January 2013

Pete Wehner on media bias in the Obama era.

Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama's nominee to head the defense department, said in his confirmation hearing Thursday that he doesn't "know much" about military programs and technology. "I've said I don't know enough about it," Hagel said, in a response to Maine senator Angus King. "There are a lot of…

It's been a rough Thursday for former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, and lawmakers from both parties seem to recognize it. Members of the Senate's armed services committee say they are "shocked at how ill-prepared" Hagel was for his hearing to be confirmed as defense secretary. Dana Bash from CNN…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Steve Hayes hosted by Michael Graham:

If Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is found guilty of traveling to the Dominican Republic to engage in sexual intercourse with underage prostitutes, he could face up to 30 years prison. The appropriate law, which would seem to apply in this instance, is the Prosecutorial Remedies And Other Tools…

If Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey either steps down or is removed from office, Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, will get the chance to choose his replacement.

Chuck Hagel inexplicably stated at his hearing this morning that Iran's government is "elected, legitimate":

Florida senator Marco Rubio says that he will oppose the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Senator Jim Inhofe asked Chuck Hagel why the Iranians had endorsed his nomination for secretary of defense:

The Republican National Committee has sent out this background brief titled, "Chuck Hagel Is The Wrong Choice For Secretary Of Defense." 

The Republican National Committee has sent out this background brief titled, "Chuck Hagel Is The Wrong Choice For Secretary Of Defense."

President Barack Obama will shut down his "jobs council" later this week, the Associated Press confirms.

According to Bloomberg:

Ever since outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a week ago that the U.S. military would lift its ban on women in combat roles, the debate, which has been simmering for decades, boiled up again. Much of the argument has centered on cultural, social, and morale-related effects that such…

In nearly all the Arab revolutions in North Africa and the jihadist offensives that followed them, incursions against Sufi shrines have preceded the onset of wide-scale radical aggression. As they initiate their invasive strategies, terrorists linked to al Qaeda and inspired by Saudi-financed…

With Chuck Hagel's Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for later today, it's worth reviewing a small sampling of the greatest hits of President Obama's defense secretary nominee:

Obamacare gimmick #418.

Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services, released this statement outlining his expectations for Chuck Hagel's Senate hearing tomorrow:

John Kerry, the richest U.S. senator, railed against the "corrupting" power of money in politics in his farewell address today on the floor of the United States Senate: 

As Adam White discusses in detail, there’s nothing moderate or incremental about the increase in federal regulations — and hence in centralized executive power — under President Obama.  To the contrary (as White notes), according to figures published by the Obama White House (see table 2-1), the…

Lee Smith writes:

Texas senator John Cornyn explains "The Case against Chuck Hagel":

As Politico reported Tuesday, former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel was paid $120,000 in 2012 to work as a "senior adviser" to Gallup, the Omaha-based polling and research firm. Gallup won't explain what services or expertise Hagel actually provided.

Ira Stoll announces the return of Smartertimes.com:

Paul Broun, the Republican congressman from Georgia, may be getting closer to announcing a 2014 run for Senate to succeed retiring Republican Saxby Chambliss. Via Jim Galloway, GOP consultant Andrew O'Shea sets the scene at a meeting of conservative activists Tuesday night in metro Atlanta, where…

In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is "the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you'll ever see." The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth.

We had been hearing talk of an economy that was picking up steam and a recovery that was, at last, on track. Now, it appears that recovery has stalled. Or worse. Bloomberg reports that in last year's fourth quarter:

Is Mitch McConnell already losing his reelection campaign? That's what a new poll from the Louisville Courier-Journal released Tuesday suggests. According to the survey of 609 registered voters in Kentucky, just 17 percent say they would vote to reelect the Republican and Senate minority leader,…

This morning on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof asserted that Bill Gates, who was seated nearby on set, is "richer than God":

Barney Frank publicly asked the Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick for the Senate seat held by John Kerry. (Kerry, of course, is stepping down to run the State Department.) But today it appears that Frank has been passed over. 

There are reports this morning that Israeli jets conducted a raid on the Syria-Lebanon border yesterday. On Tuesday, chief of military intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi was reportedly in Washington to speak with high-level American officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin…

The FBI has raided the West Palm Beach office of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a local doctor with close ties to New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez. The Miami Herald first reported the story Tuesday night:

In the last month, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has pushed big gun control measures. It's resulted in his approval dropping by 15 percentage points. Hotline reports:

Ramesh Ponnuru: Republicans should ignore Obama.

President Barack Obama's secretary of defense nominee, Chuck Hagel, said that Israel keeps "Palestinians caged up like animals." He made the remarks in 2003. 

The United States Senate voted 94 to 3 to confirm one of its own, John Kerry of Massachusetts, for the office of secretary of state. Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (both of Texas) and James Inhofe of Oklahoma were the only senators to vote against Kerry's nomination to succeed Hillary Clinton…

On Friday, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be unconstitutional. The judges rebuked Obama both because the Senate was actually in session when he made the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jim Swift, hosted by Michael Graham:

The Senate Republican Conference released this video, accusing President Obama of "Empty Talk" on tackling spending:

Florida senator Marco Rubio told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh Tuesday that "there won't be a solution" on immigration unless Barack Obama embraces "real enforcement triggers."

This morning on the Today show, former vice president Al Gore claimed that "our democracy has been hacked."

The White House released only a two paragraph long excerpt ahead of President Obama's immigration speech.

A press release from gun-rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners announces that last night it gave a firearms class to 300 teachers in Colorado. There was no cost for admission.

President Obama recently told the New Republic magazine, "Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time." Today, after some suggested the president's claim might not be true, the New Republic tweeted a picture supposedly proving that Obama has gone skeet shooting:

The various deals in Washington on extending the "Bush tax cuts," returning the payroll (FICA) tax to previous rates, increasing taxes paid by "millionaires and billionaires, delaying action on the debt ceiling, and so forth have, evidently, not worked to reassure the rest of America that we are on…

Ray LaHood, the erstwhile Republican congressman from Illinois, is leaving his post as secretary of transportation. The Washington Post reports:

The Washington Times reports:

In a statement, President Obama announces that he's "approved an additional $155 million in humanitarian aid for people in Syria." The Syrian regime, as Obama states, "has waged a brutal war against the Syrian people—murdering innocent men, women and children, in their homes, in bread lines, and at…

Democratic senator Mary Landrieu said on the Senate floor that Washington's spending problem exists only on Fox News:

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pledged last night on Fox News to block President Obama's secretary of defense nominee, Chuck Hagel, until Leon Panetta testifies on the Benghazi terror attack:

Chuck Hagel's nomination is a signal from Obama.

President Barack Obama will fly over 9 hours tomorrow, round-trip from Washington, D.C. to Las Vegas, Nevada, just to deliver a speech on immigration, according to the president's White House schedule. With Air Force One estimated to cost $182,000 per hour in flight, Obama's trip--that is, only his…

Google celebrated "Data Privacy Day," which is today, according to Google, by explaining its practice of turning over data to the government. Last week, Google revealed that it complies with government requests for data 88 percent of the time.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Mark Hemingway, hosted by Michael Graham: 

Informed sources are confirming reports that there was a major explosion at a uranium enrichment plant at an Iranian nuclear facility in Fordow last week. However, the White House believes the reports are not credible and Iran denies that anything is amiss, but a variety of news items coming out of…

Today at a White House event celebrating the NBA national champions the Miami Heat, President Barack Obama praised stars on the basketball team for taking "their roles as fathers seriously."

Christians United for Israel is bringing 400 leaders to Washington to lobby against Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee to be the next secretary of defense. CUFI, the largest pro-Israel organization in America, announces in a press release: 

Pat Riley, the president of the Miami Heat, skipped the team's meeting with Barack Obama at the White House today. Chuck Todd reports on Twitter:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD previously noted Senator David Vitter’s offense at Chuck Hagel’s “suggestion that my support of Israel is somehow contrary to my Constitutional oath.” Here’s Vitter’s full letter, laying out that concern and many others: 

On its website, the Iranian propaganda outlet Press TV has an article titled, "Journalism is dead and buried in West." The propaganda reads:

While the mainstream press routinely reports that President Obama is riding high and that Republicans are reeling, Gallup tells a rather different story about the popularity of our newly reelected president.  Across Gallup’s entire history of presidential job-approval polling — dating back to 1945…

On MSNBC today, two employees of NBC, Chuck Todd and Michael Isikoff, revealed that the Obama campaign group, Organizing for Action, is actively asking NBC's parent company, Comcast, for money:

Phil Mickelson had a bad weekend on the golf course and was almost 20 strokes behind the leader, Tiger Woods, when play was suspended Sunday in the Farmers Insurance Open tournament at Torrey Pines. But as poorly as he hit the ball, it was nothing as to how badly Mickelson misplayed public…

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet writes for Newsweek:

In an interview with the New Republic, President Barack Obama explained that military "limitations" are a reason America can't intervene in Syria.

Kathleen Parker, writing in the Washington Post:

An email from a young veteran who's a friend of TWS:

Bringing an inanimate thing to life has tantalized story-tellers from Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound) to Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) to Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein). But when the life spirit is encased in a mesmerizing artifact rather than a rampaging monster, the goal is to inject the object with…

Much of the opposition to President Obama’s choice of former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel to become secretary of defense has focused on his apparent hostility to Israel and his seeming indifference to a nuclear-armed Iran. As serious as these issues are, Hagel’s Senate confirmation ought also to…

Yoram Hazony is frustrated. A scholar at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, he has sought to bring Judaism in conversation with Western thought. The West, he believes, has not returned the favor.

Like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino has now made an American slavery film to go with his Holocaust film (Inglourious Basterds, 2009)—and like Spielberg, he secured Best Picture nominations for both of his epic journeys into shameful human history. But while Spielberg treats his topics with…

By almost any analysis, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)—the recipient of a $9.7 billion bailout in the wake of Hurricane Sandy—doesn’t work. It is poorly conceived, it’s terribly mismanaged, and it encourages harmful behavior.

On September 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to reporters before a meeting with the Pakistani foreign minister. She addressed the September 11 assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. “What happened was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and…

In arguing for stricter gun control, the White House has a fundamental problem: The facts simply aren’t on its side. Gun ownership has increased in this country for decades even as gun violence has fallen. And the remedies currently being discussed are either ominous—encouraging doctors to harass…

What was called by some “the loss of China”—the unexpected victory in 1949 of the Chinese Communists over the American-backed Nationalists—also destroyed the career of the diplomat John Paton Davies Jr. (1908-1999) as, in the 1950s, he and other like-minded “China hands” were wrongly accused of…

President Obama complained in a Saturday radio and Internet address that crucial issues are resolved in Washington only at the last possible moment. It was late December when he spoke, three days before the deadline on the fiscal cliff. A deal to avert automatic tax increases had yet to be reached.

Despite all of the White House speechwriters’ labors on the Inaugural and State of the Union Addresses, their attempt to define the tone of the president’s second term is unlikely to improve upon the president’s own words, a year ago: “Where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead…

Late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, my wife Jill and I were driving through Vienna, Virginia, toward Tysons Corner when we found ourselves in front of, and then beside, and then right behind an old gray Volvo wagon. The car caught our eyes, and quickly we realized why, for it wasn’t just…

When Greta Garbo appeared in Anna Christie (1930), her first movie with sound, MGM breathlessly advertised the film by announcing that “Garbo talks!” This made a certain sense at the time: Garbo was a big star and was Swedish, and there had been uncertainty about whether her accented English would…

Robert Ingersoll was fat. The Great Agnostic, as he was known in his day, was so portly that critics sighed over the “spectacular auto da fé” he would have made if set alight for heresy—as he surely would have been in an earlier era.

Last week brought more gruesome headlines from Africa, with a botched raid by the Algerian military to free hostages seized by al Qaeda-linked terrorists at a natural gas plant in the Sahara desert. Meanwhile, French troops in neighboring Mali were encountering better trained and better supplied…

I’d love to see the president launch us on an aspirational journey. My choice would be to connect every home and business in America to the Internet at one gigabit per second .  .  . ” (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, January 15, 2013).  

It is not possible—at least not yet—to program a computer to predict all the consequences of adopting one foreign policy over another. Policymakers therefore tend to act with one eye cocked on the rearview mirror, making decisions based on what has worked and, especially, what has not worked in the…

Last week, we learned of a secret State Department assessment that forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had recently used chemical weapons. The State Department cable, signed by the U.S. consul in Istanbul and based on interviews with doctors, defectors from the Syrian Army, and…

In March 1975, with the United States in post-Watergate disarray at home, stunned by repeated diplomatic defeats at the United Nations, and about to suffer the humiliation of seeing an ally at whose side we had fought for many years be overrun by the North Vietnamese Communist Army, Daniel Patrick…

The case for women in combat units has been, on the whole, a case made from ideology ("Equality requires it!") and from authority ("The Joint Chiefs signed off on it!"). Ideologues and authoritarians tend not to welcome debate on whatever issue it is they're applying their ideology to or invoking…

Hillary Clinton talked about her health briefly this evening on 60 Minutes. "I still have some lingering effects from falling on my head," she said. Clinton added, "The doctors tell me that will all recede."

In a joint interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, Clinton reveals that Obama knew all along that expectations were set too high for him when he first came into office:

Tomorrow, President Barack Obama will welcome the Miami Heat to the White House. Star player LeBron James, a donor to Obama's presidential campaign, is expected to attend.

The headline of an article on the Iranian propaganda website IRNA states, "Ahmadinejad: Muslims should mobilize resources to uproot Zionism."

President Barack Obama went to his daughter's basketball game today. On the drive back to the White House, the president and his motorcade drove past Bill and Hillary Clinton walking a dog. 

New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, said on ABC this morning that he is "concerned" about Chuck Hagel's views of Iran sanctions:

In an interview with the New Republic, President Barack Obama is asked whether he's "ever fired a gun."

In an interview with the New Republic, President Barack Obama is asked, "I'm wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players."

In a sharply worded letter to Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee to be the next secretary of defense, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana takes issue with Hagel's past statement that “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here…. I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.”…

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending…

The AP reports:

President Barack Obama pledged this morning in his weekly radio address to continue to crackdown on "irresponsible behavior."

Elections matter. And they matter most when a party on one side of the political and ideological spectrum succeeds a rival on the other side of the spectrum. Any doubt that just such a shift occurred in America in 2008 was dispelled when the Obamas put their fashion stamp on the Bushes’ Texas-style…

Chuck Hagel's shadow campaign.

Today, President Obama’s belief in a “living Constitution” came up against a ruling that enforced our fixed Constitution.  A 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board to be…

The United States has given another $10 million in aid to help Syrians, the State Department announced today.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional and invalid. Bloomberg reports:

Next week, President Barack Obama will begin to push immigration reform. As part of the effort, he'll go to Nevada to hold a public event on immigration reform, according to a White House announcement. 

President Barack Obama announced his new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, today at the White House. Washington Post reporter David Nakamura called the event a "big love-fest."

A young Marine infantry officer, a combat veteran of Afghanistan writes:

Two-term Republican senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia will reportedly retire at the end of 2014. Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the details:

President Barack Obama fired General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, without even calling the general to let him know he was being replaced.

USA Today reports:

At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, weighed in on the national debate about the federal government's proper role.

Not everyone will have to abide by Senator Dianne Feinstein's gun control bill. If the proposed legislation becomes law, government officials and others will be exempt.

Jindal's message to Republicans: Stop focusing on D.C.

Barack Obama's speechwriter, John Favreau, takes credit for the president's Second Inaugural Address in an interview with the Huffington Post.

I think it's fair to say that pro-life activists could not have conceived of a parody of the pro-choice movement this on target—and yet this is an actual ad produced by the Center for Reproductive Rights:

President Obama has released a statement supporting Secretary of Defense Panetta's decision on women in combat units! "Today, by moving to open more military positions—including ground combat units—to women, our armed forces have taken another historic step toward harnessing the talents and skills…

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the U.S. military would lift its long-standing ban on women in combat. The national media, as can be expected, is popping the champagne corks in celebration.

In his Google hangout on gun control today, Vice President Joe Biden made this recommendation: "So you want to keep people away in an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Smith, a retired Marine infantryman who fought in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, urges caution about the Pentagon's new directive to allow woment to fight as combat infantry. Smith describes his experience in 2003:

"Keep it f—g simple," is how Wolfgang Puck put it. Last night's elimination challenge on Top Chef was conceptually easy: make good fried chicken. And yet Brooke Williamson removed the bones (and thus the flavor) from her chicken breasts while Stefan Richter did a cordon bleu because, as he told the…

Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, told the New York Times that his wife offered to stay married to him, if he was planning to run for president. The first couple of Colorado is currently separated.

Senate leaders in both parties are brokering a deal to avert the so-called nuclear option Senate majority leader Harry Reid has threatened with regard to changing the body's filibuster rules. A Senate Republican aide confirms that the negotiated proposal between Reid and the GOP is well under way…

Joe Biden will head down to Richmond, Virginia on Friday to give a "gun safety" roundtable discussion. The vice president will be accompanied by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Senator Dianne Feinstein announced an assault weapons ban today on Capitol Hill, saying, "The purpose is to dry up the supply of these weapons over time":

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, said Thursday morning that "people of faith" should come together to fight for gun control against the "gun lobby." In his opening remarks at a press conference on gun control organized by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein,…

Just before Hillary Clinton testified on Capitol Hill about the terror attack in Benghazi, her 2008 presidential campaign filed paperwork revealing that millions of dollars worth of debt had finally been repaid.

In November, Brookings Institution fellow Michael O'Hanlon suggested the Pentagon move with caution before putting women in combat:

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California will introduce an "assault weapons" ban today on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Feinstein touted the announcement on Twitter:

At yesterday's Benghazi hearings, senators and congressmen sang Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's praise. The Washington Free Beacon provides this video:

The problem with Hillary and 'leading from behind.'

During questioning today at a Capitol Hill hearing on the Benghazi terror attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to the Hollywood movie Argo to explain her point:

Freshman Republican congressman Tom Cotton had this to say to Hillary Clinton at a hearing today on the Benghazi terror attack: "I just wish you had won the Democratic primary in 2008."

Breitbart.com reports:

Just a couple minutes ago, presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett, who is personally close to President Barack Obama, tweeted, that "If there's one thing we should all agree on, it's protecting women from violence."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn, hosted by Michael Graham:

On Wednesday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the "No Budget, No Pay Act" on a 285 to 144 vote. The measure would suspend the debt ceiling until May 19 and require the pay of U.S. senators to be withheld unless the Senate produces a budget for the first time in three years. 

At Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearing at the House this afternoon, Democratic congressman Eliot Engel said that "Barack Obama was not responsible for the Benghazi attack any more than George W. Bush was responsible for the 9/11 attacks":

Earlier today, the Department of Homeland Security took to its Twitter account to offer "tips" on how to deal with the winter weather:

Internet company Google complies with requests for user data 88 percent of the time government asks, according to data released today by Google.

During questioning by Senator Rand Paul at today's Benghazi hearing, Hillary Clinton seemed to blame her underlings for the 9/11 terror attack that killed four Americans in Libya:

Hillary Clinton lamented the lack of State Department funding at a hearing this morning on the Benghazi terror attack on Capitol Hill: 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about ascertaining whether the Benghazi terror attack was the result of a protest by Senator Ron Johnson. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Clinton shouted, seemingly losing her cool.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to throw Susan Rice under the bus when she plainly stated this morning on Capitol Hill, "I wasn't involved in the talking points process." The question was regarding Rice's misleading statements on the Benghazi terror attack on the Sunday morning after the…

Ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony today concerning the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the New York Times has published an account that is potentially very important. The Times reports:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton choked up at a Benghazi hearing today on Capitol Hill:

Here are Hillary Clinton's prepared remarks for today's Senate Benghazi hearing:

In his second inaugural address, President Obama made every effort to tie his political philosophy to the ideals and principles of the American Founding, even as he made clear how little he understands those ideals and principles.  The gist of Obama’s speech was that only government can grant…

Last night, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended the last ball of the Second Inauguration--the Staff Inaugural Ball.

Vice President Joe Biden described his relationship with President Barack Obama by saying the pair is "totally simpatico":

The Times is upset that some states are legislating non-compliance with proposed federal gun laws.  Even so, sayeth the Times:

Yuval Levin on Obama's coherent and revealing inauguration speech.

The Foreign Policy Initiative's new executive director will be Chris Griffin, a former staffer for former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman. Josh Rogin reports:

Vice President Joe Biden told CNN that neither he nor Hillary Clinton have made a decision to run in 2016:

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. Advocates of Roe and abortion rights frequently portray abortion as a matter of “women’s rights” or as a “women’s issue.” Abortion, it is said, is crucial to women’s…

Frank Lautenberg, the 88-year-old New Jersey senator, suggested that Newark mayor Cory Booker needs a "spanking" for threatening to run for the Senate seat he holds.

White House spokesman Jay Carney took a minute before his press briefing today to reflect. "I want to welcome you to the first full day of the President’s second term.  It’s a tremendous honor and privilege to be here working for this President and for the country," the former Time magazine…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court rulling on Roe v. Wade. The National Right to Life Committee estimates that, in that time period, there have been 54,559,615 abortions in America.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid reiterated on Tuesday his plan to reform the rules of the Senate to weaken the filibuster and strengthen the majority party's power to move legislative debate forward. The Huffington Post reports:

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and their families attended the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service today at the National Cathedral. There, the crowd of 2,200 heard  Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh "voices," all part of the "interfaith service," according to the pool report.

Florida senator Marco Rubio marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade with the following statement: 

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan knocked President Barack Obama for "shadowbox[ing] a straw man" in his inaugural address. Speaking Tuesday morning on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show to guest host Raymond Arroyo, Ryan responded to Obama's statement that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security "do not…

It seems clear that American civil-military relations have been healthiest when there is a high level of trust between civilian and military leaders, i.e. when there is mutual respect and understanding between them that leads to the exchange of candid views and perspectives between the two parties…

Politico reported this morning that "Henry R. Muñoz III of San Antonio -- an Obama bundler and a national chairman of the Futuro Fund, a group of Latino leaders who raised money for the president’s reelection -- is expected to be named DNC Finance Chair, the first Latino to hold the title."

At 10:12 p.m. last night, President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle returned to the White House after a long day of inaugural festivities. Twenty minutes later, aides to the president relieved the on-duty pool reporter, who was sent home as the president would no longer be leaving the White…

President Obama's Second Inauguration was only yesterday, but gearing up for the 2016 election has already begun. Vice President Joe Biden is today meeting with the Democratic National Committee in Washington.

Four years ago today, on January 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed "EXECUTIVE ORDER -- REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES." In particular, the executive order stated:

Valerie Jarrett, a close advisor to President Barack Obama, said yesterday on CNN that the president is not going to debate the role of government. Instead, she said, "progress is compelled by action right now."

Fred Barnes writes:

The race to succeed Tim Scott in South Carolina's First Congressional District begins with a new television ad from GOP candidate Teddy Turner, the son of billionaire CNN founder (and proud liberal) Ted Turner. "He went there to work as a cameraman and left a conservative," the voiceover begins.…

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is moving to London to avoid France's high taxes, according to a report in the British Daily Mail. The move would mean that Sarkozy, along with his wife, Carla Bruni, would avoid France's top tax rate of 75 percent.

President Barack Obama gave a shout out last night at an Inaugural ball to our "comrades in arms" in Afghanistan. After hearing from troops in Afghanistan through a video a satellite, the commander in chief said, "I can tell you that you've got a room full of patriots here.  And although I've got…

President Barack Obama used his second inaugural address Monday to offer an aggressive, unapologetic defense of activist government and to call for a new spirit of unity even as he seeks to move the country even further left.

In an otherwise unmemorable second inaugural speech, I was struck by one sentence: "But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well."

The New York Times, which endorsed President Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, offers "condensed" Inaugural Address on its website. Titled, "The Eight-Minute Inaugural Address," the "condensed" version whacks off 60 percent of the speech, which the Times suggests is not…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jim Swift, hosted by Michael Graham:

The speech has been subjected to instant analysis and placed in proper historical context by, among others, Andrea Mitchell who thought it recalled Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" masterpiece.  Others saw it as a call to arms for the progressive agenda.  And so forth.

The vice president stole NBC's show of the Inaugural parade when he ran over to shake weatherman Al Roker's hand:

President Barack Obama's communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, says that our political system isn't "worthy" of Obama and the opportunity the president presents. He made the remarks the Washington Post.

Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee in the last election, was booed at President Barack Obama's Second Inauguration today in Washington, D.C.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd says President Obama's Second Inaugural Address is about moving the country toward liberalism:

Barack Obama, fewer than 2 hours after his second inauguration, signed an email to supporters encouraging them to stay involved in Organizing for Action, the non-profit organization spun off from Obama's presidential campaign. Read the email below:

President Barack Obama proclaims today, the day of his Second Inaugural, "National Day of Hope and Resolve."

The menu for today's Inaugural lunch, with President Obama and members of Congress, has been posted:

Barack Obama made clear in his Second Inaugural Address that responding to "climate change" will be a priority in the president's second term.

Here's the text of President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address, as prepared for delivery:

Amy A. Kass and and Leon R. Kass on The Meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as part of the What So We Proudly Hail project:

With a few, conspicuous exceptions – Lincoln, FDR – second inaugural addresses have been largely forgettable.  And, for that matter, so have most first term inaugural addresses.

Fox News reports that the price for Inaugural ball tickets have been "slashed" by 50 percent: 

Fox News reports that a significantly smaller Inaugural crowd is expected today:

Fifty years ago, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.  When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory…

As Republicans discuss the future of the party, abandoning conservative values need not be part of the conversation. The party can appeal to larger segments of the electorate without forsaking core principles. One case in point is a group the party has long written off: public school teachers.

In 1956, the celebrated novelist John Steinbeck declared journalism to be “the mother of literature and the perpetrator of crap.” To the non-Nobel ear, this might sound like denigration or enmity. But Bill Steigerwald’s idol-slaying travelogue of truth suggests the bon mot may have been more…

It’s understandable that years of war and economic struggle have made many long for the relatively halcyon days of the 1990s, but how far are we really prepared to go to rehab Bill Clinton’s image? Wait, don’t answer that question just yet:

The Scrapbook notes with concern that the baseball world seems to have had its nerves shattered last week. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America, whose members vote on admission to the Hall of Fame in Coopers-town, chose not to admit any living players at its annual induction ceremony.…

Writing at age 35, on the cusp between youth and the rest of life, I wanted to know what to do about being a rock critic when I was no longer young. (Easy—quit.) Now, 20 years later, and on the verge of leaving middle age, I look to science fiction to help me master the imaginable sting of death:…

Director Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker after a career of making worse-to-middling action pictures, is a visionary of the grubby. In that 2009 Iraq war movie, and in her new one about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, sand and dirt and grime and mold and mildew…

The zeitgeist has always been wonderfully elastic. Attitudes change and apostasy is tolerated if you are cool enough to pull it off. There was a time when country music wasn’t cool. When Clint Eastwood was just not acceptable (Dirty Harry .  .  . really?). Cigarettes were very cool back when Bogie…

President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, has been one of the president’s closest advisers over the last four years. So it should come as no surprise that Obama wants him to run Langley. And Brennan’s boosters lay out a compelling case.

The Scrapbook is thrilled to report that actor, comedian, and -Weekly Standard friend and contributor Larry Miller is relaunching his popular podcast, This Week with Larry Miller, on ACE Broadcasting (www.adamcarolla.com/LMBlog). Nine months ago, Larry accidentally lost his footing and banged his…

As someone new to journalism, I’ve acquired every book imaginable on style, grammar, and writing. On my shelf sit Words into Type, The Associated Press Stylebook, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Even dusty old books I was forced to buy in college—like The Chicago Guide to Writing…

In 2011, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was instrumental in guiding President Obama away from rejecting a deal with Republicans on increasing the debt limit. Geithner was almost alone, the adult in White House discussions on handling GOP demands. The president and his other advisers had political…

You may remember contributing editor Max Boot’s article a couple of issues back on the fascinating career of Orde Wingate, the British officer who commanded forces fighting on the side of liberty in Israel, Ethiopia, and Burma. The book from which it was drawn, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of…

The Scrapbook, like millions of Americans, watched last week’s anticlimactic BCS championship. Undefeated Notre Dame was pitted against Alabama, but it wasn’t much of a football game. After Alabama got out to a 28-to-nothing lead, we -wondered if Notre Dame was going to change its nickname at…

While the press was distracted by the misnamed “fiscal cliff,” we began the New Year with a 13-figure deficit and a 14-figure national debt—the result of today’s Americans borrowing vast sums of money and putting it on future Americans’ tab. The two parties offer rather different explanations for…

Asia’s democracies need to get their acts together to address a common danger from the region’s authoritarian/totalitarian powers. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan face rising challenges from China and/or North Korea. All have security arrangements with the United States to deter or confront those…

Nouakchott, Mauritania

When solar panel maker Solyndra declared bankruptcy in September 2011, the Obama administration defended its $535 million loan guarantee to the company by touting the need to compete with China. At a congressional hearing, Jonathan Silver, then executive director of the Energy Department’s Loan…

Almost no one understood it at the time, but Lyndon Johnson’s speech at Howard University in June 1965 marked a disastrous change in civil rights policy. Previously, the civil rights movement had sought to overturn the entrenched, often legally mandated discrimination that was the legacy of Jim…

I’m burning with envy. Here I’ve been plugging away of late in places like Oklahoma City and Scottsdale. Meanwhile, both Susan Mary Alsop and Kati Marton, heroines of two ostensibly different books, had a much better idea. The only possible way to provoke interest in their surprisingly similar…

On the day he was nominated as secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel gave an interview to the Lincoln Journal Star. His critics had “completely distorted” his record, he complained. Rather, Hagel claimed, his record shows “unequivocal, total support for Israel.”

Once upon a time, not so very long ago in the 1960s and early 1970s, the late newsmagazine Newsweek was a different, not-so-nice place, and Lynn Povich and 45 other “good girls” who worked there had no choice but to sue to make it (or at least their careers) better. So they did—twice. And they…

Barack Obama was sworn in today as president for the second time. The small ceremony took place in the White House's Blue Room:

Later today, President Barack Obama will be officially sworn in for his second term. But first, Obama and his family attended church, where the reverend's sermon used the president's reelection campaign slogan "Forward" as a theme. From the pool report: 

David Plouffe, a long time advisor to Barack Obama, went on this morning on ABC about the president's focus on raising taxes:

Vice President Joe Biden has taken the oath of office for the second time. "At 8:21am, Joe Biden took the oath of office for a second term a Vice President, surrounded by family at the VP residence at the Naval Observatory," the pool reporter notes.

Bill Kristol gives some advice to President Barack Obama and his Inaugural Address speech writers:

President Barack Obama released this statement on the "terrorist attack in Algeria" last night:

The conventional wisdom has long held that the world is running out of everything except people of which there is an insupportable and growing surplus. The planet, in short, is doomed by the inevitable over breeding of the human race.  Everyone from Thomas Malthus to the Club of Rome agreed on…

Since becoming the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama has delivered 699 speeches using a Teleprompter, according to statistics compiled by CBS reporter Mark Knoller. That number includes campaign speeches, State of the Union addresses, and everything in between.

A group of Americans is not entirely happy with First Lady Michelle Obama. They "have been vocally disappointed with her choices and feel let down by her example," according to the Washington Post.

Take heart: There is more going on than meets the naked ear. Yes, the mud-slinging contest that has replaced serious policymaking in Washington continues, with President Obama the clear winner last week when he told a nationally televised press conference that House Republicans “have suspicions…

Earlier today, I wrote a lengthy critique pointing out the inconvenient fact that PolitiFact's Lie of the Year -- "The Romney campaign's ad on Jeeps made in China" -- turns out to be true. It involves a lot of complicated back and forth, so I encouage you to read that post if you're not familiar…

Federal court upholds Scott Walker's public-sector union reforms.

Visitors to the nation's capital for the upcoming inauguration have the chance to see a unique exhibit outside the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue. Until Saturday night, the Newseum's large First Amendment tablet will feature a projection of the work of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was…

House Republicans earlier today proposed a plan to raise the debt ceiling for only enough time (three months) to allow for Senate Democrats to produce a budget. The reason Democrats, who run the Senate, need to be prodded to propose a budget is simple: The Senate has not passed a budget in 1,360…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

In a joint statement, current and former chairmen of the conservative Republican Study Committee endorse the plan to raise the debt ceiling for a few months in exchange for the Senate's producing a budget: 

Perhaps the finest book ever written on the natural complementarity of the sexes and on marriage as the core building block of civil society was written by a Swiss who was then living in France.  (The book is Emile, and the author is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)  So when Robert Oscar Lopez writes at the…

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says in a statement: 

Last month, PolitiFact selected its "Lie of the Year." Given PolitiFact's dubious record of singling out Republicans for lying far more often than Democrats, you probably could have guessed the winner of this particular sweepstakes was a Mitt Romney campaign ad:

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

Jen Rubin, writing about the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Robert Satloff writes:

Charles Schumer sees a branding opportunity and he takes it. Schumer

A group called Gun Control = More Crime is planning anti-gun control rallies at state capitol buildings across the nation. The event, being billed "Guns Across America," is scheduled for tomorrow, January 19.

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

Sarajevo

What is the purpose of gun rights?

Senator Al Franken clarified his support today that he is in fact in favor of the proposed "assault weapons" ban. "[W]e should reinstate a ban on assault weapons," said Franken today in a statement.

Joe Biden explained President Barack Obama's gun control measures by saying that "It is about civility in society," according to the Huffington Post. "This is about the coarsening of our culture."

Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday that Barack Obama is "high on his own power" with regard to the president's announced efforts on gun control. Speaking on Laura Ingraham's radio talk show, Cruz, who was just elected to the Senate last November, said "this is a president who has…

Yesterday, Congress passed a series of bills to promote gun control and mental health.  Among other things, the bills aim to remove “unnecessary legal barriers…that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system,” to “give law enforcement the ability to run a…

(SPOILER ALERT) "Bite my tongue, bite my tongue," was all Kristen Kish could whisper to herself at judges' table. She could have explained how her teammate Josie Smith-Malave promised to make the sauce in time but procrastinated. Instead, Kristen took full responsibility as executive chef on last…

It should come as no surprise that a notorious jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar is suspected of ordering the raid on a BP oil field in eastern Algeria and the subsequent kidnapping of dozens. Belmokhtar has been at this game for a while. His career shows that jihadist ideology and criminality can…

Virginia senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, told CNN's Soledad O'Brien Thursday morning that a fellow senator's recently announced effort to "nullify" Barack Obama's executive actions on gun control is a "code word."

President Barack Obama has said the debt ceiling is not up for negotiations. But when asked at today's White House press briefing how much the debt ceiling should be increased, press secretary Jay Carney refused to say:

Former senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be the next secretary of defense, has drawn sharp criticism for championing even deeper cuts to military spending, making statements hostile or indifferent to Israel, denigrating pro-Israel groups in the United States as “the Jewish lobby,”…

Alexander Burns reports:

With Americans being held hostage in Algeria, the U.S. embassy in that country is posting Facebook photos of ... "Rubik’s Cubes Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr." Here's a screen grab:

Among the president's 23 “executive actions” designed to do something about gun violence was this:

At least two American hostages (and possibly several more) are being held hostage at a gas plant in Algeria, but there's been no word on unfolding the situation from either President Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Even Senator Al Franken, a staunch liberal, will not say whether he support a so-called assault weapons ban. The Post Bulletin reports:

Roger Wicker, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is "deeply concerned" that Chuck Hagel's "views on Iran sanctions have changed multiple times based on public reaction and criticism of his record."

The president of the United States tweeted a picture of an 8-year-old's letter pleading for gun control to rally support for the initiatives he rolled out today at the White House.

The incredible fake story of Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend.

The head of the AARP has stated clearly where his organization stands on the matter of cutting entitlements. As Kate Ackley reports in Roll Call:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jeffrey Anderson, hosted by Michael Graham:

President Barack Obama, who earlier today offered several gun control measures, is currently attending what appears to be the good-bye party for departing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Via the pool report:

Determined not to lose Mali to Islamist forces, France’s president Francois Hollande ordered a rapid deployment of air and ground forces in Mali to block well-armed and motivated fighters of the Ansar Dine movement led by the veteran Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghali from crossing the Niger river and…

Lee Smith writes:

Tom Cole is the kind of Republican that President Obama will need to help raise the debt ceiling. The Oklahoma congressman is a conservative, but he’s also a pragmatist and a realist who urged Republicans early on to lock in income tax rates for almost all Americans, rather than risk the…

In one of the executive orders Barack Obama signed today regarding guns, the president authorized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to "research" gun violence.

The boss, writing in Commentary magazine:

Tom Cole is the kind of Republican that President Obama will need to help raise the debt ceiling. The Oklahoma congressman is a conservative, but he’s also a pragmatist and a realist who urged Republicans early on to lock in income tax rates for almost all Americans, rather than risk the…

After President Obama's gun speech today in Washington, he high-fived and hugged the kids being used as props on stage behind him:

Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, released a statement Wednesday saying she is "proud to support" the Obama administration's efforts to "combat gun violence in our country." Here's more from Napolitano's statement:

President Barack Obama will put more "counselors" in school to help thwart gun violence. According to a background briefer provided by the White House, Obama hopes to add an additional 1,000 "school resource officers and counselors." 

According to a background briefer provided by the White House, President Barack Obama is asking doctors to help deal with guns. Here's the relevant passage:

President Obama and Vice President Biden revealed their proposed reforms intended to reduce firearms related violence.

The White House announced today that President Barack Obama will take 23 "executive actions" to deal with guns. The "executive actions," as introduced and written by the White House, are:

On Laura Ingraham's radio show this morning, Florida senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said the media opposes the Second Amendment.

Senator Chuck Schumer is not down with the idea of people selling their tickets to the presidential inauguration next week. And he has "asked" Craigslist and eBay to cease and desist offering them.  It is a matter of civic hygiene, don't you know.  As the senator helpfully explained, "Having a…

I predicted on Fox News Sunday on December 30 that the Metropolitan Opera's production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda would be the entertainment event of the year. We had the good fortune to be invited by friends to see it at the Met last night, and it was spectacular. Bel canto doesn't get any…

Former South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford announced his candidacy for the state's First Congressional District Wednesday. Sanford, who served as that district's House member from 1995 to 2001 and later as governor of South Carolina from 2003 to 2011, is vying for the Republican…

In late November and early December, Peruvian business leaders gathered in the industrial city of Arequipa for the 50th Annual Conference of Executives (CADE). When the polling firm Ipsos Apoyo asked CADE attendees whether they approved of the job performance of Peruvian president Ollanta Humala, a…

President Barack Obama has taken some heat after appointing mainly men to key positions in his administration. Jack Lew, a man, was last week nominated to be treasury secretary--and Chuck Hagel was nominated as defense secretary and John Brennan as CIA director.

The White House today released letters from little kids pleading for gun control, just hours before President Obama is to release a comprehensive proposal to limit guns and ammunition. The letters were released to the Associated Press in what appears to be a coordinated effort to help shape the…

Senator James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, released this statement in opposition to Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense:

Roger Kimball on the absurdity of permits.

President Obama, take note.  Small business owners think Washington has become increasingly hostile in recent years to free enterprise and thus to job creation, a survey conducted last week found.  And his policies are part of the problem.

Mark Sanford, the former congressman and governor of South Carolina, will announce he is running for his old House seat Wednesday. Jim Geraghty at National Review confirms the news in an interview with Sanford:

The AP reports:

President Barack Obama has signed a law that will allow cash prizes to be offered for information leading to the arrest of some foreign criminals, the White House announced. The law is officially called the "Department of State Rewards Program Update and Technical Corrections Act of 2012."

Tom Cole is the kind of Republican President Obama will need to raise the debt ceiling. The Oklahoma congressman is certainly a conservative, but he’s also a pragmatist and a realist who urged Republicans early on to lock in income tax rates for almost all Americans, rather than risk the…

Jay Carney tried to mock a reporter for asking a question he didn't like. The reporter, in turn, mocked Carney, the White House spokesman, telling him, "I'm not going to indulge your West Wing fantasies."

The White House has invited children for President Barack Obama's gun control roll out, which is scheduled for tomorrow:

The feds ordered the arrest of an "llegal immigrant and registered sex offender" working for Senator Bob Menendez to be delayed until after the November election. 

In a private meeting Monday—not just any old private meeting, but a 90 minutes long private meeting!—New York senator Chuck Schumer was reassured by secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel that he didn't mean the many things he's said over the years and didn't stand by the many votes he's cast…

Here's audio of then-senator Barack Obama calling a vote to raise the debt ceiling "a sad state of affairs":

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich talked about gun control this morning on CBS:

Periodically, and almost from the day he became a serious presidential candidate, editorialists, pundits, academics, and reporters have described Barack Obama’s foreign policy as a return to “realism.” Essayist and self-described realist Robert Kaplan, to take just one example, argues that this is…

Federal welfare spending will skyrocket 80 percent over the next decade, according to new analysis by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. Here's a chart, provided by the committee, detailing the growth in spending:

Former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel is President Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense. Much has already been said about the pros and cons of the nomination, and much more will be said during confirmation hearings in the Senate. Here is one possible line of questioning: given the centrality of…

Roger Wicker, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, writes in Politico:

Marco Rubio talks immigration with the Wall Street Journal.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced today that "it will use Amalgamated Bank’s cash management services to handle most of its day-to-day banking needs for the 2013 Inaugural activities," according to a press release.

Writers for the Atlantic and Huffington Post have been teaming up with Chas Freeman to attack critics of Chuck Hagel, the man President Barack Obama has nominated as secretary of defense. The Washington Free Beacon reports:

At his press conference today, President Obama showed that he either thinks he can pull the wool over Americans’ eyes through the sheer force of his own outrageous rhetoric, or else he really believes his own rhetoric and is living in a fantasyland.  The guess here is that it’s a roughly even mix…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Michael Warren, hosted by Michael Graham:

Utah businessman Jeremy Johnson, who pled guilty last week to charges of bank fraud and money laundering, is claiming he made a deal in 2010 to pay Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada $600,000 to stop a federal investigation into Johnson's business. Johnson says his alleged deal with Reid…

Jenny Sanford, the ex-wife of former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, will not run for the Charleston-area open congressional seat in the upcoming special election. According to the Associated Press, Sanford, who divorced the governor after it was revealed he had been conducting an…

Democratic congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts has already announced his intention to run in the special election for the Senate should John Kerry be confirmed as secretary of state. But Markey, who has served in the House for more than 36 years, isn't getting support from an important…

Former President George H.W. Bush has been released from the hospital. A spokesman sends out this press release:

When asked today at a press conference about why he doesn't "socialize enough," President Barack Obama gave a long, rambling answer.

President Barack Obama sidestepped a question today about why he expects members of Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling, when he himself voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator:

President Obama said he'd take "executive action" to deal with guns at his press conference today:

Barack Obama laughed this morning when NBC's Chuck Todd told the president that Congressman Jim Clyburn compared the debt ceiling to the Emancipation Proclamation:

The son of Congressman John Barrow, James Pentlarge Barrow, was arrested on drug and DUI charges on Saturday morning, the Athens Banner-Herald reports. James Barrow is 18 years old.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged to be a "counterweight" to the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg's net worth is estimated at $22 billion.

President Barack Obama will hold the last press conference of his first term, ahead of the Second Inaugural, which is scheduled for this weekend. The White House sends out an updated schedule for Obama:  

Yesterday, David Gregory asked Colin Powell about Chuck Hagel's remark that "the Jewish lobby" intimidates a lot of people on Capitol HIll. "What kind of thinking does that reflect? Can you understand pro-Israel senators being concerned by that comment?"

It is universally recognized that the Allied victory over Japan and Germany in World War II could not have happened without America’s becoming, in Franklin Roosevelt’s words, “the arsenal of democracy.” The basic figures of American war production are simply gargantuan. The United States…

It’s come to this: Serious people in Washington are discussing a hypothetical solution to the next debt ceiling crisis—minting trillion-dollar coins. There are legal restrictions on how much paper money the government can circulate, as well as gold, silver, and copper coins. But the law is unclear…

Defeat, like death, concentrates the mind wonderfully. It also liberates the mind. People venture to think the unthinkable, or at least, the impermissible. A new generation of conservatives may be moved to reconsider some ideas that have fallen into disuse or even disrepute. Compassion is one such…

We are in the midst of a crisis of federalism and we don’t even know it. In November, the states of Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use, while 16 other states and Washington, D.C., already permitted the medical use of marijuana. Yet at the same time, the Controlled…

Last week the 113th Congress met for the first time, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats in charge of the Senate. The Obama administration is optimistic that it can work its will over this legislature, driving a hard bargain on sequestration and the debt ceiling and pushing…

Perhaps the least surprising headline in the aftermath of the tax deal last week was the one in Politico declaring that congressional Democrats are planning to run against “chaos” in the 2014 midterm elections. It’s unsurprising because Democrats have been working, with considerable success, to…

To appreciate this landmark work it is necessary to know a bit about the author’s background. 

At the Mass of Christian Burial conducted for Robert Bork on December 21, the program for guests included two quotations from Thomas More, traditional patron saint of lawyers. They were presumably favorites of Bob Bork’s, or perhaps the family felt they exemplified the principles of his public…

Ken Myers grew up in a conservative Christian household in Beltsville, Maryland, during the 1960s. When he was in tenth grade, two important things happened to him.

An interesting moment on Sunday, when Colin Powell was on Meet the Press to defend Chuck Hagel, but would not stand up for the man nominated to be the next defense secretary:

NBC’s Revolution (Mondays, 10 p.m. ET/PT) features swordfights, gun-fights, and crossbow fights, chases on horseback, chases on trains, and chases on foot. It is gripping, loud, and entertaining. Who cares that its high-concept premise (all electricity in the world suddenly and mysteriously stops…

If I were of a cynical nature, I might suspect that this volume possesses an agenda beyond explaining the world’s most important and least predictable Muslim country to Westerners. But an awkward combination of a pretentious title and a lightweight style employed by its author should not distract…

Les Misérables grabs you by the lapels from the first moment and never lets you go. In this respect it is little different from the stage musical from which it derives—and not so different from the Victor Hugo novel from which the stage musical derives. How you respond to its unabashed histrionics…

I'm a sucker for a cheap subscription. For years I subscribed to Vanity Fair because I was able to get it for $1 a month. I paged through each thick issue, gazing upon countless pages of advertising for gaudy watches, men’s colognes, hideous Italian suits, and other merchandise I should not care to…

For fiscal hawks of all political stripes, the last two years have been awfully frustrating. Budget politics has been front and center almost constantly, yet we have made almost no progress toward reducing our deficits and debt.

In Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, there’s a wistful character named Prendergast, who had been a contented rural curate until he was suddenly beset by  “Doubts”—not about God’s existence, but:  “I couldn’t understand why God had made the world at all.” His bishop tries to reassure him, saying that…

Robert H. Bork, we all know, didn’t sit on the Supreme Court. His legacy thus cannot lie in votes cast and opinions written. You have to look elsewhere, and you certainly could begin with his earliest work at Yale Law School, which was in antitrust. In a series of law review articles and ultimately…

Senator Bob Corker had questions about Chuck Hagel's temperament this morning:

Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he has "serious questions" about Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated as secretary of defense:

The Associated Press reports that President Barack Obama opposes the "Death Star":

Wall Street has taken to thinking in terms of walls. There is a “wall of money” waiting to tumble down on stock markets and into corporate investments if only investors could climb the “wall of worry” constructed by America’s politicians who can’t seem to put the nation’s finances in order.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

[I]f for some reason the trillion-dollar coin idea doesn’t pan out–say, because the U.S. Mint can’t find a way to squeeze 12 zeroes into such a small space–there are lots of alternatives that range from intriguing to bonkers. Here we go … From Businessweek, nine ways to keep the country from…

In remarks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at the White House this afternoon, President Barack Obama said the U.S. has fallen "short of the ideal" in Afghanistan:

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, will run for the House of Representatives, sources close to Sanford confirm. He will try to win election to the seat formerly held by Tim Scott. 

President Barack Obama will deliver this year's State of the Union Address on February 12, which is the same day as Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

Former secretary of state Colin Powell, who served through George W. Bush's first term, will appear on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, January 13, to reportedly make the case for Chuck Hagel to head the defense department. Powell has been critical of Republicans in recent years and made…

The AP reports:

The White House has released yet another photo to combat charges that Barack Obama is running a boys' club from the most powerful and prominent office in the world. This new photo features three women advisors and three male advisors, a noticeable change from previous photos of work at the White…

Charles Krauthammer writes: 

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will join the ongoing talks on gun control taking place at the White House. Vice President Joe Biden's schedule indicates she'll be joining him, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, later today.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, wants to reform his state's tax code. Jindal announced today that his "goal is to eliminate all personal income tax and all corporate income tax."

Michael Kinsley on the conspicuous travel of our elites.

After meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder at the White House today, the National Rifle Association released a statement saying the White House has an "agenda to attack the Second Amendment."

The Obama campaign, months after the November presidential election, is continuing its quest for ... cash. The latest plea comes in an email from campaign manager Jim Messina, who also announces a "Obama Campaign Legacy Conference, where we'll firm up the structure and leadership of the new…

In December, the Obama administration acted on intelligence showing that Bashar al-Assad was preparing to use chemical weapons against his own people. Obama publicly warned the Syrian president and, according to the New York Times, “private messages sent to Assad and his military commanders through…

Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, says he will oppose Barack Obama's nomination of Jacob Lew for Treasury secretary. " Sessions released a statement Thursday afternoon criticizing Lew's nomination. Here's an excerpt:

Here's a common Top Chef dilemma: When a contestant conceptualizes a plan of action and, with the clock ticking, suddenly discovers a key component is missing, say, a level pot for risotto or a vital ingredient, does he tear up the plan or just keep going? This week, Micah Fields was hoping to…

Vice President Joe Biden, in remarks today before a meeting on guns, suggested the Obama administration is seriously considering outlawing unregulated "private" gun sales:

New York congressman Charlie Rangel says it's "embarrassing as hell" President Barack Obama's cabinet isn't more diverse:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that "deficit reduction is not a worthy goal unto itself":

The headline on a press release from the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife reads:

The number two Republican in the Senate, John Cornyn, explains in an opinion piece why he is unable to support Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Eli Lake reports:

Virginia governor's race a dead heat.

As the June 2013 presidential election in Iran draws near, it appears there is an effort underway to rekindle a national debate about the regime’s legitimacy. This effort, led by senior opposition figures pushing for clarification on the legal status of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi,…

Labor secretary Hilda Solis is stepping down. The White House confirms the news with this statement by President Barack Obama:

Though she's expected to leave her post at the State Department soon, Hillary Clinton today said she's not going into "retirement." Clinton returned to work yesterday after missing almost a month, according to the State Department, due to ill health.

By choosing White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as his new treasury secretary, President Obama is bracing himself to battle congressional Republicans in 2013, not seeking bipartisan compromises with them.  If confirmed, Lew would succeed Tim Geithner in the treasury job.

This clip from an appearance on Al Jazeera seems to suggest that Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, believes America is "the world's bully":

Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns. 

Bloomberg reveals that when it comes to political contributions, corporations know no party but are, astonishingly, looking out for their own interests.  

The New York Observer comes out against Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Bloomberg reports:

In the White House's most recently released photograph, women advisors are trotted out, and can be found among the men:

Rachel Maddow hammered President Obama's nominee to run the Defense Department, Chuck Hagel, last night on MSNBC:

As an ignorant but unabashed admirer of Xenophon, I was struck by this email from a reader, and thought other readers would enjoy it as well:

As talk of gun control legislation continues, Vice President Joe Biden, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, will meet tomorrow with gun "victims' groups."

President Barack Obama will tomorrow host a screening of the sitcom 1600 Penn, according to the White House.

Reuters reports:

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks argues persuasively that Chuck Hagel has been nominated to help Barack Obama dramatically cut defense spending.

Rep. Steven LaTourette, a moderate congressman from Ohio who won praise from the press for his preening moderation, ended his 9-term career in the House of Representatives last week. LaTourette said he retired because he was fed up with polarization in Congress. When asked about his future plans,…

Chris Christie received high marks in a new poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University and Public Mind Poll.

Concerned Veterans for America released the following statement, from chief Pete Hegseth, in opposition to the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Democratic senator Ben Cardin invoked South African apartheid in attacking Chuck Hagel's opposition to Iran sanctions on MSNBC earlier today:

Another resignation at the Department of Veterans Affairs after the inspector general discovered that “as much as $762,000 was wasted on the conferences for a parody video of the movie ‘Patton,’ trinkets including pedometers and water bottles, and overpriced food and drinks. The total cost of the…

This last year, 2012, was the warmest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was also "a historic year for extreme weather that included drought, wildfires, hurricanes and storms; however, tornado activity was below average."

Google chief Eric Schmidt, along with former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, visited a rare North Korean computer lab:

The New York Sun writes:

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg talked about gun control this morning on MSNBC--and the failure of politicians to lead on the issues. 

Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts elected in November, has chosen not to register herself as a minority senator with the Senate Historical Office. The Boston Herald reports:

Senator Ben Cardin today again said he had questions for Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated as secretary of defense:

Jonah Goldberg writes:

CBS reports:

What should the United States do about Iran? 

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch, who supported President Obama's reelection, says the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense will be a test for Senator Chuck Schumer:

The pro-Chuck Hagel forces, having failed to pick up momentum from the president's announcement today, seem to be getting desperate. Why else would the following bombshell magically appear on BuzzFeed's website?

At the Washington Post, Jen Rubin writes of a renewed interest in compassionate conservatism, citing Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, Republican Paul Ryan, and Gertrude Himmelfarb, writing in THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Here's Rubin:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Tonight, the 15th BCS National Championship Game will cap yet another extraordinary college football season.  College football is the only major American sport that emphasizes the regular season over the postseason, like baseball did in its glory days (when the two league champions went directly to…

The executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), David Brog, responds in a statement to Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense: 

The Huffington Post reports that Politico has fired several employees:

Ohio senator Rob Portman, a Republican, expressed his disappointment in President Obama choosing Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense in a statement released to the press:

Leon Panetta said he's stepping down as secretary of defense to return to his "walnut farm." There, Panetta said, he will deal "with a different set of nuts."

Marco Rubio is worried about Chuck Hagel's Cuba policy, according to the Florida senator's office.

House majority leader Eric Cantor blasts the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense in a statement: 

Here's an exchange from MSNBC this morning between Steve Clemons, a close friend and ardent supporter of Chuck Hagel, and Dan Senor:

The Emergency Committee for Israel sends out the following press release:

Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, released this statement, opposing Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense:

Politics, we are told by people who are obsessed with it, is a "contact sport." Like football, don't you know. Actually, football is not a contact sport, as Vince Lombardi once explained, and when it comes to football, his word is always final.  

It would seem, at this point, that former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson probably has a vacation home in Pyongyang. He’s visited Stalinist North Korea more than a half a dozen times, and has often boasted of his close relationship with “the North Koreans.” (Presumably, he means “the North Korean…

In a blog post on the New York Times website, columnist Paul Krugman says no to serving as treasury secretary. Which is clarifying, even though he was never offered the job anyway.

NBC's Chuck Todd reported this morning that "as many as 10 Democratic senators could vote against Hagel":

Democratic senator Ben Cardin said this morning that he has serious "questions" about Chuck Hagel, who today will be nominated to be the next secretary of defense:

During the hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense, it’s clear that the views of gay rights organizations will be heard. There the issue seems to be whether Hagel’s apology for previous remarks and beliefs was sincere, or motivated solely by self-interest. He had years to…

Fox News reports that John Brennan is expected to be named the new CIA director, possibly as early as tomorrow:

Jen Rubin, writing for the Washington Post:

If the name "Jimmy Sears" rings a bell, somewhere along the way you must've read Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's bestselling "Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly." The book dispels any lofty notions a reader might have about the cooking life. It's blunt and graphic, but it is also…

ABC's Jonathan Karl reported this morning that there is not enough Democratic support in the Senate right now to confirm Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Heidi Heitkamp, a Democratic senator from North Dakota, called President Barack Obama's gun control proposal, as it has been reported in the Washington Post, "way in extreme."

Senator Ted Cruz took a strong stand against Chuck Hagel on Fox News Sunday this morning:

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham explains his concern over Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense:

Chuck Hagel, the president's rumored pick to be the next secretary of defense, predicted that the U.S. military would be destroyed because of the war in Iraq. As CNS reported in 2008, when Hagel was a senator from Nebraska:

Last month, the Obama administration added seven new Iranian companies, because of proliferation concerns, to the ever-growing list of sanctioned Iranian entities. Yet, as important as this latest move is, one crucial category of Iranian entities is still missing from U.S. policy—companies owned or…

Just before Christmas there was a lot of public concern about America’s declining birthrate, which closed out 2012 at its lowest point since 1920. But in trying to understand why American fertility is on the wane, it’s important to understand that fertility decline is a global phenomenon.…

In a post yesterday waxing enthusiastic about Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, Michael Moore called attention to a statement of Hagel that I don't believe had been previously much noted. Here it is, from September 2007:

Jose Rodriguez on what Zero Dark Thirty gets wrong on enhanced interrogation.

CNN, reporting on the possibility that President Barack Obama will nominate Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, said that the former senator has "been against sanction for iran ... and for talking to Hamas." Watch here:

This morning (Hawaii time!), President Barack Obama is hitting the links at the luxurious Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore. The resort has two professional grade courses, the Arnold Palmer and George Fazio courses.

It has been widely reported that the recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal entails a tax hike with no corresponding spending cuts.  Other reports claim that the deal imposes a 41-to-1 ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts.  But neither of these claims is correct.  

Senator John Cornyn, the number two Republican in the Senate, spoke bluntly about Chuck Hagel, the man who President Barack Obama is said to be naming as the next secretary of defense.

A pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender group issued a statement today urging President Barack Obama not to nominate Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, said today on the Senate floor that Hurricane Katrina was "nothing in comparison" to Hurricane Sandy:

The idea of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska succeeding Leon Panetta at the Pentagon is, as the fictional king of Siam once put it, a puzzlement. Friends of Israel are up in arms at the prospect, but Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times thinks he's just the sort of contrarian…

It has been a long climb for NASCAR. The sport's beginnings were in bootlegging. One of its finest drivers, fiercest competitors, and most successful owners learned his craft hauling moonshine on the back roads of North Carolina. They never caught Junior Johnson on the road, but they did nail him…

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Nancy Pelosi's office photoshopped four faces into this photo, which now, after the alteration, includes all the Democratic women now in the House of Representatives:

In the three weeks since Chuck Hagel’s name emerged as President Barack Obama’s likely choice as the next secretary of defense, there's been a lively, if lopsided, debate about his qualifications for the job. The debate’s been lopsided because the arguments for Hagel have been so startlingly…

The AP reports on new jobs numbers:

Chuck Todd said this morning he believes the Obama administration will "yank" the possible nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense:

Barney Frank admitted this morning on MSNBC that he has asked Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick to pick him to replace John Kerry in the Senate:

Hillary Clinton, who was recently released from the hospital, released a statement yesterday ... on Burma.

Why liberals should oppose Chuck Hagel.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Last week THE WEEKLY STANDARD published my article, “Smugglers Galore: How Iran Arms its Proxies.” It seems that part of it may have found its way onto the reading list of Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah.

There is at least one thing to like about the tax-raising, can-kicking deal that avoided the fiscal cliff: It gave the U.S. military a 60-day reprieve from the consequences of sequestration.

Having avoided the "fiscal cliff," we will now be in jeopardy of breaking our necks when we collide with the "debt ceiling." The responsible thing to do, we are already being told by the New York Times is ... to raise the ceiling:

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

Vice President Joe Biden got a little frisky with the wife of Senator Angus King at today's ceremonial swearing-in at the Capitol: 

While new members of Congress are getting sworn in today, President Barack Obama is far, far away, vacationing in Hawaii. 

The AP reports that John Boehner will remain speaker of the House:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

A women's group earlier today released a statement with the following headline, "More Women in Senate Likely Result Higher Taxes, Bigger Govt, Less Freedom." The group making the claim is the Independent Women's Forum.

The Times of Israel reports:

The small republic of Kosovo, with a population of less than two million—90 percent ethnic Albanians, of whom 80 percent are Muslim—is the Balkan zone offering the greatest resistance to radical Islam. Some vignettes from recent interviews may impart the flavor of the debate over Islamism in the…

In 2008, Barack Obama promised that he would not use signing statements, but last night he released one to accompany his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

The Hertog Young Professionals Program announces a new seminar:

President Barack Obama's staff used an autopen (a machine that mimics one's signature) to sign the "fiscal cliff" legislation that Congress passed on New Year's Day. There was no ceremony or photo-op for the autopen bill signing.

How Joe Biden replaced Harry Reid.

President Barack Obama will go for immigration reform and gun control this month, the White House tells the left-leaning Huffington Post. Obama's actions will reportedly be done "quickly."

The State Department reports that Hillary Clinton has been discharged from the hospital:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican, blasted Speaker of the House John Boehner for ending the congressional session before voting on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

Over thirty minutes, NBC news reported on Twitter that Hillary Clinton had left the hospital:

President Barack Obama is back on the golf course. He returned today to his Hawaii vacation, after returning to Washington, D.C. during the "fiscal cliff" talks.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta kept his pet dog by his side when he discussed details taking out Osama bin Laden at his CIA office.

Metro stops in Washington, D.C. will now feature advertisements that warn of overspending. "Talk Is Cheap," the tagline on a series of ads reads. "Overspending Is Not."

Among the many items bundled into the fiscal cliff fix there was another delay in implementing cuts to physician payments for Medicare services.  It wasn't hard, though.  Congress has had plenty of practice handling what is called the "doc fix," since it has been doing it almost routinely for the…

An "outraged" local TV personality rants about Democrats circling around Ed Markey as John Kerry's replacement in the Senate:

John Hinderaker is optimistic on the "fiscal cliff" deal:

After hailing the passage of the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama laid down a marker on the debt ceiling: It will not, he said, be up for negotiation.

Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, explains why he voted in favor of the "fiscal cliff" deal last night in the House of Representatives:

After Congress agreed temporarily to avert the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama hailed the deal in brief remarks delivered from the White House, and then headed to Air Force One to take a midnight flight to Hawaii. Obama had left his family days earlier to return to Washington to…

John Boehner delivered a sharp response to Harry Reid, who last week accussed the House speaker of running “dictatorship.” The top Republican reportedly told the top Senate Democrat, “Go f— yourself."

The House of Representatives voted late Tuesday night to pass the Senate's bill to prevent income tax hikes from hitting American families making less than $450,000 (and individuals making less than $400,000). The deal also raises the capital gains tax for high-earners, increases the estate tax on…

Deal or no deal, taxes are increasing for every single working American. And it appears no "fiscal cliff" proposal or provision being offered by the White House, Democrats, or Republicans will alter this fact.

I suggested earlier today that enough House Republicans should support the Senate fiscal cliff bill to see that it passes. But here's an email from a reader whom I know and respect:

In 2012, 532 people were murdered in the city of Chicago, according to statistics compiled by the Crime in Chicago website. The number of people murdered the year before was 441, meaning in the city of Chicago, murders have increased by 91 from 2011 to 2012. 

The fiscal cliff deal that the Senate passed early this morning is ridiculous in too many ways to count. There seem to be no figures from the Congressional Budget Office and only "very preliminary" figures from the Joint Tax Committee about the real spending and revenue implications. The two month…

“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That’s the essence of it.”—Vince Lombardi Late Sunday night, the Washington Redskins defeated the Dallas Cowboys (that would be “America’s Team”) 28-18. The victory got them into the playoffs and made possible…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been in the hospital the last couple days with a blood clot in her head, released a statement yesterday. But it had nothing to do with her health. Instead, the statement was on "Haiti's Independence Day."

The New York Times reports: