July 2012

Why Obama's 'you didn't build that' speech really stinks.

The State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism on Tuesday. Once again, the U.S. government has deemed Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorism includes troubling relationships with al Qaeda (“AQ”) and the Taliban.

The press is having fun today amplifying the complaint of Palestinian "negotiator" Saeb Ereikat that comments Mitt Romney made in Jerusalem yesterday are "racist." What was Romney's offense? In the course of expressing amazement at Israel's economic miracle, he merely pointed out that cultural…

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, told reporters that he had heard Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn't pay taxes for 10 years. Reid said a former Bain Capital investor, whom Reid didn't name, was the source of this information, although the Nevada Democrat added he wasn't…

Harry Reid unloads on Mitt Romney to the Huffington Post:

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren backed away from her statement that supporters of hers from Wall Street tell her she could "save capitalism." The Boston Herald reports on the Democratic candidate's walkback:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said he was unaware about defense cuts that will close an Air Force base in Ohio--where President Obama will be landing tomorrow aboard Air Force One. Here's the video, from the White House press briefing:

Speaker of the House John Boehner announces in a press release:

"I don't think ultimately that the Europeans will let the Euro unravel, but they are going to have to take some decisive steps ... and I am spending an enormous amount of time, trying to work with them. The sooner that they take some decisive action, the better off we are going to be," Barack…

So President Obama has abandoned his claim that America has been headed in the wrong direction for 30 years and decided to run on Bill Clinton’s record. Well, Mr. President, the voters know Bill Clinton, and they know that you are no Bill Clinton.

The latest web ad from Barack Obama's campaign goes after Mitt Romney for not releasing more tax returns than he already has. The ad, titled "Mitt Romney's Tax Returns: When Will He Come Clean?," at one point flashes two words onscreen, "FELONS" and "TAX RECORDS."

Listen to the audio of the media horde screaming questions at Mitt Romney just after he had finished paying his respects at Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and tell me you don't sympathize with the pithy comment by his aide, Rick Gorka.

Warsaw, Poland

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has famously called for the destruction of Israel, the Jewish state, is mocking Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his recent visit there. The Associated Press reports: 

Mitt Romney’s stop in Jerusalem will probably remain the highlight of his foreign trip, but his eloquent and powerful speech today in Warsaw deserves more notice than it will probably get. In his remarks, Romney suggests a theme for his trip as a whole and a rationale for visiting the three nations…

Warsaw, Poland

Warsaw, Poland  

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren finds Ron Paul supporters in the streets of Poland, where Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is visiting:

Michael Moynihan reveals Jonah Lehrer's serious journalistic misconduct.

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to a group of trial lawyers this afternoon in Chicago, delivered a stern warning. "Imagine the Supreme Court after four years of Romney," said Biden, according to the pool report. "This is not scare tactics, just what he said. If you’re frightened it’s because you…

Over at National Review Online, George Mason law professor Eric R. Claeys has a very interesting and lengthy piece on how constitutionalists should view Obamacare after the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the law:

Ryan Lizza has a long profile of House budget chairman Paul Ryan in the latest issue of the New Yorker. Here's an excerpt:

Now that—perish the thought—it looks increasingly possible that Barack Obama might lose in November, it's only natural that speculation about Democratic possibilities for 2016 is starting to ramp up. Yes, there's the obvious caveat that the Democratic nomination is probably Hillary Clinton's for…

Campbell Brown, writing for the Wall Street Journal: 

Rasmussen’s latest poll of likely voters shows that there’s at least one thing that unites the vast majority of the American citizenry: the desire to see Obamacare be repealed. 

Senator Harry Reid, engaging in a little of that civility in our politics about which we have been lectured.

Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren says Wall Street types tell her she could "save capitalism" if she wins her race for U.S. Senate. Here's what Warren recently told a reporter, National Journal reports:

Last Monday, two days before Mitt Romney departed for London, Israel, and Poland, the Obama campaign held a conference call with reporters in order to frame their opponent’s trip. “The bar really is whether or not Mitt Romney is finally ready to shed a little light on what appears to be the secrecy…

Gdansk

A final poll of Texas Republican voters from PPP shows Ted Cruz leading David Dewhurst by 10 points in Tuesday's runoff election for U.S. Senate. Cruz, the former state solicitor general and favorite of conservative activists, has 52 percent support compared to 42 percent for Dewhurst, the…

A deputy press secretary for Barack Obama's reelection campaign married an ABC reporter over the weekend. The ABC reporter, Matthew Jaffe, "covering the 2012 presidential campaign," according to his biography on the website of ABC News. "For the past year he traveled around the country covering the…

"Former President Bill Clinton is set to play a central part in the Democratic convention, aides said, and will formally place President Obama’s name into nomination by delivering a prime-time speech designed to present a forceful economic argument for why Mr. Obama deserves to win a second term,"…

“This attack will be a precedent for every future government in Israel. . . . [E]very future Israeli prime minister will act, in similar circumstances, in the same way.”

Elliott Abrams comments on Mitt Romney's Israel remarks: 

Scrapbook correspondent James W. Ceaser, the distinguished University of Virginia professor of politics, emails a charming note from the beach, which we excerpt here:

Last week, California taxpayers, already accustomed to economic doom and gloom, received an astonishing piece of bad news. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had posted a 1 percent return on its investments over the previous year. The California State Teachers’ Retirement…

President Obama’s announcement last fall of a “pivot” to Asia has been greeted with skepticism. For one thing, there will be no appreciable increase in U.S. military assets in the region any time soon. Furthermore, even for an administration generally unconvincing in its commitment to the promotion…

Christopher Nolan’s astounding third Batman feature, The Dark Knight Rises, represents the true maturation of the superhero movie—and provides the key to understanding the bottomless craving moviegoers have for these films, 34 years after the Christopher Reeve Superman gave birth to the genre. It’s…

Earlier this year, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara took time out from presiding over the world’s largest city to initiate a fundraising drive. It wasn’t his own campaign coffers that Ishihara was seeking to fill—campaign spending is severely limited in Japan, anyway. Rather, the famously…

‘All eyes on Upton (Kate, not Fred),” read the headline in the February 14 edition of the St. Joseph, Michigan, Herald-Palladium. Her hometown paper reported that Kate Upton was the cover model of this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, making her instantly more famous than her uncle,…

As we go to press, Bashar al-Assad seems to be losing Damascus, as he has lost much of the rest of the country. Reports last week suggested the Syrian president might already be in Latakia, the de facto capital of the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast. But even if he has not already…

Does this year’s presidential campaign strike you as strikingly petty? Boringly conventional? Uncommonly stupid? Yes? Join the crowd.

The only real escape from the oppressive heat of a New York summer is a night in the open air under the lights at a big-league ballpark. That’s what my brothers and I thought, anyway, growing up as we did spending a dozen or more evenings every year at Yankee Stadium. We cut coupons from milk…

Jerusalem

In a fundraising email sent out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic strategist James Carville has a serious warning: "We’re gonna have to go through hell and high-water to win this damn thing." The remedy, according to Carville, is to donate more money to the Democratic…

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, recently said that Republican Jews are "being exploited." Today, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican, responds: 

Patrick Caddell, writing at Breitbart.com, asks, "White House Leaks: What Does Axelrod Know, And How Does He Know It?"

Daniel Halper has called attention to Nancy Pelosi's remarkable interview with Al Hunt on the topic of Barack Obama and Israel. I'd note one comment in particular: Pelosi's claim that President Obama "has been there [Israel] over and over again."

In an interview, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said that she believes Republican Jews are "being exploited," but she was sure to add, "And they're smart people."

If there's one thing we've learned after nearly a week on THE WEEKLY STANDARD cruise, it's this: Jimmy Carter was the best thing that could have happened to modern conservatism.

This week I offer a rather narrow range of choice of scenarios: gloomy, gloomier, and gloomiest, leavened only with a brighter after thought. The merely gloomy forecasts anticipate unsatisfactory growth but no recession. Analysts of this view advance three arguments.

What to expect from this fall's presidential debates.

Reporting from inside Syria, Time magazine correspondent Rania Abouzeid counters the claim that extremists currently dominate the armed resistance against the Assad regime. Having interviewed a number of Islamist and non-Islamist rebels in Syria’s Idlib province, she writes:  “There has been much…

The latest CBO scoring of Obamacare, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the overhaul’s individual mandate as an allowable (although seemingly unprecedented) tax on inactivity, shows that President Obama’s centerpiece legislation would cost about $2 trillion over its real…

Can the Colorado shootings be blamed on the culture?  On too much violence in the movies? The argument is made all the time. But it is surprising to hear someone like Harvey Weinstein—who has made a career and a fortune turning out spectacularly violent movies—say it's time for Hollywood to address…

There's been some grumbling in the pro-Israel community about Israeli ambassador Michael Oren's genuflection toward President Obama earlier today. I think the criticism is unfair.

Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

As we push off from Bermuda to return to New York, and are therefore back in international waters, THE SCRAPBOOK can report on some (but not all!) of the activities that have transpired so far on this summer's WEEKLY STANDARD cruise.

The latest Emergency Committee for Israel ad points out that President Obama has traveled all over the world, but hasn't been to Israel since becoming president:

Rasmussen's latest poll of the Senate race in Nevada shows incumbent Republican Dean Heller opening up a nine-point lead over Democratic congresswoman Shelley Berkley. Fifty-one percent of likely voters support Heller, with 42 percent choosing Berkley and only 5 percent undecided.

CNN host Piers Morgan defended Mitt Romney this morning, after the Republican presidential candidate wondered whether London is prepared for the Olympics:

The day before the Supreme Court announced the Obamacare decision, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne demanded the resignation of Justice Antonin Scalia. "Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court," Dionne wrote.

Former Boston mayor Ray Flynn, a Democrat, has cut a 30-second advertisement for Republican senator Scott Brown. "I'm a Democrat, but I'm tired of all the polarization and the pettiness and the bickering," says Flynn. "Scott Brown is a person that you can work with." Watch the ad below:

U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, the Indiana Republican, has a new 30-second advertisement contrasting himself with his Democratic opponent, Congressman Joe Donnelly. Mourdock ties Donnelly with Barack Obama and encourages Hoosier voters to "follow the Indiana principles that Richard…

Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has released a statment urging the Obama White House to cooperate with authorities on the national security leaks investigation. 

Why hasn’t President Obama intervened militarily in Syria? After all, this is a president who issued a directive last year stating that a “core” national security interest of the United States would be to prevent mass atrocities of precisely the kind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is now…

The decline of start-ups in America.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney bluntly states that "A nuclear Iran represents the greatest threat to the world."

Sandy Weill is calling for the banks to be broken up. Bloomberg reports: 

Max Boot, writing for Commentary: 

It was inevitable that after the massacre in a Colorado movie theater, the matter of gun control would come up and that the president would weigh in on the subject. And, according to this report by Michael A. Memoli in the Los Angeles Times, he has:

In today's press briefing, White House spokesman Jay Carney was unable to identify the capital of Israel:

At an event in London, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, "I'm looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill being in the Oval Office again."

Plenty of left-leaning outlets, and recently Barack Obama himself, have claimed conservatives are taking the president's "you didn't build that" comments out of context. A new web video from American Future Fund, a conservative non-profit group, puts Obama's words in their full context. Watch the…

Admiral William McRaven, commander of special operations, warned of the dangers of high-level national security leaks in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer: 

The latest print ad from the Emergency Committee for Israel highlights liberal critics of President Obama's stance toward Israel.

In his latest fundraising pitch, President Barack Obama writes, "My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as President of the United States, but that's not up to me -- it's up to you."

In response to President Obama's comment, "We tried our plan—and it worked," Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has released the following ad, contrasting that statement with what CBS called, "the worst economic recovery America has ever had." Watch here:

In the wake of the November 5, 2009 Fort Hood shootings, Steve Hayes and I wrote about the FBI’s and Defense Department’s many failures with respect to Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Part of the piece focused on Hasan’s emails to al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki, which had not been made public at the…

Low expectations for the 17th round of the U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue, conducted on July 23 and 24 in Washington, were borne out by Assistant Secretary Michael Posner’s briefing yesterday. Posner’s main points were that the dialogue is not a negotiation, but rather “just a piece” of “365 days…

First Lady Michelle Obama will hold a large event for her health intiative Let's Move in London tomorrow. The White House announced: 

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has told Chick-fil-A that the fast-food company is not welcome in his town because "Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values." In other words, because Chick-fil-A ownership believes in traditional marriage, it shouldn't bother opening up shop in Chicago.

The boss yesterday wrote a post yesterday saying that, contrary to certain things others were saying, President Ronald Reagan did not neglect national security:

Gail Collins traveled from Manhattan to North Dakota to see what a real American boomtown looks like and report her findings to readers of the New York Times. 

Yesterday, Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod claimed that the campaign wasn't worried about the damage being done by the president's "you didn't build that" remarks. Today, Gallup notes the following:

According to President Barack Obama's official schedule, "Later in the afternoon, the President will hold a Cabinet Meeting in the Cabinet Room. There will be a pool spray at the top of the meeting."

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney met with Tony Blair in London earlier today. Here's a picture: 

Two revealing stories from today's Chicago Sun-Times. First, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is not welcoming Chick-fil-A to his city: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD cruise aboard Holland America's ms Veendam arrived in lovely Bermuda Tuesday, after a stirring departure Sunday from New York. We sailed the Hudson, passing first Ground Zero, and then the Statue of Liberty—reminders, in very different ways, of the power of the American…

For 22 years, Bandar bin Sultan was Saudi Arabia’s influential, irrepressible ambassador in Washington. After years in eclipse, he has just been named as head of the kingdom’s intelligence service. What does it all mean?

It's no secret that things are not going well for the Obama campaign. The President has been forced to veer to the left on gay marriage, immigration and a host of issues to shore up his base. And even as unemployment is ticking ominously upward, gaffes and ill thought out statements on the…

As a segue to talking about gun control in a speech at the National Urban League in New Orleans, Louisiana this evening, President Obama added context to the movie theater mass murder last week in Aurora, Colorado. " Every day, in fact, every day and a half, the number of young people we lose to…

While speaking to the National Urban League in New Orleans, Louisiana this evening, President Obama went off script to criticize Americans for watching the hit television show Desperate Housewives: 

Could disaffected Jews give Florida to Romney?

“Demand for new U.S. homes probably climbed in June to the highest level in two years, economists project a report today will show, another sign the housing market is recovering,” Bloomberg, midnight.

Elizabeth Warren has a two-point lead over incumbent senator Scott Brown, according to a new poll from MassPlus Quarterly. Forty percent of respondents support Warren, the Democrat, while 38 percent support the Republican Brown, the Boston Globe reports.

Republican congressman Allen West, a freshman from Florida, has a new television ad featuring Robert Delgado, a retired Army sergeant. In the ad, Delgado claims West saved his life when the two men were serving in Iraq. Watch the ad below:

Barack Obama's reelection campaign has seized on this blind quotation in today's edition of the British newspaper the Telegraph: 

This is the president speaking:

The San Diego Union-Tribune, the 3rd-largest paper in California, offers a scathing, point-by-point indictment of President Obama's presidency—focusing particularly on Obamacare—and asks whether we've ever had a worse president.  The Union-Tribune writes of Obama:

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in Philadelphia this afternoon at the International Association of Fire Fighters 51st Convention, said, "I wish my kids would become wealthy."

Republican congressman Don Young of Alaska has crossed the aisle to endorse Democrat Mazie Hirono in the U.S. Senate race in Hawaii. "But here's what's important, Hawaii," Young says, sitting next to Hirono. "If you're looking for a United States senator who doesn't just talk about bipartisanship…

Tom Friedman is a genius. It’s very, very difficult to write a frequent column that expresses deeply conventional wisdom in a fresh, hey-kids-I-just-thought-of-this voice.  He is the id of the Washington Establishment.

While Barack Obama has taken to swing state airwaves to walk back his recent comments that business owners "didn't build" their businesses, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is not backing down from similar comments she made last year.

Patrick Gaspard, the executive director of the Democratic National Party, announced on national television that President Barack Obama "continues to support the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban."

The Washington Surgi-Clinic, located just five blocks west of the White House, advertises on its website that it performs abortions 26 weeks (6 months) into pregnancy. The website of another clinic advertises second- and third-trimester abortions involving the “intercardiac injection of medication…

House minority whip Steny Hoyer, speaking with reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, said Democrats in Congress "didn't have the votes" in 2009 or 2010 to raise taxes, even though the party had a majority in both the Senate and the House and Barack Obama was…

The latest ad from Priorities USA, the main pro-Obama super PAC, uses footage from the 2002 Olympics to hit Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Watch here: 

President Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, came under heavy fire this morning on MSNBC this morning about high-level national security allegedly coming from the White House: 

In his editorial this week, the boss lamented the petty, conventional, and stupid nature of this year's presidential campaign so far. And it looks like he isn't alone. According to a new poll from NBC and the Wall Street Journal, the last few weeks of the race have left the public with more…

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Mitt Romney is recounting a Jim Baker anecdote in which President Reagan ordered Baker, as White House chief of staff, to hold no national security meetings over a hundred day period early in his first term so that President Reagan and his team could…

This evening in Portland, Oregon, President Barack Obama thanked a man named Terry Bean for organizing the reelection campaign fundraiser he was speaking at:

Christian Bale is in Aurora, visiting with victims.

Republican Heather Wilson, a candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico, has a new ad criticizing her opponent, Democratic congressman Martin Heinrich, for voting twice for a medical device tax that Heinrich had noted himself would be bad for job creation. "Martin Heinrich knowingly puts his leftwing…

The most recent Obama ad was filmed in the West Wing of the White House. Take a look:

In a web video released Monday, the Obama campaign celebrated the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. “As your commander in chief, and on behalf of a grateful nation, I'm proud to finally say these two words, and I know your families agree - welcome home. Welcome home," Obama says in a clip…

Sixty-two foreign policy experts have sent a letter organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Foreign Policy Initiative to President Obama urging action in Syria: 

“Our economy is getting stronger. It may not be going fast enough, but by every measure our economy is getting stronger.” That is according to Howard Dean, former National Democratic Committee chairman and one of the more sober and – I dare say – conservative leaders of his party when it comes to…

According to the pool report, "joining POTUS on the flight from San Fran was Penny Pritzker, the campaign's finance chair four years ago. Jay Carney said she was in the neighborhood."

MSNBC host Chris Matthews suggested last night on national television that maybe someone like Tom Cruise's character from the movie Minority Report might be able to prevent a future shooting like the one that took place in a Colorado movie theater last week. Matthews made the suggestion when…

The latest Rasmussen poll finds that 51 percent of Americans believe the "U.S. Should Help Israel If It Attacks Iran." Additionally, the poll finds: 

Republican Senate candidate George Allen has a new TV ad telling Virginia voters that the cuts coming to the Defense Department as a result of the budget sequestration will be "devastating" to the Old Dominion and its economy. Watch the ad below:

Republican operatives in Washington are praising Scott Brown's latest campaign ad. The ad, a contrast spot being run by the Republican Massachusetts senator, shows that Brown's Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren, is to the left on economic issues of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Lyndon B.…

Last week, reports emerged that Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy had condemned gay marriage. It's no secret that the company is run by devout Christians, but this still caused an uproar. Boston's mayor threatened to deny the company business permits, celebrities condemned the company, and the…

On Wednesday, July 18, a bomb killed at least three top officials from Bashar al Assad’s crumbling regime. Among them was Assef Shawkat, the deputy defense minister and former head of Syrian military intelligence. Different accounts of how Shawkat and the others were killed have been offered to the…

Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey, who is up for reelection this year, carefully put some space between himself and Barack Obama's recent comment that American entrepreneurs didn't build their businesses on their own.

Mitt Romney will hit President Obama for high-level national security leaks coming from the White House, according to excerpts of the speech the Republican presidential candidate will deliver later today at the VFW in Reno, Nevada. Romney will call the leaks "contemptible" and a betrayal of "our…

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a top Democratic from California, accused the Obama White House of leaking national security information at a recent event in Washington, D.C. Here's video of Feinstein's accusation:

At a fundraiser last night in Oakland, California, President Obama had to remind supporters that he's "term-limited." Via the pool report: 

National Journal reports:

Last week, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report and held hearings on the giant British-based HSBC bank. HSBC Holdings was ranked as the sixth-largest public company in the world by Forbes in 2011, with assets of $2.5…

President Obama, who is in California for campaign events, fundraised from key Solyndra figures last night. Via the pool report: 

Rest in peace, Sally Ride.

Here's video of Egyptian actors who are pranked, and led to believe they are on an Israeli television program:

The Huffington Post reports that "The Obama administration is blocking the creation of an international treaty designed to protect access to books and reading material for blind people in poor countries."

Rasmussen, on its latest poll: 

It was earlier noted that the Obama campaign paid a whopping $2.6 million on polling in the month of June alone. It turns out, the president's reelection campaign has spent $15 million on polling--this election cycle alone.

The president's reelection campaign is sending around a picture from what appears to be a family celebration of Barack Obama's 43 birthday, from 2004, in an attempt to raise campaign cash. Under the subject line, "Warning: This picture is cute," Obama for America, the campaign team, writes:

President Obama will be traveling today from San Francisco, California to Reno, Nevada to “take part in an official event where he will deliver remarks at the 113th National Convention of the VFW,” according to the White House.

For all the talk about the death of the Tea Party, conservative insurgents have actually had a fairly impressive run in 2012 against establishment Republican Senate candidates. In Nebraska, Deb Fischer came out of nowhere to beat two Republicans who held statewide office. In Indiana, conservative…

Of the ten swing states, unemployment dropped in only one--Ohio--in the month of June. And things got worse in 6 of the ten swing states, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In a recent speech, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez had praise for President Barack Obama and criticism for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The Associated Press reports:

A new ad from Senator Scott Brown, contrasting statements in support of free enterprise by those like John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan with those made by Barack Obama and Brown's Massachusetts Senate opponent, Elizabeth Warren:

Peggy Noonan examines the mini-furor over the manufacturing of the U.S. Olympic team's uniforms in ... China.  It was, she believes, a missed opportunity to create a sensational political ad:

Bill Kristol, with Evan Bayh, Liz Cheney, and Kirsten Powers, yesterday on Fox News:

Iowahawk, with excerpts from the Book of Barack:

A new political science is needed for a world altogether new. But that is what we hardly dream of: placed in the middle of a rapid river, we obstinately fix our eyes on some debris that we still perceive on the bank, while the current takes us away and takes us backward toward the abyss.

I first began reading the Washington Post sometime in 1956-57, whenever I learned to read in the course of first grade. One of my parents had declared that newspapers were deliberately written at a fifth-grade level, and I was determined to find out what “fifth-grade level” meant. I discovered that…

When Reinhold Niebuhr died in June 1971, the New York Times obituary described him as “a theologian who preached in the marketplace, a philosopher of ethics who applied his belief to everyday moral predicaments, and a political liberal who subscribed to a hard-boiled pragmatism.” That apt summary…

In May, the Obama campaign unveiled its “Life of Julia,” a website detailing “how President Obama’s policies help one woman over her lifetime​—​and how Mitt Romney would change her story.” Julia is a composite character, the invention of one of the several hundred minions toiling away at Obama…

The Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, who has had the most interesting career of any hotshot American filmmaker over the past quarter-century, is tired, he says. Tired of making movies. He’s either going to retire or take a sabbatical. This is a very strange thing for Soderbergh to say. He…

April seventh, 1928: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back…

After contacting the congressional office of Justin Amash and expressing my interest in interviewing the 31-year-old libertarian Republican from Michigan, I received a terse reply via email from his press secretary.

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist whose progressive politics and world-weary posture have earned him coveted berths in the Post’s opinion and news pages. The Scrapbook wishes him the best. But The Scrapbook is also worried that, at 44, Milbank is showing signs of early-onset Reston-Broder…

Mitt Romney has articulated the choice we will make in November. We can choose President Obama and a European future—i.e., high unemployment, demographic winter, big government commanding over 50 percent of future output, a welfare state engineered and manipulated by the Washington bureaucracy, the…

When the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on June 28 to let Obama-care stand, President Obama said that “it’s time for us to move forward.” Harry Reid implored his colleagues and countrymen to “move on to other things,” and Nancy Pelosi said that “for the American people, yes, the fight is over.”

It’s John Stuart Mill’s world. Jeremy Waldron is just living in it. Not that Waldron isn’t a smart guy in his own right. A law professor at NYU and Oxford, the author of 10 books, one of Ronald Dworkin’s favorite students, and a leading figure in debates about the use of foreign law in American…

Damn Yankees is a bathroom book, which I mean in the nicest way: short, generally entertaining, with essays from authors often better known as writers than as sportswriters. Most would engage a nonfan and none presupposes warm feelings for the Yankee imperium.  

The Wesport News reports that "Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein will open his Westport waterfront estate for a $35,800 per head fundraiser for President Obama's re-election next month, reciprocation for the coveted State Dinner invite he received earlier this year from the White House." (Emphasis…

According to disclosure forms with the Federal Election Commission, President Obama's reelection team appears to have paid $92,751.50 to rent the Ohio State University's Jerome Schottenstein Center, the site of the campaign's much touted kick-off event in May.

Is the left turning against the reelection campaign of Democratic President Barack Obama? That's the impression one gets from a recent article in the left-leaning Huffington Post. 

Campaign disclosure forms for Obama for America, President Obama's reelection team, reveal a heavy emphasis on public opinion polling. According to the forms, in the month of June alone, Obama for America spent a whopping $2,639,265.72 on polling.

Slow, slower, and maybe even stop—that’s a quick summary of how Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke sees the U.S. economy. The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent last year, 1.9 percent in the first quarter of this year, “and available indicators point to a still-smaller gain in…

Mona Charen: Where's the anger?

The Department of Defense announced that one sailor is missing after the Colorado movie theater shooting, and three servicemen are injured. Here's the press release: 

National Public Radio media enterprise is so essential, according to backers, that it requires government support. But, as its supporters always point out, in an amount equal to merely 2 percent of the NPR budget.  Which leads one to ask if the outfit couldn't find a way to spend two percent less…

President Obama issued a proclamation directing government flags to be flown at half-staff "honoring the victims of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown holds a small lead over his Republican challenger, Josh Mandel, in Ohio's U.S. Senate race, a new poll from Rasmussen shows. According to the survey, 46 percent support Brown, who was first elected in 2006, while 42 percent support Mandel, the state treasurer.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gathered with supporters in New Hampshire this morning for "a word of prayer."

In January 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yaakov Neeman, the justice minister, turned to former Israeli supreme court justice Edmond Levy to head a panel of legal experts that would look into questions of land ownership in the West Bank. The initiative came about when it was…

In brief remarks about the movie theater shooting, President Obama led the audience in prayer and a moment of silence.

The Romney campaign announced that it will be pulling all ads in Colorado after the movie theater shooting last night. "We are pulling all ads in CO until further notice," says spokesman Andrea Saul. 

In response to a question about gun laws and violence in wake of the movie theater shooting in Colorado, White House spokesman Jay Carney had this to say:

Campaign spokesman Jen Psaki said, on Air Force One, that President Obama's reelection campaign has asked affiliates to pull down negative ads in the wake of the movie theater shooting in Colorado.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters this morning on Air Force One that, in regards to the Colorado movie theater shooting last night, "We do not believe at this point there was an apparent nexis to terrorism."

This morning, on ABC, reporter Brian Ross suggested the Colorado movie theater shooter might be a Tea Party member:  

Campaign spokesman Andrea Saul says, in an email to reporters, "Gov. Romney’s event today will go on as planned, and he will address the tragedy in Colorado." Romney will be speaking at Coastal Forest Products in Bow, New Hampshire. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and loved ones,"…

President Barack Obama issued the following statement this morning:

A topic that inevitably receives a lot of focus during election season is the partisan spread of the major media polls. Conservatives regularly complain that the polls are tilted against their side, and thus favor the Democrats.

Paul Ryan, writing in the Financial Times: 

President Obama reminded Florida voters of the pledge he made when he first ran for the presidency at a rally earlier today:

“I do have concerns about spending money on public broadcasting.”

At a press conference in the Capitol today, Senate Democrats continued to make their push to raise income taxes on individuals, as well as small businesses that file with the IRS as individuals, earning more than $250,000 per year. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't explain why he…

President Obama's reelection campaign accuses Mitt Romney of distorting the president's words, by showing a side by side comparison of the Obama's words and Romney's quotation of those words: 

On C-SPAN's Washington Journal recently, a Democratic member of Congress, Rosa DeLauro, said that the increase of food stamps usage has to do with the "rough economy" and the fact that real unemployment is higher than 8.2 percent. The 8.2 percent number is the one offered by the federal Bureau of…

As CNN reported, "Russia and China vetoed a new U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday that would have imposed new sanctions on the Syrian regime."

This morning on the Senate floor, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, pledged to block Republican efforts to vote on the repeal of Obamacare and tax cuts:

The latest ad from American Crossroads: 

Senator Mike Lee criticized President Obama's and the Democrats' plan to raise taxes, saying that "their proposal would leave 94% of this year's deficit intact, which makes it an inherently unserious proposal insofar as it relates to deficit reduction."

James Pethokoukis, writing at AEI Ideas:

Mitt Romney's campaign has released a web video responding to President Obama's comments, "If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own."

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are now tied in Virginia, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac. Each candidate is receiving support from 44 percent from Virginia voters. 

Charles Murray on Obama's "tone-deafness."

From the Times's write-up of the poll:

At a townhall-style campaign event in Ohio on Wednesday, Mitt Romney was asked by a voter about his views on Barack Obama's "attack on religious freedom."

Peter Robinson interviews former President George W. Bush for this week's edition of Uncommon Knowledge:

Barack Obama's supporters have been furiously arguing that the presdent's recent comments about American businesses have been taken out of context. Obama said at a campaign event last Friday:  

Turkish rulers, from Ottoman times to the present-day neo-fundamentalist regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have never been comfortable with the Alevi Muslims. Counting a quarter of Turkey’s current domestic and diaspora population of 80 million, Alevis emerged in the 16th century as eastern Anatolian…

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, blasted President Obama for failing to run a transparent administration in a radio interview earlier today with Laura Ingraham.

The House of Representatives voted 414-2 Wednesday to pass the Sequestration Transparency Act, a bill requiring President Barack Obama to release to the public a plan to implement the forthcoming automatic budget cuts, including drastic cuts to the Department of Defense. Paul Ryan, the House Budget…

The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) has succesfully acquired thousands of pages of documents from the Federal Aviation Administration on the use of drones in America. The documents include "extensive details about the specific drone models some entities are flying, where they fly, how frequently…

President Obama's latest fundraising email pitch is tied to his upcoming birthday and the fact that he's getting older.

In Damascus this morning a bomb at the National Security building killed several members of Bashar al-Assad’s “crisis cell” —a group of key regime figures tasked to put down the 16-month uprising against the Assad regime. Interior minister Mohammed al-Shaar and head of national security General…

Here's how the Los Angeles Times handled the Romney campaign's critique of Obama's suggestion that business owners "didn't build" their companies:

Republican Senate candidate David Dewhurst received the endorsement Tuesday of former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert. Leppert, who came in third in the May 29 GOP primary behind Dewhurst and Ted Cruz, did not qualify to run in this month's runoff election.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, just gave away his party's playbook on the Senate floor: 

Lis Smith, a spokesman for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, touted Solyndra by saying the failed energy company that received federally backed loans has been "widely praised as successful and innovative."

In an interview at a CNBC conference, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blamed Europe for America's economic slowdown.

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is saying congresional Democrats should not attend the party's convention in September in North Carolina.

A new ad from Mitt Romney's campaign promises that the candidate will seek a "Bipartisan Solution for Immigration" if elected president. The ad, which is in Spanish and stars Romney's son Craig, would appear to be directed at Hispanic voters: 

One upside to Romney surrogate John Sununu's ham-handed attacks on Barack Obama today is that they've distracted from Mitt Romney's own unfortunate remarks at a fundraiser in Mississippi on Monday night.  

Scott Walker on Mitt Romney: "I’d get him out from behind [the] podium."

Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has endorsed Sarah Steelman in the Missouri Republican primary for U.S. Senate. "I am deeply honored and humbled to have earned the endorsement of Governor Palin, whose willingness to stand up and fight for what is right, regardless…

It seems that not all outsourcing is equal ... or something like that.  Take, for instance, the building of an automobile known as the Fisker. This is the car that teen-throb Justin Bieber was driving when busted for speeding not so long ago.  The Fisker is a set of wheels that appeals to socially…

The star of a pro-Obama super PAC ad is speaking out against ... President Barack Obama.

President Obama broke with protocol and left behind the press. Via the pool report: 

In campaign remarks this afternoon in San Antonio, Texas, President Obama made a national security case for a strong economy and suggested that his opponent, Mitt Romney, won't take proper care of veterans if he's elected president.

On his Facebook page, Paul Ryan responded to President Obama's comments about how succesful business people "didn't build" their own businesses without help from big government. Read the statement below:

At a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that  "Liberal policies don't make good jobs," before critiquing Obamacare, overbearing regulations, slow job growth, and a slew of other Obama policies. Romney also focused on crony capitalism in the Obama…

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional committee today that "the reduction in the unemployment rate seems likely to be frustratingly slow":

The National Republican Campaign Committee has a new video pouncing on President Obama's recent comment that "if you have a business, you didn't build that--somebody else made that happen." Watch the video below:

A new index from Gallup shows America's confidence in the economy is at its lowest level since January of this year. Confidence is higher than it was throughout 2011, but the spike this year appears to be on a downward trend:

An email with the subject line "SO COOL" was sent this morning to Obama's supporters by the president's reelection team. The email, from Obama for America national finance director Rufus Gifford, encourages supporters to send in cash for a chance to celebrate Obama's birthday--with the president…

Robert Shrum is hoping for an assist from Ben Bernanke. Perhaps, Shrum writes, the chairman will have the courage to pull a John Roberts, launch QE3, and keep a staggering economy sufficiently upright that "Obama may actually be able to run on a decidedly more upbeat path through the fall."

A new chart set to be released by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details an alarming fact: In the last three months, more Americans have joined disability than have found a job: 

Mitt Romney's campaign announced two vice presidential staff members today. From the campaign:

Over the weekend Jason DeParle had a long, interesting piece on marriage in the New York Times. The gist of the piece is this couplet: (1) Marriage is a key driver of economic prosperity for families and married parents are more likely to have prosperous, healthy, stable families than single…

The U.S. basketball team, both the men's and women's squads, took a break from practicing for the London Olympic games to visit Arlington National Cemetery to pay tribute to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for this country:

Before the United States had a president or a constitution, it had the Treaty of Marrakech with Morocco. That diplomatic pact has the distinction of being the longest standing treaty between America and another country. Tomorrow, July 18, marks the 225th anniversary of its ratification.

President Obama is catching hoops in Washington tonight, watching the U.S. men's basketball team prepare for the Olympics with an exhibition game against Brazil. "President Obama arrived at the Verizon Center at 7:46 p.m., wearing jeans, sneakers, white shirt, dark blue Under Armor zip up,"…

Santorum stumps for Romney.

While in Egypt over the last several, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Muslim Brotherhood. But not everyone would meet with Clinton: Coptic Christians and Evangelicals refused, because, they claim, "the US administration has demonstrated their support for Islamism over other…

“[T]he principal thing we need to be pursuing is a very aggressive strategy of putting people back to work,”—David Axelrod, National Journal. The job numbers are just one manifestation of the economic malaise.  This morning we learned that retail sales declined for the third straight month.  Growth…

President Obama's rhetoric would suggest that he's against Bain (both Bain Capital, the investment firm, and Bain Consulting, the consulting firm, as he makes little distinction between the two Bains where Mitt Romney worked in the past). But Obama's own hiring practice suggests something a little…

Just when you thought the state of California couldn't possibly receive any more bad economic news:

The latest polling by Rasmussen Reports shows that independents think Obamacare would raise (53 percent), rather than lower (16 percent), health costs.  They think it would reduce (50 percent), rather than improve (13 percent), the quality of health care.  They think it would raise (56 percent),…

At a speech earlier today in Cincinnati, Ohio, President Obama cited economic analysis conducted by one of his campaign donors, Kimberly Clausing, and called her a "non-partisan economist." Clausing, a college professor from Reed College, has donated to President Obama and several Democratic…

The good news is, there's not much evidence so far in various polls' ballot tests that the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's business record are having much of an effect.

Deb Fischer, the Republican Senate candidate in Nebraska, is out with her campaign's first general election advertisement. The 30-second ad highlights Fischer's Nebraska values and roots, as opposed to the "out of touch" Bob Kerrey, her Democratic opponent and a former U.S. Senator. Watch the ad…

Politico reports that President Obama is in Ohio today to "highlight a new report that estimates Romney's support for eliminating U.S. taxes on American companies' foreign incomes would create 800,000 jobs in other countries, including 73,000 jobs in China." But the new report being cited by…

President Obama's closest political adviser, strategist David Axelrod, believes there's a "reign of terror going on in the Republican party," according to a transcript of a recent interview he gave to National Journal. 

A correspondent emails:

Seinfeld fans surely remember the episode in which Kramer has an idea for a cologne that smells like you just came from the beach. On page D3 of this weekend's Off Duty section of the Wall Street Journal, Aleksandra Crapanzano writes,

In the latest Barack Obama campaign fundraising pitch, First Lady Michelle Obama asks supporters to donate money to help celebrate the president's 51 birthday. Those who donate, the first lady writes, will be entered into a drawing to celebrate Obama's birthday at his Chicago home next month.

Advocates of robust American action in Syria to help remove Bashar al-Assad from power have typically made two arguments. One is the humanitarian case, urging the Obama administration to prevent further bloodshed in what is now turning into a campaign of sectarian cleansing against Syria’s Sunni…

Last week I wrote a long exegesis on microtasking and the future of temporary, remote workers. I only dabbled in microtasking on Amazon's Mechanical Turk exchange, but reader D. Bush uses it often and writes in about her experience:

Niall Ferguson, writing in Newsweek: 

THUMAN: Talk about your first few years. Is there anything you believe you failed at, not because Congress wouldn't play ball, but that rests squarely on your shoulders?

Thirteen years ago? Or thirteen years from now?

The Hill suggests that John Thune is being vetted for VP:

Mitt Romney's campaign sent out House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan's appearance on CBS's Face the Nation. On the TV show, Ryan said this election is "really going to be a big choice about two futures."

Most journalists will swear that, despite the fact they vote Democratic, they treat both sides fairly. Indeed, it is a rare event to read a news article that directly attacks the Republican party or one that praises the Democratic party.

My wife called me from the pediatrician’s office to tell me they were concerned our youngest daughter might have cancer. A short while before, I’d been playing with her when I’d noticed a small lump on her neck. Her annual check-up was approaching, and I told my wife to ask about it. There was much…

Was young George Washington a slightly inept and self-serving martinet who helped to blunder the British Empire into the otherwise avoidable French and Indian War? Seemingly so, according to this account of Washington’s early military adventures. 

Tired of journalism’s glamour and prestige, I decided to take a second job last week. I went to Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk website—a sort of virtual job fair matching thousands of businesses and online workers—and got a microtasking gig. It didn’t take long. I filled out a few forms, proved I was…

Recently, as I was putting the finishing touches on a story, an editor suggested that I “give props” to the people I was writing about. The idea came from a superior who felt that I should also give a “shout-out” to the subjects of my essay. It was a suggestion which my editor, after considerable…

Our author, professor of creative writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is apparently a huge nerd, and the title of his first short story collection allows the science fiction-savvy reader to discern this fact upfront. Omicron Ceti III is the name of the planet featured in the Star…

Does a biography bring any psychological insight to the portrayal of its subject? Does it place its subject in the context of his or her contemporaries? Does it have anything of critical substance to say about its subject? Is it well written? Is it entertaining? Is it animated by that sympathetic…

It was perhaps inevitable that our Fourth of July celebrations last week might have seemed anti-climactic after the four-day festivities a month ago accompanying the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Fireworks, however spectacular, cannot compare with the thousand-boat flotilla on the Thames cheered on by…

Last week The Scrapbook enjoyed a sensation it hadn’t felt since 1995, when Fermat’s Last Theorem was finally proved, after 358 years, by Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles. 

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us,” we are told. So we take this occasion to praise three admirable individuals who died in the past two weeks. Each of them was extraordinary in his or her own right, but each of them also exemplified the virtues of a remarkable generation.

President Obama has one thing right: Obamacare will end the process by which insured patients, or those capable of paying from their own pockets (e.g., the rich Saudi princes who inhabit the best suites in our hospitals), subsidize patients who show up in the emergency room, are treated, and then…

The Haqqani network is the most aggressive terrorist organization targeting U.S. and host nation forces in Afghanistan. Founded by aging patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani, the network is now managed by his sons Sirajuddin, Badruddin, and Nasiruddin, and their uncles Ibrahim and Khalil. They have carved…

Conservatives are engaged in an interesting intramural debate over National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Sebelius—the Obama-care case. But whether they think Chief Justice Roberts deserves hearty praise or contemptuous blame or any of the countless permutations in between, whether…

The ongoing failure of talks concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most recently in Istanbul on July 3, is no surprise. This latest negotiation charade between Iran and the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany (P5+1) is the culmination of 10 years of innumerable diplomatic…

As is abundantly demonstrated by the commentary on the June 28 decision upholding Obamacare, the drama of constitutional decision-making by the Supreme Court is irresistible. Such a significant issue decided, in effect, by one man! And that man, Chief Justice John Roberts—is he a lawless sellout to…

The memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed by architect Frank Gehry fails miserably to capture the essence of our 34th president. Bruce Cole’s article “Doing Right by Ike” in a recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD makes this point, coupled with this indisputable plea: Let’s give Ike the memorial…

It’s easy to blame politicians for their inability to come to some sort of compromise on the issues facing the economy. And they surely deserve a good portion of whatever obloquy is heaped upon them as they posture and subordinate the national interest to narrower and often baser goals. But…

The pool report on President Obama's trip to Roanoke, Virginia says that more than 20 people fainted during the president's speech this evening.  

At a campaign speech this evening in Roanoke, Virginia, President Obama seemed to concede that his signature legislation, Obamacare, is in fact a "tax."

On CNN this evening, Mitt Romney said that President Obama is attacking him to "divert attention from the fact that his policies have failed the American people."

ABC's Dan Lopez reports on Twitter: 

Mitt Romney responded to attacks from President Obama's camp by saying that the president "really needs to rein in his team and finally take responsibility for what they’re saying."

In a local interview with WJLA, President Obama urges Mitt Romney to say that he was running Bain Capital after 1999, though Romney insists he did not actively manage the company at that time. "Well, here's what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United…

David Shaywitz: "Preserving American (Medical) Exceptionalism."

Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham released the following statement on Syria:

In a letter today in the Virginian-Pilot, Mitt Romney blasts President Obama for cutting the military: 

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has taken time away from the rigors of not passing a budget and calling Mitt Romney a tax cheat to comment on the uniforms of the United States Olympic team.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has been able to confirm reports that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to be in Israel on Sunday, July 29. That day coincides on the Jewish calendar with the observance of the ninth day of the month of Av—Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the…

Defending Defense, a group made up of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, just published “Sequester’s Shadow on the Defense Industrial Base,” a joint paper that examines how the looming threat of even deeper defense cuts is already starting…

The Syrian regime has reportedly perpetrated another episode of sectarian cleansing. Yesterday, the army and paramilitary gangs loyal to president Bashar al-Assad killed more than 200 people in the Sunni village of Tremseh, in Hama province.

McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed has found audio of Condoleezza Rice's "speech she delivered at the candidate's closed-door June fundraising retreat in Park City." It is believed that this is the speech that propelled the Romney campaign to consider selecting Rice to be Romney's running mate:

Matthew Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon: 

When I suggested a couple months ago that President Obama might seriously consider replacing Joe Biden as his running mate with Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice hadn't yet thrilled Romney backers with her speech on June 23 in Park City, Utah, and Ann Romney hadn't subsequently said, "We've been…

On Tuesday, Russia announced it was sending 11 warships to the Mediterranean—some of which would dock in Syria, where Moscow keeps a base in Tartus. If some onlookers believed that the “unusually large size of the force” was meant to send a message to Washington, the fact is, the Obama…

For much of the last decade, international anti-Israel activists have targeted U.S. mainline Protestant denominations with pleas for divesting from firms doing business with Israel. There was reason: Official mainline Protestantism, pro-Israel during Israel's early decades, became sharply…

Former Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz has taken a four-point lead over Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican Senate primary runoff race, according to a PPP poll released Thursday. PPP found that 49 percent of likely Texas GOP runoff voters support Cruz, while 44 percent support…

Reuel Marc Gerecht, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

Conservatives are increasingly frustrated by the vagueness of Mitt Romney’s campaign, which perhaps can be best summed up by his non-sequitur of a slogan, “Believe In America.” Romney has to put down some detailed policy proposals to win, the argument goes.

Drudge reports, under this headline, "ROMNEY NARROWS VP CHOICES; CONDI EMERGES AS FRONTRUNNER":

Michael Kinsley: Wait, what's so terrible about outsourcing?

In a report to Congress authored in April, and posted online earlier this week by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department has once again accused Iran of supporting the Taliban. The unclassified assessment, which is titled “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” makes it clear that the U.S.…

CBS News's Charlie Rose has an interview with Barack and Michelle Obama airing tomorrow, and in an advance excerpt, the president says his biggest mistake was focusing too much on policy and not enough on the "story" of his presidency:

Three elected Democrats from Kentucky won't be in Charlotte this fall. The State Journal reports:

Mitt Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, issued the following statement after Barack Obama's campaign suggested Romney might be a criminal:

The federal government has been making the case that, with food stamps, "everyone wins," according to literature meant to promote the federal social welfare program. The argument is that accepting food stamp benefits helps to promote economic growth for the communities hosting those recipients.

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that — by a 15-point margin — the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes voters less likely, rather than more likely, to cast their vote for President Obama. Twenty-seven percent of registered voters say that the ruling makes them “less likely” to vote for Obama,…

Lee Smith, writing in Tablet: 

In this week's issue, Jeffrey Dressler explains that the Obama State Department has yet to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, in spite of bipartisan pressure from lawmakers to do so. Led by the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D,…

A new internal poll (via Politico) shows former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle ahead of one of her potential challengers and statistically tied with another in that state's U.S. Senate race. Lingle, a two-term Republican governor, leads Democratic congresswoman Mazie Hirono 45 percent to 40 percent…

Vice President Joe Biden told a NAACP meeting in Houston, Texas that he had to cut his remarks short "but this is preaching to the choir."

While attentions have been focused on outsourcing, tax hiking, and other political news, Iran has declined either to go away or to behave itself. Tensions have not eased and the Pentagon is taking precautions:

A new poll released by the David Dewhurst campaign shows the lieutenant governor of Texas 8 points ahead of his Senate primary opponent Ted Cruz. Fifty percent of Republican primary voters in Texas support Dewhurst, while 42 percent are for Cruz. Last week, however, the Cruz campaign released its…

Over at National Review Online, Ramesh Ponnuru highlights a CNN story entitled, “Voters sick and tired of health care debate.”  Ponnuru notes that the story offers essentially no evidence to support the claim made in its headline.  It’s also worth noting that the CNN story cherry picks one question…

On the Senate floor this morning, Senate majority leader Harry Reid accused Mitt Romney of not paying taxes for 12 years. 

Despite all evidence that sanctions are hurting Iran's economy, four rounds of nuclear talks failed to prove that Iran's regime is now more malleable to a compromise. Diplomacy will continue, but with Iranian proposals falling short of Western minimum requirements, it is time to ask whether…

Regardless of whether the Obama administration and campaign insist on calling Obamacare a penalty, most Americans now believe the president's signature legislation is a tax, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac. Sixty percent of Hispanics believe Obamacare is a tax, and 59 percent of independent…

A new television advertisement from the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacks President Barack Obama's campaign for spreading lies and dishonest attacks. Watch the ad, titled "No Evidence," here: 

Weak candidates may keep the Senate out of the GOP's grasp.

Illinois Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr., who had mysteriously taken a leave of absence from Congress a month ago, is reported to be at a rehabilitation clinic in Arizona. The Free Beacon has the story:

Breaking news from the New York Times (emphasis mine):

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Republicans will be able to "effectively repeal" Obamacare with a simple-majority vote in the Senate if they control Congress and the White House in 2013. By using the budget reconciliation process, repeal of Obamacare would…

Now that Americans are becoming more acutely aware that Obamacare would be funded in large part through higher taxes, it’s all the more crucial for President Obama to keep voters from discovering the overhaul’s other principal source of funding — its Medicare raid. 

The House has overwhelmingly voted to repeal Obamacare, by a vote of 244-185. Five Democrats joined 239 Republicans to vote for repeal, making it a bipartisan vote. No Republicans voted against repeal.

White House spokesman Jay Carney avoided talking about President Obama's comments on Hugo Chavez, saying that he hasn't "read it."

New Jersey governor Chris Christie's office has released a chart outlining various successes over the last three years. It's being called "Christie By The Numbers: A Look Back At Everything Across Three Balanced Budgets."

The boss has been suggesting that Mitt Romney might be looking at adding former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the Republican ticket, so imagine my surprise this morning when I received an email from ... Condoleezza Rice! Could it be that Rice was emailing me to weigh in? Was she going to…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney responded to President Obama's comments on Hugo Chavez with this statement:  

The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe reports: 

Vice President Joe Biden visited wounded veterans yesterday in Las Vegas, and told them, "You guys don't have a damn thing to be ashamed of." It is not clear why Biden might think veterans would be ashamed.

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will later today release the following chart, detailing the rising projected cost of President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare:

The latest poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling shows Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 50 percent to 44 percent among voters in Wisconsin. But PPP finds that if Romney were to pick Congressman Paul Ryan as a vice presidential runningmate, Obama's lead over Romney would drop to just one…

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts refused to tell CNN's Dana Bash that she's a minority, despite the fact that the Democratic Senate candidate was once listed as a Native American at Harvard, where she is a law professor. The Free Beacon has CNN's video:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is making the case at the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas that President Obama's policies have failed black Americans. "In June, while the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans actually…

San Bernardino on Tuesday became the third California city in less than a month to seek bankruptcy protection, with officials saying the financial situation had become so dire that it could not cover payroll through the summer.  According to the story in the Los Angeles Times, one resident “blasted…

Despite its Luddite tendencies, The Scrapbook is sufficiently au courant to be aware that many of its readers are no longer packing canvas bags of paperbacks for their summer vacations but loading up their e-readers of choice. So let us recommend to the non-Luddites that they download contributing…

Mitt Romney is addressing the NAACP today, where he will make the case that President Obama's policies have failed black Americans.

In an interview with Oscar Haza, a Spanish-speaking Miami journalist, President Obama was asked whether he's "worried with that alliance between Iran and Venezuela--and Hugo Chávez."

For 280 consecutive months before President Obama took office — a span of more than 23 years — the portion of Americans who were employed always exceeded 60.0 percent (according to official tallies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). In marked contrast, last Friday’s jobs numbers show that, under…

When you see a new poll, what do you look at first? With the general election campaign nominally underway, most people would say that they look at the head-to-head matchup between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Florida poll: Romney 46, Obama 45.

During Major League Baseball’s All-Star game Home Run Derby last night, hometown Kansas City fans booed Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano with such gusto one could be forgiven for supposing there’s still a lively rivalry between the New York and Kansas City franchises—like there was back in the…

Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia refused to answer a question about his position on repealing part or all of Obamacare this afternoon outside the Senate chamber. Asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if he supported repealing any part of the 2010 health care law, Manchin then stepped into an…

Joe Biden made a sex joke about his parents and grandparents today at the La Raza conference: 

Amtrak, which has never made any money – and has, in fact, required subsidies for all of its surly, customer-unfriendly life – is now proposing to spend about $150 billion to make it possible for riders to go from New York to Philly in under 40 minutes.  Which is about how long it takes for…

Why would the president oppose raising taxes when economic growth was 5.6 percent but propose raising taxes when it’s at 1.9 percent? When it’s politically advantageous to be seen as raising taxes on the rich.

The New York Post reports on a new cut of beef called the Vegas Strip, though in fact only the name is new. It's a shoulder cut that is so lean it needs to be grilled to no more than medium rare. (Or it can be boiled as with a Schulterscherzl.) The Post says the Vegas Strip "looks just like a…

The Wall Street Journal published a stunning story this morning, reporting that new analysis shows union political spending is about four times higher than previously thought. Moreover, union political spending now exceeds direct donations: 

Democrats are continuing to sound the alarm about this upcoming election. And the latest alarm bell is being rung by Senator Patty Murray, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell writes in a long piece at Breitbart.com that the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold (most of) Obamacare, but only on the grounds that its lynchpin provision is a tax, “has changed the nature of the 2012 elections.”  Caddell argues that Obamacare was “the…

Free advice for the Romney campaign from Luigi Zingales, writing in City Journal:

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair…

In his latest fundraising email to supporters, President Barack Obama seems to suggest that this presidential election will be a test for democracy.

The New York Times reports that "a veteran Republican campaign consultant," speaking on the condition of anonymity and in an apparent time warp, said, "Anytime Republicans are debating taxes and the economy, we’re winning. Anytime we’re debating health care, they’re winning." In 2008, this might…

Last night, Vice President Joe Biden told a Seattle audience that "Only 13 people in American history have ever served as long" he served in the Senate, according to a pool report from the event. It is a line he has used before. "I’ve served longer in the Senate, I’m almost embarrassed to…

At a Democratic fundraiser for Washington senator Maria Cantwell in the Seattle Westin hotel last night, Vice President Joe Biden said that "Republicans have changed the law so you get arrested if you do vote," according to a pool report. Biden, the pool report states, was "apparently joking."

The New York Times ran the following headline: "Cracks Appear in Republican Unity on Health Law Repeal." The accompanying piece quoted "cautious" Republican campaign consultants wary of restarting the Obamacare debate, just as House Republicans plan to hold a vote to repeal the unpopular law on…

In a remarkable development, the people of Libya on Sunday voted against the seemingly-irresistible advance of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the “Arab Spring” countries of North Africa. Until Libyan ballots began coming in, Western media seemed assured that the MB would repeat, in that country,…

White House press secretary Jay Carney had an odd exchange with a reporter at today's press briefing—in Russian! Via the official White House transcript: 

Do blacks feel their Obama support is taken for granted?

One hundred times since President Obama signed Obamacare into law in March 2010, Rasmussen Reports has asked likely voters whether they want to repeal Obama’s centerpiece legislation or keep it. In all 100 polls, voters have favored repeal.

When did President Obama change his mind on the wisdom of raising taxes in an economic downturn? And, perhaps more important, if the U.S. economy slipped back into recession, would the president abandon his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy?

A newly released Rasmussen poll asked likely voters, “If Mitt Romney is elected President and Republicans win control of Congress, how likely is it that the health care law will be repealed?”  Only 40 percent of independents said that it’s “very likely.”  The other 60 percent of independents’…

The Democratic National Committee chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is in Boston today to hold an event to urge Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

The lobbying firm Strategic Health Care is hosting a Capitol Hill event titled, "White Trash Reception." Here's a flyer for the event:

Following the president's push for a tax increase earlier today, GOP super PAC American Crossroads is blasting out this Bloomberg article from last month noting that Obama's proposal wouldn't just be a tax on wealthy individuals -- it would be tantamount to a pretty significant tax on businesses as…

The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity. Wolfe is suing the party to seat his delegates after he won over 40 percent of the vote…

A campaign spokesman for President Obama's reelection team, Jen Psaki, seemed to agree with an MSNBC host earlier today that the president is not able to run on "hope" and "change" this election cycle:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wowed Romney donors at a campaign retreat in June, and the boss wondered last week whether Rice might be one of the women Romney is considering as a running mate. But picking Rice would be problematic for Romney because that would either require Romney to…

President Obama just announced from the White House a plan to maintain current tax rates for the middle class, while hiking the tax rates for those earning above $250,000 per year. And while Republicans have already voiced opposition to the president's plan, Democrats are now beginning to express…

I recently received a postcard from my alma mater announcing "GEORGETOWN IS GOING GREEN." But how? Through carbon credits? Wind turbines? The postcard explains,

Apparently thinking that, in our republic, the president unilaterally passes laws and the Supreme Court unilaterally decides whether or not we’ll keep them, President Obama has been telling the American people that “the law I passed [Obamacare] is here to stay.”  But former Senate majority leader…

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is expected to hold another vote to repeal Obamacare, and the American Action Network is encouraging voters to tell House Democrats in potential swing districts to support repeal. AAN is running web ads for New York and California voters with a Three…

President Obama later today will announce a large tax increase on those Americans making over $250,000 a year. The Romney campaign is saying that this is Obama's  "response to even more bad economic news." 

Barack Obama's campaign just announced that it raised $71 million in the month of June, while earlier today Mitt Romney's campaign announced a $106 million June haul. The difference? Romney outraised Obama by $35 million in June.

President Obama will call for tax hikes later today at the White House. The New York Times reports: 

The Romney campaign announced its impressive June haul this morning, via a campaign email:

Give the media enough time, and they will spin straw into gold – for Democrats, naturally. And so it has been over the last two weeks since the Obamacare ruling was handed down. We have seen media pundits debate whether the ruling hurts Mitt Romney. We have seen them criticize Team Romney for not…

President Obama issued the following statement, congratulating Libya for holding elections yesterday:

I've gotten several inquiries about the poll numbers I cited this morning on Fox News Sunday.

Google yesterday reportedly launched a worldwide gay rights campaign, officially beginning in Poland and Singapore.

The nation of Iran has been elected to serve on a top U.N. Arms Trade Treaty post, the monitoring group U.N. Watch reports. 

Following Chief Justice John Roberts' decision upholding Obamacare's requirement to purchase health insurance as a constitutional tax, rather than an unconstitutional mandate, foes of the law saw an opening for Mitt Romney to attack Obamacare for raising taxes on the middle class. And so it seemed…

Two percent is no solution. That’s the growth rate chalked up by the U.S. economy in the first quarter (1.9 percent for those who believe in the precision with which GDP is measured) and that most forecasters see in America’s near-term future. Macroeconomic Advisers is not alone in lowering its…

Jonah Goldberg on our sick culture.

Yuval Levin, writing at National Review Online: 

The Akron Beacon Journal reports: 

The latest military developments in Syria are now generally understood as ushering in a new phase in the Syrian conflict. What’s less observed is that the minority Alawite regime’s mass killings of Sunnis and the intense fighting around the cities of Homs and Hama also seem to replicate significant…

An email with the subject line "Urgent," has been sent to President Obama's supporters by campaign manager Jim Messina. It's a request for campaign cash.

Ted Cruz is leading David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate in Texas, according to a new internal poll released by the Cruz campaign. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they support Cruz, with 40 percent supporting Dewhurst.

Via Mark Knoller:

In Beaver, Pennsylvania, President Obama's bus tour stopped off at Kretchmar's Bakery, which is "a three-generation establishment on the community’s main drag," according to the press pool report. 

Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

The Republican National Committee has released this web ad, blasting President Obama for saying the latest jobs report is "a step in the right direction":

The Obama campaign ... might eke out a victory, but it is at risk of losing control of the economic narrative. Its best hope is to stop nickel-and-diming Mitt Romney and laundry-listing forgettable initiatives and, instead, give independents reason to think that Obama has a clear, viable plan to…

Every so often you read a headline that cuts right to the heart of things. For instance, this one, on CNN this morning:

President Obama spent the first few minutes of his remarks today in Poland, Ohio cracking jokes with the crowd, and avoiding having to address today's disappointing jobs report:

President Obama called today's a jobs report a "step in the right direction":

Erin McPike's "close examination of the [Romney] campaign's activity" at RealClearPolitics suggests four leading contenders for Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick—former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Ohio senator Rob Portman, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, and Louisiana governor Bobby…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney responded to today's disappointing jobs numbers by saying that "It doesn't have to be this way."

White House chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan Krueger issued this statement on today's jobs numbers:

Adam Kinzinger, the 34-year-old Republican congressman from Illinois, considers September 11 2001 the first of two major, life-changing moments for him. The second came five years later, in 2006, when Kinzinger and his then-girlfriend were walking down Milwaukee’s North Avenue after having dinner…

Today's U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report shows that minorities are being hit hard by the economy:

CNBC reports:

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling, President Obama seems to have forgotten exactly how our law-making process works. Yahoo! News reports that, at a rally in Ohio on Thursday, the former part-time constitutional law lecturer and current president declared that "the law I passed is…

The Hill reports:

In Parma, Ohio, President Obama talked about dressing up like a Tea Party member to get votes in Hyde Park, Chicago:

Is Romney deciding among Pawlenty, Portman, Jindal and Ryan for VP?

The biggest newspaper in the Washington, D.C. area asks, "Did global warming intensify the derecho in Washington, D.C.?" It's the same question the Washington Post brought up directly after the derecho thunderstorm struck the Washington area last Friday.

Russian president Vladimir Putin made his second visit to Israel last week. His brief trip included high-level talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they agreed at least in the abstract that Bashar al-Assad should stop slaughtering civilians in Syria and that the world…

Paul Wolfowitz and Mark Palmer, writing in the Washington Post: 

President Obama made an unscheduled visit on his bus tour today to Kozy Corners in Oak Harbor, Ohio. While working the crowd, he complimented a nurse, saying that "This is a good looking woman."

It is not the Supreme Court's job, according to its chief justice, “to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” The Court must defer to Congress, the body which passes the laws, good or bad.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamcare will hurt the economy, according to a new Gallup poll.  Only 37 percent believe the health care overhaul will help the economy.

A few paragraphs from the boss's editorial a few weeks ago are today particularly pertinent: 

Politico is still promoting ex-reporter Joe Williams, who is no longer working at the publication after saying that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is uncomfortable around people who are not white.

The Obama campaign has just sent out the following fundraising email, signed by Vice President Joe Biden. The subject line reads, "I want to buy you a cup of coffee." Read the email below:

Some high profile candidates have decided not to attend their parties' national conventions later this summer. This is news, but one is inclined to wonder why. After all, would you want to spend three days in August, listening to speakers as they introduce some "great and distinguished American"…

Syria is running for a spot on the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Syrian regime, for over the past year, has ruthlessly engaged in suppressing protesters by murdering and detaining thousands of opposition figures, and now hopes the international body will be more accepting.

Vice President Joe Biden is taking the rest of this July Fourth week off. "The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden will be in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware," the White House announced. "The Vice President has no public events scheduled."

Remember Michael Dukakis (1988) and John Kerry (2004)? It's possible to lose a winnable presidential election to a vulnerable incumbent in the White House (or in the case of 1988, a sitting vice president). So, speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to…

On CNN this morning, President Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that the president disagrees with the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally conceded that Obamacare, as it stands under the Supreme Court ruling, "is a tax."

Following last week's bipartisan vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for withholding details about the Fast and Furious scandal, more revelations keep coming, well, fast and furious. Senator Chuck Grassley recently released a memo that shows that details of the Fast and Furious…

Speaker of the House John Boehner's Fourth of July tribute to the Declaration of Independence: 

On the day that the Supreme Court released its Obamacare ruling, my daughter and I had the opportunity to visit the Reagan Ranch. Located in the mountains in the Central Coast region of California, the ranch is where President Reagan spent nearly one out of every eight days of his presidency. As…

Bill Kristol, writing four years ago for the New York Times:

If you're in the mood for reading a bit this July 4th, there are many fine Independence Day speeches and orations to choose from. Here are three that I find particularly moving:

Keith Hennessy: How to undo Obamacare.

Just in time for the nearly 2 million member Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly this week, which will consider anti-Israel divestment, some prominent Christian activists have released a new anti-Israel salvo, called Kairos USA.

Earlier today, news broke that North Carolina congressman Larry Kissell is refusing to endorse President Obama and might not attend the Democratic convention later this year in Charlotte, N.C. And now, there's word that Rep. Hayden Rogers won't be endorsing Obama or even attending the convention. 

Daniel Gordis remembers former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in Tablet: 

The White House Press Office has just released this statement on the death of actor Andy Griffith:

President Obama will celebrate July 4 tomorrow at the White House with a naturalization ceremony, the White House announced today. The president will be joined by Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano.

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the OraQuick In-Home HIV Test, the first over-the-counter, self-administered HIV test kit to detect the presence of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and type 2 (HIV-2). HIV is the virus that causes acquired immune…

Human Rights Watch has just released an 81-page report detailing the Syrian regime’s systematic use of torture against opposition figures. “‘Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s Underground Prisons since March 2011’ is based on more than 200…

A SWAT team raided the home of the sister of freshman Republican congressman Blake Farenthold of Texas, Politico reports:

According to a Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, Barack Obama now rates behind Jimmy Carter in the pantheon of great presidents.  The poll asked likely voters to list the two best and the two worst presidents the history of the United States.  Here are the tallies, based on net results: 

“Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of the nation's bluest and wealthiest counties; its perennially awful power service raises the question of whether liberals can make the trains run on time,” Gregg Easterbrook, Atlantic. Good question and one I was also asking last Saturday when, with my usual…

A new poll shows Mitt Romney has taken a significant lead in North Carolina, a state which Barack Obama won by just 12,000 votes in 2008. The Civitas Poll of 600 North Carolina adults shows Romney with 50 percent support, compared to Obama's 45 percent support. That's a big gain for Romney, who in…

Another North Carolina Democrat is refusing to support President Obama's reelection effort. This time it's Rep. Larry Kissell. 

According to a newly released Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes Americans more likely to vote for Mitt Romney and less likely to vote for President Obama. By a margin of 21 points (32 to 11 percent), voters say that they are now more, rather than…

This year, an election year, President Obama and his family will be breaking with tradition and not vacationing at Martha's Vineyard. The Boston Globe reports:

The Associated Press reports that this summer is an example of "some of the worst of global warming":

One of the few bright spots in last week’s Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care overhaul was a political one: The opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts argues that Obamacare is constitutional under the taxing powers of Congress. The Obama administration’s advocate before…

Two days after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on President Obama’s signature legislation, the president delivered his weekly radio address and didn’t utter one word about Obamacare or the ruling.

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has been named chairman of the Republican National Convention Committee on Resolutions. The committee, generally referred to as the Platform Committee, will help set the agenda for the Republican party and convene during the party's convention next month in Tampa,…

Is the economy back in recession?

Geoffrey Norman’s lovely piece on the Seven Days Battles of June 1862 in this week’s edition of the magazine needs no glossing, but the fights that brought Confederate General Robert E. Lee to the fore also marked the beginning of a period where the future of the United States was increasingly in…

The death certificate of Elizabeth Warren's aunt Bess "Bea" Veneck, who famously told the Massachusetts Democrat that her grandfather's "high cheekbones" belied Warren's Cherokee heritage, identifies Veneck as "white" and not "Native American." Warren officially informed the state of Oklahoma of…

At the end of an interesting op-ed, Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevy relates an interesting and revealing anecdote about Senator John Kerry, who is believed to be in the running for the secretary of state position should Barack Obama be reelected.

A top Democratic congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says that we're living through a "depression":

The House Intelligence Committee chair, Congressman Mike Rogers, unloaded on the Obama administration for what he calls "probably the most damaging" national security leaks in history, the National Journal reports. 

In an interview, veteran Democratic foreign policy insider Stuart Eizenstat admits that the Obama administration has not placed all options on the table for dealing with Iran. The Times of Israel reports:

Newt Gingrich issued a warning, based on the destructive storms that hit the Washington, D.C. area over the weekend, on Twitter: 

Arkansas Democrat Gene Jeffress, who is running for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, offered a strange story about health care reform at a recent campaign stop. The video, picked up by Caleb Howe at RedState, contains some offensive language from Jeffress, who suggests that Republican…

The Economic Times reports: 

The latest Rasmussen poll find that 52 percent of likely voters favor repealing President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare. Rasmussen writes: 

Yesterday on CNN, White House chief of staff Jack Lew defended the Obama administration's involvement in the Fast and Furious scandal by saying that "this administration has been the most transparent ever."

The Associated Press reports that, when it comes to Syria, the Arab League is uniting around the opposition:

Paris

A drug enforcement agent, a friend of a friend, used to say that society is like a skyscraper: Most people stay on one or two floors, only getting to know people about as rich or poor as themselves. Only the cops go to every floor, from the subbasements to the penthouse. 

For decades now, media marketers and content producers have been milking the Jane Austen craze, first with fine dramatizations of the novels themselves for small and large screen, then with a vast bazaar of knockoffs—sequels by the score (Letters from Pemberley: The First Year, Captain Wentworth’s…

On great occasions,” the president wrote, “every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going beyond the strict line of the law.” In fact he would later say, during a national security crisis, that “a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself” and would “absurdly…

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The never-ending Democratic attempt to resurrect the strategy that destroyed Barry Goldwater in 1964—he’s an extremist, don’t you know—rolls on, with liberals and the media trying to tar the Republican party as an “ideological outlier” in American politics. 

Only in Washington: After 12 years of study and millions of dollars spent, a congressionally appointed commission has yet to break ground on the National Mall for a memorial to President Dwight David Eisenhower. The memorial, which could cost American taxpayers up to $142 million—yes, you read that…

A man wanders along a beach, picking up smelly rocks and poking things with sticks. If one of the gray-green lumps he seeks happens to have just the right scent—of squid, musk, and fecal matter—it could change his life. Ambergris is a rare substance which has been used for centuries to make…

World War I, the great wrong turn of modern history, began with a wrong turn. It was made by the driver of the open car carrying the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife on their visit to Sarajevo in June 1914. The driver stopped the car, intending to turn…

If you’re wondering how President Obama plans to get reelected in 2012—and why he might succeed—look back not to 2008 but to his successful campaign to win congressional passage of Obamacare during 2009 and early 2010.

Long before their tanks roared through the Ardennes, the Nazi regime had Paris in its sights. Hitler’s lunatic ambition had its crafty side; as his urbane diplomats charmed French aristocrats, his secret minions mounted a cultural offensive aimed at softening the French will to resist. Deep in the…

Francis Scott Key and the rockets’ red glare at Fort McHenry. Dolley Madison rescuing Washington’s portrait from the sack of the White House. Andrew Jackson’s lopsided victory at New Orleans after the Treaty of Ghent. These are colorful episodes that people at least hazily associate with the…

Austerity and growth are increasingly viewed as opposites: If one is selected, the other must be sacrificed. Policies to promote growth require that austerity in government spending be forgone, while policies that impose austerity in government spending do so at the cost of growth. 

Mitt Romney has a well-deserved reputation as risk-averse and cautious. His campaign team has made no secret of its strategy to have their man tiptoe to the presidency by focusing almost exclusively on President Obama’s stewardship of the economy. The execution of this strategy depends on Romney…

Richmond, Va.

Herewith a handful of assorted volumes that, having crossed the literary editor’s desk, strike The Weekly Standard as interesting—even pleasant—reading in a variety of moods and circumstances.

Back in the dark ages of superstition and disease, before science brought suffering humanity into our present era of perpetual peace and economic stability, people were very unenlightened. As Harris (2010) and Hitchens (2007) note, it was a dark time. Very dark.

Last week, we wrote on this page that given the Obama administration’s lack of leadership on Iran in this “period of consequences,” Congress should step in to fill the void. As our editorial went to press, a bipartisan group of 44 senators began to do just that. In a letter organized by Senators…

After Vladimir Putin’s predictable victory in the Russian presidential election in March, the opposition​—​which had enjoyed a few heady months of visibility and freedom after the December parliamentary vote became a debacle for the Kremlin​—​seemed demoralized and disoriented. The protests were…

For three weeks in May, Republican super-PACs took turns attacking Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in TV ads. Republicans hadn’t held their primary​—​it’s not until August 7​—​but McCaskill wound up trailing all three of the GOP candidates in polls. Now McCaskill, unnerved, is struggling to…

CBS's Jan Crawford has a must-read report on the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision:

The Washington Post considers the heat wave and derecho thunderstorm that hit the Washington, D.C. area on Friday and wonders what role "manmade climate warming" might have played.