September 2012

Yesterday, speaking at a campaign event in Florida, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I ask every day, what's the exact number of the fallen angels -- not generally, not an estimate, the exact number -- because for every one of those women or men, it has transformed a family, a family we owe. And…

Republicans are pointing to this exchange of Obama political adviser David Plouffe on Meet the Press this morning defending the decision to fundraise the day after the terrorist attack in Libya:

There were mixed messages from aides to Barack Obama this morning on the Sunday talk shows.

Democrats today trotted out a new tactic for raising campaign cash: shame.

Statements released by two top Democrats on Capitol Hill yesterday wrongly stated that 5 Americans were killed in the terror attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11. In fact, 4 Americans were killed in that attack: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen A. Doherty, and Tyrone…

Fox News host Bret Baier last night ran this comprehensive timeline of the Obama administration's handling of the terror attack:

Omar Khadr has been sent from Guantanamo to Canada, after returning from the jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Khadr is slated to stay in custody for the time being. It is difficult to think of a more mythologized figure in the post-9/11 war on terror. For the worldwide left, Khadr has become a…

Free trade might not be the first casualty of an American election campaign, but it is right up there in the top rank. President Obama is bashing Mitt Romney for sending jobs to China when he ran Bain Capital, and Romney is returning the favor by accusing Obama of failing to label China a currency…

American voters overwhelmingly believe the United States should play a "significant role in world affairs," a new poll from the Foreign Policy Initiative shows:

Muslim Americans in Michigan, including a local newspaper editor, will be rallying Friday in Dearborn to protest the YouTube film, "Innocence of Muslims" and advocate for blasphemy laws. Here's an image of a poster advertising the rally:

Vice President Joe Biden engaged in a little retail politics earlier today at Nestor's Gourmet Deli in Boca Raton, Florida:

Adam White emails in response to this post: 

Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

A WEEKLY STANDARD source living in Northern Virginia passes along photos of the first piece of mail the source has received from the Romney campaign. Instead of focusing on a big issue--say, Obamacare, the debt, or taxes--the mailer is about Lyme Disease: 

On September 27, the chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (who is also president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Fatah Party) spoke to the U.N. General Assembly.

During his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a drawing of a bomb to illustrate the threat of Iran's nuclear program. Several media types pooh-poohed Netanyahu's chart, including the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. "It is…

Still basking in the glory of his latest appearance at the U.N., Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now heads back to Tehran with his head held high after winning yet more American hearts and minds. As the Islamic Republic's official news agency, Fars, reports this morning, according to a new…

Freshman House Republican Allen West has a new ad highlighting his service as a lieutenant colonel in the Army--and his Democratic opponent's 2003 arrest at a South Florida night club. "Two men, a country in crisis," the ad's voiceover says. "You decide." Watch the 30-second ad below:

The Obama campaign has created a series of electronic greeting card aimed at women voters. "President Obama summed up the Republican Party’s approach to women’s health when he said 'they want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,'" the Obama campaign…

A savvy friend writes:

We are now less than two weeks away from an election that could either save or destroy what remains of Venezuelan democracy.

A printed mailer sent out by the Utah Democratic party features what appears to be a darkened photo of Republican House candidate Mia Love. Below is the image of the mailer:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scheduled a phone call for late morning Friday with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

President Obama is scheduled to attend three campaign fundraisers tomorrow, according to the White House. All three events are in Washington, D.C.:

Why you shouldn't vote for Obama.

Here's the full text of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's United Nations address:

A new ad from American Crossroads, with a James Bond theme: 

Two shocking photos coming off the wire of Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the United Nations moments ago.

One year ago today, North Carolina governor Bev Perdue suggested suspending national elections.

Yesterday, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. the heads of all of the major media "fact checking" organizations convened for a panel discussion. On the panel were PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler, the Associated Press's Jim Drinkard, and it was…

For all of the wishful thinking in the mainstream press about President Obama’s positioning 40 days before this election, Obama’s approval rating looks remarkably similar to what it was on this date in 2010 — shortly before his party lost a historic 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats. On September…

After a light day of campaigning today in Virginia, President Barack Obama returns to the White House at 2:10 p.m., according to the president's public schedule. Obama has nothing else on his schedule for the remainder of the day.

Jay Carney tells reporters aboard Air Force One, "It's a great day for America."

At the Washington Post this morning, Glenn Kessler posts a collection of the Obama administration’s evolving statements on Libya and some important reporting of facts surrounding the attacks.

President Obama has released a new two-minute ad that will serve as a closing argument of sorts as early voters begin to go to the polls in several states.

In a message to Israeli citizens yesterday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he'd use his remarks at the United Nations to respond to the "black day" at the international body. Netanyahu is scheduled to speak later today.

Zerohedge reports on the latest GDP numbers:

This morning, Rick Santelli said the revised GDP numbers are "depressingly weak":

Americans must be wondering how much more of this “recovery” they can afford.  New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama…

Steve Hayes, with A.B. Stoddard and Kirsten Powers, yesterday on Fox News: 

On August 24, 2012, the German daily Tagesspiegel reported a dismaying decision by the German Academic Exchange Service, or Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The agency decided in favor of continued cooperation between the University of Potsdam’s Institute for Religious Studies (IRS)…

During a new one-minute TV ad, Mitt Romney looks into the camera and says: 

Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren are tied at 48 percent support, according to Rasmussen. The U.S. Senate race, which pits the Republican incumbent Brown against Warren, a Democrat and Harvard law professor, remains a contentious toss-up. Rasmussen also reports that 3 percent of likely voters in…

"Romney's High Unfavorable Rating Hampers Message on Economy" ran the headline at Bloomberg Businessweek. "Half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Romney—a September high for a presidential challenger in the last three decades," reports Julie Hirschfeld-Davis. "Forty-nine percent of likely…

When Republican strategists like Karl Rove cite 1980 as a model for this year’s election, they usually have in mind two main elements: Ronald Reagan’s question in the late October presidential debate about whether voters felt better off than four years earlier, when they elected Jimmy Carter, and…

Eight House Republicans have signed a letter to President Barack Obama to demand more information regarding the September 11th attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans. House Armed Services…

The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as the Republican vice presidential nominee continues an odd and indeed unprecedented pattern so far in the 21st century. Seven of the eight major party vice presidential candidates have been the first people from their home states to be major party…

Utah Republican Mia Love has pulled ahead of Democratic congressman Jim Matheson, according to an internal poll released by the Love campaign. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Love leads Matheson 51 percent to 36 percent; the same poll found Matheson leading Love 51 percent to 38 percent in July,…

Can a Republican candidate lose a debate on tax policy and win the presidency? The Romney campaign seems to think so.

President Barack Obama is far ahead of Mitt Romney in three important swing states, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac. Obama leads Romney by 12 points in Pennsylvania (54 percent to 42 percent), by 10 points in Ohio (53 percent to 43 percent), and by 9 points in Florida (53 percent to 44…

Seems like everybody has now seen it, either when it happened (that would be in "real time") or on replay. Even players who benefitted from the call agree that the Packers got hosed. The remedy? 

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan completed the initial leg of their bus tour across battleground Ohio. The GOP forces added an element of celebrity that may help shore up their base, and they encountered voting blocs that Romney must attract to win the state. Based on recent poll numbers here in the…

Republicans, by and large, are frustrated with recent polls of the presidential election because they think Democrats are being oversampled. Many pollsters respond by saying that “weighting” the polls for partisan identification creates its own problems and might end up skewing the polls in the…

Can a Republican candidate lose a debate on tax policy and win the presidency? The Romney campaign seems to think so.

Mitt Romney was joking about airplane windows.

At a rally in Ohio today, Mitt Romney said that Barack Obama hasn't raised taxes during his first term in office but will if he's reelected:

President Obama’s supporters are obsessed with being “on the right side of history.”  This is, after all, the essence of progressivism — history progresses, always upward (don’t ask about the Dark Ages), and progressives exist to speed up that “progress.” This, in turn, informs the view of this…

The White House weighed in on the blown call that cost the Green Bay Packers the football game last night against the Seattle Super Hawks. Via the pool report, from aboard Air Force One: 

“Bir Halek, Ya Fayyad” is not a catchy tune. But the popularity of Palestinian singer Kassem Najar’s song, which translates to “Get A Grip, Fayyad,” is an indication that Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, may be on the way out. Najar, however, is the least of Fayyad’s…

President Obama made the case to the ladies of The View that we should "marginalize" the infamous anti-Islam video that supposedly sparked attacks on American embassies across the world by "ignoring it."

Criticism is mounting over First Lady Michelle Obama's lunch plan, as kids are complaining they aren't getting enough to feel full after eating.

President Obama's address at the United Nations was at times eloquently aspirational, and for the most part conventionally unobjectionable. But there was one sentence that gave away the fundamental lack of seriousness of the Obama worldview: "We have begun a transition in Afghanistan, and America…

In a speech at the United Nations this morning, President Obama says the attacks on America across the Muslim world over the last two weeks are also an "assault on the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded."

Here's the text of President Obama's United Nations address, as prepared for delivery:

The reason why President Obama is not meeting with any foreign leaders during this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York is, as one aide to the president explained, because "If he met with one leader, he would have to meet with 10."

David Winston's newly released poll, based on a survey taken September 12-14, nicely illustrates the challenges facing—and the opportunities available to—the Romney campaign. The poll (with a reasonable D+2 sample) shows a close race, with Obama up 48-46 percent. But it's worth looking at answers…

CNN blasted President Obama this morning for skipping meetings with foreign leaders this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City and instead appearing on daytime TV talk show The View:

While Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the United Nations, "Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor walked out of the General Assembly hall," according to the Associated Press.

At Foreign Policy’s The Cable, Josh Rogin provides an update on reports connecting a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan Ben Qumu to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rep. Adam Smith, the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said today…

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's clone?

In remarks this morning to the Clinton Global Initiative, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed a radical idea: a global tax on elites around the world.

Sometimes an uninhabited island chain is just an uninhabited island chain. But that’s never the case in East Asia, where territorial disputes often involve fishing rights, energy supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, the re-litigation of historical grievances.

Speaking in New York today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel will be "eliminated." Ahmadinejad made the remarks to reporters. He's in New York in for the United Nations General Assembly.

Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won his special election to the U.S. Senate in 2010 by campaigning around the state in his pickup truck. The truck became integral in Brown's popular image, helping the Republican win over traditional Democratic voters to win the seat once held by Ted Kennedy.…

"I think it's not good enough to say it's free speech, it should be allowed. I think if this does provoke action against American citizens or Americans anywhere else in the world then maybe we do need to think how much freedom is OK." So says Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar. 

This morning on MSNBC, Obama adviser David Axelrod scoffed at the notion the president should actually have a plan to save Social Security from bankruptcy: 

This morning on MSNBC, Obama adviser David Axelrod scoffed at the notion the president should actually have a plan to keep Social Security from bankruptcy: 

A report today in an official outlet of the Iranian regime claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, will meet with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ahmadinejad is currently in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, where these reported meetings will take…

Elizabeth Warren appeared on a local radio talk show Monday morning, where both a caller and one of the hosts asked the Harvard law professor about her use of her unproven Native American heritage to advance her professional career. In response, Warren claimed she only listed herself as a minority…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that independents overwhelmingly support the repeal of Obamacare — by 18 percentage points (55 to 37 percent) — which once again raises this question:  How can an incumbent president hope to win reelection when his centerpiece legislation is this…

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren kept a private law practice in her Harvard office in Cambridge for years, despite the fact that she does not appear to be licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. William Jacobson of the blog Legal Insurrection does the heavy…

President Barack Obama's closest political adviser, David Axelrod, is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser later today for a Democratic candidate for Congress who linked the Tea Party with the shooting in Tucson that injured former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The Democrat that will be joined…

The new Politico/GWU/Battleground poll seems to me, from a quick perusal of its internals, to have produced solid and non-quirky results consistent with several other surveys. It has a D+3 sample, and shows an Obama margin of 3 on the presidential ballot test and a 1 point Democratic edge on the…

The release of Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax returns shows that he freely gave away more than $4 million to charity last year (about 30 percent of his income).  In comparison, when Joe Biden was first running for vice president, his tax returns showed that he had given away just $3,690 to charity over the…

Highlighting “the dismantling of the space program over the last four years,” Paul Ryan said in Orlando on Saturday, “Today, if we want to send [our] astronaut[s] to the space station, we have to pay the Russians to take them there.  [The crowd booed at the thought.]  China may someday be looking…

Boston

Charleston, W. Va.

In the July 2 issue of this magazine, we argued that anyone wishing to understand President Obama’s reelection strategy should forget about the 2008 election and examine instead his successful drive to win congressional approval of Obamacare in 2009-2010. He and his team accomplished this by giving…

Recently, the Washington Post fact checker wrote a column examining a series of claims made by pro-life groups about Obama’s abortion record. He evaluated four pro-life claims that were found wanting, receiving from one to three “Pinocchios” for being misleading, with four being the maximum number…

The Clam Castle, a tiny out­post along Boston Post Road on the way to Hammonasset Beach in Connecticut, serves up a menu I find irresistible: fried whole clams, clam fritters, clam strip rolls, fried shrimp, fried sea scallops, and fried cod. It reminds me of the seafood restaurant in The Simpsons,…

Answers for Aristotle intends to help us improve our lives. Its method is to see what science can now teach us about philosophical questions, but also what it cannot. It joins the current gaggle of semi-popular works meant to inform the eager, but ignorant, about what neuroscience and psychology…

For close to 1,300 years, Muslims cared little what infidels thought of them. The curious caliph, sultan, vizier, or cleric might engage the arguments of Christians questioning the one true faith, but such disputatious exchanges were made as much out of befuddlement as disdain: Any sensible,…

It is said that there are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity. Likewise, it seems, there are no new titles for books on sin; the old ones just get amended. Three years after Gary A. Anderson’s critically acclaimed Sin: A History, another American academic, Paula Fredriksen, offers her…

I have known Ben Stein for 50 years. We met as rival high school newspaper editors in early-1960s Washington, and then forged a close, lasting friendship a decade later as colleagues in the beleaguered Nixon White House.

Not long ago I was in Boston browsing the stacks of that legendary emporium, the Brattle Book Shop, when I chanced upon Winston Spencer Churchill: Servant of Crown and Commonwealth, a collection of tributes to the parliamentarian, war leader, historian, and wit, which his longstanding English…

Early Friday morning, September 14, a movie-loving and Romney-supporting friend emailed: “I’m starting to panic. Tell me not to.”

All right, you’re in the Obama White House. You see that the monthly jobs report is terrible, worse than expected. The Federal Reserve is so worried about the economy that it proposes 24/7 pump-priming to jolt it out of the doldrums. A mob invades the United States embassy in Cairo, pulls down the…

‘It’s difficult to know what to ask a rapper. It’s not unlike the difficulty (I imagine) of being a rapper. Whatever you say must be considered from at least three angles, and it’s an awkward triangulation. In one corner you have your hard-core hip-hop heads; the type for whom .  .  . ” (Zadie…

Our government is not a pure democracy but a constitutional republic, meaning that we govern ourselves in accord with the Constitution, which provides for a Supreme Court with the authority to review and strike down laws that are in conflict with the Constitution. In Cosmic Constitutional Theory,…

It’s pretty hard not to have some misgivings about the increasing government surveillance of citizens, though reasonable people can disagree to what extent this is necessary to keep us safe. However, The Scrapbook would like to think that we can all agree that when the surveillance state becomes…

On September 11, seemingly spontaneous protests erupted in Libya and Egypt over the online trailer for an anti-Islam video that almost no one in the West had heard of. The protests quickly became violent, ending in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his fellow Americans in…

Despite—or because of?—continuing bad economic news, President Obama has doubled down on the argument that Mitt Romney and the Republicans will take the country back to “the failed policies that got us into this mess.” His argument is simple: While his policies haven’t (yet) worked, Romney’s (like…

On the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, radical Islamists breached the walls of the U.S. embassy compound in Cairo, tore the American flag to shreds, and replaced it with the black flag preferred by al Qaeda, which reads, “There is No God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger.”

Journalists often play dumb as a way of drawing information from a reluctant source. But they are just as quick to act smart—to assume an air of authority over a topic with which they have been only briefly acquainted. Michael Lewis, the financial journalist and author of many bestsellers, is now…

It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video,…

Sharpsburg, Md.

A new zombie movie called World War Z starring Brad Pitt and budgeted at $150 million won’t be coming to your local multiplex anytime soon, even though it was originally supposed to premiere this Christmas. Nor will the sequel to the G. I. Joe movie I’m sure you didn’t see, which cost $125 million…

President Obama is outside the ideological mainstream, viewed as very liberal by an electorate that’s moderate or somewhat conservative. His domestic policies are unpopular, notably his health care law, economic stimulus, and spending plans. His foreign policy initiatives—curbing Iran’s nuclear…

Tonight, CBS aired a 60 Minutes interview with President Obama. But curiously enough, the news magazine show did not air a clip of Obama admitting to interviewer Steve Kroft that some of his campaign ads contain mistakes and that some even "go overboard."

This evening on CBS's 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama called the recent violence in the Middle East "bumps in the road."

In an interview to air tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama will refer to Israel's concern over Iran's march toward a nuclear program as "noise."

Tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes, President Obama will say that "I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree."

The former Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 2000 election has not decided who he'll be voting for this time around. Lieberman made the admission in a C-Span appearance that broadcast earlier today: 

A recent email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which focuses on getting Democratic party members elected to the House of Representatives, announces a contest to find the "Worst. Republican. Ever."

In an interview this morning on CBS, former President Bill Clinton wildly accused Republicans of working to disenfranchise minorities, immigrants, and young voters. "And they have worked hard at this," Clinton said of these supposed Republican efforts.

Bill Clinton told Bob Schieffer this morning that he doesn't "know" whether his wife, Hillary Clinton, will run for president in 2016:

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Robert Gibbs had problems explaining why the Obama administration misled the nation on what happened in Libya:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Chris Wallace asked Robert Gibbs, "So [Obama] has time for Whoopi Goldberg, but he doesn't have time for world leaders?" The question is in reference to Obama's decision to go on The View next week, but not to meet with world leaders, including Israeli prime…

Gary Gross believes Mitt Romney can learn a lesson from George W. Bush:

Yesterday, when speaking via video to the AARP, President Obama said, “But what I’m not going to do, as a matter of principle, is to slash benefits or privatize Social Security and suddenly turn it over to Wall Street.”

In a statement to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin offers some advice for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, this year's Republican ticket for president and vice president, respectively.

I know a gaffe when I see one, having made many myself, and Romney’s 47 percent remark was no gaffe. It was an expression of a belief so deeply held, and so thoroughly validated in the circles in which Romney travels, that it required no fact-checking. Add to that the tin ear that allowed the…

Do conservatives really want Romney to win?

Vice President Joe Biden talked up cheerleaders at a campaign stop earlier today. Via the pool report:

Addressing the audience at an AARP convention today, Paul Ryan declared, "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare." He explained to those in attendance how Obamacare would turn "Medicare into a piggy bank," while also putting "15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare’s…

Ann Romney's airplane made an emergency landing, press secretary Andrea Saul reports:

According to a statement released by the Romney campaign that summarizes the rate of taxes the Republican presidential nominee paid between 1990 and 2009, the rate at which Mitt Romney paid taxes is approximately equal to what President Barack Obama paid last year. 

Here's video of Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser and friend to President Barack Obama, speaking about collectivism in 1996:

Mitt Romney may want to consider adding a few more lines about welfare reform—and Barack Obama’s gutting of the law’s work requirement—back into his stump speech. A new poll conducted by the National Republican Congressional Committee asked 1170 respondents two questions about welfare reform, and…

The Romney campaign is releasing Mitt and Ann Romney's 2011 tax return today. The campaign previews a few of the highlights here:

President Barack Obama responded to Mitt Romney's criticism of his remarks yesterday by saying, "We don't want an inside job in Washington, we want change in Washington."

President Obama said in an interview yesterday that, “The most important lesson I’ve learned is you can’t change Washington from the inside.”

So if you're politically attuned and on Twitter, you've probably seen these disturbing photos of Obama supporters pledging allegiance to the president of the United States. Supporters write on their hands some value or thought that is allegedly embodied by the Obama campaign. It's the kind of thing…

Senate majority leader Harry Reid is holding up the Senate to allow a vote on a bill introduced by embattled Democrat Jon Tester.

An alarming data point from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee: More Americans are being added to food stamps than are finding jobs. The data is detailed in this chart, provided by the committee:

Boston

Conservatives are growing worried, and Democrats gleeful, about Obama’s lead in the polls, basically for the same reason: it is late in the season (or so it seems), and the incumbent president has a lead. That is a good thing for Obama.

Robert Samuelson: Romney should make lemonade out of his "47 percent" lemons.

A central tenet of President Obama’s foreign policy platform is that al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat.” The death of Osama bin Laden, drone strikes in northern Pakistan and elsewhere, the Arab Spring, and Obama’s more conciliatory approach to the Muslim world have all supposedly come together to…

Henry Olsen writes in the Washington Post: 

Politico reports that “the Obama administration is airing ads on Pakistani television condemning the anti-Islamic film ‘The Innocence of Muslims,’ a State Department spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.” (Watch the State Department ad here.) But why just the ridiculous video? Perhaps the Obama…

At a town hall hosted by Univision this afternoon in Florida, a college student asked President Obama for advice on how to get a job. Obama first lavished praise on the journalists hosting the forum and then admitted that the economy has not been doing well for the last four years:

A perceptive e-mail from a friend from the world of finance:

It’s a couple days old, but nevertheless worth watching: Here’s the clip of President Obama’s interview with David Letterman (which Steve Hayes discusses in greater detail here), during which Obama shows that he apparently has no idea how big our national debt is — apparently even to the nearest…

Yesterday the White House announced that Cheryl Saban will be an American representative to the United Nations. Cheryl Saban's husband is Democratic donor and billionaire Haim Saban. The Washington Free Beacon reports:

The White House is now calling the Libya terror attack that resulted in the death of four Americans, including the American ambassador to that country, a "terrorist attack." From the pool report aboard Air Force One: 

The controversial proposal for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial now has a new component: a smartphone app, which, according to the memorial’s designers, visitors will be able to use on-site to “contextualize Eisenhower’s impact” and view historical and biographical content. Postmodern…

Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine, a Democrat, said that he's open to having a "minimum tax level for everyone":

One of the ways you can tell that Obama's magic is gone is the lack of insane, iconographic art surrounding his campaign this time. In 2008 Obama art was beyond parody. There was an entire meme about The One riding on unicorns.

A campaign spokesman for President Barack Obama suggested this morning on national television that there are no plans for the president to update the nation on what happened in Libya:

Applications for U.S. jobless benefits fell by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000 in the week ended Sept. 15, the Labor Department said Thursday ...  Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to drop to 375,000. I The average of new claims over the past month, meanwhile, rose by 2,000…

Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has regained the lead in his race against Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, according to a new poll by the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Boston Herald. Fifty percent of the 524 registered voters polled support Brown, while 44…

The Washington Examiner has published a ten-part series titled "The Obama You Don't Know": 

CBS reports this morning that witnesses are saying "that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate [in Benghazi, Libya]. Instead, they say, it came under planned attack. That is in direct contradiction to the administration's account of the incident."

At a Univision forum last night in Florida, Mitt Romney was in part asked (through an interpreter), “If you’re elected president, will you repeal all of Obamacare, or just change parts of it?  Which parts would you change?”

Matthew Continetti reviews Larry P. Arnn's The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It in the Claremont Review of Books:

The media tut-tuts about the ebbs and flows of the polls in the presidential race because – well, because that’s what the media does. But, in fact, if you look at every presidential race going back over the years when the incumbent party was defeated or almost defeated – 1948, 1968, 1976, 1980,…

There is an old saw that if you torture statistics enough, they will tell you whatever you want to hear.  Words are like this, too. In the interest of clarity during the current campaign season, here is a brief lexicon of how Democratic officials use words:

FOX News reported Wednesday night that a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan ben Qumu has been tied to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans. While the details of Qumu’s alleged involvement remain to be confirmed, it isn’t surprising that…

You know what Romney needs? A fresh start.

The Obama administration has conceded that the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya on September 11 was, in fact, an act of terrorism. And intelligence officials suspect that al Qaeda’s affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), orchestrated…

In an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, President Barack Obama suggested that most of the country’s debt was accumulated under George W. Bush, pretended that he has offered a solution to these problems, said that he does not know the total U.S. national debt, and claimed that the…

Josh Rogin reports:

As much as it's a distraction from some inartful comments Mitt Romney made about taxes, perhaps the media might spend sometime explaining why a Justice Department official just resigned over over a report on the Fast and Furious scandal that led to the death of a border patrol agent:

Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by eight points nationally, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. Obama has 51 percent of support from the likely voters polled, compared to 43 percent who support Romney.

The Obama campaign is now advertising "the last Dinner with Barack." In an email sent to supporters this afternoon seeking donations, Obama for America writes:

Virginia-based outlet Politico declares Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney a "man of constant sorrow." Alexander Burns writes:

On the Senate floor just, Senate majority leader Harry Reid tripled down and again accused Mitt Romney of not paying income taxes:

The American Action Forum has released new analysis of the burden of new regulations under President Obama. It's most striking finding? The cost of added regulations under President Obama is now estimated to be $488 billion.

President Obama's New York City fundraiser last night featuring hip-hop stars Beyoncé and Jay-Z featured "floor-to-ceiling gold bottles in the entire space," according to the New York Post. The paper calls it "a custom-designed tower of $800-per-bottle champagne that dominates the main room at…

New polls taken in Ohio and Florida find that "voters want decisive foreign policy in the Middle East." The polls were conducted by Patrick Caddell and John McLaughlin.

The teachers, if you ask them, resisted the fearful boot of repression and struck a blow for worker's rights:

On Monday, the Romney campaign trumpeted a plan to change the campaign's direction and "reinforce more specifics" on policy. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of a memo from GOP political veteran David Smick, addressed to the Romney campaign, with advice on how to "revamp" the television ad…

"I was a severely conservative Republican governor," Mitt Romney told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2012.

In a sit down interview with late night host David Letterman that will be aired later this evening, President Barack Obama continued a trend of blaming others for the problems this country faces.

What recession?

A few random thoughts (and some reporting) on Mitt Romney and the video.

The group Concerned Veterans for America has released a new ad asking the federal government to help "fix" problems that have been preventing military members from voting:

In at least four recent instances, specific actions by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have moved President Barack Obama in a new, different direction. It's a trend worth noting, showing that Romney's positions have (at least some times) helped shaped Obama's. 

Lots of people have already unpacked the philosophical and logical problems with Mitt Romney’s belief that 47 percent of the country is basically free-loading off of everyone else (and voting Democratic). I’m struck, however, by how the moocher theory was presaged during the primaries in the…

A new poll finds that assisted suicide and medical marijuana are popular in the state of Massachusetts.

William McGurn, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Mitt Romney has a new ad aimed at women voters, which focuses on the debt piled up during the Obama administration. "Dear daughter," the female voiceover says. "Welcome to America. Your share of Obama's debt is over $50,000, and it grows everyday." Watch the ad below:

Among the reporting on Mitt Romney’s unfortunate comments at a private fundraiser, it’s interesting to see the mainstream media’s subtle attempts to try to redefine the nature of the income tax.  Most Americans presumably (and rightly) think of the income tax as a tax on, well, income. The press…

Plenty of conservatives are pushing back against the worldview espoused by Mitt Romney in his "arrogant and stupid' remarks at a private fundraiser earlier this year.

The courts are moving with customary alacrity in ruling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's request for an injunction that would have compelled teachers to return to the classroom this morning. Not so fast, the judge said, Wednesday would be soon enough, although “by then, the legal matter could be irrelevant.…

So we have in 2012 two presidential candidates who—when they thought they were speaking privately to their fellow 1 percenters—have shown contempt for fellow Americans.

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor and Massachusetts Democrat, leads incumbent Republican senator Scott Brown by four points, according to a new poll from Suffolk University.

As we get further removed from a Republican convention that, at least in prime time (and apart from Paul Ryan), didn’t emphasize the importance of repealing Obamacare, and a Democratic convention at which President Obama was praised for spearheading Obamacare’s passage regardless of the…

Joe Scarborough says he owes Mitch McConnell an apology.

In remarks earlier today in Cincinnati, Ohio, President Obama presented himself as willing "to work with [Republicans] to reduce the deficit." Indeed, the president stressed he was so commited to helping Republicans that he'd even "walk the dog or wash their car."

Vice President Joe Biden quoted the official propaganda outlet of the Chinese Communist regime to knock Mitt Romney at a campaign event today:

In Wisconsin today, Vice President talked up coconut cream pie--and himself. From the pool report:

President Obama's campaign made a serious charge against Mitt Romney today when spokesman Ben LaBolt suggested on national television that the Republican presidential candidate had previously profited off slave labor in China:

Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren turned down a cake celebrating the Occupy Wall Street movement's first birthday on Monday. Staffers from the state Republican party tried to hand her the cake at a press conference, the Boston Herald reports:

The schools that were supposed to be open today will not be. The teachers need more time to study an offer that gives them a raise even as the city can't really afford it and they haven't done anything at all to deserve it. This, at a time when millions in the private sector would consider it a…

Conventional wisdom, and most national polling, holds that Barack Obama has an advantage over Mitt Romney on foreign policy. But a new poll conducted by SurveyUSA in Florida shows that Romney has an advantage over Obama on the situation developing in the Middle East.

Fred Barnes reviews When Saturday Mattered Most for the Wall Street Journal:

Trita Parsi has some explaining to do. The Iranian-born and Swedish-raised president of the National Iranian American Council is perhaps the most outspoken advocate for engagement with the Islamist regime in Tehran. If that posture has won him praise in certain foreign policy circles, this may be…

With just 50 days until the presidential election, the Romney team says it plans to reorient the campaign toward communicating more policy details regarding tax policy, energy policy, and foreign policy.

Last month in London, Mexico’s Olympic soccer team won gold by defeating its Brazilian counterpart, 2-1. The victory gave Mexico its first-ever trophy in a major international soccer tournament (apart from the 1999 Confederations Cup), and it proved that the soccer gap between Latin America’s two…

Via GOP12, the latest ad from the Romney campaign focuses on spending:

Last week, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced the central bank would begin another round of quantitative easing, the term of art for the Fed's policy of purchasing securities in an attempt to stimulate the economy. With his plan to buy $40 billion in securities per month, Bernanke has…

President Obama has just released this ad, which highlights the financial crisis of four years ago and then claims that, under Obama, the drop in employment has been reversed, and we're back on the right track for the middle class.  Mitt Romney would be well served to run the following 30-second ad…

The Massachusetts Republican party is wishing a happy birthday to the "Matriarch" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren:

BuzzFeed reports:

The gap between the way the media characterizes the presidential race and what is actually happening is growing larger by the day. In particular, we see a systematic emphasis on news items that favor the president and a discounting of evidence that disfavor him.

The course of starting a successful business never did run smooth—particularly for bored, retired athletes. Johnny Unitas blew his football fortune on bowling alleys and a circuit board company. Björn Borg came close to selling his Wimbledon trophies to make ends meet after his fashion label failed…

 There’s added confirmation for our colleague Jay Cost’s thesis about the Democratic party from a surprising source. In his new book, Spoiled Rotten, Cost argues that the Democrats have increasingly become less a traditional political party than an agglomeration of client groups, who band together…

President Obama has had four years to fix the economy, and it’s not his fault he’s failed so far. He’s tried very hard, and he’s made some headway. But the task is so great that no one, not even FDR or Bill Clinton, could have done any better than he has. Thus, on effort and good intentions alone,…

I first saw Brenda Starr at midnight, lured to a derelict pier by a promised interview. Suddenly the moon, skewing shadows on twisted steel beams, silhouetted yachtsman Broker Proffitt against the glinting bay beyond. (Brenda preferred her villains upscale.) As he drew a gun, Brenda was seized with…

Throughout Privacy, Garret Keizer’s extended essay on the topic in an increasingly public world, the author confuses and conflates voluntary sharing with forced governmental action. “Does anything say so much about the times we live in as the fact that the word sharing has almost everything to do…

In the mid-1990s, a severe famine brought millions of North Koreans to the brink of starvation. Floods precipitated the crisis, but the failed economic policies of Kim Il Sung—the paranoid dictator intent on maintaining a vast military machine and acquiring nuclear weapons—were the real culprit.…

Faux-folksy columnist Molly Ivins (1944-2007) and Ann Richards (1933-2006), the single-term Democratic governor who lost her 1994 bid for reelection to George W. Bush, rank as progressives’ favorite dead Texans. It was perhaps inevitable, given the political leanings of most theater audiences, that…

“So here we stand. Americans have a choice. A decision.”

The Democratic party underwent an ideological evolution in Charlotte last week. They are no longer a pro-choice party. They’re the party of abortion.

It would be a good parlor game to draw up a list illustrating the variety of great men New England has produced—starting with the archetypal New England poet Robert Frost, continuing through, say, Benjamin Franklin, the gunsmith Samuel Colt, the black intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, the Watergate…

In the great Nefud Desert—on the sun’s anvil—of my south yard, the noonday heat rises in shimmering waves and burns like ancient, unforgiven sin: the primal fault of the world laid bare. “From here until the other side,” my wife says as we stare out from the back porch, “no water but what we carry.…

Charlotte, N.C.

The moral and geostrategic arguments for a Western intervention in Syria speak for themselves. There is only good in helping a courageous majority free itself of a barbaric puppet of Iran and Russia who indiscriminately bombs his own civilians from land, air, and sea. Ethically, no outcome could be…

Bill Clinton, who rode a recession into office and left the scene just before another one began, knows something about the blame game. Addressing the Democratic convention on Wednesday night, he made a full-throated effort to defend the Obama presidency by putting it in the context of past…

When asked what he thought about the cultural wars, Irving Kristol is said to have replied, “They’re over,” adding, “We lost.” If Kristol was correct, one of the decisive battles in that war may have been over the liberal arts in education, which we also lost.

The Obama administration continued to claim Sunday that the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were not planned or coordinated but spontaneous responses to news of an anti-Islam video that happened to take place on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It’s a highly dubious…

Bill Galston, one of the most intelligent center-left observers of contemporary American policies, is surprised:

I wouldn't recommend reading Maureen Dowd's outrageous column in today's New York Times (though apparently President Obama's campaign would), but I would recommend some of the responses. Particularly, Ira Stoll's: 

Libyan president Mohammed el-Megarif is saying the attack Benghazi that killed the American ambassador was planned well beforehand. His statements on this topic firmly contradict the Obama administration's version of events. 

ABC's Martha Raddatz asked, if there are American Marines in Paris, why are there not Marines in Tripoli?

Susan Rice, the Obama administration's UN ambassador, said this morning on ABC's This Week that the Benghazi consulate, where four Americans were killed on September 11, had the level of security the State Department thought was needed.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, doubled down on the Obama administration's claim that an Internet video is responsible for anti-American mobs across the Middle East: 

Arkansas Republican House candidate Tom Cotton has released a new ad, highlighting the political lessons Cotton learned serving in the U.S. Army.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that the recent mobs in the Middle East aren't in response to U.S. policy: 

With just over 50 days until the presidential election, Joe Biden, the gaffe-prone vice president, is taking the weekend off. "The Vice President will be in Wilmington, Delaware," his public calendar reads. "There are no public events scheduled."

President Obama has made reducing the U.S. nuclear deterrent a primary focus of his administration. In 2010, he negotiated a treaty with the Russians that, for the first time in history, required only the United States to reduce its deployed nuclear forces.

So it’s come to this. A former professor of economics turned central banker can keep policymakers and investors on the edge of their seats, waiting for his latest pronouncement. That tells us two things. First, in the near-term, the president and Congress are irrelevant, frozen in mutual antipathy…

Charles Krauthammer: Our abandonment of Israel.

In a primary election yesterday, New York Republican state senators who voted for gay marriage faced the voters. John Fund reports:

From Thursday's press conference with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland: 

The signs are not comforting.  First there is this:

The researchers at the Republican National Committee notice this alarming fact in President Obama's sequestration plan:

During a speech at the Values Voters summit in Washington, D.C. today, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan criticized the President Obama on all fronts--foreign policy, unemployment, economic opportunity, Obamacare, the debt, religious liberty, and more. Today also notably marked the first…

At the White House briefing today, press secretary Jay Carney seemed confused when talking about how often and where President Obama's receives the presidential daily briefing:

Buried in a Los Angeles Times report is this nugget:

No settlement as of Friday morning.  But ...

White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted today that protests in the Middle East are not about America but instead are in response to a film: 

A simmering dispute between the United States and Israel heated up this week as leaders of both countries traded sharp statements. On the surface, and according to most media accounts, the disagreement stems from Israel’s dissatisfaction that the United States has not articulated a red line that it…

A new ad from Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign features boxing coach Art Ramalho of Lowell, Massachusetts. Ramalho was the first coach of Micky Ward, the professional boxer who inspired the 2010 film, The Fighter. In the ad, Ramalho calls Warren a "real fighter" and says her opponent, Republican…

Photos and video from the Twitter feed of Phil Han, a reporter and producer in CNN, who is outside the U.S. embassy in London where a mob has gathered and burned the American flag: 

Later this morning, Paul Ryan will deliver foreign policy remarks at the Value Voters Summit in Washigton. Here are excerpts:

Mitt Romney maintains a three-point lead over Barack Obama, according to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll:

This morning, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, tweeted:

Paul Bremer emails with this observation:

First Lady Michelle Obama stopped by a Virginia YMCA yesterday where she met with elementary and middle school kids. The kids had tough questions for the first lady, including the whereabouts of the president of the United States. She did not immediately know.

Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon: 

The libraries of the University of San Francisco (USF), a Jesuit institution, this month completed digitizing a unique American periodical, the Albanian Catholic Bulletin, accessible here to any interested readers. The Bulletin came out mainly in English with a small section in Albanian, reversing…

At Thursday's Mitt Romney rally in Fairfax, Virginia, one Romney supporter lambasted the media in its coverage of the election.

There are nine key swing states in this election (Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada), with four other states (particularly Michigan, which President Obama must win, and North Carolina, which Mitt Romney must win) that also have some…

Quantitative easing today, tomorrow, and forever.

Republican Senate candidate Deb Fischer of Nebraska has a new television ad out. "In Nebraska we solve problems by governing responsibly and sticking to our principles," Fischer says in the ad. "Time Washington did the same." Watch the ad below:

A large demonstration is planned for tomorrow, Friday, in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo but, as you can see on Al Jazeera’s live streaming video, protesters are gathered today, too. The police have established their position at some distance from the crowd, as well as the embassy, and are…

In honor of Hispanic heritage month, the Environmental Protection Agency sent out this internal email, featuring content plagiarized from this website and a picture of Che Guevara:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama was "correct" in saying that Egypt is not an ally of the United States.

Fairfax, Va.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland maintained that Egypt is an ally, regardless of what President Obama said:

A century ago, progressives were challenged to achieve "Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means." Beginning with Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life, and continuing through the New Deal, Democrats increasingly eschewed state-based populist Jeffersonian democracy and replaced it with FDR's…

During a press conference in the Capitol on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi said that she opposes efforts to end U.S. aid to Egypt.

Yesterday the Obama made a pointed critique of Mitt Romney suggesting that he was unprepared to handle foreign policy because he "shoots first, aims later." This Foreign Policy report of the President trying to walk back his strong statement on Egypt yesterday ought to give pause to anyone who took…

The Hill reports:

Like others who are convinced that reform of public education is possible, Bloomberg believes:

We grow numb to fresh reports of bad economic news.  So much so that an increase in joblessness, like the one this morning, doesn't really shake anyone up the way it used to.  We hear, more and more, that high unemployment is the new normal and that we may as well get used to it.

This video splices Barack Obama's statement on Mitt Romney's foreign policy with Jimmy Carter's statement on Ronald Reagan's foreign policy from nearly 30 years ago:

I'm not sure what the correct response would have been from the New York Times to the State Department's request Wednesday not to post online a graphic AFP photograph of the fatally wounded U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.There are reasonable arguments both ways, I suppose, and the Times's…

The Chicago Tribune has refused to print an anti-teachers union ad, according to the Center for Union Facts, the group whose ad was rejected by the paper. The Tribune rejected the ad by saying it had "racial undertones."

The latest Bob Woodward books reveals that Peter Orszag, at the time a columnist for the New York Times, sent a draft of an article to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett for review and comments before publishing.

Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University (AU) in Washington, decided to bring her cold-stricken baby daughter, too sick for the daycare center, along with her to teach her opening class for the fall semester in "Sex, Gender, and Culture." Some 40 undergraduates…

Former State Department official Liz Cheney says that "It has certainly been a terrible 48 hours. In Libya, violent extremists killed American diplomats. In Cairo, mobs breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy, ripped down the American flag and replaced it with the al Qaeda flag."

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

Bloomberg reports:

Since arriving on the scene in 2008, psephologist Nate Silver has been widely hailed as a “statistics guru.” That phrase is a good fit for what Silver does. While his writing style often mimics the technical wonkery one sees in political science journals, his work differs from science in important…

Mitt Romney is being accused of crass political opportunism for speaking up about the attacks on U.S. interests in Egypt and Libya on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. And not just by his political opponents. By Wednesday evening Reuters, in a straight news piece, reported that Romney’s comments…

The investigation into the exact circumstances that brought us the twin attacks on U.S. diplomats in Egypt and Libya remains ongoing. Much remains uncertain. But a few new press accounts provide clues that are worth noting. And those clues point to a possible motive for the anti-American rallies…

Romney continues hammering Obama over apology.

Seems Egypt is down on its luck and needs a little help. Not that much, really.  Five, maybe ten billion, "a senior EU official," said on Wednesday."

We don't really know the answer, Politico reports: 

Elliott Abrams, writing at National Review Online: 

According to the Census Bureau:

The mainstream media have been busy today criticizing Mitt Romney for his criticism of the Obama administration's response to the attacks on our embassies in Egypt and Libya. First Read encapsulates the media narrative quite nicely: 

The blog RightScoop.com has audio of the press coordinating which question to ask Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at his press conference this morning on the events in Libya and Egypt. “[N]o matter who he calls on we’re covered on the one question,” an unidentified journalist says. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a presidential-style address this morning on the deaths of diplomats in Libya. Watch here:

Yesterday, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an Egyptian mob stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, pulled down the American flag and burned it. In its place, they raised a black banner inscribed with the shehada ("There is no God but Allah, Mohamed is the messenger of Allah"), a pennant…

After President Obama delivered remarks on Libya this morning from the White House--and before his planned trip to Las Vegas--he visited the State Department to deliver more personal and more private remarks. He wanted to offer encouragement after four State Department workers were murdered…

An online gamer tells the story of Sean Smith, an American diplomat killed in Libya yesterday, who used the Internet handle "Vile Rat." It's chilling and eerie--and heartfelt.

As the Chicago Teachers Union strike heads into day three, perhaps you should get to know the the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis. She's the one currently demanding the nation's highest paid teachers get a 19 percent pay increase. I should mention that despite Lewis being an…

One can question the timing and tone of Mitt Romney’s statement last night. One can note he wasn't as fluent and clear as he might have been at his press conference this morning. Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered the following remarks on Libya and Egypt earlier today:

During the assault on the U.S. embassy in Egypt, demonstrators reportedly chanted “Obama! Obama! We are all Osama!” They yelled this obvious reference to Osama bin Laden as an al Qaeda-style flag was hoisted and the American flag brought down. At least one of the protesters at the anti-American…

According to a transcript of this morning's statement, President Barack Obama failed to mention the storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo yesterday. His statement focused on the loss of an American ambassador and other embassy workers yesterday in Benghazi, Libya.

Here's video of the U.S. embassy in Cairo being mobbed yesterday:

The White House just announced that President Obama will speak about the events in the Middle East at 10:35 a.m. Hillary Clinton will be by the president's side:

A WEEKLY STANDARD reader points out that in all the early commentary about the events in Libya and Egypt, no one seems to have noted the date. Could it be, as he puts it, that "someone had it marked on a calendar to whip up a murderous frenzy on, oh, Tuesday 9/11"?

“To say that the contract will be settled today [Tuesday] is lunacy,” CTU president Karen Lewis told cheering teachers.  Ms. Lewis sounded like she is digging in for the long haul when she said,

The Associated Press reports:

9/11 survivor Michael Wright's account.

A reader sends along this picture of a 9/11 memorial set up by the Young Conservatives of Texas at the University of Texas:

The U.S. embassy in Cairo released the following statement: 

Slightly more Americans trust Barack Obama than Mitt Romney on the issue of job creation, a new poll from Rasmussen shows. Forty-seven percent of those polled said they trust Obama more on job creation, compared to 45 percent who say they trust Romney more.

President Obama talked about rappers Pitbull and Flo Rida with a Florida radio DJ known as “the pimp with the limp.”

Over at Red State, a blogger makes a note of an incredible Washington Post fact checker column yesterday. The column ostensibly fact checked a series of claims made by pro-life groups criticizing Obama on his abortion record. I don't want to get into all of the back and forth because it involves…

Eleven years after the most devastating terrorist attack in history, some in America pretend that the threat of jihad or Islamist terrorism has waned to such an extent that it is no longer a priority.

Buried in the middle of an interesting Politico article on GOP alarm over the Romney campaign's neglect of foreign policy and its "ham-handed response" to criticism on that score is this:

A little retail politics from Vice President Joe Biden on this September 11 anniversary in Pennsylvania, via the pool report: 

Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis agreed to allow the White House to approve the quotations he used from President Barack Obama in his story about the president in this month's magazine.

Addressing a largely Catholic audience Monday night at an event sponsored by the John Carroll Society in Washington, D.C., Cardinal Timothy Dolan emphasized the non-sectarian, non-partisan—catholic with a small “c”—nature of the fight for religious liberty.  “It is not some far right, extremist…

Earlier this morning at the Pentagon, President Barack Obama delivered the following remarks in rememberance of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001:

The verdict now seems to be in on the Romney campaign's strategy of generally avoiding making the case against Obamacare and choosing not to make President Obama's defining legislation a defining issue in this campaign. That strategy plainly seems to have benefited both Obamacare and Obama, and it…

The strike by Chicago teachers continues. It is a hardship for parents and one more tough break for the students in Chicago's public schools, some 40 percent of whom drop out before graduating high school. Equally unfortunate are the 20 percent who do graduate but are still functionally illiterate.…

A "bullet hit the window right where Obama sits," Michael Lewis reports in his Vanity Fair piece on President Barack Obama. The president was not sitting in his favorite seat when the bullet was shot and hit the window on the Truman Balcony.

William Kristol: "The 9/11 Generation."

In the Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn writes about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's disappointing silence on Afghanistan:

Two lasting memories. The first, from the White House on the evening of September 11, 2001:

U.S. senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is calling President Barack Obama to provide more details on how the commander in chief plans to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

CNN poll: Obama 52, Romney 46.

President Barack Obama praised his signature health care legislation in his own signature, the Des Moines Register reports. Obama autographed a University of Iowa medical student's lab coat with the phrase, "Go Obamacare!" after a rally in Iowa City Saturday. Here's more from the Register:

The Republican Jewish Coalition will be running this print ad in several Jewish newspapers, calling attention to the growing rift in the Democratic party over support of Israel: 

Dear Governor Romney,

If Syria is a testing ground for the larger struggle of the American-led order in the Middle East against the Iranian-led resistance bloc, it’s also an example of the importance of the Kurds. An ethnic community with almost 30 million people spread across the Middle East—most densely in Turkey,…

During an interview Sunday on Face the Nation, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was pressed repeatedly by host Norah O'Donnell for specifics on the Romney-Ryan tax reform plan. But Obama made it through an interview that aired on the same program without being pressed for specifics on his…

White House spokesman Jay Carney says President Barack Obama has no comment on the teacher strike in Chicago:

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is hosting a Democratic super PAC fundraiser right now in Chicago: 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney issued a statement about Monday's teachers' strike in Chicago:

The public school teachers are going on strike in Chicago and the first worry of the people who run the city is for the safety of the children—where violence is already sky-high. The political class in Chicago has already failed in its duty to provide for the public safety. Failing to keep the…

The school attended by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel's children remains open, even though public school teachers are striking in Chicago resulting in school closures across the city.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, Illinois senator Dick Durbin called Mitt Romney the "the baby daddy of Obamacare." He made the remarks in reference to Romney saying over the weekend that he'd repeal and replace Obamacare, maintaining some similar features of the president's signature legislation.

On morning radion, President Obama debated whether pop star Nicki Minaj really endorsed Republican Mitt Romney last week in a new song, or whether she's playing a different character:

In one of President Obama's TV ads, Bill Clinton says that the key question in this election is which candidate can figure out how "to return us to full employment." But as the federal government's own figures show, Obama might want to start by first figuring out how to get us back to the level of…

As we wait to see the extent and duration of Barack Obama’s post-convention bounce, it makes sense to do a little analytical house cleaning. In particular, a meme developed over the summer that Barack Obama was a strong favorite to win reelection, thanks to a sustained and substantial lead over his…

The Serpent and the Lamb is not easy to pin down. Officially, it tells the story of Martin Luther’s relations with the eminent painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553); Professor Ozment argues that the two men created the Protestant Reformation between them. Luther was the mastermind and…

We’re at war. More than 68,000 troops are deployed to Afghanistan. More than 2,000 Americans have died in over 10 years of fighting. The war has quiet bipartisan support. Too quiet.

North Platte, Neb.

Bootlegger movies have tended to be rather high-spirited affairs, with reckless and wild country boys outsmarting and outdriving the slow-witted lawmen in their counties as a mouth organ boings in the background and a Dobro is being a-picked. Moonshiners are among the original romanticized outlaws,…

A sea of signs proclaiming “We Built It” revealed the battle cry of last week’s Republican National Convention. We don’t need to wait for Los Angeles mayor and convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa to bring his gavel down in Charlotte on Tuesday to know the Democratic theme. It’s been clear for…

As Chris Bohjalian tells it, the years between 1915 and 1923 were “the most nightmarish eight years of Armenian history.” Yet the horrific events of that time are generally not included in history courses, and are not so well known outside the Armenian community. No longer. Bohjalian describes what…

Mention the names of Wellington, Nelson, and Pitt to any informed person and you’re likely to get a nod of recognition. But Castlereagh? A blank stare.  Yet the case can be made, and John Bew makes it convincingly, that Viscount Castlereagh was the equal of those three men and many other…

Last week, Iran reportedly dispatched more of its Revolutionary Guard shock troops to Syria to prop up its ally. And with that the Obama administration lost another of its justifications for sitting by idly as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad runs his countrymen through a meat grinder. The death…

Lafayette, La.

As the Islamic Revolution has devoured its own, many Iranians have sought refuge in the West. After the fraudulent 2009 presidential elections and the crackdown that followed, the United States and Europe were flooded with Iranian pro-democracy dissidents and even pro-regime types who fell afoul of…

For Democrats, the issue of abortion is a hardy perennial. They turn to it in hope of persuading voters that Republicans, in their opposition to abortion, are extremists and antiwoman.

There was an interesting moment at the Republican National Convention last week: just a moment, and scarcely noticed, but it seemed to sum up a Mitt Romney problem which, in a rational world, would not be a problem. 

If you missed Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week and tried to play catch-up the next morning, you could be forgiven for concluding that nothing the Wisconsin congressman said was true.

Tampa

Ted Gioia, who recently published an excellent History of Jazz, now turns his attention to classic instances of that art. As a pianist and teacher of jazz piano, Gioia often wished, he writes, for a “handbook to this body of music, a single volume that would guide me through the jazz repertoire and…

When Reynolds Price died in January 2011, after a gallant battle of three decades with disabling spinal cancer and chronic pain, he left an uncompleted fourth volume of reminiscences. Its quality, notwithstanding its abrupt end, bears testimony to his gifts: His literary exit is almost as striking…

Did you know that bitching about President Obama is now considered a “tradition” among liberals? It is. Things move so fast with those guys. One person has a gripe, another person chimes in, a third grouses about this or that, and the next thing you know—it’s a “tradition.” Very progressive.

If Washingtonians think they live in a Democratic-dominated city, they should come out here to the Rocky Mountain hotbed of liberalism that is Aspen. In Washington, each party recognizes that the other must exist. Otherwise, they would have no one to attack and would be forced instead to come up…

First, a disclaimer. The Scrapbook thought that the Republican National Convention was a success, and that Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech was first-rate, as was Paul Ryan’s address. Ann Romney, Clint Eastwood, Condi Rice, and all the Romney witnesses did their parts well, sometimes exceptionally…

A racy fundraiser for President Barack Obama in Manhattan featured male dancers collecting tips. The event was called "Gogo for Obama."

President Obama, speaking earlier today in Florida, said that American manufacturers are "making products that we sell around the world, marked with three proud words: made in the U.S.A."

At a campaign event in Florida today, President Obama joked that he's considering former president Bill Clinton for "secretary of explaining stuff." The apparent compliment comes days after Clinton's well received performance at the Democratic convention in Charlotte. 

President Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, gave an interview to WNYC but refused to go on the record about the Democratic party plaform's omission of God and Jerusalem from this year's document. Bob Hennelly, the reporter conducting the interview, writes:

Charlotte

President Obama, speaking last night in Iowa, told an audience member that she'd "love [him] even more" after hearing the fourth part of his plan:

The party conventions are over, the signs and funny hats are overflowing trashcans in Tampa and Charlotte, and reality returns to center stage in the form of Friday’s jobs report. It’s rare that a single data report matters much. After all, we can’t project a trend from a single data point. The…

Zwara, Libya

On Wednesday night, former president Bill Clinton assured us that nobody could have managed the Great Recession better than Barack Obama. He compared Obama’s tenure to the period between 1993 and 1996, when the economy was recovering but people were not yet feeling it. He assured us that, soon…

The rock band R.E.M. released a statement on its website asking Fox News to stop playing their song "Losing My Religion." According to R.E.M., Fox News was playing the popular song during the Democratic convention.

Pollsters are in hot demand and may be the only class of people prospering in this economy. With business booming, it appears they have looked for new marketing tools to include "micro-targeting." All the better to tell us what we already knew.  

Barack Obama adviser David Plouffe gave a statement to the press to say that his boss would leave the convention with "momentum" but that that the campaign is expecting "the race is going to be about where it was" before the conventions. Plouffe predicts that this "a problem for Mitt Romney."

During his acceptance speech last night, President Obama claimed, “I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and we have.”

As the jobs numbers were read on air this morning on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough immediately proclaimed, "This is good news for the president."

Last night, Barack Obama proved why he is the most partisan and divisive president in the modern era. Just as he has throughout most of his term, Obama accused the Republican party and American conservatism of being fundamentally un-American--and though he never came right out and said it, he left…

The White House is finding encouragment in today's jobs report. "[T]oday’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover," writes Alan B. Krueger, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. 

Mitt Romney responds to this morning's dissapointing jobs report:

CNBC reports: 

In his speech last night to the Democratic convention, Vice President Joe Biden referred to fallen soldiers as "fallen angels."

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's high-powered, fist-pumping speech to the Democratic convention Thursday night has some calling her the "breakout star" of the evening.

Charlotte

A powerful benediction this evening by Cardinal Dolan after President Obama's speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte: 

President Barack Obama's convention address, as prepared for delivery: 

Speaking tonight at the Democratic convention tonight, Joe Biden said, "My dad respected Barack Obama - would've respected Barack Obama if he'd been around":

Georgia Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis just gave a speech at the Democratic convention attacking voter ID laws. A recent New York Times/CBS News/Quinnipac poll asked voters about voter ID laws in three key swing states and found the following result:

The Associated Press ran a fact check on Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention last night that contained the following section:

The State Department today again refused to name the capital of Israel, even after being questioned by the press and even after the Democratic party (President Obama's party) voted yesterday to add language to its platform stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Charlotte

Speaking at the Democratic convention's Women's Caucus on Thursday morning, First Lady Michelle Obama made a direct appeal to women voters. “You believe as I do that my husband has been an extraordinary president, ” she said. “Barack understands the challenges that women face, and he has made it…

Tonight in Charlotte, at the Democratic convention, the Obama administration is expected to trumpet its foreign policy and national security record. It’s therefore worth taking a look at what President Obama has actually done.

Charlotte

Charlotte

According to the Sunlight Foundation, the White House retweeted a message that stated, "@HildaSolisDOL WE NEED NATIONAL WORKERS UNION! LABOR LAWS 2 FEW 2 WEAK! WORKING PEEPS SLAVES 2 WALL ST! #HappyLaborDay #un ..."

The latest Mitt Romney ad uses Bill Clinton's words against President Barack Obama: 

The Dallas Cowboys defeated the New York Giants last night, in the first game of the NFL season.  Like many millions of fans, I chose to watch the game instead of former President Clinton's speech. Having seen plenty of Clinton speeches, I knew his moves and was pretty confident that Tony Romo and…

Vice President Joe Biden will not be speaking during prime time. The New York Times reports: 

Many conservative commentators saw in Bill Clinton’s speech an overly long, rambling, charming, endorsement of Barack Obama, a bit too wonky, and probably successful, if at all, only in assuring some wavering voters to stick with their 2008 decision and renew President Obama’s contract with America.

Alexandra Gallardo Rooker, a big wig in the California Democratic party, said that the California delegate who compared Paul Ryan to Nazi Joseph Goebbels "doesn't go far enough":

Elliott Abrams, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

White House aides David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett deflected blame for not putting in mentions of God and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the Democratic party platform: 

Rabbi David Wolpe offered the benediction last night at the Democratic convention and made sure to emphasize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. "[Y]ou have taught us that we must count on one another; that our country is strong through community, and that the children of Israel on the way to…

Ever since DC Comics decided to reboot their entire universe of characters, they’ve been trawling the diversity waters. They’ve done all sorts of stunt casting with their characters. In June, for instance, they turned the Green Lantern gay.

Chris Matthews, reacting to Bill Clinton's convention speech last night, said, "I always figured that if Bill Clinton landed on Mars, he would know how to do it with them, he would know how to reproduce, he would know everything. He'd just instinctively know how to talk to people."

President Barack Obama himself intervened in amending of the Democratic party platform. Before a tumultuous floor vote to change the platform, there was no reference to "God" and the document lacked an assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. On the removal of God, Obama reportedly said,…

In his fondest dreams, President Obama couldn’t have imagined getting any more from Bill Clinton than he did last night at the Democratic convention. Rather than pull Obama toward his centrist policies, Clinton embraced Obama’s hyper-liberalism—at least for one night.

In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years." Yet, under FDR, who inherited a much weaker economy than Obama did, real GDP growth…

Start counting Pinocchios. Sandra Fluke began her speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight by claiming that there were no women on the congressional panel on religious liberty that she was turned away from testifying at. Here's what she said:

Charlotte

Bill Clinton's prepared remarks, which he's delivering now at the Democratic convention:

An Obama campaign official confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that President Obama “personally” intervened to alter the Democratic platform to include a reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The new platform, adopted this evening at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, now includes…

George Stephanopoulos tweets:

Here's video of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose ability to tell the truth has been challenged in recent days, being interviewed by CNN. She insists that "there wasn't any discord" during the now infamous voice vote at the convention today over whether the platform language would…

Charlotte

Democrat Paul Begala said on CNN that the floor vote to add pro-Israel language and the word "God" into the Democratic platform was "awkward," "embarrassing," "stupid," and an "unforced error":

The Huffington Post reports that President Obama "personally intervened" to get the Democratic platform to include pro-Israel language and to include a reference to "God."

Democratic party heads rammed through the revised platform, which includes updated pro-Israel language and the mention of God, against the clear wishes of those voting at the convention in Charlotte. Here's video of the chaos:

Charlotte

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a funny piece about political mixed marriages. It opened with an anecdote about a husband and wife who belong to different parties and the dilemma they faced during a presidential election. The husband was going to be traveling on Election Day, so he gave his…

Charlotte

CHARLOTTE—It's been raining every afternoon here during the Democratic convention, but from talking to the locals here in Carolina, short afternoon showers are pretty common this time of year. One imagines that way back when Democrats booked the 74,000 seat Bank of America stadium for Obama's…

Charlotte

Always looking "forward," President Obama has asked Bill Clinton—who was elected to the presidency 20 years ago—to speak tonight and suggest to the American people (whether explicitly or implicitly) that this is really a choice between Clinton and George W. Bush, rather than between Obama and Mitt…

Concerned Veterans of America has a new web video out marking the national debt passing the $16 trillion mark on Tuesday afternoon. The ad focuses on the threat the debt poses to national security, and points out that the "interest on the debt will soon exceed the defense budget." Watch the ad…

On Monday, President Obama traveled to Louisiana to tour flood damage after Hurricane Isaac hit the Gulf region last week.

"Government is the only thing that we all belong to," from the Democratic convention in Charlotte, yesterday.

Charlotte

South Carolina Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian compared his state's Republican female governor, Nikki Haley, to Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun this morning at a breakfast in Charlotte, North Carolina.

There is much to admire in Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention: the admirable delivery, the praise of her husband’s virtues was sincere and moving, and the rags-to-riches tale avoided seeming stale after so many others.

Politico reports: "Democratic officials confirm to POLITICO that President Obama's prime time address will be moved indoors to the Time Warner Center. The Thursday address was scheduled to be at Bank of America stadium — an outdoor venue with more than 70,000 seats. But forecasts are predicting…

Todd Akin, a six-term congressman and Senate nominee from Missouri, said something stupid and offensive a couple weeks ago. Akin apologized for the comment, and was nonetheless promptly rebuked by every leading Republican, including the presidential nominee. GOP leaders announced they were cutting…

Senator Chuck Schumer does not know President Obama's position on Jerusalem: 

Politico executive editor Jim VandeHei last night admitted that the "Mainstream media tends to be quite smitten with the Obamas."

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that 50 percent of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare, while 41 percent oppose it. In addition to these specific tallies, Rasmussen's survey draws attention to two things.

Over Labor Day weekend, three different theories of the 2012 presidential race were offered, all from Team Obama.

Charlotte

As The Examiner’s Philip Klein explained yesterday, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused the Washington Examiner of “deliberately” misquoting her comments claiming that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren stated that Republicans were “dangerous for Israel.”

Charlotte

Are there no consequences for lying? Even on national television?

Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who is giving a keynote address tonight at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, is a beneficiary of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney helped create.

CNN reports on the reason this year's Democratic platform is stripped of certain pro-Israel language: The Democratic National Committee is "simply following what the Obama administration's policy is. That the White House said several months ago that the status of Jerusalem is an issue that should…

A promotional video played this afternoon at the Democratic convention in Charlotte states, "Government is the only thing that we all belong to."

Charlotte

Charlotte

Pineville, N.C.

The United States Treasury reports that the total public outstanding debt is: $16,015,769,788,215.80. This is the first time in American history debt has eclipsed the $16 trillion mark.

The Campaign for Working Families, Gary Bauer's Super PAC, is launching a new ad today in North Carolina:

A newly released poll from the Hill indicates that President Obama and the Democrats face strong headwinds as they start their convention. The poll shows that, by a margin of 14 percentage points (54 to 40 percent), likely voters do not think Obama's job performance merits reelection.  The basis of…

President Obama made a campaign stop to a fire station and hand-delivered a case of beer. Via the pool report:

"God" has been removed from this year's Democratic party platform. 

Today is the first day of the Democratic convention in Charlotte. Coincidentally, GM, the embattled car company that was bailed out by the federal government, has some good news to report.

The Israeli ambassador to America, Michael Oren, has released a statement rebuking the chair of the Democratic National Party.

Yesterday, a top California Democrat likened Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Today, a top Kansas Democrat is likening Ryan to Adolf Hitler. 

Bloomberg reports:

In the 2008 Democratic party platform, there was this language on Jerusalem, Israel:

Charlotte

Was there a GOP convention bounce? The better question may be, was there a VP/convention bounce? The VP choice and the convention have normally been back to back, often making the two in effect one event, with one bounce. This year Romney announced Ryan more than two weeks before the convention. So…

Of all the generally accepted claims that have been repeated throughout this presidential campaign, perhaps the most false is the assertion that President Obama was dealt a tough hand on the economy. In truth, Obama was dealt a winning hand; he simply had no idea how to play it.

In an interview with KKTV, CBS's affiliate in Colorado Spring, President Obama gives himself an "incomplete" grade on fixing the economy:

Charlotte

CHARLOTTE – Earlier this evening, in an appearance on Fox News, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused the Washington Examiner of “deliberately” misquoting her comments claiming that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren stated that Republicans were “dangerous for Israel.”

Charlotte

Here's the hottest petition on Change.org—and the Facebook group has 22,000 members and growing:

The chair of the Democratic party in Massachusetts has apologized for saying Republican senator Scott Brown was trying to be an "honorary girl" by folding towels in a recent campaign ad. The Boston Herald reports:

The city of Charlotte's motto for the Democratic convention is, "We Make It Possible." As a local affiliate reports:

Michelle Malkin yesterday announced that Monday (today, which is Labor Day) Americans should observe "Empty Chair Day."

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "eats only the tops of muffins," a New York Times op-ed notes. The piece, by Professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee, claims the Romney campaign is telling this anecdote to show Romney as "an everyday Joe." 

Just received this email from President Obama's reelection campaign:

The Jerusalem Post reports: 

Vice President Joe Biden gave his answer to the press to the question of whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago: 

California Democratic party chair John Burton compared Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to Nazi Joseph Goebbels this morning in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here's video:

Cincinnati

At the official kickoff of his reelection campaign, President Obama offered a tacit (although unintended) admission of four years of failure, declaring, "We have to move forward, to the future we imagined in 2008. ... That’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States."…

Grey Gardens itself is a marvel. .  .  . Like Ben and Sally’s other two homes, it’s ritzy and historic and perfectly restored and all of that, but more than anything it’s just a beautiful place. The gardens take up an entire acre and are as lush as you can imagine, full of archways and hydrangeas…

Tom Mankiewicz, who died in 2010, was a Hollywood hack of limited abilities. He found his greatest success as a screenwriter of several second-rate James Bond pictures and as a director of the very weird big-screen comedy version of Dragnet. So it comes as a stunning surprise to discover that…

Not even the most experienced reporter is likely to recognize him as he takes his seat in the New York delegation or struggles to make his way through the jostling crowds on the floor of the Republican National Convention this week in Tampa. David Koch (the name is pronounced like the soft drink)…

Democrat Tammy Baldwin is running for the Senate in Wisconsin, but a TV ad criticizing her opens with a smiling House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on the screen. Democrat Joe Donnelly is his party’s Senate candidate in Indiana. An ad targeting him quotes Donnelly as saying “he’s not worried about…

Writing in these pages some months ago, Mark Hemingway made the case for being -skeptical of media “fact checking” operations (“Lies, Damned Lies, and ‘Fact Checking,’ ” December 19, 2011). They routinely get the most basic facts wrong; they laughably claim that Republicans lie more than Democrats…

Mitt Romney’s vice presidential short-list came down to a choice between a baby boomer, Rob Portman (born 1955), and a Gen Xer, Paul Ryan (born 1970). Romney’s decision to pick Ryan—the first post-boomer ever to run on a national ticket—was widely described as bold, in large part for highlighting…

Thirteen years ago I co-authored a book that I thought could cut the Gordian knot of the health care dilemma. The dozens of copies sold proved insufficient to promote the needed revolutionary change. John C. Goodman has now written the book that can do the job. He presents as clear an answer as we…

Now that he’s officially the Republican nominee for president and has an excellent chance of becoming the most powerful man in the world, I feel free to admit, in the full knowledge that nobody cares, that I never liked Mitt Romney. My distaste for him isn’t merely personal or political but also…

He kept a diary—a friend, a boy we knew when we were young, all those years ago—and at the end of most entries he would assign himself a line from a baseball box score, defining each day as though it were part of some classic pennant race against .  .  . well, who knows? The general malevolence of…

In the past three decades, there have been three big stories in East Asia. 

Green Bay, Wisc.

Modern academics are not celebrated for the clarity and felicity of their writing. One of the most important lessons a postgraduate student can learn—and if he doesn’t learn it soon, he’s doomed—is that academics generally do not write books and articles for the purpose of expressing their ideas as…

What are the chances that President Barack Obama and his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will ever have anything meaningful to say about monetary policy​—​beyond continuing to try to coax Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to print ever more dollars to buy up ever more U.S. government…

‘America is more than just a place,” Paul Ryan told the Norfolk, Virginia, crowd during his first speech as Mitt Romney’s running mate. “It’s an idea. It’s the only country founded on an idea. Our rights come from nature and God, not government.” The audience roared at this mention of natural…

With just over two months until Election Day, Barack Obama holds a narrow lead over Mitt Romney in the race for the presidency. The lead is shallow, however, and a careful look at the landscape reveals significant weaknesses for the president. The key question remains whether Romney can capitalize…

Louis Serurier, a French diplomat stationed in Washington in the early 19th century, observed that the War of 1812 lent America “what it so essentially lacked, a national character founded on a common glory to all.” The American war effort was hardly flawless, and the final outcome may have been…

What if what everyone knows about presidential elections is wrong? 

Boy, that Mitt Romney can screw up your life. Or possibly end it. To hear the left tell it, he is not merely a vampire and/or vulture capitalist, getting rich while leaving millions of people in misery, he is also able to give people cancer, at a distance of thousands of miles and after the passage…

Long before Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin flapped his gums about the female body’s magical ability to prevent pregnancy in the case of “legitimate rape,” Democrats were conducting an aggressive campaign to cast Mitt Romney as an extremist on social issues.

Former President Bill Clinton tried to get former senator Ted Kennedy to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in the 2008 election by describing Barack Obama this way: "A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags." 

President Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, said today on Fox News Sunday that, under Obama, we've had "29 straight months of job growth." Yet, according to the federal government's own figures, 29 months ago, 58.5 percent of Americans were employed. Today, only 58.4 percent of Americans are…

Dave Weigel, who's already in Charlotte for the Democratic convention, is checking out the swag available and came across this Obama calendar being sold. He posted some photos of the calendar over at Slate, and I encourage you to take a look. To be clear this is not official campaign merchandise,…

Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by four points according to Rasmussen's latest daily tracking poll, released Sunday. Forty-eight percent of likely voters support Romney, with 44 percent supporting Obama. This shows a six-point swing for Romney from last week's Rasmussen poll, when the Republican…

A surrogate for Barack Obama, former governor Bill Richardson, insisted that all around the world "the international community wants to see this president reelected." Richardson made his remarks this morning on CBS:

This morning, CBS's Bob Schieffer asked a top surrogate for Barack Obama, Maryland Democratic governor Martin O'Malley, whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago: 

Fred Hiatt, writing for the Washington Post, notes that the war has been "almost forgotten":

If you want a near perfect encapsulation of how the Obama campaign is leaning on incompetent partisans masquerading as "independent" media fact checking organizations to do their dirty work, I strongly encourage you to read today's article in the New York Times, "Obama Team Sharpens Attacks on…

The Charlotte Observer reports that big protests and rallies are expected in Charlotte:

A former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill who briefly worked in the Obama administration has been accused of "drugging and sexually assaulting women," the Washington Post reports. 

Here is an easy way for any non-economist to tell whether an economy is in dire straits: If investors are looking to their central bankers to get them out of the mess created by over-borrowing, ineffective regulation, and political paralysis. Markets unwilling to lend money at reasonable rates? No…