May 2013

Peggy Noonan on why the IRS scandal is different.

The Israel Project reports:

Supporters of President Obama’s overhaul of American medicine are touting the early evidence from California’s Obamacare exchange (still under construction) as good news for their side.  But as the Los Angeles Times notes, the Golden State’s version of Obamacare will mean higher insurance premiums…

The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University is out with a new study on media fact checkers, and unsurprisingly, their results suggest that PolitiFact has it out for Republicans. Dylan Byers at Politico summarized CMPA's findings:

Reprising the "Don't Double My Rate" theme used during the 2012 presidential campaign, the White House is pushing a plan by President Obama this week to prevent interest rates on some student loans from doubling effective July 1.  However, the savings for most borrowers is rather less significant…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the growth of the recent scandals, the media's coverage, and the Republican response.

Writing for Salon, Curtis Morrison, a self-titled "liberal activist," admits to bugging Mitch McConnell's office. He claims to have been inspired by Julian Assange and claims, "If given another chance to record him, I’d do it again."

It is often said that the real scandal in Washington is not what's illegal, but legal.  And not merely legal but ... commonplace and celebrated.

A longtime friend and savvy D.C. veteran emails with these worthwhile thoughts:

Earlier this week, Louisiana legislator Karen Carter Peterson called Obamacare critics racist:

The State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2012 survey on Thursday. The section on the Middle East and North Africa includes a report on terror attacks in Libya.  All told, there were eleven terrorism-related attacks last year in Libya prior to the 9/11 attack in Benghazi…

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker has launched a group with the mission of restoring trust in government, according to this report by Charles S. Clark in Government Executive.  No question something needs to be done and none, either, that Mr. Volcker has a way of getting things done.  

The White House has released this Situation Room photo of the president and his advisers meeting to discuss "hurricane preparedness":

The Defense Department announced that it's sponsoring anonymous Internet chat groups for sexual assault victims, according to Defense.gov. The announcement comes after a string of high-profile sexual assaults among military personnel. 

What Lee Rigby's murder says about Western society.

On Thursday, the White House's administrator for federal procurement policy, Joe Jordan, wrote on the White House blog about a legislative initiative that President Obama is sending to Congress next week "to stop excessive payments to Federal contractors."  Jordan continues:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the current state of the IRS scandal and Eric Holder's future as Attorney General.

Former Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens said that he doubts Russia transferred missiles to Syria, but if it turns out the weapons were transferred, " our Air Force can deal with them":

MSNBC host Chris Hayes "bet" on national TV today that the Justice Department has also targeted the New York Times for publishing pro-Obama leaks:

The White House defended Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to invite press to an off-the-record briefing by saying Holder "is interested in having a constructive policy discussion with professional journalists about a subject most people think is a complex policy issue." White House spokesman…

“The fundamental fact that we all have to be aware of is, when we go to war now, we send less than 1 percent of our population to war and they’re all volunteers and many of them are from working-class environments. And in the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nothing was asked of the rest of us. We…

The AP reports:

An important Washington Free Beacon report:

The Republican National Committee announces that it's filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the release of all "Benghazi Emails Between Obama’s Reelection Campaign and State Department." The RNC's press release reads:

The oldest and most durable of all Washington handouts is the agricultural subsidy. Without it, of course, farm families would be forced off the land, food prices would rise, and all manner of woe would be the nation's lot.

It becomes more and more difficult to find the bad news about the sequester.  Unless, that is, you are in the Pentagon and trying to figure out how to keep the Marine Corps fully equipped and trained and up to strength.

At a fundraiser last night in Chicago, President Barack Obama signaled that he's interested in his legacy as a president and insisted that he's willing to work with anyone.

Clinton's scandals were way worse than Obama's.

When President Obama unveiled his Race to the Top initiative in 2009, the idea was to award $4.35 billion in federal grant money to states to replicate policies that boosted student achievement.  That quickly changed and the federal money was instead used to persuade states to adopt…

Off the top of his head, Democratic Senate candidate Ed Markey of Massachusetts can't think of a tax increase proposed by his party that he's opposed. Speaking to reporters, Markey, a longtime member of the House of Representatives, couldn't say if he'd voted against an income tax increase.

First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a message to Democrats supporting Massachusetts Senate candidate Ed Markey: “Keep writing those checks. And if you haven’t maxed out, max out!” She made the remarks at a Boston hotel earlier today. 

In August 2010, Austan Goolsbee, serving at the time as economic adviser to President Obama, told reporters during an anonymous background briefing that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate income taxes. That statement was made at the same time that top Democrats, including President…

White House spokesman dodged questions today about whether Attorney General Eric Holder told the truth when testifying in front of Congress. The questions arise amid new developments in the story of the Justice Department's snooping on Fox News reporter James Rosen.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said today that the White House is satisfied with the responsiveness of the IRS in face of the growing scandal:

Michael R. Strain, writing for National Review Online:

Bernie Becker and Kevin Bogardus write in The Hill that, according to “two top tax writers on Capitol Hill ... the case for tax reform has been strengthened by the recent revelations about Apple’s tax tactics and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.”

In August 2010, Austan Goolsbee, serving at the time as economic adviser to President Obama, told reporters that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate income taxes. That statement was made at the same time that top Democrats, including President Obama himself, were demonizing Charles and David…

Today, President Obama personally became re-involved in his former campaign organization's new incarnation Organizing for Action.  On the same day he is scheduled to appear at two DCCC fundraisers in Chicago, the president of the United States sent the following email to OFA's mailing list, signed…

A collection of letters shows high-level officials in the IRS signed off on requests for additional information from conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. As NBC News reports, at least one letter sent to a conservative group has the signature of Lois Lerner, the suspended IRS official…

Larry King will host a new TV show on Russian network RT:

Later this evening, President Barack Obama will head to his hometown of Chicago to attend two Democratic party fundraisers aimed to help his party help win back the House of Representatives from the Republicans.

Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson said today that Obamacare critics are inspired by the race of the president of the United States, Barack Obama:

The varying tax rates of the S&P 500 companies.

In response to reports that the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Darrell Issa, has subpoenaed information related to the Benghazi terror attack, the State Department responds by promising to "take stock of any new or outstanding requests for information." The State Department, however, did not…

While traveling to New Jersey today, President Barack Obama stiffed the Democratic opponent of Republican governor Chris Christie. Obama did not meet privately with Barbara Buono, the Democratic candidate. But he did walk along the Jersey Shore boardwalk with Christie.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U, on the rising cost of college and whether it's still worth the cost.

The Washington Post reports:

President Obama, praising the Jersey Shore:

Some arcade games today on the Jersey Shore with Barack Obama and Chris Christie. Via Mark Knoller and Ed Henry: 

[G]ood news for our employees, good news for our visitors as we start the summer season this Memorial Day Weekend, and good news for the security of our nation’s icons -- the places that the dedicated men and women of the U.S. Park Police protect every day.”  This was National Park Service Director…

Jay Carney told the press aboard Air Force One that President Barack Obama respects New Jersey governor Chris Christie and his efforts. Via the pool report:

The Washington Examiner reports that the IRS chief visited the White House more than once a week under President Obama, after having visited less than once a year under President Bush. The IRS chief came to the White House a reported 118 times from 2010 to 2011 under Obama, compared to only once…

President Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, is "beginning to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse." The feelings of "remorse" began for Holder after he read an article in the Washington Post about how the Justice Department, which he heads, investigated Fox News reporter James…

AL.com reports:

Vice President Joe Biden is in Latin America meeting with foreign leaders. His first stop was in Colombia, where he landed yesterday and met with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos.

At a ceremony marking Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, President Barack Obama said that most Americans are able to remain unaffected by war.

On this Memorial Day, as on others, every American will turn to his own thoughts and prayers, and recall his own favorite speeches, music, and poetry. Memorial Day has no one dominant "text." But for those who aren't familiar with it, I recommend Theodore O'Hara's poem, "Bivouac of the Dead,"…

“You’re stupid,” is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama. But on Friday morning I picked up the Wall Street Journal and learned that the president had given a speech about the war on terror saying, “This war, like all wars, must end.”

Senator Schumer's off-the-shelf solution to any problem, real or merely perceived, is to form a "gang of eight" that comes up with a bipartisan fix.  As Keith Laing reports on the Hill, Schumer appeared onFace the Nation and:

The new film version of The Great Gatsby is, shockingly, terrific—opulent, powerful, and thrillingly gorgeous. Baz Luhrmann, the director and co-writer, plays it as high melodrama, operatic both in intensity and the lushness of its settings and costumes. This turns out to be the best possible…

The state of the union today is uneasy, at best. Washington is crippled by gridlock while Americans across the country feel alienated from their government, so much so that the president feels compelled to remind them that the government is “us.” But is it really so, in a meaningful sense? Sure,…

The Scrapbook was drawn like a moth to the flame by this eye-grabbing teaser last week on the front page of the Washington Post’s Health & Science section: “A metallic-green beetle has arrived .  .  . If you live near an ash tree, beware.” The headline was equally unnerving: “Exotic beetle has…

Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), the spellbinding celebrity healer of late-18th-century Vienna and Paris, is one of those mercurial, charismatic characters who can only be described as, well, mesmerizing. Not everyone gets to be a verb and an adjective. For Henri F. Ellenberger, in his massive history of…

SeaTac, Wash.

As if we needed it, last week provided a fresh reminder about how the government behaves in the wild. And it has nothing to do with the IRS, Benghazi, or Eric Holder. 

The burgeoning deficit has stopped burgeoning, at least for now. So Republican plans to attack the profligate president and to use the debt ceiling as a weapon to get more spending cuts can be shelved. Conservative deficit hawks should turn to a more immediate and important task—devising policies…

One almost feels like shedding a tear for rich people these days. They are regularly pilloried by President Obama and his acolytes on editorial pages and talk shows as selfish greedheads who need to be taxed, and taxed again, as punishment for their wealth. Malcolm Forbes loved to show how his…

Of the generation of American poets born in the 1920s, three are preeminent: Richard Wilbur (b. 1921), Anthony Hecht (b. 1923), and James Merrill (b. 1926). This judgment will, of course, be contested by those who are most excited by the high nonsense of a John Ashbery, the manic improvisations of…

I was not long ago introduced before giving a talk by a woman who, to authenticate my importance, said that she had Googled my name and found more than 12 million results. She didn’t, thank goodness, go on to say what some of these results were. If she had, she might have mentioned that a few years…

By most accounts, Kermit Gosnell seemed stunned last week when a jury found him guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in what seemed to have been his routine killings of newborn babies at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia; he thought he was doing his job. Abortion is legal and is a…

Fulton, Mo.

The Cold War is now so over that it might as well be grouped with the ancient ice ages, but there is one echo rolling across Europe from East to West: the Russian attempt to dominate the natural gas market on the European continent. As the energy sector accounts for 25 percent of Russia’s economy,…

'Still, even though New Yorkers subsidized the states closest to the political values of Ted Cruz, you never heard much complaining about how it’s unfair to support the gun-toting culture of the South, or underwrite its chronic disregard for the poor, the environment and those without health…

Human cloning is finally here, and it is going to spark a political conflagration. First, some background.

Gabriel Gomez is an ambitious guy. In January, with Massachusetts senator John Kerry all but certain to be confirmed as secretary of state, the 47-year-old Gomez wrote a letter to Governor Deval Patrick. Between Kerry’s resignation and the special election to fill his seat in the Senate, Patrick, a…

Everyone in Washington, except those in the crosshairs, likes a good scandal, and THE WEEKLY STANDARD is no exception. What’s more, in the case of the Obama administration, comeuppance is well deserved and overdue. So while it may be a dubious pleasure to enjoy watching the high brought low and the…

There is no doubt that the American presidency is an imperfect institution and that it has been inhabited by imperfect people. Given these incontrovertible facts, political scientists have long sought ways to improve the presidency. Some want to make it more powerful, others less. Some want us to…

So, what about the video? The White House last week released nearly 100 pages of emails detailing some of the discussions within the Obama administration that resulted in major revisions to talking points about the Benghazi attacks drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

There is no curse on the second term of presidents. When presidents lose credibility, when trust vanishes and their word is no longer accepted, they have only themselves to blame. That was true for President Nixon, among many others, and now it’s true for President Obama.

New York senator Chuck Schumer was given the opportunity this morning on national TV to endorse his one-time protege Anthony Weiner in the New York City mayoral race. Schumer refused the offer. 

Former Obama intelligence official Dennis Blair, an admiral, blamed leaks on the "trend" being set "at the top of this administration":

On MSNBC, host Melissa Harris-Perry compared Gitmo terrorist inmates to American slaves:

Detroit is so close to insolvency that there is talk in the city of selling off some of the Detroit Institute of the Arts' treasures, including works by Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh.  

It would be a major understatement to say that Obamacare has had a bad spring.  Around the time of Lincoln’s birthday, registered voters told Fox News that, by a margin of 6 percentage points (48 to 42 percent), it would “be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009”…

At the conclusion of a lunch at the British embassy here in Washington, Britain’s ambassador, Sir Peter Westmacott, asked each of the four scribbler-economists he had invited to give his forecasts for the year. I usually decline to participate in this sport, but after hearing the unoptimistic views…

Gary Schmitt: "The lighter-than-air commander-in-chief."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on President Obama's recent counterterrorism speech at National Defense University.

Georgia Democrats may finally have a candidate for next year's Senate race to succeed Republican Saxby Chambliss. Michelle Nunn, an Atlanta businesswoman and the daughter of former senator Sam Nunn, is "actively preparing" for a Senate campaign, the Hill reports:

For over a week now, the Syrian town of Qusayr in Homs Province has seen some of the heaviest fighting in the two-year conflict. The struggle for Qusayr, says besieged President Bashar al-Assad, “is the main battle” in all of Syria. Lying adjacent to a highway linking Homs to the north and Damascus…

Following in the footsteps of other TWS contributors who've run for Congress (e.g., Jim Webb in 2006 and Tom Cotton in 2012), Quin Hillyer has thrown his hat in the ring for the GOP nomination in the First Congressional District of Alabama, where incumbent Jo Bonner announced yesterday he'll be…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with the Becket Fund's Adele Keim on the Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case.

During his counterterrorism speech on Thursday, President Obama defended the use of drones by saying the following:

New York congresswoman Carolyn Maloney announces that she will take part in the opening of a New York City migraine center. Maloney will be joined by Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer and city councilwoman Jessica Lappin.

On Thursday, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on a bill that would ban most abortions during the last four months of pregnancy nationwide. Proponents of the legislation frequently cited the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, as well as the words of President Obama himself,…

Kimberley Strassel, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Via CBS's Mark Knoller:

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, on the Center for American Progress:

Earlier this week, seven Egyptian security officers were released after being held hostage for a week by Bedouin tribesmen in the Sinai. The abductions are the latest in a series of now commonplace hostage events and armed attacks in the Sinai that highlight the deterioration of security in this…

ROTC back at CCNY.

As the investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi intensifies, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are seeking to conduct transcribed interviews with thirteen top State Department officials in the coming weeks in order to learn more. Those named in…

Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have written a letter calling for IRS employee Lois Lerner to be removed from office:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the growing IRS scandal.

President Barack Obama responding to a heckler at a national speech earlier today:

President Obama was heckled during his national security speech today:

The full text of President Obama's "Future of our Fight against Terrorism" address, as prepared for delivery:

President Obama is using his national security address today to reject the "Global War on Terror."

In a speech today, President Obama is calling for the transfer for Gitmo inmates to the United States.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "predicts active 2013 Atlantic hurricane season," according to a press release on the government agency's website. The other alternative being offered by NOAA is that this year's hurricane season will be "extremely active."

President Barack Obama condmned the London terror attack, but he didn't single out a motivation for beheading. Here's Obama's statement:

This morning on a radio show, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admitted that more lewd photos could come out:

Senator Mitch McConnell said Harry Reid is bringing the "culture of intimidation that we've seen at the IRS" to the Senate: 

Caroline Alexander, at Bloomberg, delivers some bad news about Syria and its civil war:

The Internal Revenue Service has come under heavy criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in recent days after an inspector general's report detailed "inappropriate criteria" used to identify certain applications of mainly conservative organizations for special review resulting in long delays…

"Troops in London were advised in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s attack not to wear their uniforms outside their bases," The Sun reports. The report doesn't make clear who gave the order in the first place, but it was quickly reversed: "at Cobra this morning, it was agreed that issuing…

Last night, President Barack Obama honored singer Carole King with the the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The celebration took the form of a concert, featuring James Taylor, Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sande, and Trisha Yearwood. It will air next…

Three U.S. senators have identified the missing parts of the response to the Benghazi terror attack. In a statement, Senators Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain list "What We Do Not Know" about Benghazi:

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was asked last night whether he's going to apologize to Susan Rice. He said that she doesn't deserve an apology; she "deserves to be subpoenaed."

Bill Kristol, with Mara Liasson and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Charlotte Allen on her recent cover story, Beyond the Pale.

This week we have entry #5,740,412 in the ledger documenting "Why Not Every Market-Based Outcome Is Optimal." And that’s the Yahoo purchase of Tumblr.

Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings warned that the IRS scandal might result in a "chilling effect" on the IRS

Congressional hearings over the last two weeks have been filled with stories of misconduct due to incompetence and inexperience among certain IRS employees. Both Republicans and Democrats have leveled the accusations, and Internal Revenue officials testifying before Congress have admitted as much.…

After a decade of the Democratic party dominating all levers in government the state of Illinois is a mess. Its government pension debt is far and away the largest of the 50 states and its dismal credit rating reflects it. Unlike neighboring states Illinois is hemorrhaging jobs and dancing around…

Spain has its problems, including an unemployment rate that could be a prelude to revolution or ruin ... or both.  But the country seemed to feel it needed a fleet of warships.  To include submarines.  It made plans to build four of them,  but there was a problem.  As Roberto A. Ferdman…

On Tuesday, liberal bloggers Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post attended a private meeting at the White House:

Democratic congressman Stephen Lynch says "there will be hell to pay" if IRS doesn't fully cooperate with Congress, and suggests he might support a "special prosecutor": 

The Democratic ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, said that today's IRS hearing "is more important than one election":

IRS official Lois Lerner said at hearing today, "I have not done anything wrong."

J. Russell George, the inspector general who uncovered the IRS scandal, appears to have at one time dated Michelle Obama, well before she was married to Barack Obama.

After the IRS revealed it had wrongly targeted hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups, the agency claimed that the misconduct was limited to "low-level employees" in its Cincinnati office. Yesterday, the attorney for Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations division, told…

During Tuesday’s hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) declared that failing to encourage people to sign up for government-mandated health insurance is downright “un-American.”  Speier was referring to Congress’s refusal to fund…

At a Jewish American Heritage Month reception last night in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden talked about Jews, power, and influence.

Speaking at a Jewish American Heritage Month reception last night in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden requested the "teleprompter in the room to be taken down," according to the pool report.

Anthony Weiner announced overnight that he'll be running for mayor of New York City. He made the announcement by releasing this YouTube video:

55 percent see Benghazi cover-up. 

National Public Radio reporter Ari Shapiro reports that liberal pundits were seen entering the West Wing:

A top IRS official will take the 5th Amendment and not testify in front of Congress, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The State Department today announced the dedication of a new "environmentally-sustainable" embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi. The cost of the building project is $133 million.

The crusade to save the spotted owl continues.  It began with limiting timber sales on federally managed lands in order to preserve the owl's preferred habitat.  As a result, Teresa Platt writes:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that questions about Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius for Obamacare fundraising are similar to questions about President Obama's birth certificate: 

Texas senator John Cornyn asked former IRS chief Douglas Shulman to apologize to his constituents for the IRS's wrongdoings. Shulman refused. Here's the exchange:

The inspector general who filed the report on the IRS targeting conservatives and former IRS commissioner agree: The law is relevant. The statements were made at a hearing today on Capitol Hill:

President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Jack Lew, the current treasury secretary, said today at a Capitol Hill hearing that he was aware "questions had been raised" about the IRS when he was at the White House:

Testifying today on Capitol Hill, Douglas Shulman, the former IRS commissioner, says he "can't say" how the targeting of conservatives by the agency he once led happened: 

Texas senator John Cornyn has released this video, titled "A Culture of Intimidation," about the IRS's targeting of conservatives in his home state and across the nation:

Today, the Government Accountability Office issued a report of preliminary finding on the progress the Department of Homeland Security has made in its efforts to reduce the backlog of immigrant visas. Although almost 863,000 records were "closed" in the last two years, the backlog of potential…

From Eric Katz, at Government Executive, we learn:

Glenn Kessler awards Dan Pfeiffer, an adviser to President Barack Obama, three Pinocchios:

The more the evidence emerges, the more one has to wonder: Could Obamacare have been designed any more poorly? Even those who don’t mind Obamacare’s striking consolidation of power and money in Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty, or who don’t mind the medical overhaul’s $2 trillion…

The thoughtful Carl Cannon has written a piece, "Richard Milhous Obama," concluding that our current president has more in common with our 37th than President Obama's partisans would like to acknowledge. The estimable Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in, defending against liberal dissents the…

The show will go on.  Sequestration may have cost Washington D.C. tourists a chance to tour the White House, but the Independence Day fireworks will go off as planned.  A contract was awarded yesterday to Garden State Fireworks of Millington, NJ for $221,819.77.  The listing for bids on the…

Ethan Epstein: "One Tough Nutter: Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor has cracked down on crime, reformed the city’s finances, and spoken frankly about black family breakdown."

Perhaps no other IRS official is more intimately associated with the tax agency's growing scandal than Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division. Since admitting the IRS harassed hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups for over two years, Lerner has been criticized for…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on his editorial about the burgeoning IRS scandal and the media's coverage of it.

The White House press office announces that President Obama and his wife, Michelle, will travel to Africa next month:

In a commencement ceremony address to Morehouse College yesterday in Atlanta, President Obama made a joke at his wife Michelle's expense.

A reporter confirmed with Jay Carney, today at the press briefing, that President Obama met with his chief of staff and the treasury secretary many times over the last month and that neither official told the president of the IRS scandal:

White House spokesman Jay Carney says no one is more outraged at the IRS scandal than President Obama:

White House spokesman Jay Carney says that the president's counsel and chief of staff knew about the investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative group. But, Carney says, they didn't see it fit to tell President Obama about the investigation. 

Normally I blog about each week's Mad Men episode here. I avoid Slate and Esquire and everywhere else that offers analysis and simply try to reflect on the more interesting aspects of the show. Then I'll go over to the other sites and realize I know nothing. I am reminded of Gene Hackman's Lex…

Harvey Mansfield, writing for the Claremont Review of Books:

Last week, a contract totaling more than $378,000 was awarded to develop and manufacture signs for Civil War-era cemeteries, including "18 unique interpretive signs for Confederate lots."  The contract was awarded by Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

On Friday, Arizona congressman Trent Franks announced he will be introducing a bill to prohibit abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, with exceptions for when the mother's life or physical health is at risk. NARAL president Ilyse Hogue condemned the modest restriction in a statement:

We hear a lot, these days, about how President Obama is not like Lyndon Johnson and thanks be to heaven for that small mercy.  The point seems to be that the president doesn't know how to arm twist, sweet talk, bribe, and emasculate both friend and enemy (of which he truly had neither) in order to…

Student loan debt runs to about $30,000 per graduate of the class of 2013, as Phil Izzo writes in the Wall Street Journal.  And the total amount of student loans outstanding runs to almost a trillion dollars: more than either credit card balances or automobile loans.  More than any form of consumer…

The Scrapbook notes, without editorial comment, that Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey seems to have undergone a laparoscopic surgical procedure last February to reduce his stomach’s capacity. The object of the operation is obvious—weight loss—but there seems to be some debate about why the…

Corporate governance is a much-discussed topic, and the operation of corporations has proven a fertile field for investigative journalism. But even though many colleges and universities are multibillion-dollar-a-year operations, the subject of university governance has been largely neglected. This…

Rooting around in a bookstore not long ago, I stumbled upon a second edition of Functions of a Complex Variable (1917) by the Scottish mathematician Thomas MacRobert. Immediately I felt a chill, a sense of doom and foreboding, I had not experienced since youth. This was a dread mathematics text…

If you want to know what’s going to go wrong in the culture, read the professional journals. A case in point: An article in the April 10 New England Journal of Medicine called for the creation of a commodities market for “made-to-order” human embryos.

Drama critics come in all kinds, besides, of course, good and bad. There are those who regurgitate the plot and those who gallop off on hobby-horses. There are those with sound ideas but no style; those with impressive styles but no taste. Some tergiversate, even without a Janus face; others ride…

By all but universal agreement, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) was Henry James’s first masterpiece, a lengthy contemplation of the fate of an orphaned American girl who falls victim to European manners and morals—the first great articulation of his “international theme.”

The president has described the Boston terrorists as “self-radicalized,” and his voice is but one in a great chorus insisting that we face a major threat from Americans gone bad, almost entirely on their own, and certainly without any input from foreign countries or terrorist groups. Some of these…

‘'But the larger fault goes to Congress as a whole, including but not limited to [Rep. Darrell] Issa, for acting like moths to flames in their attraction to attack mode and scandal, real or purported, while avoiding like a cat who has sat on a hot stove the more important heat of .  .  . ” (Norman…

Houston

In 1986, three million illegal immigrants in the United States were given the right to become citizens. It was a full-scale amnesty, created by a bipartisan majority in Congress and signed into law by President Reagan. It had one big flaw.

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers…

Our demographic understanding of the 2012 election continues to be fleshed out, most recently with a Census Bureau report. Some of the census findings merely confirm what we thought we knew. For instance, for all the talk about 2008 as a “historic” election, turnout, as a percentage of eligible…

The historian Allen Weinstein has had, by any standard, an illustrious career. For some years, he was a professor of history at Smith. Moving on, he created and served as director of the Center for Democracy, which promoted democracy abroad and played a major role in validating the critical…

He poses as an investigative journalist and is presented in his main outlets—the Nation, MSNBC, Socialist Worker, Democracy Now!—as a foreign-affairs expert. In fact, Jeremy Scahill—a college dropout who was arrested several times in the 1990s in connection with (among other things) the occupation…

'Push the correct button, win a cash prize!” That might sound like an outdated carnival game, but it actually describes government employment. Uncle Sam shelled out more than $1.2 million to pay operators to man the Capitol’s fully automated senators-only elevators over the last five years,…

A new poll from CNN demonstrates that Americans say the continuing investigations into two scandals that have arisen in the last week are important.

In a commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, President Barack Obama recalls Jim Crow laws and racism of the 40s and 50s. Morehouse College is a historically black college.

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer said this morning on TV that it's "irrelevant" who edited the Benghazi talking points:

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer was asked on TV this morning whether he thinks the IRS actions violated the law:

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer said it's an "irrelevant fact" where the president physically was during the Benghazi terror attack on September 11, 2012:

Most Americans say that the issues being raised by congressional hearings into the Benghazi terrorist attacks and the revelations that the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups "involve serious matters that need to be investigated." According to a new poll from Gallup, 69 percent of those…

"Trade makes the cake bigger so everyone can benefit.” So advised our distinguished visitor, British prime minister David Cameron, on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona announced Friday afternoon that he will introduce a bill that would ban abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy (20 weeks after conception) nationwide--with exceptions for when the life or physical health of the mother is at risk.

Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona announced Friday afternoon that he will introduce a bill that would ban abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy (20 weeks after conception) nationwide--with exceptions for when the life and physical health of the mother is at risk.

Noonan: No ordinary scandal.

The Washington Post editorial board is quite upset with “Republicans and conservative media obsessed” with the “phony” issue of the administration’s misleading public explanation of the nature of the attacks in Benghazi. In a lengthy editorial, the Post makes a haughtier and more condescending…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on scandal week in Washington.

Among the questions the Internal Revenue Service asked an pro-life conservative group in Iowa: What do you pray about? Chris Moody at Yahoo! News has the story:

Karen Handel, the former secretary of state of Georgia, is running for the Republican nomination for Senate next year. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

In his prepared remarks on the IRS’s targeting of his political opponents, President Obama said that “we’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” but only once we determine “who is responsible.”  In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel offers some helpful thoughts on determining…

White House spokesman Jay Carney says it's "been a good week." He made the comment to the New York Times.

IRS commissioner Steven Miller said the IRS's targeting of conservatives "is absolutely not illegal":

At a Capitol Hill hearing today, IRS commissioner Steven Miller said a bigger budget would be helpful:

Under questioning, IRS commissioner Steven Miller admitted the IRS planned when it would reveal that it wrongly targeted conservative groups:

At a Capitol Hill hearing, IRS commissioner Steven Miller clarifed his position: "I never said I didn't do anything wrong."

Another celebration planned at the White House. This one will take place next week, and will honor Carole King:

NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS  deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election:

On TV this morning, Bob Woodward made the case for not dismissing Benghazi and compared the scandal to Watergate:

Chris Christie, the Republican Bill Clinton?

In an email to supporters of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi encouraged readers to sign a petition to "declare your support" for Obamacare ahead of the House plan to hold a vote on repealing the unpopular health care law. The email, which had the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with contributing editor Reuel Marc Gerecht on his piece on the Iranian regime and its apologists.

Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez continues to poll within single digits of his opponent, Democratic congressman Ed Markey, in the special election for Senate in Massachusetts. According to a new poll from PPP, first reported by BuzzFeed, Markey leads Gomez, a political newcomer, by 7…

After nearly two days of editing, then CIA director David Petraeus was sent the revised Benghazi talking points on September 15, 2012. He was less than impressed, to put it mildly.

At an outdoor White House press conference, President Obama called over Marines to shield himself and the Turkish prime minister from the rain:

CNN reports:

Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, his party's nominee for Senate in next month's special election, asked a former House colleague not to show up to a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. earlier this week. A Markey staff member reportedly called Ben Jones, a former Democratic congressman from Georgia who…

Steve Hayes on the Benghazi emails, last night on Sean Hannity's Fox News show:

The designated moderate in the Republican presidential field, Chris Christie, will have to run on a little more than his famous bellicosity.  There is the matter of his record as governor of New Jersey and his success in dealing with that famously Republican constituency: organized labor.  In that…

Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads his Republican opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, in the latest poll of the 2013 gubernatorial race in Virginia. According to Quinnipiac, 43 percent of registered voters in the Old Dominion support McAuliffe, a businessman and former chairman of the Democratic party during…

California congressman Devin Nunes made the claim yesterday that the Justice Department wiretapped telephones in the House of Representative's Cloak Room, an exclusive part of the Capitol where members are able to privately interact with one another. Nunes made the claim on Hugh Hewitt's radio show.

The White House on Wednesday released 94 pages of emails between top administration and intelligence officials who helped shape the talking points about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that the CIA would provide to policymakers in both the legislative and executive branches.

Since the IRS admitted it improperly targeted conservative and Tea Party groups last Friday, journalists have worked tirelessly to expose the full extent of the growing scandal.

President Obama says he discussed the IRS scandal with Treasury secretary Jack Lew. The thing is, it's a Jewish holiday, Shavout, and Lew is an observant Jew. 

Treasury secretary Jack Lew asked Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to resign his post in response to the reports that the IRS had unfairly singled out conservative non-profit groups for close scrutiny. Miller has resigned, President Barack Obama said in a…

It's a truism that no president makes it through a second term without some scandal. President Obama is no exception.

The Obama administration’s editing of the Benghazi talking points not only obscured what really happened in Libya on September 11, 2012, it also confused the events of earlier that day in Cairo, Egypt. The editing process specifically removed any hint that “jihadists” were encouraged to “break…

Eric Holder said the White House discovered the AP's records had been subpoenaed by reading the newspaper:

Eric Holder said today on Capitol Hill that "I am not sure" after being asked when he recused himself from the AP phone records case:

Democratic congressman Mel Watt brought his grandson to today's Eric Holder hearing on Capitol Hill:

At today's Capitol Hill hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder at first wasn't sure who subpoenaed the AP's phone records, but later blamed his deputy attorney general:

Pablo Pantoja made news this week by publicly leaving the Republican party to become a Democrat. "In a letter released by The Florida Nation on Monday, RNC State Director Of Florida Outreach Pablo Pantoja announced that he is changing his political affiliation to the Democratic Party," the…

On Monday, the Center for New American Security published an 84-page report, called “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran.” The subject matter is particularly noteworthy given the report’s provenance. CNAS is a think tank close to the Obama administration that, among…

If you have been worrying that you consume too much salt, then you might want to give that one a rest.  As Gina Kolata reports in the New York Times:

On Twitter this morning, David Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Barack Obama, tried to downplay the significance of the growing Benghazi scandal. "I think this story is BS," he said, arguing that those concerned about the Obama adminstration's handling of the terror attack are really only…

When the IRS went fishing for information from those Tea Party groups, it cast a very wide net.  

NBC's David Gregory suggested that the White House is blaming the growing IRS scandal on the Treasury Department for not "deal[ing] with this more quickly":

From the federal overhaul of American medicine that brought us the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid, we can now add the Sebelius Shakedown. In what it calls an “unusual fundraising push,” the Washington Post writes, “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius…

The growth of Obamacare, in frightening chart form.

CNN’s Jake Tapper has obtained the verbatim text of an email from Ben Rhodes, a top Obama adviser on foreign policy and national security, which I referred to in two recent pieces on the Obama administration’s manipulation of the Benghazi talking points. It's a good scoop. Assuming the email is…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the IRS targeting of tea party groups.

Spokesman Jay Carney said some at the White House "were aware" of reports that IRS was targeting conservatives, but that nobody bothered to do anything about it:

Speaking today in Stockholm, Sweden, John Kerry called "climate change" a "life and death" issue. And the secretary of state apologized on behalf of the United States for not doing enough to fight "climate change."

From today's press briefing:

Richard Rubin at Bloomberg poses the following head scratcher:

Last week, the Benghazi talking points took center stage in the ongoing investigation of the 9/11 anniversary attacks in Libya.  Jay Carney came under intense questioning at Friday's White House press briefing as he struggled to justify a dozen iterations of talking points before Susan Rice used…

Seems K Street and Max Baucus were looking forward to a fun year of fixing up the tax code and making it stand up and salute. But now the IRS has gone and muddied the waters.  As Erik Wasson and Peter Schroeder write at The Hill:

In a couple minutes, the top Republican in the Senate will say that "we’ve only started to scratch the surface of this scandal." Mitch McConnell will say those words in reference to the IRS-targeting-conservatives scandal, and will make those remarks on the Senate floor.

In a letter to a seven-year-old Wisconsin boy, Vice President Joe Biden considers the possibility of guns with chocolate bullets. Biden's letter reads:

Ahead of his official nomination this week as the GOP's candidate for governor of Virginia, state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has a new ad outlining part of the Republican's economic plan.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, both Republicans, have written a letter President Obama saying the IRS scandal "is big brother come to life."

Today's Boston Herald wood:[img nocaption float="center" width="606" height="640" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]21063[/img]:

Iran will chair the U.N.'s disarmament conference.

Jay Carney responds to the AP's story on phone records:

In his joint press conference with David Cameron this morning, Barack Obama asserted that the reason Moscow doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the White House on Syria is because of the Cold War. “I don't think it’s any secret that there remains lingering suspicions between Russia and other members of the…

White House spokesman Jay Carney refused to answer questions about the federal government monitoring the Associated Press's telephone records. Instead, Carney "referred questions" to officials in the Justice Department. 

The Associated Press reports:

Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty. The AP reports:

The White House counsel apparently heard about the IRS scandal in April, according to Jay Carney:

Saturday, the White House retweeted a link to an OregonLive.com story on competition among healthcare insurers purportedly instigated by Obamacare:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Stephen F. Hayes on Benghazi, the President's press conference, and his recent story, The Benghazi Scandal Grows.

On May 6, the media was full of warnings about an immediately pending cyberattack called “OpUSA.” Homeland Security said “The attacks will likely result in limited disruptions and mostly consistent of nuisance-level attacks against publicly accessible web pages and possibly data exploitation.” This…

At a press conference today at the White House, President Obama said "There's no there there" on criticism of how his administration handled the Benghazi terror attack:

Democratic senator Joe Manchin calls the IRS's activities "unacceptable and un-American."

Late last week, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services was running a little short of the scratch it needed to sell the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to the people who will reap its many benefits.  Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post reported:

On that IRS business, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post insists that President Obama:

In a statement released this morning, the Newseum announces that it will "re-evaluate" its decision to include two terrorists on its "Journalist Memorial." The Newseum had been planning to honor former members of the terrorist group Hamas, Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama.

CBS's Sunday morning show had a piece on couples who choose to be childless. The spot featured an appearance by Jonathan V. Last, author of What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster:

Ben Smith reports that Jewish groups are outraged the Newseum plans to honor two terrorists:

There is a genre of books about politics written by ideologues on both sides of the divide. Their aim is to inform their fellow partisans about the misinformation, misdeeds, and malign intentions of the people on the other side, offering talking points to rally the troops for the next…

Historians’ memoirs have become a distinct subgenre of the memoir form. They’ve even been the subject of their own study: Jeremy D. Popkin’s History, Historians, and Autobiography. But why should historians’ memoirs be of interest to anyone, even to historians? Because, in addition to charting the…

The massacre of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, last December rightly sparked a national conversation about policies that might be enacted to prevent such atrocities in the future. But where is the national conversation in response to the massacre of innocents carried out in Philadelphia by…

Readers of the Washington Post might have thought a time warp had collided with the zeitgeist last week when they turned to their Style section. For there, staring at them from the front page, and stretching well beyond, was a seven-page, -14-part package entitled “The Prophets of Oak Ridge,”…

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un may have been incensed last week at having been knocked out of the headlines by a gay NBA player, or perhaps he was just having a bad day. His solution? Send an American citizen to the gulag. Kenneth Bae, a Washington state native who owns a tour company that…

The front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution one day in late March was almost completely taken up by news of indictments of 35 public employees. They were not legislators or crooked cops but principals and teachers in the Atlanta school system. They had been doing what one expects to hear…

Recently I read a story in my local newspaper reporting that high school kids routinely throw out tons of vegetables because the food in their school lunches is so awful. It would seem that the youth of America particularly object to the lettuce. 

In his April 30 White House press conference, President Obama explained that there’s evidence chemical weapons have been used in Syria, but “we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, and who used them. We don’t have a chain of custody.”

Every Christmas I receive a charming letter from a college friend I’ll call Doug. Because we live far from each other, I have never met his three children. Reading his letters carefully, I could see that one child wasn’t flourishing as well as the others. So this past winter, when Doug and I met in…

Wildly successful movie directors often bemoan their successes and say they long for a time when they will be able to just make smaller and more personal films. Then they don’t. 

Alec Wilder met Lorenz Hart in 1942, while listening to Mabel Mercer at Tony’s on 52nd Street in New York. At the time, Hart was working on All’s Fair, to become By Jupiter, his last show with Richard Rodgers. Years later, Wilder would write:

There was one moment in President Obama’s world-weary press conference last Tuesday when he seemed genuinely interested and engaged. At the very end, when Obama had already begun to depart the podium, a reporter shouted a question about the previously obscure but now famously gay NBA center, Jason…

Over the past few weeks, there have been rumblings of a potential buyer for the Tribune newspaper company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, and a few other notable papers. Given the desperate financial straits of the Tribune…

A Slate column reprinted in the Washington Post wisely points out that some of the best-known writer-drinkers stayed sober while working. We heartily agree. But shouldn’t this apply to caption-writers as well?

Undisclosed location in Afghanistan

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard…

Rome

The GOP may have a problem, but few seem to know what it is. Such appeal as the party had, it seems to have lost. In the later-stage Cold War, between 1968 and 1989, it won five out of six presidential elections, four of them with more than 400 votes in the Electoral College. Since the Cold War…

Last September, Ronald Robins Jr., a senior vice president at Abercrombie & Fitch, received a letter urging the company “to join with over a hundred major companies and make political spending disclosure and accountability a corporate practice.” The Ohio-based clothing retailer isn’t particularly…

At his press conference last week, President Obama renewed his request for Republicans to negotiate a grand bargain with the White House on spending, taxes, and deficit reduction. Yet he knows Republican leaders in the House and Senate have already rejected the very idea of getting together with…

President Barack Obama will start the week by attending 3 Democratic fundraisers in New York City, according to the White House.

Liberal former congressman Dennis Kucinich blamed President Obama's Libya policy for the death of four Americans in Benghazi. Kucinich also said the Obama administration politicized the response to Benghazi because they "were in the circumference of an election, and when you get on the eve of an…

The White House has touted the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigation of the Benghazi massacre as a review “led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility that oversaw a process that was rigorous and unsparing.” In fact, the report was purposefully incomplete and willfully…

The Egyptian interior ministry announced Saturday that an al Qaeda plot against a Western embassy and other targets had been disrupted. Two suspected terrorists are being held for questioning and a third is under house arrest.

CBS anchor Scott Pelley said at a speech at Quinnipiac University that journalists "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again."

Not front page material in the Grey Lady's news judgment.  But good enough for page A-11.  With the third paragraph reassuring readers that an agency spokesperson had insisted 

A little scare at the White House this morning, via the pool report:

Governments everywhere are on the prowl for more revenues. French president François Hollande wants to tax incomes in excess of €1 million at a 75 percent rate. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has jacked up VAT. Southern Europe’s finance ministers have come up with the novel…

Jay Carney aggressively defended the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks and the revision of CIA talking points Friday in an uncharacteristically hostile White House press briefing. But in his attempts to protect himself and his administration colleagues, Carney offered a series…

Continetti: Why does the Obama White House avoid the truth about terror?

White House spokesman Jay Carney said, in response to a question about the I.R.S. targeting conservative groups, that the I.R.S. is run by a George W. Bush political appointee:

Washington is buzzing about the expose this morning by ABC News' Jonathan Karl showing that the White House's Benghazi talking points underwent 12 different revisions and were scrubbed of references to terrorism. The report builds on and confirms the reporting by The Weekly Standard's Stephen…

The White House is marking Mother's Day, which is this Sunday, by celebrating free birth control provided by Obamacare. The White House made the declaration in a tweet today from their official Twitter account.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the Benghazi hearings didn't reveal "new" information:

Tom Price, a Republican congressman from Georgia, will not run for the U.S. Senate next year. Price told the Marietta Daily Journal that his "assessment at this point is the House is the battleground for politics in this country right now" and he will seek sixth term for his metro Atlanta House…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with William Kristol on Benghazi and the week in review.

At a White House press briefing on May 1, Barack Obama spokesman Jay Carney attempted to frame new reporting on the Benghazi attacks as old news by noting that the attacks had taken place "a long time ago." 

Jennifer Rubin writes at the Washington Post:

Norm Ornstein has become so frustrated with the national dialogue that he has started shouting at the TV.  His rants are, to be sure, quite erudite:

Ron Fournier, writing at National Journal on the growing Benghazi scandal:

The headline of Jeff Mason's Reuters story this morning reads:

BuzzFeed reports:

NBC's Lisa Myers said this morning on TV that Democrats have been calling her to attempt to undermine the testimony of Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks:

Vice President Joe Biden says that of first term accomplishments, he's "proudest" of the stimulus. He made the comment in an interview to Rolling Stone magazine. 

Last December, Hillary Clinton's State Department famously threw four career officials under the bus for Benghazi (while of course exculpating all senior and political appointees). One of them was Raymond Maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary for Maghreb Affairs in the Near East Bureau. But…

The difference it made.

Under Obamacare, if you like your job, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll get to keep your job. The AP reports:

Fresh off of Wednesday's House hearing on the Benghazi attack, America Rising has a new video juxtaposing the statements of the whistleblowers to those then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made at an earlier hearing. Watch the video below:

Nancy Pelosi indicated she would be visiting troops this weekend but for sequestration:

Just this week, news broke that the "world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun" was successfully built and test-fired by an engineer in Texas.  The technology involves a special printer that uses melted polymers to generate plastic components for a variety of uses, now including working firearms.…

House speaker John Boehner is requesting the Obama administration release unclassified emails between the White House and the State Department regarding the Benghazi attack of September 11, 2012. In a statement at the Capitol Thursday morning, Boehner cited Wednesday's House hearing with three…

“South Carolina has passed a bill that criminalizes the implementation of Obama’s health care law reform law,” said HuffPost Live host Jacob Soboroff last week. The claim, from the Huffington Post and others, is that South Carolina is attempting to “nullify” Obamacare. But what the…

Senator John McCain said yesterday at an event that Secretary of State John Kerry is doing "sh---y" job:

Steve Hayes, writing for nytimes.com:

The Newseum, a museum in Washington, D.C. that chronicles the news industry, plans to add two dead terrorists to its "Journalists Memorial."  The announcement to include these terrorists on the memorial, which "pays tribute to reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the…

The Pentagon has been on a long and expensive quest to make its personnel invisible. Or something close to it. So new camouflage patterns have been researched. Several of them, in fact. At least one for every branch of the service, including the Air Force, most of whose people do not need to hide…

During his trip to Mexico and Costa Rica last week, President Obama tried to highlight the positive and downplay the negative. Thus, he spoke at length about the growth of trade, commerce, and economic partnerships, arguing that security issues should not be allowed to dominate all discussions of…

House speaker John Boehner is criticizing the White House's reaction to the revalations, first reported by Stephen F. Hayes for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, that the administration's talking points on the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last September were altered. From a press release…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Stephen F. Hayes on what we learned at today's Benghazi hearing in the House of Representatives.

Israel’s air campaign this past weekend, its two strikes Friday and Sunday on Syrian targets, shows where the Obama administration has gotten Syria wrong. Over the last few weeks, the White House has framed its Syria policy, or its lack of one, in terms of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal…

In a statement to the press, the State Department is calling "on all Libyans to refrain from armed protest and violence during this difficult time in the democratic transition."

At today's Benghazi hearing, Congressman Mark Pocan complains of "rehashing some of the same old stories":

Democratic congressman William Lacy Clay of Missouri blamed congressional budget cuts for the terror attack on Americans in Benghazi:

Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks said that the he was "stunned," his "jaw dropped," and "embarrassed" when Susan Rice blamed the terror attack on an Internet video:

Dr. LeRoy Carhart is something of a rockstar among the "reproductive rights" community. The two Supreme Court decisions on partial-birth abortion bear his name: Stenberg v. Carhart, which overturned the state of Nebraska's ban in 2000, and Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the federal ban in 2007.…

Elijah Cummings, the Democratic ranking member at the Benghazi hearing, said that testimony on the Benghazi terror attack reminds him of the saying that "Death is a part life:"

Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, the foreign service officer and former deputy chief of mission in Libya, said at a Capitol Hill hearing that the "saddest phone call I have ever had in my life" was when he heard Amb. Chris Stevens had been murdered:

LeRoy Carhart is something of a rockstar among late-term abortionists. The two Supreme Court decisions on partial-birth abortion decisions bear his name: Stenberg v. Carhart, which overturned the state of Nebraska's ban in 2000, and Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the federal ban in 2007. The…

Benghazi whistleblower Eric Nordstrom, the former Libyan regional security officer, choked up today at the Capitol Hill hearing on the 9/11 Benghazi terror attack:

The National Rifle Association has a new ad defending Republican senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire for her vote against the Toomey-Manchin gun control amendment.

House Armed Services Committee chair Buck McKeon asks the Department of Defense to release more Benghazi-related details:

The people are speaking, through a Gallup Poll, and as Daniel Strauss writes in the Hill, they aren't talking any language the political class understands:

House speaker John Boehner might support the Internet tax bill. But it isn't too likely, he indicated in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Nearly eight months after terrorists killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration still has not explained who, exactly, was responsible.

Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, has won his old House seat back in a special election to succeed Tim Scott, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate earlier this year. The Associated Press reports:

The congressional hearings on the 9/11 Benghazi attacks this week will likely focus on the classic questions often asked on such occasions: what did those involved know, and when did they know it?  Not only will the post-attack words and actions of government officials come under scrutiny, but…

Eli Lake responds to "a nonsense person" today on C-Span; 

I once suggested the Garden State be renamed the Diner State—New Jersey has more of them supposedly per capita than any other state in the union. They all seem to be open 24 hours and offer the kinds of food I love, especially around 2 a.m., such as a Western omelet, corned beef hash and eggs, and…

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, the Democratic nominee for the South Carolina First Congressional District special election, is listed twice on today's ballot. Colbert-Busch is also the nominee of the Working Families party.

From the Economist:

David Frum writes at the Daily Beast about why the elite consensus on immigration reform is wrong:

David Tucker and Nathan Tucker have penned a brief at the American Enterprise Institute about the role music plays in American civic life. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

The White House, via the pool reporter, has revealed that the president today didn't win in golf:

In an NBC interview, Google's Eric Schmidt reminded America that "It's important to remember these 5 billion people are just like us. They're just trapped in bad poverty and bad governance and so forth." The CEO of Google was referring to those in the world who don't have smartphones:

The House GOP leadership's ballooning problem.

Last week the White House celebrated the first anniversary of its Atrocities Prevention Board. At the time, Elie Wiesel asked at the inaugural ceremony whether or not we’d learned anything from the fact that “the greatest tragedy in history,” the Holocaust, “could have been prevented had the…

It's been a roller coaster of a special election in South Carolina's First Congressional District, and about 24 hours before the polls close, the race for the House seat once held by Senator Tim Scott looks to be a close one. As the Huffington Post noted, Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Stephen F. Hayes on his recent piece, The Benghazi Talking Points. 

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano praised her employees today in a statement to the press. 

My memories of the 1960s and '70s are vague by choice, but I seem to recall that there was a legitimate popular concern back then about quasi-religious cult recruitment of youth. Almost immediately, there was a reaction to it known as “deprogramming.” Then, there was a reaction to deprogramming in…

Congressman Tom Cotton talked about the threat facing America yesterday on Meet the Press:

Yuval Levin has an excellent piece at NRO, "Reforming Immigration Reform," on how the Gang of Eight's immigration bill could be improved. Levin notes "that, compared with some other conservative critics (including some of NR's editors), my starting point on this subject is significantly friendlier…

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican candidate for Senate in Massachusetts's special election next month, has released his first ad. The spot is a biographical introduction for the political newcomer, a collection of snippets from Gomez's GOP primary victory speech last week and TV news reports about his…

President Barack Obama is apparently hitting the links today. He'll be playing golf with two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Bob Corker, and Senator Udall, a Democrat from Colorado.

A top U.S. diplomat will testify Wednesday that as fighting raged in Benghazi, Libya, in the early morning hours of September 12, 2012, military officials in the region told a second rescue team preparing to deploy from Tripoli to Benghazi not to make the trip.

Kirsten Powers, writing at the Daily Beast, says the Kermit Gosnell case has revealed the abortion rights community has become blind to the horrors of late-term abortion:

As everyone knows, the youth vote skewed heavily for President Obama.  The question now is – will voting this way become a lifetime habit for these people.  Or can they be turned back to the light of reason as they begin looking for the jobs they need to pay off their student loans.

Republican attorney general Ken Cuccinelli leads Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race by 10 points, according to a poll released Sunday by the Washington Post. Among likely voters in this November's election, 51 percent said they would support Cuccinelli, while 41…

Voters Don't Like Political Class Bossing Them Around So reads the headline on this piece by Scott Rasmussen on Real Clear Politics.  It doesn't come as a surprise to many of us that

Con Coughlin reports that Iran is getting ready to go to war with Israel:

Garden City (“What a misnomer!” said cousin Betty, who’d been there) is the seat of Glasscock County, a rectangular piece of flat, dry West Texas with a population density of two per square mile. The population of the “city” fell as low as 100 early in the last century, but the 2010 census put it…

Dallas

Two recent news items highlight the issue of income inequality in America. First, a study by the Pew Research Center found that the net worth of the upper 7 percent has risen by 28 percent since 2009 while the net worth of everybody else has dropped by 4 percent. Second, a recent poll conducted by…

Timonium, Md.

Oregon governor John Kitzhaber did his best Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown impersonation last week and traveled to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where the Democrat attended a conference focused on the concept of “Gross National Happiness” (GNH). 

With an immigration bill finally on the table, Republicans would do well to stop and ponder how they have arrived at this juncture. Since the November election they have been preoccupied with how to approach Hispanics on this critical issue. Because almost 80 percent of illegal immigrants are…

The new movie about Jackie Robinson’s entry into major league baseball paints its characters with such an unmitigatedly saintly brush that Parson Weems himself might come back from the grave to say, “Speaking as the man who invented the story about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree,…

In an Earth Day press release last week, Secretary of State John Kerry referred to climate change as a “clear and present danger,” and said that “if ever there was an issue that demanded greater cooperation, partnership, and committed diplomacy, this is it.” 

In 1957, the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Randolph Pate, sent a brief note to the director of the Marine Corps Educational Center, Brig. Gen. Victor Krulak, in which he asked, “Why does the U.S. need a Marine Corps?” Krulak, already a legend in the Marines, penned a lengthy reply: “The…

Early in this book, author Brendan Simms, professor of history at Cambridge, quotes John Locke: “How fond soever I am of peace I think truth ought to accompany it, which cannot be preserved without Liberty. Nor that without the Balance of Europe kept up.” As Simms indicates, for Locke, “truth” was…

Barack Obama’s first big political moment was at the Democratic convention in 2004 where he gave a heartfelt oration about the differences between red states and blue states:

Philadelphia

“The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. .  .  . [T]he Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.” —E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909)

So The Scrapbook is rooting around on the Internet and stumbles on a blog piece by Ben Yagoda in the online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Scrapbook begins to leave the page, but then hesitates: The Chronicle is not usually on The Scrapbook’s reading list, but there’s something…

Today's New York Times carries a story about the President's "red line" on the Syrian use of chemical weapons: how that line appeared and how it disappeared.

The Obama administration continued today to make pathetic statements on Syria. Via the pool report, from aboard Air Force One:

Oregon senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, today expressed concern about Obamacare. Reuters reports:

Democratic congressman Stephen Lynch said this morning on TV that Susan Rice used "scrubbed" talking points on Benghazi to deliver "false information" to the American people: 

President Barack Obama got ahead of himself and his advisers when he said that Syria using chemical weapons would cross a "red line," the New York Times reports. 

As Clive Crook notes on Bloomberg, that while Paul Krugman does not suffer fools gladly, he does not necessarily believe that everyone “who disagrees with him [is] either a fool or a knave ... Many of those who disagree with him are sociopaths.”

Mickey Kaus has some more tough criticism for the immigration reform bill and one of its chief engineers, Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio:

The Obama administration’s Syria policy is bad enough, and this State Department press release from this morning is just pathetic:

Fox News's Chad Pergram announces the line-up for the  whistleblower Benghazi hearing, which will be held on Capitol Hill next week, on Twitter:

Republican congressman Steve King of Iowa will not run for the Senate seat held by retiring Democrat Tom Harkin next year. The Hill reports:

In his weekly address filmed this time in Mexico City, President Obama touted his efforts to reform the immigration system. He made sure to say the "bill is a compromise," and included this gaffe, "It would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in…

A funny thing happened to our dysfunctional government. It functioned, unwittingly perhaps, but function it did. President Obama forced Republicans, unwilling to risk the political consequences of taking America over the fiscal cliff, to accept a $180 billion tax increase. Republicans returned the…

CNN reports this evening that there have been Israeli airstrikes on Syria:

The deadly sound of silence.

In Mexico, President Obama said that Obamacare passed after a "little bit of a fuss." The president made the statement while speaking at a press conference in support of over-the-counter Plan B for women as young as 15:

Just as the wrecking ball was poised to swing at President Reagan’s home on Chicago’s South Side, where he lived when he was 3-4 and survived near-fatal pneumonia, President Barack Obama put brain research in the national spotlight.

In a petition emailed today to supporters, Organizing for Action, President Obama's former campaign group, uses violence in Chicago to push for more gun control.

The special election campaign for Senate in Massachusetts is only a few days old, but it's already looking close. A new PPP poll shows Democrat Ed Markey leading his Republican opponent, Gabriel Gomez, by only four points. Here's more from PPP:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with William Kristol about Stephen F. Hayes's new piece, The Benghazi Talking Points. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Michael Warren and Michael Graham on the Massachusetts Senate Race. 

Jonathan Spyer explains how Syrian president Bashar al-Assad may have the upper hand right now in Syria’s two-year-old conflict. “Regime forces have clawed back areas of recent rebel advance,” Spyer writes in the Jerusalem Post. “The government side, evidently under Iranian tutelage, has showed an…

The Fed earlier this week blamed sequester for the economy faltering. As Forbes reported then:

Democratic senator Chuck Schumer conceded that Obamacare is "part" of the reason health care costs are increasing:

Jake Tapper on President Obama's choice for secretary of commerce:

Today's big number is non-farm payrolls. And, thus, the unemployment rate for the previous month. The economists surveyed by Reuters called for 145,000 jobs and an unemployment rate at 7.6 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the latest jobs numbers:

Allyson Schwartz, the Democratic suburban Philadelphia congresswoman running for governor, was the director of the Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center, an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, from 1975 to 1988. Her time there coincided with the formative years of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s infamous…

Ex-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that she's praying Hillary Clinton will decide to run for president next election, because the former first lady is supremely qualified.

President Obama took a moment yesterday in Mexico to "editorialize just for a second about gun control," as he said at a joint press conference with his Mexican counterpart.

Eight months is a long time to release the Benghazi photos.

The first independent poll of next months' special Senate election in Massachusetts shows Democrat Ed Markey with a six-point lead over Republican Gabriel Gomez. The Wall Street Journal has the details:

The inspector general of the State Department is reportedly looking into whether the Accountability Review Board of the Benghazi terror attack intereviewed everyone they should have. Fox News's James Rosen has the scoop.

The White House today hinted that it supports 15 year olds being able to get Plan B over the counter. Here's spokesman Jay Carney, speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Mexico:

The governor of the state of Maryland, Martin O'Malley, has signed legislation to repeal the death penalty.

Gary Schmitt, writing on the American Enterprise Institute's website:

Today, 150 years ago, Stonewall Jackson executed his flank march and attack – and was mortally wounded – at Chancellorsville, as Geoffrey Norman recalls:

Warren Buffett has joined Twitter:

After the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) student government failed to silence the campus pro-life group, a newly formed pro-choice organization intends to target those students with harassment charges—while taking off their shirts in protest.

The Hill's Elise Viebeck writes:

First time claims were "unexpectedly" low, as Alex Kowalski & Shobhana Chandra of Bloomberg report, dropping to “the lowest level in more than five years.”

Last night in Washington, Joe Biden stated that abused women fear getting "raped again by the system." He also made the push that Washington, D.C. should be its own state, with two U.S. senators.

Vice President Joe Biden made the case last night at a Washington, D.C. hotel that abused women fear getting "raped again by the system." Biden made the comments in remarks to a fundraiser for the Volunteer Lawyers Project, which is co-chaired by his daughter.

Karen Handel, the former secretary of state of Georgia and a potential Republican Senate candidate, sent this email to her supporters:

Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina occupies a strange place on the spectrum of American politics. An 18-year House veteran from the conservative coast, Jones is a pro-life former Democrat, raised Baptist but a Catholic convert. The 70-year-old Republican’s biggest claim to fame may have come in…

The FBI releases this photo of suspects in the Benghazi terror attack:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in response to a question about the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terror attack that it "happened a long time ago."

As the White House first announced in March, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico and Costa Rica later this week. The trip is billed as "an important opportunity to reinforce the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties that so many Americans share with Mexico and Central America." And at…

The April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, which finds that only 35 percent of American have a favorable opinion of Obamacare, has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention. But this top-line finding misses a more compelling point:  Even Kaiser, the most reliably pro-Obamacare of all of the…

The Boston police announces that "Three additional suspects taken into custody in Marathon bombing case."

Norman Podhoretz reflects on the 50th anniversary of his essay "My Negro Problem-and Ours":

The first of this week's three big employment numbers was released this morning. Tomorrow, we will learn the first-time claims number. Friday, the unemployment number and rate for the previous month.  As this item from Reuters indicates, the signs are not good:

First Lady Michelle Obama will do a book signing event at a local Washington, D.C. bookstore, the White House announced today. The event, aside from a brief photo-op, will be closed to the press.

From The Call, 29 April 1920: The will and the sacrifices of the Russian Proletariat have vanquished the ferocious reaction. And the sun of May 1920 bursts upon a Europe with the Revolution pursuing its victorious march, and precipitating the bankruptcy of the bourgeois States. Above the ruins,…

Ed Markey, the 19-term Democratic representative and dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, will face political newcomer Gabriel Gomez, a Republican, in next month's special election for the U.S. Senate.