June 2013

Yesterday, millions of Americans received an important email (subject line: "This is important") from no less a personage than the vice president of the United States. Here it is:

President Obama is with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the HIV Foundation Center in South Africa, where a 15-year-old "rapper" performed "Hell on Earth" for him this afternoon. Via the pool report:

The Chicago Tribune editorializes:

In the New York Times on Friday, Adam Liptak writes that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has concluded another term in which, on the whole, conservative interests have won the day. Liptak and his sources attribute this chiefly to Roberts’s role as a “canny strategist with a tough…

President Obama used his Saturday morning radio address to rally support for the energy/climate change initiative he announced earlier in the week.  This is the plan whereby we can have it all.  No more coal, more expensive electricity, better weather, and a more robust economy.  One wonders why it…

Imagine a parallel universe in which the media coverage of legislators' recent efforts to pass gun control omitted any reference to last year's slaughter of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Earlier this week, Texas senator Ted Cruz pledged to block State Department nominees until the federal agency filled the vacant inspector general position. Almost two days later, the State Department nominated Steve Linick for the position, which has been vacant for nearly 2,000 days.

The Washington Times reports that the cost of Obama's Africa trip, estimated as high as $100 million, is overshadowing President Obama's agenda. If past VIP trips are any indication, lodging and local transportation would represent only a fraction of the $100 million, yet those costs would likely…

At a press conference today in Pretoria, South Africa, President Obama lectured about job creation -- and how to look out for your own national interests:

Investors worry more about China’s slowdown than about Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke’s “taper,” according to a recent informal poll. Goldman Sachs expects the Chinese economy to grow by 7.4 percent this year. That’s way down from 10.4 percent in 2010, 9.3 percent in 2011 and 7.8…

Philip Klein reports that the NFL will not help the Obama administration promote Obamacare:

An email "From the Stop Chris Christie Team," which is "Paid For By Barbara Buono for Governor," Christie's Democratic opponent, sounds a bit panicked.

At the Radisson Blu in Dakar, Senegal, President Obama tried to get reporters to write about issues he believes are important. "[M]illet and maize and fertilizer doesn’t always make for sexy copy, but I very much hope that all the press who were in attendance today generate a story about this,"…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the week that was in Washington.

The two top Republican senators, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, have written letters to six professional sports organizations, warning them not to work with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to promote Obamacare. The letters were addressed to the top…

Philip Klein, writing for the Washington Examiner:

You are governor of a mid-Western state with substantial union membership and voters who are generally disgruntled and feeling no love for your Republican party.  You are down in the polls and friendless in the media.  What to do?

Obama administration officials may be upset that China intervened to help NSA leaker Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong but they shouldn't be surprised.   Beijing has intervened before to get its way on matters that were meant to be the purview of Hong Kong's independent judicial system and to stymie…

According to a recent Gallup poll, 42 percent of Americans believe that the Affordable Care Act will make their family's financial situation worse.  Almost half of those surveyed believe that it will make the nation's overall health care situation worse.

The immigration bill passed by the Senate Thursday afternoon would give some employers a financial incentive to employ "registered provisional immigrants" (illegal immigrants granted legal status) instead of U.S. citizens.

President Obama stopped by the press cabin on Air Force One, as the presidential plane made its way to South Africa. While there, the press had a chance to ask the president about major issues concerning Americans: the scandals, the controversial Supreme Court decisions, immigration, and many…

President Obama went to the press cabin on Air Force One to say he doesn't need a "photo-op" with the ailing Nelson Mandela, who's currently in a Johannesburg hospital. President Obama himself will land in South Africa shortly and says he doesn't want to be "obtrusive" to the Mandela family. 

In a mid-year report to Congress, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson weighed in on the controversy surrounding the IRS's review of exempt organization (EO) applications. The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) "is an independent organization within the IRS and helps taxpayers resolve problems…

As a “millennial” (i.e. one born between 1980 and 2000), I’ve grown used to reading descriptions of myself – written, always, by those much older than I – that I don’t recognize. It’s a bit like hearing my voice on tape – can that really be me? So take, for example, the trendy idea that people my…

The Supreme Court's rulings are worse than they sound.

An unexpected thing happened at tonight's state dinner in Senegal: President Sall reunited President Obama with a character who appears in his book, Dreams from My Father. Via the pool report:

Senator Jeff Sessions, the chief opponent of the immigration bill, released this statement in response to the Senate passing the law by a vote of 68-32:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on today's cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on immigration reform, and its uncertain future in the House of Representatives.

During a floor speech Thursday afternoon, New York senator Chuck Schumer castigated his colleagues who plan to vote against the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill.

Whatever one’s views on gay marriage, it is appropriate — in a sense — that this issue, which was illegitimately thrust onto the scene by willful judges at the state level, has now been illegitimately advanced by willful judges at the federal level.  Accordingly, gay marriage has been propelled…

Douglas MacKinnon, writing for the Washington Examiner:

North Dakota senator John Hoeven, one of the co-writers of the supposedly tougher border enforcement amendment to the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill, appeared Wednesday night on radio host Hugh Hewitt's nationally syndicated show. Once Hewitt began questioning Hoeven on the details of the…

Imagine for a moment that a Republican state senator in a liberal Northeastern state filibustered gay marriage legislation or some gun control measure like background checks. If he went on CNN the following day, do you think he would be grilled about his position? Without a doubt.

As President Obama and his family continue their tour of Africa, the White House put out a Fact Sheet entitled "U.S. Support for Strengthening Democratic Institutions, Rule of Law, and Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa." One of the first items highlighted by the White House is a $53 million…

“The best place to be in public life is voting ‘no’ on something that passes,” said Peter Roskam, the Illinois Republican and chief deputy whip in the House of Representatives. “Right? Because you go to everybody, the people who were opposed to it, you say, ‘Well, I was opposed to it.’ The people…

Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott says the IRS should continue to use "BOLO lists," the Be On the Look Out lists that had agency officials targeting conservatives:

The IRS commissioner said today at a Capitol Hill hearing that the IRS's internal review doesn't contradict the inspector general's report that says progressives weren't targeted by the federal agency:

In Dakar, Senegal, speaking at the Martin Luther King Middle School, First Lady Michelle Obama likened her upbringing to the upbringing of the Senegalese children at the school. Obama told the children of her "experience," and how it was similar to theirs.

The government's new commitment to reducing what President Obama calls "carbon pollution" will, it seems, make us all more prosperous through the miracle of regulation.  As Roger Meiners explains on “The Percolator,” the Department of Energy claims that a new regulation covering microwaves will…

President Obama, speaking about Edward Snowden in Africa, said he hasn't called the Chinese and Russians about the man wanted by the U.S. government:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie thinks the Supreme Court made the wrong decision, Maggie Haberman of Politico reports:

Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department's inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups.

Citizens flooding Senate with calls urging opposition to immigration bill.

The Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage effectively leave the issue very much alive in state and national politics. The four justices appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama clearly would declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in a heartbeat, if they were to get a fifth…

The State Department yielded to pressure from a coalition of Seattle and Washington state politicians, community groups, and advocacy organizations and agreed to withdraw at least one ad in the department's Metro bus ad campaign in Seattle promoting the “Rewards for Justice” campaign. The program…

Mollie Hemingway writes: 

In connection with the observance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, the Administration for Native Americans division of Health and Human Services is hosting an online seminar ("webinar") on Thursday. The focus of the seminar is concept of the "Two Spirit" individual in…

President Bill Clinton released a statement, together with his wife Hillary Clinton, hailing the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, a bill he signed into law in 1996.

Much will be written about Chief Justice Roberts's opinion for the court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, holding that supporters of California's Proposition 8 lacked constitutional "standing" to defend in federal court California's ballot initiative against same-sex marriage. (Whether or not same-sex…

A new National Journal poll on late-term abortion is somewhat biased against the pro-life side: The poll's question claims the bill passed last week in the House of Representatives only contains exceptions in the cases of rape or incest without mentioning that there is also an exception for when a…

President Obama called the plaintiffs of the Prop. 8 Supreme Court case while they were being interviewed on MSNBC:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

A key line from the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act. "DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty."

Sean Trende asks, in a thoughtful and data-heavy piece, whether the GOP has to pass immigration reform to be competitive in the future at the presidential level. The answer is no.

One day after the president declared war on coal and committed his administration to making electricity – and, thus, just about everything else – more expensive, the 1st quarter GDP growth figures were revised down from a tepid 2.4 percent to an anemic 1.8 percent.

The latest depressing news on the descent of a formerly free people into a state of sheepdom comes with a Gallup survey on the matter of regulating the permissible portions of soft drinks.  Seems three out of ten Americans are okay with a law (presumably federal) that would limit the allowable…

Ted Cruz argued on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon against the immigration bill's Obamacare amensty tax:

Democratic congressman Ed Markey won Tuesday's special election for the Senate in Massachusetts, defeating Republican candidate Gabriel Gomez. The Associated Press reports:

Ross Douthat on the great disconnect in Washington.

Obamacare poses a tricky problem for supporters of the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. It would be too politically toxic to give illegal immigrants amnesty and taxpayer subsidies under Obamacare, so the Senate bill prohibits "registered provisional immigrants" (individuals who are…

Obamacare poses a very tricky problem for supporters of the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. It would be too politically toxic to give illegal immigrants amnesty and taxpayer subsidies under Obamacare, so the Senate bill prohibits "registered provisional immigrants" (individuals who…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on immigration reform's future, Edward Snowden

In terms of the “optics,” it doesn’t look good when you initiate a lawsuit against “Baby Girl.” But don’t let that fool you into thinking that the Capobianco family of South Carolina, who launched the lawsuit “Adoptive Couple versus Baby Girl,” and who won today at the Supreme Court, were in the…

President Obama, at his climate change speech today, said, "We don't have time for a meeting of the flat earth society."

President Obama's climate speech, being held today outside at Georgetown University, appeared to be drowned out for a few moments by an airplane headed for Reagan National Airport: 

In President Obama's climate change speech set for later today, he'll reportedly say that the Keystone pipeline shouldn't be built if it hurts the environment.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website Healthfinder.gov even has a selection of over 100 eCards that can be sent to friends and family to encourage them to lose weight, quit smoking, get screened for various diseases, and even stop bullying.

Alana Goodman reports, for the Washington Free Beacon:

In a statement, President Obama called today's Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act a "setback."

There are senators, it seems, who tweet. And it probably isn't a bad discipline for those accustomed to writing legislation that runs to the thousands of unread and incomprehensible pages to have to restrain themselves to a mere 140 characters. But, of course, several senators release 140…

Just hours before President Obama is set to deliver his major speech on global warming, the Washington Post publishes a news story explaining that "to a large extent" the president is in fact waging "a war on coal":

It is not enough for the Taliban that the U.S. is getting out of Afghanistan and abandoning vast amounts of equipment as it goes.  The departure must be made deadly and humiliating.  So as Rahim Faiez of AP reports:

The Washington Times reports:

While Daniel P. Schrag, White House climate adviser, tells the New York Times that "a war on coal is exactly what's needed," so far the Obama administration has been a boon for U.S. coal exports.  Last week, the Department of Energy reported that coal exports have more than doubled during President…

College football fans may soon have another thing to lord over the NFL.  The Hill writes, “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday she is in talks with the NFL to help promote new insurance options under ObamaCare.”  The report continues, “Sebelius said the football league…

Daniel P. Schrag, a White House climate adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, tells the New York Times "a war on coal is exactly what's needed." Later today, President Obama will give a major "climate change" address at Georgetown University. 

In what's being called the first "test vote" on the Gang of Eight's comprehensive immigration bill, the Senate Monday evening passed a motion to invoke cloture on the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the bill, 67 to 27. All 52 voting Democratic senators were joined by 15 Republicans, including Gang of…

Why Snowden's motives matter.

Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, asked on the Senate floor why the body should vote to give majority leader and Nevada Democrat Harry Reid "procedural control" over the debate over the Gang of Eight's immigration bill. Sessions, speaking Monday afternoon against a motion to close…

In a letter sent to the Russian ambassador the U.S., Senator Lindsey Graham asks that Edward Snowden be turned over to American authorities. 

A new Gallup poll of small-business owners indicates that Obamacare is having a dramatic and deleterious effect on Americans’ employment prospects.  More than 40 percent of small-business owners say that Obamacare has caused them to freeze hiring, while nearly a fifth say that it has caused them to…

A new poll by Rasmussen finds that only 28 percent believe the federal government will secure the border if the immigration bill passes.

Speaking about Hong Kong's decision to let NSA leaker Edward Snowden leave, without handing him over to American authorities, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that "we find their decision particularly troubling." Carney added that their decision "unquestionably has a negative impact" on…

In the final poll from Suffolk University before Tuesday's special election, Democratic congressman Ed Markey leads Republican Gabriel Gomez in the race for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts by 10 points. In the survey of 500 likely voters at the end of last week, 52 percent support Markey while 42…

The East Wing of the White House announced today that Maria Cristina “MC” González Noguera, an Estée Lauder executive, is joining Michelle Obama's staff.

The Associated Press reports:

Senator Bernard Sanders (“Bernie” to his friends) describes his party status as "independent."  He caucuses with the Democrats and is reliably to the left on any matter of importance.  As, for instance, immigration.  So he is a "yes" on the great big bill that will fix everything and that nobody…

Charles Moore, writing in the Telegraph:

The Scrapbook’s hypothesis that the substance of blockbuster news stories tends to diminish with time​—​there’s less here than meets the eye​—​is borne out most of the time. Which, as nonscientific theories tend to go, is an enviable record. 

The beleaguered Eisenhower Memorial Commission holds its next public gathering later this month, and before its members duck-walk into the hearing room, huddled in a hoplite phalanx against a shower of eggs and rotten vegetables unloosed by an audience of neo-classicist fuddy-duddies, they should…

Williston, N.D.

'Time was when the whole of life went forward in the family,” the historian Peter Laslett once wrote, “in a circle of loved, familiar faces. .  .  . That time has gone forever. It makes us very different from our ancestors.” Laslett was writing in 1965, as he lamented the decline of the family over…

Politics can seem frustratingly complex. It can be a challenge to grasp that the targeting of conservatives by Internal Revenue Service officials over the last few years constitutes a genuine scandal, while the lawful activities of employees of the National Security Agency do not. It can be a…

Perhaps the most terrible thing about fascism was its enormous popularity. The German and Italian people—the same who had given the Western world many of its most notable cultural achievements—not only endured fascist tyranny; most of them were active and enthusiastic participants.

One might expect Keith Alexander to advocate on behalf of the two programs at the center of our national debate about terrorism and surveillance. He is, after all, the head of the National Security Agency, which runs them. “It’s dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent—both here…

With so many scandals swirling around the Obama administration, it is hard to identify which is the most politically damaging for the president. But there’s no doubt which one should trouble constitutionalists the most. The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups raises core…

For all of the just wars that have been fought over the cultural canon, one genuine benefit of the (still somewhat undulating) critical consensus is that it’s a pretty genuine aid for determining what you really needn’t bother reading right away. Or, as a professor once said while wielding Samuel…

Paul Ryan has been pro-immigration since he worked for Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett two decades ago at Empower America, a now-defunct conservative think tank. When National Review ran a cover story, “Why Kemp and Bennett Are Wrong on Immigration” in 1994, Ryan wrote a 4,000-word rebuttal. It defended…

Out in my corner of exurbia, businesses post a lot of signs. Not billboards or paid advertising, but little self-made placards that stick in the ground like the campaign paraphernalia you see before elections. They jut up lamely out of the grassy beds that run along the sidewalks next to strip…

For years, perhaps even decades, waiters and waitresses have been stopping by tables to ask, “Is everything all right over here?” or its variant, “How are you guys doing?” 

Should Americans fear the possible abuse of the intercept power of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland? Absolutely. In the midst of the unfolding scandal at the IRS, we understand that bureaucracies are callous creatures, capable of manipulation. In addition to deliberate misuse,…

In university classrooms, and across campuses nationwide, we hear it repeatedly: Ever--increasing calls for “social justice.” But not everyone is on board:

I was watching the Chicago Blackhawks play the Los Angeles Kings in the western Stanley Cup final round when, in the second period, the television camera panned to Tom Cruise, sitting alone in a rink-side seat. “Tom Cruise is a big Kings fan,” the announcer said. 

When newspaper editors get together for their next good head-scratching session​—​Why do they hate us? Why don’t they take us seriously? Why are they abandoning us in droves?​—​someone should hand out copies of Ruth Marcus’s column “The girls are back” from the June 12 issue of the Washington Post. 

It’s going to be a long summer in Washington. With so many scandals, news organizations that have spent years sweeping startling allegations about the Obama administration under the rug now find themselves overwhelmed. Woe betide the average citizen who just wants to know what the heck his…

Last week, the online publication Salon took a break from its usual sophisticated political analysis (“Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American,” the magazine brayed on April 16) to raise a pressing civil rights issue: “Are straight actors in gay roles the new blackface?”

Two weeks of protests across Turkey that have left four dead and more than 5,000 injured have observers wondering whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing an Anatolian Spring. Is Turkey’s Islamic ruler weathering a crisis similar to the revolutionary climate that sent Arab protesters…

Ricardo Patiño Aroca, Ecuador's minister of foreign affairs for trade and integration, announces on Twitter that they've received a request for asylum from Edward Snowden: Tweet Tweet The foreign minister met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame last week at the Ecuador embassy in London last week:

The boss this morning talked about the immigration bill on Fox News Sunday's "Panel Plus":

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky defended NSA leaker Edward Snowden this morning on CNN:

President Barack Obama will give a speech on "climate change" this Tuesday, the president announces in a YouTube video:

President Barack Obama uses his weekly address to tout the immigration bill that's currently being debated in the Senate. "It’s a bill that would continue to strengthen security at our borders, and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers, so they won’t have an…

Veterans of a failed campaign will gather Sunday in Burlington, Vermont.  Ten years ago, Howard Dean offered himself to the nation. He would run for President and take his stand with “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” His supporters loved him for that. They craved the real thing.  After…

Reports surfaced earlier this week that the webpage of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) appears to have been purchased and hosted by City of New York.

The bad news is that there is good news. At least, that’s how many skittish investors in shares and bonds see the increasingly cheery view of the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus who concluded last week that downside risk to the economy has diminished since the Fall, and guessed that…

This evening, the White House announced a new nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Belgium:

In a Friday evening press release, the White House details what First Lady Michelle Obama will be doing when she, the president of the United States, and their daughters travel to Africa next week. A recent article in the Washington Post reported that the trip could cost up to $100 million. 

In a letter just sent Speaker of the House John Boehner, President Obama notifies Congress that U.S. forces were "recently deployed to Jordan." 

An Air Force vet with experience in the nuclear program writes in:

The Los Angeles Times reports: 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday published the results of a study on the effects of nutrition labeling on fast-food menus from 2005 to 2011.  Researchers were interested in the impact of locally instituted regulations by various states and municipalities, including New York…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the future of comprehensive immigration reform, and President Obama's European trip.

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon: 

The New York Times is announcing that it has discontinued The Choice blog, which was created four years ago to help students demystify college admissions and financial aid. Although we will no longer update the blog’s monthly college checklists, virtual guidance office sessions, and student posts,…

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell will say today that the IRS is "thumbing its nose at the American people." He'll make those remarks this morning at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Shortly after opening its political office in Doha, Qatar earlier this week, the Taliban floated the idea of exchanging U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been in captivity since 2009, for the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. The offer, which has been a longstanding…

The June Kaiser Health Tracking Poll indicates that Obamacare is now less popular than it has been at any time since October 2011 — about three months before Mitt Romney won his first Republican primary.  (Romney, of course, chose not to emphasize Obamacare during the presidential campaign.) …

The boss last night on Fox News:

President Obama came into office on a promise to end divisiveness and suspicion and other things that blind us to our common humanity.  It was a nice idea which he has since discarded in favor of stigmatizing and demonizing his political enemies and, when that doesn't work, using the powers of the…

It begins.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi ripped Republicans for not spending enough money on food stamps. "They're taking food out of the mouths of babies," Pelosi said of her Republican colleagues following the defeat of the farm bill in a floor vote. "Two…

It is said that when jazz legend Charlie "Bird" Parker died, the coroner guessed he was in his 50s. Parker was, in fact, 34 years old. Likewise, many of us might have been surprised to learn that actor James Gandolfini, who died suddenly on Wednesday night, was a mere 51. This means that when The…

While half the country is obsessed with the cases that the Supreme Court is about to decide—not to mention the cases that the Court may or may not take up next—Justice Alito left the Beltway this week for greener pastures. Specifically, he headed south to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, and…

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put out a press release today promoting the savings to consumers from Obamacare in 2012.  The department claims that the average consumer receiving a refund will get about $100 as a result of rules on how insurers must spend premium dollars. The…

The Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations is soliciting bids for "Data Mining and Targeting Software" to help in its efforts to combat illegal trafficking in cigarettes and other tobacco products.  The announcement appeared Monday on the federal government's fbo.gov…

A new poll from Republican pollster John McLaughlin shows Gabriel Gomez within three points in Tuesday's special election for Senate. Gomez, a Republican, has 44 percent support, according to the poll, while Democrat Ed Markey has 47 percent. Here's more from Politico:

In the wake of his scintillating 2-for-22 shooting exhibition on the White House basketball court — complete with an air ball, a steady barrage of bricks, and a layup that didn’t so much as draw iron — President Obama is now reportedly trying to enlist the National Basketball Association to help…

Budget may be strained and deficits may be insupportable but there is money, $70 million worth, for IRS bonuses.

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll indicates that independents like the sound of “Obamacare” even less than they like the sound of the “health reform law.”  By a margin of 11 percentage points (43 to 32 percent), independents have an “unfavorable,” rather than a “favorable,” view of the “health…

On Monday, June 10, former British prime minister Tony Blair released a thoughtful memorandum that was quickly reproduced on websites around the world. Titled “The Trouble Within Islam,” Blair’s reflections were stimulated by the resurgence of Islamist terror in Britain, where a serviceman, Lee…

Robert Zarate writes, for the Foreign Policy Initiative:

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican candidate in the June 25 special election for Senate in Massachusetts, has a new television ad featuring quotations from his recent debate with Democrat Ed Markey.

The Internet had a conniption last week when Jeb Bush spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference and made the following remark:

Live video of a joint Concerned Veterans for America/THE WEEKLY STANDARD event:

Jeffrey Anderson: Swedencare isn't a fair comparison to Obamacare.

An event tomorrow, which will be leave streamed here, and on this website:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with reporter Michael Warren on his recent cover story, Frack to the Future.

President Obama told a German audience today that the U.S. lags behind other countries because Americans don't speak enough foreign languages. It’s not the first time he’s expressed the sentiment: back in 2008, Obama said, “It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English,…

At an event in Germany, President Obama said American youth lag behind their European counterparts because they are not taught "a second and third language." Via the pool report:

In Germany, President Barack Obama expressed gratitude on behalf of the American people "for some very important German immigrants, Anheuser-Busch."

The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it was moving forward with its attempt to negotiate with the Taliban, which has opened a long-awaited political office in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban released a statement trumpeting its new political front. Within hours, Afghan president Hamid Karzai…

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the men accused of bombing the Boston Marathon in April, isn't winning any fans among the victims of her sons' crimes. The Boston Herald reports that one of those victims, who was hospitalized for weeks after the bombings, says Tsarnaeva's pro-jihad comments are…

With another of those airline mergers in the works, there is a possibility that flights from Washington's Reagan National Airport to some smaller cities out in the interior may be cancelled to the inconvenience of members of Congress who need to get home regularly and hang with their constituents.…

Today, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, President Obama paid appropriate tribute to the brave East Germans who rebelled 60 years ago against Communist dictatorship:

News reports from the final debate between Democrat Ed Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez conclude that Gomez, a first-time candidate and self-styled "new kind of Republican," delivered a strong performance. With just days left in the campaign before the June 25 special election for Senate, Gomez…

Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado is a prominent gun control advocate (who apparently is quite confused about how guns work), as well as the co-chair of the "Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus." At a press conference on Tuesday, Elizabeth Harrington of CNS News asked DeGette why the logic of gun control…

President Obama warned about climate change in his Berlin speech today:

President Barack Obama, speaking today in Berlin, cited German philosopher Immanuel Kant:

Obama thanked Berlin for the warm welcome and said it was so warm, indeed, that he was going to take off his jacket:

The White House pool report reveals that only 6,000 will be in attendance for Obama's Berlin speech today:

Kathleen Parker writes:

The state of California and Shenzhen, China have signed an agreement to cooperate together in fighting climate change.

James Rosen of Fox News reported last night that State Department officials might have committed perjury:

Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania was one of only six Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted Tuesday night against a bill restricting post-viability abortions (six Democrats voted for the bill). Dent was also the only Republican to publicly criticize House leadership for bringing the…

The House of Representatives voted 228 to 196 on Tuesday evening to pass a bill that prohibits most abortions later than 22 weeks in pregnancy (20 weeks after conception), the point by which some infants can survive long-term if born and the point by which medical science indicates they can feel…

Neoconservatism: The idea that won't quit.

At least for now (although a statewide referendum may be pending), Arizona governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has succeeded in her efforts to implement a key part of Obamacare in her state.  Brewer has very aggressively — and entirely voluntarily — spearheaded the charge to implement Obamacare’s…

Al Gore believes, as Johan Carlstrom at Bloomberg writes, that it is time for some reforming of capitalism.  Mr. Gore has done all right under the old regime having recently:

On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden moderated a conference call with two unnamed senior administration officials to provide background for reporters on today's transition in Afghanistan handing over the lead on security in the country to the Afghan National Security…

Brian Hughes, of the newly re-launched Washington Examiner, reports:

The Chinese organ Xinhua reports that Ecuador might offer asylum to Edward Snowden. 

There is a lot in the farm bill not to like, which makes it like every farm bill of the last half century. There are also, as Erik Wasson of the Hill reports, the usual absurdities, which opponents will try to carve out of the bill and, no doubt, fail in the attempt.  The larger the outrage, the…

Senator Claire McCaskill has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and this is all the buzz (that is the right word, isn't it?) at Morning Joe and other places where the insiders gather and do careful, elaborate dissections of the day's essential news.  

The House of Representatives is scheduled Tuesday to consider a bipartisan bill to add new seasonal flu vaccines to the IRS definition of taxable vaccines.  The Senate has already reached an agreement to vote on its version of the bill without further debate if the House passes an identical…

A corrected transcript just sent out by the White House of deputy national security adviser's Ben Rhodes comments to reporters yesterday includes this:

The authors of the Senate immigration bill are now openly admitting that citizenship for illegal immigrants — already a bridge too far — is no longer even being linked to strengthening the border.  As Byron York writes in the Washington Examiner, Sen. Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.), a member of the Gang…

CNN reports:

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Senator Dan Coats accuses his congressional colleagues of "grandstanding" about the NSA:

Charlie Rose last night asked President Obama his new Syria policy. The president first objected to it being called a new policy. "I'm not sure you can characterize this as a new policy. This is consistent with the policy that I've had throughout," he said.

IRS official: "Tea Party" could mean "liberal," you know.

Last week, Jay Carney ducked a question on President Obama's position on a bill banning elective abortions during the final four months of pregnancy. The White House issued a statement Monday saying that the president would veto the bill: 

The White House just announced another $300 million for Syria. "Today, during his meeting with G-8 leaders in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, President Obama announced over $300 million in additional life-saving humanitarian assistance to help feed, shelter, and provide medical care for children,…

Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, told viewers on Fox News Monday morning that Americans should avoid a "rush to judgment" on the leaking of classified information by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency systems analyst. The Washington Examiner has the video:

With 9 days left before the June 25 special election for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Democrat Ed Markey maintains a significant lead. The latest poll from the Boston Globe shows Markey, a longtime House member, ahead of Republican Gabriel Gomez by 15 points. Here's more from the Globe's…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on President Obama's falling polling numbers.

Can American workers “cut it” in today’s labor market? Not according to an anonymous aide for Marco Rubio, who was recently quoted by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker making the case for the Senate’s immigration reform bill.

As if there isn't already enough on the agenda for the G-8 Summit, now Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is threatening Europe by hinting at a terror campaign on the continent. If the Europeans arm the Syrian rebels, Assad told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "then Europe's backyard…

Speaking at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, at a performance by of "Riverdance" by Irish youth, First Lady Michelle Obama thanked the crowd and said, "It is good to be home."

Edward Snowden says "lies" from the Gang of 8 are part of the reason he felt "compelled ... to act." He made the statement in response to a question about his motivations in releasing classified information on the Guardian's website.

In a blow to the chances of the Senate's immigration bill being signed into law, House Speaker John Boehner has decided he won't bring a bill up for a vote in the House without the support of the majority of his conference. David Drucker has the scoop at the Washington Examiner:

Al Gore is out there somewhere – he travels a lot, don't you know, and not in coach – making his usual measured arguments on matters of the day.  On the NSA affair, Mr. Gore finds the thing not merely outrageous but "obscenely outrageous."  Obscenity is hard to define these days, but Gore knows it…

What was the lesson of the Kermit Gosnell trial? Since the Philadelphia doctor was convicted last month of murdering three born-alive infants, two competing viewpoints have emerged.

From the middle of 2009 onward, those opposed to President Obama’s attempted overhaul of American medicine have enjoyed a distinct, if underappreciated, rhetorical advantage.  Taking a page out of the playbook that led to the defeat of Hillarycare in 1994, advocates of limited government and…

The red hot quote to start the week comes from Mike Allen's Politico Playbook where he excerpts a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza that contains this gem.

A new CNN poll finds that 66 percent of American adults believe that it's "right" for the Obama administration to analyze and collect Internet data. Only 33 percent believe the action is "wrong," and 1 percent have "No opinion."

Speaking this morning in Belfast, President Obama took the opportunity to mix in a little golf talk as he addressed Northern Irish youth.

It’s not clear why much of the Western media continues to describe Iran’s newly elected president as a “moderate.” After all, Hassan Rouhani is a regime pillar: As an early follower of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rouhani joined him in exile in Paris, and over…

My wife says the only thing I’ll plant is what I can eat. Not entirely true, I tell her. I point to certain things I’ve planted: the cluster of yellow iris in the side yard, the bunch of white iris in the backyard, and the large spread of irises of many colors in the front yard, under the crape…

Fremont, Nebr.

In Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, the captive English maid, Blonde, scornfully rejects the advances of the powerful Osmin, overseer of Pasha Selim’s harem: “Pasha here, pasha there! Girls are not good to give away! I am an Englishwoman, born free, and I defy anyone who wants to force me to…

London

“There was a definite puppet-like quality about [Vaslav] Nijinsky’s Petrouchka. He seemed to have limbs of wood and a face made of plaster, in which his eyes resembled nothing so much as two boot buttons. Only now and then did he make you aware that beneath this façade there was a tiny spark of…

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, gave by far the most thoughtful and combative commencement address this year, at Brandeis. He defended the humanities as our genuine counterculture. His defense of the humanities was intellectual​—​a defense of philosophers, theologians, poets,…

Connecticut last week became the first state to pass a law which requires all genetically modified food to carry a warning label; according to Connecticut senate president Donald E. Williams, “There is mounting scientific evidence showing that genetically modified foods are harmful to our health.”  

On immigration reform, Senator Marco Rubio is the indispensable man. If he bails, it fails.

Last month, in City of Arlington, Texas v. Federal Communications Commission, the Supreme Court’s five judicial conservatives divided on a question concerning the relationship between federal courts and federal regulators. Justice Scalia wrote the decision for a majority that included Justice…

After a three-week siege, the combined forces of Hezbollah and the Assad regime have taken the important crossroads town of Qusayr, which is just south of the even more important city of Homs in east-central Syria. “Whoever controls Qusayr controls the center of the country, and whoever controls…

An email from the National Cannabis Industry Association (yes, even the potheads have lobbyists now) landed in The Scrapbook’s inbox last week. The PR blast announced: “30+ Cannabis Industry Leaders Head to D.C. to Deliver a Message to Congress: ‘Tax Us—Fairly.’ ” (“Legalize it, don’t criticize…

Mention Ronald Reagan to an avowed environmentalist, and you’ll generally elicit a groan. In the conventional telling, the Gipper appointed right-wing extremists to key environmental positions and proceeded to give timber companies and energy interests a free hand to despoil nature. Had Congress…

Former senator and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole had some harsh words for his political party recently. In a Fox News Sunday interview, Chris Wallace asked, “You describe the GOP of your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans. Could people like Bob Dole, even Ronald…

London

'With budgetary tantrums in the Senate and investigative play-acting in the House, the Republican Party is proving once again that it simply cannot be taken seriously. This is a shame. I don’t share the GOP’s philosophy, but I do believe that . . . ” (“Can the GOP grow up?” Eugene Robinson,…

One of The Scrapbook’s favorite journals is the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s quarterly, The New Atlantis. TNA, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, is concerned with unpacking matters of technology and science, and grappling with how such advances relate to human nature. If you’re a…

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Operation Ajax—the notorious CIA plot that is supposed to have ousted Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq. In the intervening decades, the events of 1953 have been routinely depicted as a nefarious U.S. conspiracy that overthrew a nationalist…

For the record, and strictly speaking, The Scrapbook is opposed to heckling. It’s rude, ill-mannered—and reflects poorly on the heckler, not the object of derision. This attitude may come as a surprise to, say, our friends in Great Britain, where Parliament resembles a bear pit at times, and every…

On August 1, the one-year “safe harbor” for religious charities objecting to provisions of Obamacare will end. Starting then, these nonprofit employers will be forced to violate their religious beliefs or pay large fines. In charge of collecting the fines will be our recently newsworthy friends at…

Nonfiction is a baggy-pants term, in whose bulging pockets one finds autobiography, memoir, the essay, literary journalism, and book-length studies of ideas, trends, and much else. The only thing these various forms have in common is that all are written in prose and are based, supposedly, on fact.

In the best-known court case in the Hebrew Bible, two women come to King Solomon, the wise, wealthy, and powerful king with the following quandary: One of their children died in his sleep, while the other remains alive. There are no witnesses, and each mother claims that the living child is hers.…

The Germans are famous for melding nouns and adjectives together to form extremely long words. No hyphens, no spaces, just an assemblage of letters and umlauts as menacing as a mechanized division. For instance, the German word for -xenophobia is Ausländerfeindlichkeit. In Austria prior to its EU…

In a Sunday evening statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Public Affairs Office released this statement, meant to clear up information on the National Security Agency’s data program.

Members of the U.S. Senate were given the opportunity to attend a briefing on Thursday that would bring them up to speed on the NSA surveillance operations, among other things.  The briefing would be conducted by James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, not some low-level staffer.

In a statement, press secretary Jay Carney says the U.S. respects the Iranian election and congratulates the Iranian people.

The Associated Press reports that the "moderate candidate wins" the Iranian presidential election. The so-called moderate is Hasan Rowhani.

Friday evening, the State Department released a joint statement from the June 10-11 "U.S.-Germany Cyber Bilateral Meeting." The meeting was held in Washington.

Thursday the White House announced that the American intelligence community assesses, with a level of high confidence, that the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against the opposition multiple times, in a limited fashion. Now that it is clear Assad has crossed the…

Chinese president Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama doffed their ties, rolled up their sleeves (well, at least Obama did), and even took the now-obligatory stroll around the Sunnylands Estate in Rancho Mirage, California, in the manner of Eisenhower and Khrushchev at Camp David, and Reagan…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the NSA's surveillance programs, the IRS scandal, and immigration reform.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Friday afternoon that she will manage the floor debate on a bill that would prohibit most abortions during the final four months of pregnancy. The bill has been revised to include exceptions for when the pregnancy is the…

Congressman Tom Cotton made the case today on the House floor to keep terrorists at Gitmo:

The Washington Post fact checker wrote in an update this afternoon that he has retracted the "Four Pinocchios" rating he gave to Trent Franks's statement that the "incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low." The Post's Glenn Kessler writes (emphasis added): 

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes says the president will get "great bang for the buck" out of his Africa trip later this month:

With an email today from the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the group formerly known as the Obama reelection campaign, Organizing for Action, is reigniting the fight over guns in America.

An article about the Iranian presidential election, published online earlier today, included this quotation from the father of Noushin Sobhani, a 31-year-old Iranian gynecologist: 

Earlier this week, the brother in-law of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The crux of the immigration dilemma was nailed, unsurprisingly, by Milton Friedman and he summed it up in a letter he wrote in 2006, the year of his death.

Matthew Continetti writes:

At the White House press briefing on Thursday, CNN's Jessica Yellin brought up Nancy Pelosi's refusal to explain the difference between the killings carried out by Dr. Kermit Gosnell and late-term abortion. "Does the President and this White House believe that this bill is an important bill?"…

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum spoke Thursday at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington about the failure of the Republican party and its presidential nominee to speak to the concerns of middle class and working people. Politico's James Hohmann reports:

White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes explained the Obama administration's decision to step up action in Syria. 

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton says it's time for a woman in the Oval Office, music to her mom Hillary Clinton's ears.

George F. Will: The scowling face of the state.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes released the following statement on Syrian use of chemical weapons, resulting in 100-150 deaths: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer John McCormack on House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's puzzling response to his question about abortion at her press conference today.

Maggie Haberman reported last night:

In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributor and former speechwriter for Mark Sanford, reviews a new ebook about the disgraced-governor-turned-congressman from South Carolina:

President Obama and his family will be going to Africa later this month. But the trip won't be cheap; it's expected to cost American taxpayers $60 to $100 million, according to the Washington Post.

The military historian Victor Davis Hanson was in Washington, D.C., to promote his latest book, The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Considering what is transpiring overseas, the timing couldn't be better. (It also makes for great…

At a Thursday press conference, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi condemned a bill that would prohibit abortions during the final four months of pregnancy with an exception for when the life and physical health of the mother is at risk.

The message regarding terrorism from the Obama administration over the past few years has been that al Qaeda is on the run, its core leadership has been "decimated," and that the face of the "war on terror" is changing for the better.  In his recent speech on U.S. counterterrorism…

Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

The president's former reelection campaign is pushing its supporters to "Stand up for Obamacare."

At a Democratic fundraiser last night, Barack Obama praised the progress he's made as president. "Across the board, people are feeling like, all right, America is moving and it’s moving in the right direction," he said.

One price, however, has recently spiked dramatically according to this Bloomberg headline

A new poll on the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate shows Democrat Ed Markey with a 12-point lead over Republican Gabriel Gomez, with 49 percent supporting Markey and 37 percent supporting Gomez.

Remembering "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Gary L. Bauer emails friends and supporters this special message on the passing of Rachel Abrams:

The White House announced the opening of a new government supercomputing center in northern Maryland this week.  Patricia Falcone of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) attended a ceremony to mark the occasion along with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and various army…

NSA chief Keith Alexander says Edward Snowden's claim that he could tap any phone call or email is "false":

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel whether he recommended the president veto a defense spending bill. Hagel answered by saying he hasn't been consulted on the legislation:

During his opening remarks at today's House Budget Committee hearing on the Department of Defense and the 2014 budget, Paul Ryan said, "The first duty of government is to keep us safe. And to keep us safe, our strategy should drive our budget. But under this administration, the budget is driving…

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake reports (emphasis added): 

Gary Schmitt writes:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on immigration reform's long, hot summer ahead.

President Obama is attending three Democratic fundraisers today. One in Boston, Massachusetts, and two more at private homes in Miami, Florida. He'll return to Washington later tonight.

When Edward Snowden decided he wanted to release details about the NSA's intelligence operations to the public, he reached out to Laura Poitras, a 49-year-old film maker and political activist opposed to the war on terror. As the Washington Post noted on Monday, Poitras had "the odd distinction of…

When Edward Snowden decided he wanted to release secret details about the NSA's intelligence operations to the public, he reached out to Laura Poitras, a 49-year-old film maker and political activist opposed to the war on terror. As the Washington Post noted on Monday, Poitras had "the odd…

Watch the 2013 Bradley Symposium live:

At a high-dollar fundraiser last night in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden warned his fellow Democrats about the Republicans.

Kaus to conservatives: Wake up to what's happening with immigration.

For nearly 30 years—at least since Bill Bennett’s tenure as secretary of education and Lamar Alexander’s as governor of Tennessee—education-minded conservatives at both national and state levels have embraced a two-part school reform strategy, focused equally on rigorous standards and parental…

In the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney warns that the NSA's PRISM program puts the United States on the slippery slope to tyranny:

He was supposed to be done, finished, out of football and perhaps headed to Australia to try rugby.  Now, Tim Tebow is, as Mike Garofolo of USA Today reports, "... on his way to Foxborough to join the New England Patriots."

Scott Brown, the Republican senator from Massachusetts who lost reelection last year to Democrat Elizabeth Warren, could be competitive challenging a Democratic senator in the state next door, according to a new poll from the Washington Free Beacon. In a hypothetical match-up between Brown and New…

A local NBC affiliate, WHIZ in Zanesville, Ohio, reports that Obamacare will cause health care premiums to increase 88 percent:

In a statement on the Senate floor this morning, Republican leader Mitch McConnell signaled he'd vote for cloture for the immigration bill. But he also suggested the bill needs to be amended.

President Obama stopped in the middle of remarks on immigration to shame someone whose cell phone went off: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the recent leaks regarding the NSA's intelligence gathering programs.

Last Friday night, upper management of the country's national security establishment gathered for dinner, speeches, and an evening of conviviality at the annual banquet of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. The event followed hard on the heels of the revelations about the NSA's…

Booz Allen confirms the NSA leaker was an employee of the consulting firm who made $122,000 per year. And, the firm says, he is no longer employed by Booz Allen.

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, is suspected of soliciting prostitutes and possibly minors, according to a State Department memo. The details are published in today's New York Post.

The New York Post editorializes: 

On Piers Morgan's CNN show, a gun violence victim asked if it would take a "senator to get shot" for Americans to be supportive of gun control:

Two more touching pieces on our dear friend Rachel Abrams. The first, from Jennifer Rubin:

Two charts on food stamps spending, provided by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee, just as the Senate is voting the food stamps program (which is part of the so-called farm bill):

As Daniel Halper noted earlier today, ex-Energy Secretary Steven Chu raises a lot of eyebrows in his recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, where his defense of the department's loan guarantee program refuses to concede any lessons learned from the Solyndra fiasco.

As the IRS scandal grows, the Department of Health and Human Services today published a blog post titled "Health Datapalooza IV Tops Off a Huge Year in Data Liberation":

A new poll from Suffolk University finds Democratic congressman Ed Markey with a seven-point lead ahead of this month's special election for the U.S. Senate in Massachsuetts. In a survey of 500 likely voters, Markey received 48 percent support, while his Republican opponent, businessman and retired…

Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman writes about his interactions with Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old federal contractor who leaked details of the NSA's PRISM program to The Guardian and the Post:

Obamacare regulations are forcing employers to cut employee hours at Indiana schools, according to the Courier-Journal.

CBS News reports:

The New York City health department reports an all time high for diabetes-related deaths in the City, according to a press release announcing a new report.

One part of the problem may be that far too many people are cleared to handle sensitive material.  So many that the government cannot adequately investigate their backgrounds and their character.  So many that secrets aren't really secret any longer.  

Ex-energy secretary Steven Chu is still praising Solyndra-style loans. He did it most recently in an interview with San Francisco Chronicle.

Bill Gertz reports:

We'’ll take the liberty of updating, for the summer of 2013, the famous lines from Auden’s “September 1, 1939”:

When his House subcommittee held the forum “After Newtown: A National Conversation on Violence and Severe Mental Illness” in March, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) received bipartisan praise for what was to be the first of three hearings on the topic. Murphy, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s…

The Walt Disney World Resort, located outside of Orlando, has more than twice Manhattan’s land area and about the same number of hotel rooms as Philadelphia. It’s America’s largest single-site employer—over 60,000 people work there—and for many of the 17 million or so who visit each year, it is a…

Longtime Weekly Standard contributor Steven Hayward, in an item at the Powerline blog, draws our attention to a report by the Federal Highway Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on “Red Light Camera Operational Systems.” As is typical with government reports, the…

The Scrapbook, despite its reputation in some quarters, has a streak of sentimentality when it comes to certain subjects: Old Yeller, for example, or Lou Gehrig’s farewell address. And of course, cabinet members on the road to redemption.

Veteran D.C. journalist Jonathan Alter is releasing his second book on the Obama administration this week—The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies. The Scrapbook will be as content to ignore this publishing event as we were Alter’s 2010 volume, The Promise: President Obama, Year One. You don’t have…

Stockholm

The great thing about this account of the artists and intellectuals in and around New Orleans’s French Quarter during the 1920s is that it upends nearly every assumption commonly made about the American South—even the true ones. The early-20th-century South may have produced the odd isolated…

The Obama administration is heralding a conference later this month in Geneva where representatives of Bashar al-Assad’s regime will ostensibly sit down with the Syrian rebel forces opposing them. The effect will be to prop up Assad. Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, is committed to the Syrian…

In a speech at the National Defense University on May 23, Barack Obama declared an end to the global war on terror. The threat posed by al Qaeda, its affiliates, and those it inspires can be managed, he said. “As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely…

Here’s a story of movie star vanity. In 1998, word appeared that Al Pacino had optioned the rights to Herman Wouk’s novel Marjorie Morningstar (1955). Sporadically over the next few years, reports came out linking the actor with various actresses who wished to play the title role of a woman, barely…

An older Ukrainian guy walks his dogs in the woods near my house. We talk a lot. The other day I was complaining about tendonitis in my ankle, which was causing me pain. 

Recently I spent some time surrounded by people who are smarter than I am, who are braver and more committed to human progress, who know more about science and technology, more about business and industry, and more about budgets and expenditures.

During his speech at the National Defense University on May 23, President Obama sought to reassure Americans that they are “safer” because of the administration’s “efforts” to fight terrorism. The controversy over the administration’s handling of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in…

It's a well-known fact that on most college campuses, supposedly havens of academic freedom, you really have to watch what you say.

For at least half a century, judicial restraint has been the clarion call of the conservative legal movement. After the Warren Court era, Roe v. Wade, and very nearly a “right” to welfare benefits, it was not surprising that conservatives would seek to rein in judicial self-aggrandizement.

Marilynne Robinson is afraid we are losing our “loyalty to democracy” in America, though her reasons for fearing this might (or might not) surprise you. Tribalism and austerity—a general lack of generosity—will kill America. Individuals are generous enough, she admits, but what is lacking is a…

Fifty years ago this coming All Saints’ Day, the United States government concluded its patronage of Ngo Dinh Diem by dispatching him from the presidency of South Vietnam. His removal, in a U.S.-countenanced Vietnamese military coup, might have been less dramatic had President Diem not perished,…

If you want to see both the potential and the peril in Latin America, you could not do better than to visit Honduras and Colombia, as I did in mid-May: The former is Exhibit A for all that is wrong with the region, from drug trafficking and violence to governmental corruption; the latter a showcase…

The “state of grace” is not, to put it mildly, a Jewish idea; in fact, save for Christ’s divinity, it may be the least Jewish concept in all of Christianity. So it is a fascinating irony that the first movie written and directed by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish filmmaker seems to embody the state of…

Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings says the case of the IRS scandal has been "solved."

Post time for today’s running of the Belmont Stakes, the 145th running of the 1½ mile-long Grade 1 stakes race and final leg of the triple crown, is 6:36 p.m. With the Kentucky Derby won by Orb, the morning-line favorite in today’s race at 3-1, and Oxbow, going off this morning at 5-1, winning the…

A Republican polling firm has found that the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate is in a dead heat. Democrat Ed Markey, the longtime congressman, leads Republican and first-time candidate Gabriel Gomez by just a point. According to McLaughlin and Associates, a firm that often works…

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke hints that he might—perhaps, maybe—be thinking about possibly slowing the Fed’s purchases of bonds and mortgages. That leads bondholders to start selling, driving up interest rates, and causing tremors on stock markets. Not only here in the U.S.: the…

I was browsing this afternoon through Rachel Abrams's TWS blog posts from 2009-2011. They're all well worth reading, but these three seemed to me to particularly capture some of Rachel's spark and zest. Here are snippets: read the whole things.

When Israel finally discovered a bonanza of natural gas about five years ago everyone was happy. But then fierce arguments broke out—and rightly so.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol 

The press pool reporter passes along an email with the subject line, "Secret Service on Santa Monica College shooting reports." President Obama is currently at a Democratic fundraiser in Santa Monica. And he appears to be completely out of harm's way.

Two U.S. senators want to build a "special Catfish Office" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Senator John McCain. The "Catfish Office" would cost $15 million a year. 

On Wednesday, Hezbollah conquered the Syrian town of Qusayr. The week before, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, appeared on television and vowed to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The timing of the speech made it clear that taking Qusayr was crucial to that goal. The town sits on the…

After giving remarks about health care, President Obama said he'd take only one question because he doesn't "want the whole day to just be a bleeding press conference."

At a press conference in California, President Obama declaratively said, "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about."

Our dear friend Rachel Abrams died this morning, after a valiant three-year battle against cancer. She was an American patriot, a fighter for Israel, and a joyful and gifted controversialist. She was also the loving bulwark of her wonderful family and a loyal and sparkling friend. We offer our…

At a Democratic fundraiser in Palo Alto, California, President Barack Obama described himself as a common sense Democrat.

Standard operating procedure in Washington, when confronted with a political crisis – or even several of them – is to change the subject, then leave town and raise some money.  Lots of it.

Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse blamed the latest jobs report on the sequester and the Republicans:

The unemployment rate ticked up, according to new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defends the recently revealed metadata mining government intelligence programs:

Thursday, at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Gary Robbins delivered another response to the "many concerns" expressed by Russia about the ongoing hunger strike by many of the terrorist detainees at the Guantánamo Bay facility:

At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Nancy Pelosi responded to news that, contrary to earlier claims by Barack Obama and Pelosi herself, Obamacare will cause health insurance premiums to rise sharply for many people who purchase their own insurance in the individual market.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow and Director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute on his forthcoming editorial on the conflict in Syria.

The New Mexico Democratic party chairman was given access to at least one illegally obtained email from the campaign of the state’s Republican governor, according to federal investigators. For nearly a year, the FBI has been investigating the hacking of email accounts owned by the 2010 campaign of…

Congressional candidate Quin Hillyer's first ad:

Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser to President Obama, said that Eric Holder is "definitely" not stepping down and that he'll be attorney general "for quite a while."

From a congressional hearing today:

The House Subcommittee on the Constitution held a mark-up hearing this week on a bill that would ban abortions during the final four months of pregnancy with exceptions for when the life and physical health of the mother is at risk. To the “millions of women who value their personal autonomy,” said…

The House Subcommittee on the Constitution held a mark-up hearing this week on a bill that would ban abortions during the final four months of pregnancy with exceptions for when the life or physical health of the mother is at risk. To the “millions of women who value their personal autonomy,” said…

Today, the political class celebrates the long career of John Dingell.  As of Friday nobody, not even Robert Byrd, will have served longer in either body of Congress.  As the media fashions this story, we are expected not only to marvel but to feel gratitude. Whatta guy. Great public servant. Been…

Six months after it was first hinted at, and a month after widespread reports surfaced, the United Nations, Britain, and France have all just confirmed the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Yet, there has been no U.S. response to Syria’s increasingly clear violation of President Obama’s publicly…

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at the General Assembly of the Organization of American States in Guatemala on Wednesday, reminisced about his first trip to Latin America as a U.S. senator back in 1985:

The Wall Street Journal reports

Roy Blunt: "The IRS didn’t just target conservative non-profits."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Susan Rice's promotion, the nomination of Samantha Power to be the next ambassador to the United Nations, and Congress's investigation into the Internal Revenue Service scandal.

The State Department announced Monday a total of up to $23 million in rewards for information on terrorists in West Africa, the first time the Department's Rewards for Justice program has offered rewards in that part of the continent. Although the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that…

Samantha Power, President Obama's nominee to be U.N. ambassador, once had this to say about John Kerry, the secretary of state:

Heather McGill, the wife of Alabama state senator Shadrack McGill, recently took to Facebook to warn other women not go near her man. Particularly, Mrs. McGill's warning is directed at strippers. 

Florida senator Marco Rubio, a key Republican backing the immigration bill in the Senate, said during a radio interview Tuesday night that he won't vote for the bill if it isn't amended to improve border security. "What we're trying to get to ideally is an amendment that dictates the number of…

The White House announces President Obama will speak at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin later this month:

Audio of Michelle Obama being interrupted last night by a heckler: 

Gordon Gee's peripatetic and colorful academic career – president of West Virginia University, University of Colorado, Vanderbilt, Brown, and Ohio State – has come to a self-inflicted end. Mr. Gee was an able fundraiser, which seems to be what those charge of civilizing and educating the next…

Socialists around the world have their own traditions for celebrating “International Workers’ Day,” and Evo Morales is no exception. Each year, the Bolivian leader uses May 1 to make a big announcement, typically regarding the military-backed seizure of a given industry or company. In 2006, during…

Richard Goldstein writes at the New York Times:

The use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war is, says the secretary of state, "unacceptable."  Back when their use was one of those contingencies for which we are supposed to have plans, the president warned that the use of such weapons represented a "red line," for the United States. 

President Obama today nominated three liberals to fill longstanding judicial vacancies on the important Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Will the Senate rubber-stamp the president's nominees—even though the court's fine as it is, with the eight judges currently serving enjoying the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with contributing editor P.J. O'Rourke on his recent cover story, Obama's Asteroid.

Chris Christie said he doesn't know and doesn't care what the cost of the New Jersey special election will be:

The New York Times reports today that New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican, is considering setting a special election for the vacant New Jersey Senate seat ahead of the already scheduled November election. This move, as the Times reports, could cost around $24 million: 

High officials in the Obama administration are using "secret e-mail accounts," according to the Associated Press, and stonewalling when asked about them, even by establishment media operations.

Before a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, Democratic congressman Jim McDermott argued that conservatives deserved the scrutiny they received. "None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not…

Congressman Jim McDermott, a Democrat,  said that the groups targeted by the IRS had it coming since they filed paperwork seeking a special tax status with the federal government:

About a half-century ago, Secretary of State George C. Marshall used his commencement speech at Harvard to announce what came to be known as the “Marshall Plan.” Of course, not every commencement address can be a major policy pronouncement by a leading statesman, but this year’s decision to give…

A big part of Obamacare is its massive expansion of Medicaid. Fortunately, this expansion can’t happen in most states without Republicans freely choosing to make it happen. Unfortunately, far too many Republican governors seem to be confused about the distinction between repealing Obamacare and…

The small Southeast Asian country of Laos outraged civilized people everywhere last month by repatriating nine escaped North Koreans orphans. The escapees, who had travelled through China and into Laos, are now likely to suffer harsh punishment. Repatriated North Koreans are known to face…

June 4, 1989, was the day China took a huge step backward, a generation of Chinese people lost the chance for democracy, and Deng Xiaoping forfeited an opportunity to share the Nobel Peace Prize with the Dalai Lama.

On Monday, CNBC reported on a new survey that found that two-thirds of Americans currently without health insurance don't know if they will purchase coverage by the deadline, the first day of 2014.  The survey was released by InsuranceQuotes.com, a company that offers comparison shopping for…

It's not fair to Nixon, as the boss has warned, but ...

Treasury Department inspector general J. Russell George testified before Congress on Monday that IRS employees have refused to say who ordered the targeting of Tea Party groups:

The names of two terrorists currently "remain" on the Newseum's "Memorial Wall," a letter written by the chief executive officer of the Newseum confirms. The letter is addressed to Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and signed by CEO James C. Duff. 

Democratic congressman Jose Serrano made the case that the IRS needs more to prevent the federal agency from more scandals:

A news report published today says that North Korean officers are in Syria helping Bashar al-Assad wage war against his own people.

President Obama, speaking earlier today at conference on mental health at the White House: 

Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Talking about the IRS affair on television, former White House senior advisor, David Plouffe, passed it off as the work of a few employees who "did a dumb thing."

Over the past few weeks things cyber have blown up in our faces once again. While some of the media noticed, the gist of the reporting was on who was doing what to us now, not the growing scandal of our essentially supine reaction to it.

As Alexei Anishchuk of Reuters reports:

The website Jewish Ideas Daily has been, for quite some while, a star of the web, featuring interesting original material as well as links to other worthwhile writing embodying a lively, serious, and committed approach to Jewish issues and ideas. Today, Jewish Ideas Daily has re-launched as Mosaic.…

A former campaign manager for New Mexico governor Susana Martinez was indicted in federal court Thursday on 12 counts of illegally intercepting emails intended for members of Martinez’s 2010 campaign, including some sent to Martinez herself. Now, some are questioning whether the current Democratic…

New York congressman Charlie Rangel appears to flip off a heckler at yesterday's Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade:

Of all the scandals in his administration that President Obama knows nothing about, the one Americans find most appalling is the decision by the Internal Revenue Service to target the president’s political adversaries. What’s more, as subsequent congressional testimony has made clear, the IRS isn’t…

Tax collection may be a necessary evil, but the IRS has been working hard to emphasize the latter over the former. And this applies to conduct beyond the current scandal over political targeting. 

Austin, Texas 

When John Henry Newman died in 1890, English papers around the world singled out different aspects of his life and work for praise or censure, but on one point they were unanimous. As the obituarist of the Colonies and India put it, “We question whether there is a living writer who had a command of…

"We provided horrible customer service,” outgoing acting commissioner of the IRS Steven Miller told the House Ways and Means Committee on May 17, referring to evidence that his agency had targeted Tea Party groups for special scrutiny in determining tax-exempt status. The passing remark, which so…

Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office, “The Buck Stops Here.” Sixty years later, President Obama hangs a sign on the door to the Oval Office, “Do Not Disturb.” In 1978, about halfway between the two liberal presidents, Harvey Mansfield, as we’ve noted before, diagnosed…

Nothing has been left unsaid about Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Jewish insurance lawyer from Prague who conducted his work life in Czech, his personal life in German, and his nocturnal writer’s life in a highly condensed metaphoric language whose striking images reveal the absurd core in the human…

Not once, not twice, but three times in the course of the 86-minute running time of the extravagantly praised Frances Ha is the title character shown running through Manhattan. Once, we see her running with her best friend. Another time we see her running to find an ATM. Then we see her running…

As readers well know, The Scrapbook prefers to see the glass half-full rather than half-empty, and so Act One, Scene 2 of the Obama scandals has been interesting to watch. True, it took evidence of the administration’s deep (and possibly unlawful) hostility toward the press to prompt the mainstream…

In his introduction to this new collection of essays by Janet Malcolm, Ian Frazier writes generously, if generically, that the book “brings together a wide range of pieces that display her unique skills.” By the time we have finished reading Forty-one False Starts, however, Frazier’s praise rings…

At one point in The Company You Keep, Robert Redford’s new film about the residue of the Weather Underground, a character named Sharon Solarz is captured by the FBI after living under a series of aliases since her involvement in a Michigan bank robbery decades earlier in which a security guard was…

I met him once. Well, met in the loosest sense: I was introduced to Ray Manzarek at a Los Angeles restaurant in the 1980s and got to shake his hand. No more than that, but even at the time it felt like an encounter with passing greatness, a brush with the fading mythology of the age, and down…

The workings of Washington sometimes attain a kind of purity in their illogic. This happens most often after a particularly jarring event, when the frenzy to do something, anything, becomes irresistible to the beehiving journalists, legislators, lobbyists, and regulators who constitute the…

It's become an all too familiar tale: A naïve, amoral Westerner travels to Stalinist North Korea and returns with breathless tales of what a wacky, weird, and wild time he had there! (Somehow, the country’s extensive gulag never makes it onto the visitor’s itinerary.)

The news of the Internal Revenue Service targeting Tea Party groups has Americans spooked. We’re supposed to be a republic, in which everyone is treated equally. So how is it that the federal government has abused so egregiously its taxing power, one of the most potent tools at its disposal?

Dartmouth government professor Brendan Nyhan is one of those political scientists who must really want his field to be considered a hard science, like chemistry or physics. To that end, he often marshals graphs and quantitative measurements in service of his arguments, no matter how dubious. (He’s…

Grasping the realities of the Middle East is never easy. This is not primarily because they change quickly, but because so much time, effort, and money is spent to prevent reality from breaking through. Fifteen Saudis kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11, so the Saudis spend even more millions to persuade…

Replete with stunning horror stories, as one would expect, this remarkable collection of antislavery writing astonishes nonetheless. For example: “Our first black President was a man of such distinguished talents, that none chose to risk their own reputation for discernment by not acknowledging…

The complexity of Washington scandals as they unfold usually involves many moments at which it is possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Two such instances have come into sharper relief in recent weeks. One is that we still have no good explanation for U.N. ambassador Susan Rice’s…

Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s second vice president and the Progressive party candidate for president in 1948, was once again in the news earlier this year. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick produced a multipart Showtime series and large book blaming the Cold War on his removal from the…

Some conservatives think that the elite media are finally turning on Barack Obama and his administration.

On May 21, liberal columnists Jonathan Capehart and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo were seen heading into the West Wing for a meeting. Just a few hours earlier, it had been reported that Lois Lerner, the bureaucrat at the center of the IRS scandal, would…

Baltimore

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, added his rather important voice to the growing number of current and former officials who believe the Obama administration should expedite the release of some documents captured during the raid that killed Osama bin…

This morning on Face the Nation, Bob Woodward weighed in on the Obama scandals:

Democratic senator Mark Pryor was asked on a local television show whether he stands by his vote in favor of Obamacare:

"Some" in the White House want Eric Holder, the embattled attorney general, to step down, according to a report.

Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, says she and the rest of the White House remain "very upbeat" despite the series of scandals that have engulfed the Obama administration in recent weeks.

Tiger Woods shot a 44 on the front, 79 for the round, and finished 16 shots off the lead, yesterday, in the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village.  Later, speaking the royal plural, Woods explained:

Can Republicans win another special election for Senate in Massachusetts? More than three years after Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's old seat in an upset, fellow Republican Gabriel Gomez may have a shot of doing the same. The Cook Political Report has moved Gomez's race against Democratic…

The recent news on the economy, in general, and deficits, in particular, has been encouraging.  Seems the clumsy blend of tax increases and reduced spending – aka the sequester – brought in more revenue and reduced spending.  Funny how that works.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had some words about the cyber threat from China while speaking today in Singapore. But a Chinese general, in the room for the speech, immediately responded by saying, "China is not convinced."

Thomas Carlyle had his own reasons for labeling economics the dismal science, and today’s economists seem intent on proving that the label applies in the circumstances of today’s American economy. After all, we are being treated to some really good news, especially compared with that being dished…