story got me thinking about the GOP's complicated relationship with the big banks:

The tide sweeping from Greece across Europe and into the United States is washing away support for austerity, in some cases reinforcing opposition to it, largely from the left. President Obama is delighted at this support for his refusal to cut spending in the face of mounting deficits, and the…

Behind the scenes at MSNBC.

St. Cloud, Minn.

Milwaukee news radio station WTMJ reports:

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was criticized by a fellow Democrat over her inability to explain the recent controversy over Warren's disputed Native American heritage.

St. Cloud, Minn.

President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, admitted at a Harvard Kennedy School of Government event in Massachusetts that "The economy, you know, will continue to be a challenge."

In a report called, "Messina dismisses doubts about Obama chances of winning North Carolina," the Hill has this to say about Obama campaign manager Jim Messina: 

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics, takes to Facebook today to review the Avengers, a movie about a bunch of superheroes banding together to save the world, “which focuses on a new, limitless clean energy source called ‘The Tesseract,’” according to Chu.

NBC's Carrie Dann reports another instance of buffoonish foot-in-mouth behavior by Vice President Joe Biden:

St. Cloud, Minn.

Last Friday, a Lebanese military tribunal met for the fifth time in the trial of Sheikh Hassan Mchaymech, the Hezbollah dissident. The Shia cleric Mchaymech was first kidnapped in the summer of 2010 by Syrian security forces as he tried to cross the Lebanon-Syria border on his way to make a…

The star of the hit TV show Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker, is hosting an Obama fundraiser, an email claiming to be from Parker announced. The subject line is, "I'm hosting." The email was sent by the Obama campaign. Here's the email:

Since Obama’s flip flop on gay marriage earlier this month (he supported it in 1996, before opposing it for 8 years starting in 2004), there has been a lot of talk about whether he will lose support with African Americans in the fall. African American voters, after all, are both a core Democratic…

St. Cloud, Minn.

A new ad from Crossroads GPS is targeting Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey for his support for the Wall Street bailout of 2008. "Bob Kerrey supported the Wall Street bailout while serving on the board of a company that tried to exploit it," the voiceover reads. Watch the ad below:

That's the subject of Mitt Romney's latest ad, wherein he promises on his first day to approve Keystone and begin the process of cutting taxes and repealing Obamacare: 

The Arkansas Democratic party may decide not to award delegates to an opponent of Barack Obama in the state's primary next Tuesday, according to reports. The opponent, John Wolfe, Jr., says if he's denied rightfully won delegates, the party would be effectively disenfranchising those who chose him…

After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. "[D]elegates Wolfe…

One big I.P.O.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has been out on the campaign trail in Ohio, visited Hogfather's Old Fashioned BBQ in Washington, Pennsylvania on his way to the Pittsburgh airport.

Earlier today, Vice President Joe Biden said of auto workers who lost pensions and benefits, "Some of them got hurt. The vast majority, because of the federal pension board they have out there to make up differences when companies go under like this. Most did fine." The Romney campaign has…

Seems that Jimmy Kimmel was lined up to tell a real nifty one that would have left 'em rolling in the aisles at the recent White House Correspondents bash. But he held back after being advised that it was a little too much. Even for that crowd.

On Tuesday night, Nebraska state senator Deb Fischer unexpectedly won the Republican primary over a better-funded establishment favorite, attorney general Jon Bruning. Folks curious to know just who Fischer is might want to watch a few her debates with her Republican primary opponents—many are…

A newly released Fox News poll includes 42 percent Democrats and only 34 percent Republicans — an 8-point Democratic edge — and shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by 7 points (46 to 39 percent).  Among independents, however, the poll shows Romney leading by 5 points (34 to 29 percent).

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren contributed a number of recipes to "Pow Wow Chow," a cookbook edited by Warren's cousin:

Joe Biden, speaking in Ohio today, said that he is "tired of being called a 'Middle Class Joe.'"

Speaking in Ohio, Vice President Joe Biden admitted that auto workers lost jobs because of actions taken by the Obama administration:

Vice President Joe Biden didn't seem too worried about the auto workers who lost pensions and benefits because of the restructuring that the auto bailout required:

That’s what Clive Crook thinks, anyway. In a measured appraisal of the election, he writes:

Republican Senate candidate Denny Rehberg of Montana has a new television spot out taking on his opponent, first-term Democrat Jon Tester, for bringing back home "Washington bologna."

While the debate continues over how to deal with an Iran that has nuclear ambitions, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has other things on his mind. "I would like to be next to our young athletes at the 2012 Olympics but the host has a problem with this," Ahmadinejad said of 2012 Olympics in…

The Obama administration announced today plans for lease sales for "available all unleased areas in the Central Gulf of Mexico Planning Area, offshore Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including 7,276 blocks on about 38.6 million acres," according to a Department of Interior press release.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

You may have heard a bit about the recent controversy over the Eisenhower Memorial here in Washington, D.C. The design by Frank Gehry centers on a minuscule statue of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a boy in a park surrounded by 80-foot-tall images of a stark Kansas countryside. But you might wonder, why…

In this week's New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin criticizes the Supreme Court's handling of Citizens United v. FEC, which affirmed a corporation's First Amendment right to spend money on independent speech on political issues, even when that speech criticizes candidates for office.

Steve Hayes, with Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News: 

Republican Tom Cotton, a candidate for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, has received the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper. From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

If you ever find yourself engaged in a debate over why our national debt — now $15.7 trillion —has risen $5.9 trillion over the past four years and $15.4 trillion over the past fifty years, NPR has released a useful chart (based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and…

In the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race, Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over the jobs numbers under Governor Scott Walker's administration. Republicans have been touting the fact that the unemployment rate has declined from 7.7 percent to 6.8 percent since Governor Scott Walker took…

Life imitates The Simpsons.

From the there's an app for everything department, here's one for managing life's little ordeals division:

Senate Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected President Obama's proposed budget this afternoon. The final vote tally was 99-0.

According to Politico, “Obama’s exasperation with modern journalism, like his contempt for modern politics, is rooted in his disappointment with the current state of its practitioners…”

Mitt Romney has endorsed Florida congressman Connie Mack for Senate, according to a campaign statement.

The United Auto Workers union is sending out a letter from its legislative director, Josh Nassar, urging senators to vote against several budgets pending in the Senate. One of the budgets UAW apparently opposes is President Obama's own budget. 

State Department officials have announced that Hillary Clinton is moving toward taking the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The secretary of state has already delayed her decision to review the MEK's status for almost two years, even though congressional…

Adam Kredo reports: 

In the past week, three different pollsters have polled the Wisconsin recall race, and all three came up with virtually identical results. Last week, a Rasmussen poll showed Governor Scott Walker leading Democrat Tom Barrett 50 percent to 45 percent. Yesterday, the Democratic firm Public Policy…

House of Representatives lawmakers are set to debate an annual bill that authorizes military programs later this week, and a handful of Democrats have set their sights on killing provisions that would support efforts to build missile defenses by 2015 to protect America’s East Coast from future…

Jay Cost talks about his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, with Fox News:

The chairman of First Solar, a company that's been in the recipient of the Department of Energy money, admitted this morning at a House hearing that his company has more jobs overseas than in America:

The Drudge headline from Sunday night was "Crushing Defeat," which it certainly was for the Christian Democrats in North Rhine-Westphalia's state election. In the span of two years, the CDU plummeted from 34.6 percent of the vote to 26.3 percent within the state. The CDU's gubernatorial candidate…

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,  So frolic, so gay.... —Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-1632), "The Merry Month of May." The poet Thomas Dekker is surely set to become a Tea Party favorite, anticipating as he did the merry and gay (in the old-fashioned sense) month of May 2012: Merry and gay…

A host of liars, miscreants, and extreme leftists – and those were just the serious candidates! – squared off yesterday in the Portland, Oregon, mayoral election. In total, 23 candidates were on the ballot to see who would run the so-called “Rose City” (or, more appropriately, “Insufferable…

Former state solicitor general Ted Cruz is the only one of four Republican candidates for U.S. Senate in Texas to have signed the Repeal Obamacare pledge. The pledge, sponsored by Independent Women's Voice, states that the signee will vote for "all bills" that seek to repeal Obamacare.

For the New Jersey Press Association Legislative Correspondents Club Show, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Newark mayor Cory Booker joined together to parody Seinfeld:

The Republican Senate Budget Committee will release this new chart later today, showing that the "U.S. Spends More Per Person Than Portugal, Italy, Greece, Or Spain."

A notional woman named “Julia” recently made her debut on the Obama campaign’s website. Julia, it seems, needs help at every stage in her life, and if the president has his way, the government will be there to assist her in, among other things, getting a college education, finding a job, securing…

A newly released PPP/Daily Kos poll shows President Obama and Mitt Romney locked in essentially a dead-heat in Wisconsin — where Obama beat John McCain by 14 percentage points in 2008. The poll (which was taken shortly after Obama came out in favor of redefining marriage) shows Obama with 47…

Nebraska state senator Deb Fischer won a come-from-behind victory over her opponents in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, the Associated Press reports:

Chris Matthews bombs: "Who is Gary Powers? Who is Gary Powers?"

The federal prison inmate who got 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote in West Virginia last week against President Obama tells CNN that this election is about the economy:

The Washington Post reports on a new study by Bloomberg Government, which shows that the repeal of Obamacare would cost health insurance companies more than $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — over the remainder of this decade alone.  Why?  Because Obamacare would transfer colossal sums of money…

The latest poll by Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling shows Wisconsin governor Scott Walker leading Democratic challenger Tom Barrett 50% to 45% in the state's gubernatorial recall race. Those are the exact same numbers PPP found prior to the Democratic primary and the exact same results Rasmussen…

An interesting event in Washington next week hosted by e21:

According to just released disclosure forms, President Barack Obama has between $500,000-1,000,000 in assets in a JP Morgan Chase account. The full title of the account, as it's written on the disclosures, is "JPMorgan Chase Private Client Asset Mgmt Checking Account." It is a jointly held account,…

Forced by the Obama administration to choose between violating its faith and morals by providing abortion pills and contraception to students under its health plan or dropping health insurance altogether, Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio has chosen the latter. Via Hot Air, Steven Ertelt…

Politico has unearthed a 1997 article from the Fordham University law review referring to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as a Harvard law school's "first woman of color." Maggie Haberman reports:

Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has just released his first television ad of the cycle. At the center of the ad is a quotation from CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl, who reports on Brown's perceived independence in his two years in the Senate. "He's turned out to be unpredictably…

A new poll of Arkansas Democrats shows Barack Obama receiving support from only 45 percent of Democratic primary voters in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District, while 38 percent support his underfunded and relatively unknown primary challenger, Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe, Jr. Seventeen percent…

Republican House candidate Tom Cotton has signed a pledge to repeal Obamacare--but his primary opponent, Beth Anne Rankin, has not.

President George W. Bush was back in Washington today, to mark the opening at his Bush Institute in Dallas of the “Freedom Collection.”

Barack Obama was asked to grade his performance on the View this morning, but shied away from giving himself a letter grade. "You know, I won't give us a letter grade," Obama said. "I think it's still incomplete."

Last Friday, Gallup released a poll showing the country almost evenly divided on Obama's gay marriage endorsement, but 26% of Americans said Obama's move made them more likely to vote against him while 13% said it made them more likely to vote for him. By a 12-point margin, independents said they…

Texas Senate candidate David Dewhurst and his allies seem to be getting worried. Dewhurst, the Texas lieutenant governor who was once ahead by 30 points, now leads his toughest challenger, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, by closer to 10 points just two weeks away from the May 29 primary.…

The Boston Globe issued this lengthy correction to an article the newspaper ran on May 1, which purported to have a document proving Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren was part Cherokee, as she has claimed. "A record unearthed Monday shows that US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a…

The New York Times's recently released poll finds that President Obama's gay marriage stance is not going over well with voters.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) has been considered America’s fastest growing sport, quickly becoming a national phenomenon. But a new economic study shows even NASCAR’s powerful engines haven’t been able to keep up with the Obama-era economy.

After the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sparked national outrage by telling Boeing that it could not open a factory in a right-to-work state, there's little evidence that the board has been chastened. The latest news is that a recent decision to allow unions to hold "quickie" elections to…

Americans Elect, the independent organization seeking a credible third-party presidential candidate in 2012, has decided to call it quits, according to a statement from the group's CEO, Khalil Byrd.

The latest Mitt Romney web ad looks at "a few of the 23 million Americans ... [who]  are out of work, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work. These are the stories behind the statistics. These are a few of the twenty-three million."

When President Obama came out last week in favor of redefining marriage, he couched his opinion in the context of federalism, saying, “I think it is a mistake to — try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue.” During that same interview, however, he declared that a…

Could Nebraska be the next state to select a conservative underdog in a Senate primary? Sixty-one year old Deb Fischer, a Nebraska state senator, had been a long-shot candidate for the GOP nomination for Senate against the better funded state attorney general, Jon Bruning, and the more well known…

Nearly half of all Americans (46 percent) now “strongly” favor the repeal of Obamacare, while barely a quarter (26 percent) “strongly” oppose it — according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters.  Among independents, the split is even greater — 46 percent now “strongly” favor repeal, while…

Texas governor Rick Perry, a former Republican presidential candidate, has endorsed former Vets for Freedom director Pete Hegseth for Senate in Minnesota.

Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, a rising Democratic star who has generated some 2016 presidential buzz, published a photo on his Twitter feed this afternoon of New Mexico's Republican governor Susana Martinez, along with a delegation of visitors from the southwestern state. O'Malley's message,…

A Wisconsin Democratic official vents to Greg Sargent:

Jennifer C. Braceras notes in the Boston Herald that "Liz Warren has been unable to put to rest the flap over her claimed Native American ancestry. That’s because the controversy raises legitimate questions about the integrity of this Senate candidate and Harvard Law prof, who once listed herself…

What do Maurice Sendak, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Commentary magazine have in common?

Mia Love, the 36-year-old mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah and Republican candidate for Congress in the state’s newly created Fourth District, is something of a political anomaly. A conservative and a Mormon, Love would be the first black female Republican in Congress ever.

David Feith, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

President Obama is attending a fundraiser today in New York City that will be hosted by Hamilton E. James, the chief operating officer and president of Blackstone. The financial firm Blackstone is "one of the world's largest private equity fund businesses," according to its website.

A new poll released Sunday shows Tom Cotton opening up a large lead over Beth Anne Rankin in the Republican primary race for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District. The Talk Business-Hendrix College poll shows Cotton, an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, with 51 percent support, 18 points ahead…

This business with Greece goes on and on, and one begins to think, automatically, of Sisyphus and his rock. Only in this case, you start pulling for the rock.

Bloomberg reports: 

Government, and the party of government, have been through something of a rough patch lately. First, there was the GSA’s Las Vegas blowout. Then, the Secret Service debaucheries. And, two weeks ago, the video of an Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrat preening about his enforcement strategy…

Annapolis

President Obama is breaking new ground in his campaign for reelection. He is going where incumbent presidents have never gone before. He is doing things for which President George W. Bush would have been pilloried. And Obama is doing all this in plain view.

Gullible voters are supposed to get all wound up about the GOP “war on women,” but it seems to us that the Democratic stance that women are helpless creatures who must be coddled by an all-consuming government is far more pernicious. If you think that’s an unfair characterization of Democrats, we…

No whining. No nagging. No teeth-gnashing. These are our springtime resolutions here at The Weekly Standard, at the beginning of the six-month general election campaign to select the next president of the United States.

Happily, poet Molly Peacock possesses formidable biographical skills, for they are essential to the task of taking on her subject, the life and art of  Mary Granville Pendarves Delany. But Peacock also brings a poet’s sensibility to The Paper Garden, which enhances its vivid appeal. With a panoply…

The Five-Year Engagement is the latest presentation from the orbit of Judd Apatow, the comedy mastermind whose particular genius is to stuff his movies to the gills with funny people doing funny things. This may seem like an obvious thing to do, but most movie stars don’t like being upstaged by…

In June 2010, the nation’s capital was atwitter with stories of the Washington Nationals rookie Stephen Strasburg, a starting pitcher who threw 100 miles per hour with a wicked changeup. On days when he pitched, attendance doubled; television sports shows asked their panelists to weigh in on…

Is Barack Obama a warrior president? Not in the British tradition, of course, which gave us Winston Churchill, with his crazy cavalry charge against Sudanese spears, or the more cerebral Harold Macmillan, shot to pieces in World War I, lying in the blood and the mud reading Aeschylus. Obama is a…

Chantilly, Va.

I was never in any danger of succumbing to golf. As a teenager, I worked three summers looping at a local country club and spent a lot of time around the game. I understood its appeal: the satisfaction of precise physical motion, the thrill of hunting for new and better equipment, the quiet and…

Even before the celebrations a year ago had ended, terrorism experts were debating the strategic significance of Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs. Some argued that bin Laden would prove irreplaceable to al Qaeda; others claimed he had been in hiding so long he was…

Study the history of philanthropy in America and you quickly discover that books you would assume exist don’t. Want a history of the Ford Foundation? There isn’t one, although there are histories of some Ford programs and of Henry Ford’s personal giving. Nor are there histories of the MacArthur…

Shortly after Mitt Romney won the Wisconsin primary and, in effect, the Republican nomination, I asked a prominent Republican strategist whom he thought Romney would choose as his running mate. He answered without hesitation.

The German assault against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was the largest military undertaking in history. Adolf Hitler expected the Ostheer, the German Army of the east—organized into three army groups consisting of 136 divisions, the bulk of Germany’s panzer (armor) units and air forces,…

This might have been a funny book if it hadn’t tried so hard to be serious. It might have been a serious book if it hadn’t strained so hard to be funny. It might have been witty, it might have been clever, it might have been profound—it might even have been good. If it weren’t so bad.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed on Friday that al Qaeda has a "presence in Syria."

James Pethokoukis recommends that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney use the following response to the news that JP Morgan lost $2 billion in risky trading:

Businessman Frank Vandersloot, the CEO of Melaleuca, has been targeted by the Obama campaign after donating money to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, 'Keeping GOP Honest,' took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private…

Perhaps the best way to understand China’s trade policy is to consult professional China watchers who always accuse mere economists of ignoring “context.” The Chinese regime is in transition to a new generation of leaders; a scandal has led to the purging of Bo Xilai and the arrest of his wife in…

Tamron Hall is not happy to hear media criticism from Tim Carney.

Washington Post White House reporter Amy Gardner tweeted that the "WH is serving us margaritas at the press file center in Reno."

Gallup took a poll of adults regarding Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, and the topline number seems* to look good for the president: 51% approve of Obama's support of same-sex marriage, while 45% disapprove. But when you take a look at how it might move votes, it seems to be a losing issue for…

While most of the informed Western public is aghast at the economic and political chaos that appears to be overtaking the government in Athens, southeast Europe has seen aggravated Islamist turmoil in the Balkan Muslim-majority lands and minority communities on and near Greece’s borders.

"[T]he president played basketball this morning with staff members and a few special guests, including [actors] George Clooney and Tobey Maguire," the pool report read this morning. Finally, a couple hours and a state later, a reporter asked the president the question on the minds of most…

Now that President Obama's reelection team wants to include coal on the agenda, it's worth remembering that Obama himself warned in 2008 that his policies would bankrupt anyone who started a coal power plant. Here he is in 2008, speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle:

After a disappointing showing in West Virginia, where President Obama received only 59 percent of the vote against a prison inmate in the Democratic primary, the president's reelection team decided to highlight the importance of coal (or clean coal, to be exact) on its website. (West Virginia is a…

It seems there's lots of enthusiasm for Keith Judd, the prison inmate who secured over 40 percent of the vote against Barack Obama in Tuesday's West Virginia Democratic primary. Consider these pins for sale on eBay:

The Washington Post reports that Nancy Keenan, the head of the group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League, is stepping down:

Matt Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon: 

Mitt Romney has his biggest lead yet over Obama in Rasmussen's tracking poll: 

The Democrats don't have a partisanship problem ... not like the Republicans do, according to the New York Times's Andrew Rosenthal who disagrees with Richard Lugar's assessment that, “Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country,”

Now that President Obama has announced that, having been for gay marriage (in 1996) before he was against it (in 2004 and 2008), he’s now for it again (in 2012), the Wall Street Journal editorial board comes perilously close to suggesting that Mitt Romney should change his position on the issue. …

“Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape” is at the National Gallery of Art through August 12. The conceit of the exhibit is that Miró was no sequestered surrealist but an artist readily engaged with politics and society—“an artist of his times,” as a wall caption puts it. Visitors reading that caption…

Regarding Dick Lugar’s loss to Richard Murdock, the Old Gray Lady wants you to know one thing: He went down because he was just too gosh-darned moderate and sensible for those insane Tea Party Republicans in Indiana and the dastardly outside groups that targeted him:

The Washington Post's Mitt Romney was a teenage bully story has caused a lot of media thumbsucking today. However, questions about the story itself keep emerging. The Post acknowledges that one of the major sources for the story was an Obama campaign volunteer in 2008. Beyond that, the paper's been…

President Obama, speaking earlier today at a campaign event in Seattle, Washington:

Bloomberg reports that Biden went to Obama yesterday morning to apologize for painting him into a corner on gay marriage:

Cracks in the Washington Post Romney/bullying story.

Benny Morris, writing for Tablet: 

In an effort to convince the Democratic party to use “more inclusive language” on the issue of abortion, Democrats for Life executive director Kristen Day is “urg[ing] all Democrats, including those who would come back to the Democratic Party if it changes its abortion stance, to sign the online…

The Hill reports:

CNNMoney has uncovered a shocking story: Mitt Romney will spend more on national defense than Barack Obama would! 

The Los Angeles Times reports that, “A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls' soccer team in October 2010.” This grim news comes on the heels of a 2010 study, which found that more than…

Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, the Democrat running against Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election, has relentlessly attacked Walker's budget cuts. But Barrett has refused to say what he would have done differently to balance the budget or even how much he would have cut from education in…

Matt Negrin of ABC reports that "A new ad by Obama tells the story of Brian Slagle, an autoworker in Ohio who says he was laid off and 'scared to death' until the president swooped in to save the industry."

Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas looks to be the likely (and deserving) winner in his race for the Republican nomination in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District. Having led the GOP field in fundraising, Cotton, an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, landed a big endorsement today that should…

We are the ones ... who are waiting tables and living in our parents' basements. According to Gallup:

Former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has endorsed Ted Cruz in the Texas GOP Senate primary. Cruz, the former solicitor general, is facing lieutenant governor David Dewhurst in the May 29 election. From the Cruz campaign's press release:

Maarab, Lebanon

The Obama administration’s recent focus on finding a compromise to allow the Iranian regime to maintain some enrichment capabilities “for peaceful purposes” distracts from the underlying nuclear threat at hand. Any outcome short of the verifiable dismantling and end of the Iranian nuclear program…

President Obama made what's being heralded as a big announcement on same sex marriage. "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," Obama told ABC News in an interview broadcast this morning.…

Rasmussen polls the Wisconsin recall:

A mysterious mailer appeared in our mail boxes this week. It reads, "President Robert Mugabe and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art and Culture invite you to the Premiere of The Dictator." The event's location? The "Presidential Residence" in Harare, Zimbabwe:

The president has already admitted Biden 'got out a little bit over his skis,' on the issue. But Politico reports that the White House is fuming that Biden's errant remarks in support of gay marriage forced the president's hand. Not only that, Biden's getting the credit for the president's change…

Just two days before Sunday’s presidential elections, news broke that French judicial authorities are contemplating bringing rape charges against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in connection with the so-called Carlton Affair. Strauss-Kahn has hitherto “merely” been under investigation…

Keith Judd, the federal inmate who won over 40 percent of the Democratic primary vote in West Virginia on Tuesday, just might be gaining momentum! (President Obama carried the state with 59 percent of the vote.)

Vice President Joe Biden is at least part of the reason President Barack Obama came out in favor of same sex marriage yesterday, the president admitted in the interview on the issue with ABC's Robin Roberts:

This morning on ABC, President Obama said that he thinks same sex marriage should be allowed. "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," the president said.

It is easy to see why double agents are the source of inspiration for many spy novels and movies. The intrigue involved, including a potentially violent end to their spy games, gives writers low-hanging fruit to pluck. But art frequently mirrors real life when it comes to double agents. Especially…

No Labels--the 501(c)(4) organization with the motto (reminiscent of the Obama 2012 slogan), "Not Left. Not Right. Forward."--is lamenting the the defeat of Dick Lugar in yesterday's Indiana Republican primary. From a fundraising email from co-chairs Nancy Jacobson and Mark McKinnon:

As pundits and analysts debate the impact of Barack Obama's support for gay marriage on the 2012 election, Matthew Dowd, a top strategist of the 2004 Bush campaign, writes at the Huffington Post that "marriage initiatives in 2004 on the ballot in 11 states had no discernable effect on turnout among…

President Obama was never likely going to win in North Carolina without a big win nationally. Yet his campaign insisted on pretending so, going so far as to locate the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.  Now, on the heels of North Carolinians having handed a resounding victory to…

The debate over same sex “marriage” has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans. Then there is Barack Obama.

Maggie Gallagher, the co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, sends out a statement in response to Obama's announcement that he supports gay marriage:

In 1996, Barack Obama supported gay marriage. In 2004, while running for Senate in Illinois, Obama was against it, he said, because of his religious faith. But in his big interview today, President Obama cited the teachings of Jesus Christ as a reason for his decision to support gay marriage:

John Wolfe Jr., Barack Obama’s Democratic challenger in the upcoming Arkansas and Texas primaries, said he is for civil unions for gay couples but refused to support gay marriage.

Capital New York quotes Jon Cooper, a gay Obama bundler, on the president's decision to renounce his opposition to gay marriage:

An interesting thing happened in the Wisconsin recall primary yesterday: Governor Scott Walker received more votes than Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk combined, the two leading Democrats fighting to challeng him on June 5. Walker won the votes of 626,538 Wisconsinites, despite the fact that he had…

Here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD we are prostrate with admiration! President Obama's sudden reversal of opinion on gay marriage was, by any measure, an incredibly gutsy thing to do.

Rick Klein of ABC News reports:

Keith Judd, a federal inmate incarcerated in Texas, garnered 40 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary in West Virginia yesterday. The good showing by the convict is a bit of an embarrassment for Barack Obama, but the president's reelection campaign appears to be taking advantage of the…

In the wake of Keith Judd's inspiring showing in the West Virginia Democratic primary, one wonders if there's another state where Democrats could be encouraged to exercise their sovereign right of choice to refuse to rubber stamp the renomination by their party of President Obama.

Republican congressman Denny Rehberg of Montana has released his first television ad in his race against incumbent Democratic senator Jon Tester. The ad contrasts Tester votes in the Senate for "higher taxes," to "raise his own pay," and for "bonuses for Wall Street executives" with Rehberg's House…

Since I wrote about Naomi Schaefer Riley being fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, the story has moved along somewhat.

At the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza and Aaron Blake explain why Dick Lugar lost yesterday's Republican primary in Indiana:

On June 19, 1981 a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66. “I've always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s better to go too soon than to stay too long. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted to have an opportunity to spend…

Richard Mourdock’s big primary victory over incumbent senator Dick Lugar in Indiana suggests that the insurgent Tea Party conservatism of 2009-2010 is alive and well in the 2012 Republican party. (On the other hand, Keith Judd’s showing against President Obama in Tuesday’s West Virginia Democratic…

Tom Cotton, a Republican candidate for House of Representatives in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, is debuting a new ad that's running on television across the district. The ad will also run in Shreveport, Louisiana television markets, which reach several southern Arkansas counties. Watch…

The U.S. is divided on gay marriage, as on many issues. But the gulf of the cultural divide on this particular issue is striking.

Yesterday’s overwhelming approval of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions by the voters of North Carolina underlines the growing likelihood that the issue will be a major factor in the 2012 presidential election. Consider the following circumstances:

President Barack Obama has won the Democratic party primary in West Virginia--but it was closer than expected. The president's only opponent in the race, Keith Judd, is an inmate at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas. Obama received 59.4 percent of the Democratic primary vote,…

Like many others, I was quite struck by the images of a partially empty stadium for President Obama’s campaign kickoff rally in Columbus. Media reports put the crowd at roughly 75 percent capacity, with the “nosebleed” sections largely unfilled.

With 100 out of 100 counties reporting, North Carolina's voters have approved a constitutional amendment stating that "marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State." Sixty-one percent of voters cast ballots in favor of the…

Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, the Democrat who lost Wisconsin's 2010 gubernatorial election to Scott Walker by 5.7 points, will get another shot at Walker in the June 5 recall election. With 40% of precincts reporting, the AP has called the Democratic primary for Barrett, as he leads union-backed…

The Washington Post reports:

NBC reports: 

Bad Rachel: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Taliban."

Remembering Friedrich Hayek, whose birthday is today. He was a philosopher and economist and wrote many wise things, including this:

The RealClearPolitics average of national polls now shows Barack Obama and Mitt Romney tied (Obama: 46.2%, Romney 46.0%)--the best Romney has done in the RCP average of polls since October 12.

President Barack Obama might not be the only Democratic presidential candidate to receive a national party delegate in West Virginia. Keith Judd might receive one, also. But, in order for him to be represented at the Democratic National Committee convention in North Carolina, he must win at least…

A new poll from Rasmussen shows a dead heat in the Massachusetts Senate race between incumbent Republican Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. Both candidates are tied at 45 percent. Here's more from Rasmussen:

Late last night, in a shameful example of editorial cowardice, the Chronicle of Higher Education fired Naomi Schaefer Riley. Naomi is a good friend of mine, a sometimes contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and a fine writer. And the story of what happened to her is highly instructive.

President Obama's position on same sex marriage might be "evolving," as he's admitted himself, but he wasn't always so unclear about where he stood. Consider this interview from 2004: 

White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked aboard Air Force One about President Obama's position on same sex marriage. He punted. Again. From today's pool report:

Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, releases his new book The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise today. As you may have guessed from the title, the book is sort of the inverse version of The Road to Serfdom. Given all that is going on…

Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett is the heavy-favorite in today's Democratic gubernatorial recall primary, but his primary victory came at a cost. would like to be

Joe Biden, speaking to a Jewish group earlier today, blamed America for being the "problem" regarding Iran:

A new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University shows New Jersey governor Chris Christie at a record-high 56 percent approval within the state. NJ.com reports:

Warren Buffett expressed support for the Keystone Pipeline on Fox News last night. "I'm not an expert, but it certainly seems like it makes sense to me,” said Buffett. He added: "There are an awful lot of pipelines running in the United States and net, they've certainly been a huge plus for the…

A final poll from PPP shows that a referendum supporting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in North Carolina is on its way to a comfortable win today. According to the poll, 55 percent of voters support the amendment, and 39 percent oppose it. Here's more from the…

How could Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, Harvard law professor, and (as we all know) 1/32 Native American, miss out on Harvard University's 17th annual Powwow? The Boston Herald reports:

We've been skeptical of the arguments by some of our brethren on the right that Barack Obama is a quasi-socialist or a crypto-socialist ... or just a plain old socialist. But now the New York Times is weighing in, in favor of the proposition.

Today in Washington, Argentine vice president Amado Boudou will be addressing a Council of the Americas conference on the global economic recovery. I have no idea what Boudou will say in his remarks, and I have no idea how the attendees will receive it. But I do know this: Having a senior member of…

At RealClearPolitics, Sean Trende deconstructs the faux determinism of those political scientists and journalists who would be pundits, and who in this case claim to know that Mitt Romney's electoral path to victory is necessarily narrow. Here's the core of Trende's argument (but do read the whole…

In Carmel, Indiana over the weekend, a supporter of congressional candidate Susan Brooks was caught on video tape stealing campaign signs of opponent David McIntosh:

One aspect of President Obama's philosophically revealing — and mock-worthy — "Julia" web ad doesn't seem to have garnered as much attention as one might have expected. Just as Julia's life of government dependency isn't likely to inspire a new set of books along the lines of the celebration of…

On Friday, the boss took on Democratic congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts at a debate sponsored by the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C. Watch here: 

A younger, hipper 60 Minutes.

Which group of voters’ support for (or opposition to) Mitt Romney will hinge the most on his vice presidential choice?  According to a newly released Politico-George Washington University poll, the answer is:  Republicans under the age of 45.   

A new ad from Montana senator Jon Tester's reelection campaign features supporters touting his record on ethics. Among the testimonials is one from former congressman Pat Williams. "He's cracked down on lobbyists, refused their trips" Williams says. Watch the ad below:

New Jersey Senate candidate Joe Kyrillos, a Republican, is calling on Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, to recuse himself from congressional hearings on MF Global, the financial firm led by Jon Corzine that went under last year.

President Obama called French president Nicolas Sarkozy to say thanks and good bye, the White House press secretary announced. 

This month, the Los Angeles city council is expected to ban single-use plastic bags. “[T]he ban is an attempt by the city to reduce litter,” says the Los Angeles Daily News. But it is likely to reduce something else: jobs.

The chairman of the Massachusetts Republican party, Bob Maginn, knocked Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for her claim that she has Native American heritage. Maginn argued that Warren's registration as a minority professor at Harvard Law could constitute "academic fraud" and urged the…

A joint statement from the defending defense group at the American Enterprise Institute, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Heritage Foundation:

It seems the Obama re-election effort, which is now officially underway, will not be run out of Washington. The big decisions will, of course, be made in the White House where, Mark Halperin writes: 

From Mark Halperin of Time: 

Hillary Clinton is in Calcutta, India, where she told an audience that "she want[s] to see a female US president during her lifetime -- but insisted she was ready to 'get off the high wire' of top-level politics." Interestingly, the Calcutta Telegraph places Clinton on its front page, with the…

One day before the Indiana primary, Dick Lugar has released a new ad accusing his opponent, Richard Mourdock, of wanting to "cut every single senior's Social Security." (Update: The ad was apparently released late last week.) The ad portrays an elderly woman talking about Mourdock's Social Security…

Big Government reports that the Young Guns Network, a group tied to House Republican leader Eric Cantor, has purchased another direct mail item supporting Dick Lugar over Richard Mourdock in the GOP Senate primary in Indiana. The item focuses on Lugar's support for ethanol subsidies and…

President Obama's reelection prospects look grim. The New York Times, in its account of Saturday's campaign launch, reported:

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign released another campaign ad this morning, a 60-second spot that will run in battleground states Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. "While the campaign has done a number of response spots,…

The this past weekend's New York Times:

Bill Kristol, with A.B. Stoddard, Liz Cheney, and Juan Williams, yesterday on Fox News:

Around the time Lisa Mulhearn’s Old English Sheepdog, Goober, turned 12, a veterinarian discovered a bone tumor in his nose. The doctors at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, gave Mulhearn a grim prognosis. Without expensive chemotherapy treatment, her dog—the newly divorced…

"Authenticity” has been all the rage in the Republican primary season, which bounced back and forth from one extreme to the other, with the field neatly split between the five or six people who were all too authentic, and one who wasn’t authentic enough. There was Mitt Romney, who was inauthentic…

I don’t remember when I first heard from Chuck Colson. Most likely it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Nor do I recall whether he called or sent a letter. But I was flattered he had bothered to get in touch with me. That I remember. 

Paradox is supposed to be interesting and subversion is supposed to be fun. But this year’s supposedly subversive Whitney Biennial, though paradox incarnate, is the sort of thing that gives soul-annihilating ennui a bad name. And its tedium is a direct consequence of the paradox at its very heart:…

Is there no end to the technocratic impulse? Just when you thought that our government overlords couldn’t find any new way to intrude into our lives, they hatch a plan to multiply bureaucrats. Now cooking on the Obama stove: criteria to measure our “happiness.”

Like many members of America’s “cognitive elite” (I’ve got a string of fancy degrees to prove it), I’ve taken the “How Thick Is Your Bubble?” quiz in Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, which explores the brainy upper crust’s alienation from the dimmer and poorer lumpenproletariat that lives in trailers…

The Nobel Peace Prize is the world’s most prestigious award, as Jay Nordlinger argues in this erudite and insightful history. He has written not only the go-to reference book for the prize and its laureates but also an important philosophical reflection on the nature of “peace” in modern times.

The most politically brazen feature of Obamacare has always been its looting of Medicare. About half of Obamacare’s costs are to be covered with money taken from an already nearly bankrupt program for seniors. And the most politically perilous aspect of this ploy is Obama-care’s cuts in Medicare…

In his tragedy Phoenissae, Seneca wrote “Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to it.” For Seneca, death was a part of life, a natural process that could not be avoided. And indeed, at the time, death pervaded the world through famine, disease, childbirth, and…

The Treasury Department has issued subpoenas to the speakers’ agencies of 11 prominent former U.S. officials, including a governor of Pennsylvania, a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and director of Homeland Security, who have given speeches on behalf of the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK.…

The French prefer “tenacity” to “cooperation” by a measure of 51-44 percent, according to a poll about political attitudes published this election season. By 57-41 percent they like “hard work and courage” better than “social justice and solidarity.” Such attitudes have not been widespread in…

Paris

Talks between the Newspaper Guild of New York and the New York Times have been heated. In late March, the union forced the paper to drop its proposal to extend the workweek at the Times to 40 hours​—​any work over 35 hours and the paper has to pay overtime. The Times’s management bitterly noted…

A complete understanding of Michael Robbins’s poetry requires, in roughly equal measures, knowledge of modern academic poetry, its Romantic-era predecessors, seventies and eighties pop music, recent death metal, and au courant literary criticism. Knowing more than a little about hip-hop and Star…

On April 18, just days after a U.S.-led coalition wrapped up the first round of renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Republic of Azerbaijan made an announcement. In a statement released online, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Security said it had “conducted large-scale special operations”…

USA Today reports: 

Senator Marco Rubio appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace this weekend and gave viewers a clear understanding why many conservatives see him as a strong candidate to be Mitt Romney’s running mate. Rubio answered Wallace’s questions directly and forcefully, drawing sharp contrasts between…

James Pethokoukis asks, "what is the true state of the labor market?" He offers, "If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.6% today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.1%."

Ahead of Tuesday's Republican Senate primary in Indiana, six-term incumbent Dick Lugar has a message for Hoosier voters: "At this point, help."

Worth watching or reading: Leon Kass's Irving Kristol Address, "The other war on poverty: Finding meaning in America," delivered earlier this week at the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner:

Summer is approaching and nerves are jangling. In recent years the green shoots of the early months withered in the heat of summer. The queue of people worried that this summer will be another in which a recovery is aborted is long: the unemployed, retailers, investors, President Barack Obama and…

Charles Krauthammer: "Divider in chief."

To the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid, President Obama has now added the Senior Swindle — a ploy to spend $8.35 billion in taxpayer money to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. Under Obamacare, millions of seniors would lose…

A new poll from Rasmussen shows Republican congressman Denny Rehberg leading his Democratic opponent, Senator Jon Tester, in the race for the U.S. Senate in Montana, 53 percent to 43 percent. This is Rehberg's widest lead yet.

You could almost feel the tension in the digital universe this morning, prior to 8:30 EST, at which time the Bureau or Labor Statistics would be releasing the employment number for April. The suspense—oh, the excruciating suspense! Would the number for new hires match expectations? Would the…

A new poll released Wednesday by Marquette University Law School shows Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett cruising to victory in Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial recall primary. And it looks likely that the June 5 recall election between Barrett and Governor Scott Walker will come down to the wire.…

President Obama is currently speaking at Washington-Lee High School, a luxury school just outside Washington, D.C., about the high cost of education. The president's mission is, we learn from the pool report, "to discuss the cost of college education and to build pressure on Congress to extend the…

A new poll from Howey Politics and DePauw University shows Richard Mourdock leading Dick Lugar by 10 points in the Indiana Republican Senate primary. Among GOP primary voters, 48 percent said they would vote for Mourdock, the state treasurer, while 38 percent said they would vote for Lugar, the…

Texas Senate candidate David Dewhurst has a harsh new radio ad criticizing his Republican primary opponent Ted Cruz for "helping a Chinese company get away with stealing blueprints from an American company." Listen to the ad below:

Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate challenging Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, has had to address her claims of Native American heritage, despite the fact that genealogists have not been able to confirm Warren is descended from the Cherokee tribe. Warren is a law…

North Carolina congressman Mike McIntyre, a Democrat, refused to offer public support for President Obama's reelection effort. 

On Sunday evenings, President Obama meets with his top ten campaign officials to "gather for a confidential briefing on his re-election," according to the New York Times. Present at these meetings, which, we learn, usually take place after the president's Sunday golf outings, are a slew of White…

Another terrible jobs report today: The establishment survey reported the economy added just 115,000 jobs. While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, according to the household survey, it was once again for the wrong reason. The unemployment rate is simply a ratio – the number of people…

Matt Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:

The New York Times reports on the latest jobs report, just released this mroning: 

That's the question the latest web ad from the Republican National Committee is asking--"What do you do when you don't have a record to run on?"

The vogue new lifestyle choice of the Obama recession?

Hillary Clinton, who is in China for meetings, did not make a statement earlier today about the Chinese blind dissident who is seeking her help. But it appears the State Department's work with the Chinese hasn't been for nothing.

Ron Paul’s aversion to monetary expansion in the middle of an economic crisis is a fringe libertarian idea—and also widely held in America’s political mainstream, including by some Fed officials. This wave of thinking seems to foreshadow a worrisome trend: the ongoing Japanization of the West.

Members of Tufts University's men's crew team have been suspended for wearing what some are calling an inappropriate T-shirts to an annual school function, Spring Fling, an end of year school wide concert.

The Detroit Free Press reports that “General Motors made $1 billion in the first quarter, beating analysts’ expectations before being dragged down by a special accounting-related $590-million charge in struggling Europe.”

It appears increasingly likely that Senator Richard Lugar will not be the senior U.S. senator from Indiana when the next Congress is sworn in. After 36 years on the job, he is running behind in a tough primary. His opponent's main knock on Lugar is that he has been in Washington too long and been…

Arizona senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, has endorsed Tom Cotton for Congress. Cotton, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is running for the Republican nomination for Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District against the 2010 GOP nominee, Beth Anne…

We have been anxiously awaiting the release of the documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. According to informed U.S. intelligence officials, thousands of documents were captured in bin Laden’s lair, as was video and other types of media.

Ben LaBolt, President Obama's campaign spokesman, claimed on Twitter that the Republican National Committee, "following their nominee's example," has "apparently been outsourced to Manila."

The Chamber of Commerce is sending out a new direct mail item on behalf of Indiana senator Dick Lugar, the National Journal reports. "Hoosiers are concerned about job growth...And...Dick Lugar is standing up for Indiana," the mailer reads, noting Lugar's support for building the Keystone XL…

The Republicans' line on President Obama: That he is the divider in chief. The Hill reports: 

Jose Rodriguez, a former National Clandestine Service chief at the CIA, recently made the case that the search for Osama bin Laden was long, hard, and full of twists and turns.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who briefly took refuge in the U.S. embassy, recently expressed his hope that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would rescue him. "My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane," Chen…

Speaking to a reporter on a local news station in Boston, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts cited her ancestor's "high cheekbones" (quoting an aunt) as evidence of her Native American heritage:

The boss offers his thoughts on President Obama's Afghanistan speech in a piece for the Washington Post:

President Obama on Friday will "speak with juniors and graduating seniors and their parents about the need to prevent interest rates on federal subsidized student loans from doubling on July 1" at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the White House…

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told a reporter today that she publicly identified herself as part Native American while teaching at Harvard University in order to get "invited to a luncheon" with people of similar heritage. The Boston Herald reports:

National Journal reports on a new poll that shows incumbent Indiana senator Dick Lugar leading his primary rival, state treasurer Richard Mourdock, 44 percent to 42 percent. The group behind the poll, the Lunch Pail Republicans, is a pro-labor organization supporting Lugar.

In the 39 months that President Obama has held office, party affiliation has swung 10 points against his party.

Of the books I have read about China, The Corpse Walker, which I reviewed for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is one of my favorites. Written by Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker contains stories about the strange mix of people Liao met while traveling around China and serving time in jail for writing and…

Charles Blahous and James C. Capretta, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Americans Elect, the centrist group searching for an alternative presidential candidate to run against the two major parties, has hit a snag in their nomination process. The Associated Press reports that Americans Elect, which will have ballot access in every state, has canceled its preliminary…

Vice President Joe Biden seemed this morning to defer to his grandfather's past advice not to deliver a toast with water--before rejecting it. From this morning's pool report:

West Virginia's Democratic governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, is not sure who he will vote for in November.

Mitt Romney's campaign released this web today, contrasting what President Obama promised with reality:

With the House of Representatives set to vote this month on a bill to reverse the trillion-dollar “sequestration” cuts to the military, Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) will be launching his “Defending Our Defenders” listening tour in Chesapeake, Virginia, on May 14, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.  Forbes,…

Writing on Monday, Michael Goodwin blasted Team Obama for its Osama bin Laden reelection campaign ad:

Adam Kredo reports from the Revolution.

Here are the prepared remarks of President Obama's Afghanistan speech, as prepared for delivery: 

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father Benzion died earlier this week at the age 102. Today, over at Tablet, Yossi Klein Halevi and Jonathan Spyer have very  interesting, informative takes on Bibi and his late father—as well as the history of Revisionist Zionism, its battles with Labor,…

Republican Linda McMahon, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, released her first television ad of the cycle. The 60-second ad will run statewide and features McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, telling her personal story. Watch the ad below:

A 101st Airborne Vietnam vet writes to me about the controversy over the Obama campaign ad which suggested that Mitt Romney wouldn't have gone after Osama bin Laden:

The Eric Cantor-affiliated Young Guns Network has recently jumped into the Indiana Senate primary on behalf of Dick Lugar, paying for mailers that criticize Lugar's opponent, Richard Mourdock, for wanting to cut federal education funding. Politico's Jonathan Martin reports why this could…

In speaking about U.S. defense, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock told the Times of Northwest Indiana that “There's always going to be a lot of duplication. We look today at the historical setup of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. There's a lot of duplication and bureaucracy…

Bill Kristol writes about the Obama campaign’s spiffy new, one-word campaign slogan—“Forward”—and jokingly suggests that the slogan may have been lifted from Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Or, on the other hand, maybe it was a steal from MSNBC’s “Lean Forward.” From the sublimely bloody to the bloody…

Michelle Obama seems to have tried out a new campaign slogan at today's fundraiser in Las Vegas.

A NewsCore report on the New York Post's website reported earlier that President Obama had arrived in Afghanistan to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

President Obama's reelection team released a campaign ad this morning that features this graphic, touting the supposed "jobs created by President Obama's clean energy initiatives."

Bashar al-Assad’s security forces have brazenly slaughtered more than 10,000 Syrian civilians, and injured or detained tens of thousands more, since the anti-regime protests began in March 2011. Despite these facts, America’s policy towards Syria—a terror-sponsoring government that is Iran’s…

Indiana senator Dick Lugar is out with a new television ad, the hardest hitting in the Republican primary race, pitting Lugar against state treasurer Richard Mourdock. The ad claims that Mourdock has "bad judgment" and makes "bad decisions." Watch the ad below:

Michael Medved, writing in the May issue of Commentary: 

State treasurer Richard Mourdock, a 60-year-old Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, says the stakes in the Indiana primary couldn’t be higher. “This race is for the heart and soul of the Republican party in the United States Senate,” Mourdock tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and National Clandestine Service, has made quite a splash in the past couple of days. Building on arguments in his new book, Hard Measures, Rodriguez has dealt with all of the most controversial aspects of the CIA’s response to…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 26 percent of Democrats support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation — which, of course, was a purely Democratic endeavor that passed without a single Republican vote. Moreover, the poll shows that most of these…

Presidential elections are won on the basis of personal appeal and the ability to provide compelling leadership on the biggest issues of the day.  In the opening stages of the general election race, Mitt Romney's campaign seems prematurely willing to admit defeat on the first count, while telling…

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen tells NBC that he's worried the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden will now be "spun into election politics" this "political season."