October 2013

So much for al Qaeda "in retreat."

Mary Landrieu, the Democratic senator from Louisiana, will introduce her own bill to allow Americans who like their health insurance plan to keep that plan. Landrieu, who said Wednesday she would be open to sponsoring legislation of that kind, released a statement about her intention:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the world series and the political environment in the wake of many Americans having their health insurance policy cancelled.

When Kathleen Sebelius testified at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, she acknowledged the presence of a worrisome statement included in the source code of Healthcare.gov and promised that work was already underway to remove it.  A search of one portion of the code later on Wednesday revealed…

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is practically coasting toward reelection next week. The latest Real Clear Politics average of polls show a race that isn't even close. On Tuesday, just a year after Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, the Republican spoke in Sea Bright, on the Jersey…

President Obama attended a Democratic fund raising event in Weston, Massachusetts Wednesday night at the home of Alan and Susan Solomont.  Among the 60 attendees were a number of high-profile Democrats, according to the Boston Globe:

Halloween has become, like so many things in modern America, nice. It's all treat and no trick, and far more amusing than terrifying. But the Obama administration is to be commended for reminding us—in an uncharacteristic moment of originalism—of the older meaning of the holiday, in which the trick…

Lee Smith, writing for Tablet:

President Obama’s appearance in Boston was the second most important event in that city yesterday and it was so far behind that it couldn’t even see the first one.  Still, the President did say a couple of interesting things, including an affable suggestion for those who are feeling forsaken,…

Al Jazeera finds an Obamacare navigator in Colorado who hasn't signed up anybody for the new program because it's too expensive:

For what I think is the first time, President Obama admitted that some Americans will pay more for health care under Obamacare. He made the admission in remarks at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts.

The fact-check of "you can keep your plan."

Obama administration officials produced a memo documenting security concerns with healthcare.gov, the health insurance exchange website, the Associated Press reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on his recent piece with John McCormack about the struggle of Senate Democrats to defend the promises made about Obamacare.

From Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post, we learn that in Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s testimony this morning:

A new audit by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released on October 24 found that while the IRS has improved the timeliness of scanning taxpayer correspondence into its Correspondence Imaging System (CIS) since a previous audit six years ago, the accuracy rate has apparently declined…

This is why we can’t have nice things, New Yorkers might have muttered when they heard the news: Bill de Blasio, a shoo-in to be elected mayor next month, supports a plan to gut one of New York City’s most successful policy innovations of the past three decades.

Seems that:

Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat from Louisiana, tells Politico's Manu Raju that she'd be interested in supporting a proposal to allow Americans who like their current health insurance plan to keep it for next year. Here's the story from Politico:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius opened up her testimony before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee panel, saying:

A new poll of the Virginia's gubernatorial election hints that the race may be tightening between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli. According to Quinnipiac's survey of 1,182 likely voters, 45 percent say they will vote for McAuliffe and 41 percent say they will vote for…

At a hearing on Capitol Hill, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said that the Obamacare website has "never crashed."

Rep. Ralph Hall, a 90-year-old Republican from Texas, told Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that he thought he saw her riding a tricycle in Meade, Kansas when he was in the 3rd grade:

Whether it’s “pivoting” or “rebalancing,” the Obama administration’s unceasing efforts to turn retreat into a virtue – particularly when it comes to the Middle East – have become a distinguishing feature of this president’s national security strategy.

In December 2009, Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu assured Americans that the Obamacare legislation being debated in Congress would not affect those who like their plans. Watch the video of her speech on the floor of the Senate:

CNN reports that the White House is intimidating insurance companies not to publicly criticize Obamacare:

President Obama hasn't heard.

As he stepped off an escalator leading from the Capitol's underground subway system to the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson opened up a yellow folder, pulled out a copy of the “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act," and handed it to fellow senator Chris Coons.

It had to happen.  Everything else is going global and, as Kevin Bogardus of The Hill reports:

This from the Department of Making Chicken Salad out of Chicken Feathers:

Last Thursday, representatives from four of the main contractors working on various aspects of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act testified at a Congressional hearing.  The contractors were hired by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the division of the Department of…

National Review's Jonathan Strong reports that House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer admitted today that Democrats knew many Americans would lose their health insurance policies because of Obamacare:

The head of the agency implementing Obamacare, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner, said today at a hearing on Capitol Hill that "We have a system that's working."

The Washington Post editorial board writes:

With a week to go before election day, Virginia voters favor Democrat Terry McAuliffe for governor over Republican Ken Cuccinelli by more than 10 points, according to a new poll from the Washington Post. The survey found that 51 percent of likely voters support McAuliffe and just 39 percent support…

Last night, Fred Upton, the Republican chairman of the of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, introduced the "Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013." The goal is simple: To allow people who like their health care plans to keep them for the next year under Obamacare.

NBC News reports that it was no secret in the Obama administration that many folks would be losing their health care plans under Obamacare:

NRO: No, you can't keep your insurance.

On Saturday, October 26, news broadcasts around the world presented images that, innocuous in any other country, were revolutionary for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Responding to an online petition titled “oct26driving.com,” at least 60 female subjects of the desert monarchy drove cars on the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the rollout of Obamacare and the World Series.

PolitiFact has a pretty terrible and rather partisan history of Obamacare fact checks. However, there's one, in particular, about Obamacare that remains especially puzzling. It's the "half-true" rating the organization gave when President Obama promised that, If you like your health insurance, you…

White House spokesman Jay Carney explained at today's briefing that "it's true" some Americans will not be able to keep their health care plan under Obamacare: 

What's wrong with Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's Republican candidate for governor? He's losing by nearly 10 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics, to Terry McAuliffe, the flawed Democrat. The conventional wisdom is that Cuccinelli is too conservative on social issues, and the McAuliffe…

Lou Reed died yesterday in Amagansett, N.Y., thus ending his life on the same island, Long Island, where it began more than 71 years ago in Kings County, better known as Brooklyn. For most of the time in between, Reed was all about Manhattan (he was, says this obituary in Spin Magazine, “the…

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is in the news today, following:

Some good news about the economy might make what promises to be the unending glitches of Obamacare easier to endure. But the latest is not encouraging, with Bloomberg reporting:

Elliott Abrams writes:

One Florida woman is going from paying $54 a month to $591 under Obamacare, CBS reports:

Beginning with a speech last Thursday, President Obama is seeking to rejuvenate his administration's push to alter immigration laws and perhaps draw some attention away from the Obamacare launch debacle that has been dominating the headlines for much of October. The day following that speech, a new…

CBS's 60 Minutes ran this report last night on the Benghazi terror attack of September 11, 2012:

Congress will be looking for answers about the bungled launch of Obamacare.  And, as David Morgan and Susan Cornwell of Reuters report, it has someone who was, heretofore, merely an obscure bureaucrat in its sights.  Seems that a couple of months ago, she "assured a congressional oversight panel…

Democratic senator Joe Manchin said that, under Obamacare, "nobody should be forced to buy a policy that cost more than what they had and is inferior to what they had":

The president is getting out of Washington and will, as Alexis Simendinger of Real Clear Politics reports:

“The thrill is gone,” famously warbled B.B. King among others. And so it is for watchers of the U.S. economic scene. The eighteenth partial government shutdown is over, World War II veterans can legally visit the monument to their bravery, hikers can trek through national parks, and the National…

Peggy Noonan on the Obamacare disaster.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with contributing editor Matthew Continetti on his recent editorial and why the GOP needs to learn the lesson of Healthcare.gov's failure.

A week after THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported that the Obamacare website Healthcare.gov was using a copyrighted web script without attribution, the lines have been quietly added back to the code. In a tacit admission that the lines should not have been omitted, the full attribution now appears at the…

The Obamacare website Healthcare.gov has been grabbing all the headlines lately, but another aspect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may come under increased scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead: Electronic Health Records (EHR).  The ACA requires medical providers to transition to electronic…

Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida who lost a race for U.S. Senate in 2010, has a new ad that looks a lot like a campaign ad. Watch the video below:

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin will propose a new law next week called: "If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act."

Obamacare is costing one Indiana school district $6 million, WTHI reports:

The AP reports this troubling news:

As the boss said on TV a couple days ago, the next move for the GOP should be to pass a bill that essentially says, "If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it."

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

A new CBS report highlights the story of Natalie Willes, "one of the millions of Americans who already have private health insurance but whose policies do not comply with the Affordable Care Act."

Don't like Obama's drones? Blame liberals.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid says that "Everybody" is "willing to pay more" taxes. He said so in an interview with a Nevada Public Radio host.

There might be "glitches" in the system, but the White House is still celebrating Obamacare. In a series of tweets today, the White House says the new health care law provides good and affordable health care for women: 

Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat from North Carolina who is up for reelection in 2014, says she supports delaying the deadline for signing up for health insurance under Obamacare's individual mandate. Hagan, who voted for Obamacare back in 2010, also says the fine for not signing up for health…

The attorney general of Maryland was criticized for attending an underage party that his son was DJ-ing. There you are, a reporter pointed to a picture of the party, "In front of two guys, their shirts off, with a girl twerking in between."

Charles Krauthammer previews his book Things That Matter on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show:

In Missouri, the implementation of President Obama's health care law is having a negative impact on the health insurance market--including the market for plans that fall outside the government-run exchanges. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kaiser Health News report:

Kaiserhealthnews.org reports:

Liberal Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said this morning on national television that we should consider delaying the Obamacare individual mandate:

The contractor who helped design the Obamacare website confirmed to Congress this morning that there was "no pilot program" to test healthcare.gov before it went live on Oct. 1:

The first-time claims number comes in as … well, not so good.  This is typical if not predictable.  As Reuters reports:

The U.S.S. Forrestal (CVA 59) was the first of the Navy's super carriers, built from the keel up with an angled deck, hurricane bow, steam catapults and all the other refinements and improvements on carriers designed and built for World War II, before the time of jets.  It was the ship that…

The Washington Post reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the Boston Red Sox and what Republicans should do in response to the recent Obamacare woes.

A long New York Times story today details the quarrels and vicissitudes that have marked the Obama White House’s Syria policy over the last two and a half years.  Some senior officials wanted to arm the rebels to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, while others pushed back.

An organization representing Louisiana parents shouldn't be allowed to intervene in a federal lawsuit against the state's school voucher program, the Department of Justice said in a response to a motion requesting legal intervention. The Louisiana chapter of the Black Alliance for Educational…

While the Affordable Care Act was making its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously promised the American people over and over again that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. 

The economy is, as always, what we think about, even when we are talking, almost entirely, about something else.  As, for instance, the troubles with the Affordable Care Act.  When things are going well, economic growth is robust, people are making more money, employers are hiring … then, all…

How much do some distrust Obama? Enough for at least one person to suggest that the woman who fainted behind the president at his Obamacare speech earlier in the week was part of a White House gag:

A recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recalls the 1980s stories of $640 toilet seats and $500 hammers.  In a report primarily addressing the construction of a hospital in Afghanistan that is two years behind schedule, SIGAR also found…

Just 33 percent of Arkansas voters approve of the job of Democratic senator Mark Pryor, according to a new poll of likely voters from the University of Arkansas. That's Pryor's lowest rating in the annual poll since entering the Senate in 2003, while an all-time high of 41 percent disapprove of his…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on what Republicans should do to seize the on the opportunity provided by the floundering opening of Obamacare's exchanges.

New research from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee shows that over the last 5 years, the U.S. has spent about $3.7 trillion on welfare. Here's a chart, showing that spending versus transportation, education, and NASA spending:

The boss went on national television this morning and said that Republicans should pass a bill that says, "If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it."

Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that it's "unbelievable" to think that the Health and Human Services Department didn't realize that the Obamacare website was messed up:

Obamacare's death spiral?

Portland city commissioner (as city councilmen are called in that Oregon city) Steve Novick has never been one to respect the limits of his office - or recognize that it has any limits at all. Since being elected just over a year ago, Novick has used his minor public position to 1) assail DirecTV…

It is widely recognized that the effects of the Sequester are felt most emphatically at the Pentagon and in the services. As reported by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. at Breaking Defense, the point was driven home, yesterday, by chief of staff of the Army, General Ray Ordierno, who said:

There is unhappiness in China over the price of Starbucks coffee.  As Celia Hatton of the BBC reports:

Terry McAuliffe has a 17-point lead over Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor's race, according to a new poll from Rasmussen. McAuliffe, the Democrat, enjoys his largest lead yet in the race with 50 percent of the vote, while Republican Cuccinelli has 33 percent. The Libertarian candidate,…

Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's Daily Show, took on the disastrous launch of the Obamacare health insurance exchange website on Monday evening.

Fred Barnes, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Democratic congressman Alan Grayson of Florida used an image of a burning cross to spell "Tea Party" in a recent fundraising email:

Gertrude Himmelfarb, writing for Mosaic Magazine:

"Bullying doesn't just happen on the playground," so begins an article in an online Health and Human Services (HHS) publication called Let's Talk. The HHS's Federal Occupational Health agency cites a recent study finding that more than a third of Americans report being bullied at work, though only…

Yesterday in the Rose Garden, President Obama touted the Obamacare hotline and recommended people call to sign up for Obamacare. "[T]he point is the call centers are available," Obama said, sounding as though he were in the middle of an infomercial. "You can talk to somebody directly and they can…

Will the Obamacare revolution be televised?

Longtime Mississippi senator Thad Cochran, who will be 76 at the end of this year, hasn't said whether he'll run for a seventh term in 2014. But late last week another Republican entered the primary race for Senate, and he's challenging Cochran from the right. Chris McDaniel, a state senator,…

Cheryl Miller on ROTC returning to New York City:

The day had finally arrived—our children were embarking on their first flight. My wife and I figured that since we wouldn't have to be changing diapers in cramped quarters (our kids are five and three), the time was right. But I also presumed that since we had toddlers with us, the airline would…

On national television today, President Obama hawked Obamacare as the event turned into one big infomercial:

A woman behind President Obama fell ill at today's Obamacare event at the White House:

Speaking at the White House about Obamacare, President Obama tied the rollout of his signature legislation to the government shutdown:

Today's Obamacare event was supposed to start at the White House at 11:25. But President Obama is late. 

The state of Maryland has been front and center on the launch of open enrollment through the new Obamacare insurance marketplaces on October 1. The week before the launch, President Obama joined Maryland governor Martin O'Malley in Largo, Maryland to boost public awareness of the marketplaces, and…

The Foreign Policy Initiative's annual forum is tomorrow in Washington, D.C. "The full lineup and link to RSVP is here and below. Forum is free, on-the-record and open to the public.  To follow the Forum, folks should use #FPIForum. We are also taking questions via Twitter," says FPI in an…

The Republican National Committee issued a press release this morning saying it filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out Obamacare enrollment figures. Here's the press release:

The New York Times think it's found a civil war among conservatives and Republicans. The Times quotes the boss:

Later today, President Obama will do one of those events where he appears with several people whose life experiences provide an example for the rest of us. In this case, they will be people who have successfully signed up for Obamacare on its website, despite what are described by the New York…

For over a year it has been common knowledge within the Obama administration that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could not launch its network of health exchanges for the Affordable Care Act in a minimally acceptable way. That knowledge did not stop the HHS publicity machine from…

"What is it like,” asks Tim Birkhead, “for an emperor penguin diving in the inky blackness of the Antarctic seas at depths of up to 400 m[eters]?” And what is it like “to feel a sudden urge to eat incessantly, and over a week or so become hugely obese, then fly relentlessly—pulled by some invisible…

Winston Groom’s legendary Forrest Gump is the iconic bystander who stumbles into the company of historically significant figures—and even, in the case of Elvis, supplies signature bodily gyrations. What follows will claim no such force or influence. But when it comes to unusual brushes with…

Last month, Angel Echevarria, an off-duty Department of Homeland Security official, was arrested in Florida for pulling his gun and shooting a car that allegedly cut him off on the highway. According to police, Echevarria had absolutely no legal authority to do this. The episode was a classic “road…

With the economy still cratered, a slew of foreign policy debacles, and a government shutdown, most Americans probably haven’t thought much about the Fast and Furious scandal in recent months. The Scrapbook doesn’t know what it says about the times we live in that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,…

Breaking Bad is the story of a seemingly well-intended but very misguided man who turned to cooking meth in order to amass enough wealth to provide for his family once he dies of cancer. The consequences of that unfortunate decision—not to mention the lies and deceptions to keep it on track—pyramid…

The Scrapbook has taken note of the federal government’s political use of the shutdown: the National Park Service closing down popular attractions and open spaces, scare stories about medical research and air traffic safety, and so on. In the words of Rahm Emanuel, the onetime Obama White House…

Greenwich Village has always been a matter of geography imbricated by doctrine. Exempted from the 1811 grid plan for numbering Manhattan’s roads north of 14th Street that came to define most of the island, Greenwich Village, bordered on its west by the Hudson River, retained a crazy-quilt layout of…

It’s sometimes the case that the most forgettable historical figures furnish the most enduring lessons. Here, Michael J. Gerhardt excavates the remains of some of our least memorable—and least popular—chief executives, along the way adroitly reconstructing the political, legal, and historical…

One of the things you learn when you read the letters of great writers is how rarely great writers talk about literature in their letters. Mostly they talk about money. The letters of Henry Ford show more interest in big ideas and artistic principles than do those of James Joyce. When Joyce wrote a…

What Erica Grieder has succeeded in doing with this book is what few journalists have been able to do: The Texas Monthly editor and one-time Southwest correspondent for the Economist has captured the twin realities of a state that is easy and tempting to mischaracterize. And she avoids the traps…

Contrary to many pundits’ expectations, congressional Republicans seem to have zigzagged their way to a reasonable position in the ongoing budget battles. To be sure, their clumsy manner of getting there has helped to obscure this conclusion. Nevertheless, the GOP has the better argument in the…

A reunion marking the hundredth anniversary of the founding of my high school—Nicholas Senn, on the northside of Chicago—is to be held this month, and I shall not be attending it. I am one of those people who had a good run in high school. A minor athlete, a member of most of the school’s better…

On July 21, 1969, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin joined Neil Armstrong on the moon’s surface and launched a new epoch of human history. It’s safe to say that this is the best-known item on Buzz Aldrin’s résumé. 

Plato is smarter than you. That’s how an experienced teacher once began a series of lectures on the Greek philosopher. And a good beginning it was, for it put students on notice that, as they read, their first duty was to attend and learn. Plato didn’t have the final word—there would be Aristotle,…

Philosophers, war heroes, a movie star: A wide variety of men with an even wider variety of cultural tastes have inhabited the White House over the centuries. And evolving standards and technologies have combined with evolving political realities to create a culture the White House’s original…

"Washington is a place where hundreds of children couldn’t play soccer this past weekend; where cafeteria workers, janitors and secretaries aren’t getting paid for who knows how long; where Metro trains and buses run empty; where shoeshine guys sit idle; and where Girl Scout troops had to cancel…

There have always been readers of John Updike’s work who find his most impressive achievement to be his short fiction rather than his novels. 

“We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.”

Despite the administration’s hype of President Obama’s “historic” 15-minute phone call with the ostensibly moderate Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, the looming prospect of direct engagement with the regime in Tehran over its nuclear weapons program, and all the other symptoms of Rouhani fever…

Franklin D. Roosevelt, meeting with his son Elliott at the beginning of the Casablanca conference in January 1943, went out of his way to voice his revulsion at the ugliness of British imperialism by referring to his transit through the tiny British colony of Gambia:  

Last week in these pages, Ike Brannon noted that Europe is outstripping the United States in reducing the role of government in the economy (“Europe Leads the Way?” October 14). Now it seems that our European brethren are also taking a more sensible view of the regulatory state. The European…

Decades before Hillary Clinton chaired a health care task force and Nancy Reagan urged new drug enforcement laws, Lady Bird Johnson declared war on neon lights. Specifically, she fought for the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, lamenting what she called “endless corridors walled in by neon, junk,…

Earlier this month, California congressman George Miller took to the floor of the House of Represent-atives and, in a vitriolic speech, shouted that the Republicans were shutting down the government because of a “jihad” against Obama-care. Miller is a far-left liberal, but he is no backbencher. A…

During a press conference on July 26, Tunisian interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou listed the suspected terrorists thought to be responsible for two high-profile assassinations in his country. Among the names was one Ali Harzi—the same name as one of the chief suspects in the September 11, 2012,…

Sylvia Burwell, director of the Office of Management and Budget, refused to guarantee that the Obamacare website will be fixed by December 15:

The Obamacare rollout is going about as well as the introduction of New Coke or the merger of Time and AOL or … take your pick. Just how bad is it?  Well, the administration won't tell. Just doesn't, it appears, want to talk about it.

He had a real name but nobody knew it.  He was known universally as "Bum" Phillips and he was one of the best loved football coaches never to win a championship.  Never, in fact, to play in one.  His teams came close.  They were one game from the Super Bowl in successive years.  After the second…

Julian Hattem and Ben Goad of the Hill report that:

CNN reported last night that HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius will make time to attend a gala in Boston, but is too busy to testify on Capitol Hill about Obamacare:

The government re-opened, and there was no default. No surprise. This was the 18th shutdown since 1976, when the current budget procedure was established. The five shutdowns under Jimmy Carter were mostly over major policy issues such as abortion (he was for it) and the construction of a…

Insurers getting the wrong data from Obamcare exchange site.

The White House will re-open for tours, according to the Huffington Post. But instead of tours 5 days a week, they will only be offered 3 days a week.

Janet Napolitano, who recently stepped down as head of the Department of Homeland Security, was noticeable absent today in the nominating of her replacement, Jeh Johnson, by President Obama at the White House:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with James C. Capretta on fallout from the government shutdown and the failure called Obamacare:

Yuval Levin explains what's going on with healthcare.gov at National Review Online:

The company responsible for the digital disaster of Obamacare is a Canadian outfit called CGI which, as Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post explains:

With just weeks left in the 2013 gubernatorial race in Virginia, Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli has a new TV ad that questions the seriousness of his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe. "What's Terry McAuliffe offering Virginia families?" the voiceover asks. "False, misleading attacks;…

In his Wall Street Journal column, Daniel Henninger makes a strong case that: 

In light of the beating the Obama administration is taking over the ignominious launch of the Obamacare insurance marketplaces, it makes sense that the White House would be looking for good news to share.  The White House Twitter account attempted to provide a boost on Thursday with the following:

The president will "nominate former Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson as the next secretary of homeland security," USA Today reports. "Johnson, general counsel for the Defense Department during Obama's first term, will be introduced by the president at a ceremony on Friday."

Obamacare exchange website wasn't tested until a week before launch.

Louisana governor Bobby Jindal, the two-term Republican and potential presidential candidate, has announced the formation of a new group called America Next. The organization bills itself as a "conservative policy group" that aims to "focus on winning a war of ideas." Here's an excerpt from a…

The captain of the ms Noordam has announced that due to the choppy seas we won't be able to put in, as planned, at Santorini—but that rather than having another day at sea, we're boldly heading off to dock at Iraklion, Crete.

Vermont has agreed to a $2.8-million contract with a D.C.-based public affairs firm to promote the state's health insurance exchange mandated by Obamacare. As Vermont-based watchdog site vtdigger.org reported earlier this week, the administration of Democratic governor Peter Shumlin is paying…

At a Thursday afternoon press conference, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if Obamacare should be delayed in whole or in part if healthcare.gov still isn't working in November or December.

Healthcare.gov, the federal government's Obamacare website, has been under heavy criticism from friend and foe alike during its first two weeks of open enrollment.  Repeated errors and delays have prevented many users from even establishing an account, and outside web designers have roundly panned…

James Kirchick, writing in the New York Daily News:

In his concession speech to Senator-elect Cory Booker in Bridgewater, N.J., on election night, Steve Lonegan announced that he would retire from elective politics and enter private business, rather than mount another U.S. Senate race against Booker next year or return to his post as New Jersey…

President Barack Obama delivered remarks from the White House Thursday morning following the conclusion of the government shutdown and the raising of the debt ceiling. The president praised government as an entity "we rely on" in a "whole lot of ways." He also said that he hoped the country had…

Vice President Joe Biden offered returning federal workers handshakes, hugs, and kisses -- and muffins, too -- this morning at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

The siege has been lifted.  The 16-day ordeal is ended.  Life, once again, is good.  As Alexander Bolton and Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill report:

At sea aboard the ms Noordam, off the coast of Greece

A memo from the Office of Management and Budget director Sylvia M. Burwell on re-opening government:

President Obama signed the "deal" to re-open Congress and increase the debt limit, according to the White House. The press secretary sent this out late last night: 

Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, has defeated Republican Steve Lonegan in New Jersey's special election for the U.S. Senate Wednesday night. The Associated Press called the race for Booker just after 9:30 pm.

Even before the House vote on the so-called congressional deal to re-open the federal government and increase the debt limit, President Obama began to pivot to immigration: 

The Senate voted Wednesday night to raise the federal debt ceiling and to reopen the government. The bill passed overwhelmingly, 81 senators supporting to 18 opposing, and will now go the House of Representatives. House speaker John Boehner has said he will not block a vote on the Senate bill…

Don't expect to see cuts for programs like these in the shutdown "deal."

Here's the so-called deal that Congress is expected to approve tonight:

On Tuesday evening, the reelection campaign for Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor emailed supporters about a recent "secret meeting" between Republican senator Ted Cruz and a group of House Republicans at a restaurant on Capitol Hill, Tortilla Coast. Pryor campaign manager Jeff Weaver suggested that the…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jeffrey H. Anderson on the congressional deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit:

The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy is nearly upon us, so one would expect America's public intellectuals are gearing up to present a series of sober and illuminating reflections about the tragedy's cultural and political legacy.

House speaker John Boehner released a statement saying that the "fight will continue," but that it isn't feasible to block the deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans now:

The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert writes about Jonathan V. Last's book What to Expect When No One's Expecting and gets it completely wrong.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, announced a "deal" just now on the Senate floor:

National Park Service director Jarvis said he discussed closing the open-air monuments and memorials with the White House, as well as the secretary of the Interior Department: 

Politico reports: 

Heather R. Higgins, of the Independent Women's Voice, explains "what happened yesterday" in an email I received this morning:

Delaware has finally signed up someone for Obamacare. This has caused officials in that state to celebrate, according to the Associated Press.

Just what you would expect.  Shut down the government and right away, wild animals move in.  They even infiltrate the White House grounds.

On board the ms Noordam sailing from Italy to Greece, with a break from both sightseeing and panels, it seemed advisable to me 1) to ignore the goings-on in Washington, and 2) to find time for an article I'd set aside to read, Harvey Mansfield's "Machiavelli's enterprise" in the October New…

President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview:

Things are going pretty terribly for the Obamacare exchanges.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer John McCormack on the latest in the government shutdown and debt ceiling talks:

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Huffington Post today that "I don't think we should be making excuses" for the Obamacare roll-out:

A reporter proposed a deal to White House press secretary Jay Carney: How about Obama "delay Obamacare for a year if Republicans would agree to delay heart attacks for a year?"

Not a single citizen of the state of Alaska have signed up for the Obamacare exchange. The Associated Press reports that Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, has written a letter to Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the problems with the health insurance exchanges…

In the White House garden, tomatoes are rotting on the vine and the weed growth is unchecked.  Reuters is reporting that:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is out, today, with her first book.  In his Politico Playbook, Mike Allen calls it a "D.C. Must-Read."  Which, if true, is the most depressing news to come out of the Imperial City so far this week. But, then, it is only Tuesday.

New polls of likely voters in three key states in next year's U.S. Senate election show Republicans running just behind incumbent Democrats. Harper Polling, a firm associated with Republicans and working on behalf of conservative super PAC American Crossroads, conducted surveys of likely voters in…

On board the ms Noordam, at port in Venice

The past two weeks have been filled with stories of government offices, agencies, services, workers, monuments, websites, memorials, and parks that have been closed, suspended, furloughed, and even barricaded.  Perhaps the most notorious of the actions taken has been the barricading of the open-air…

Earth to the GOP: It's about Obamcare, folks.

A new report on sequestration's impact on defense from the Bipartisan Policy Center:

That meeting of the big dogs, scheduled for 3:00 p.m. and designed to get to a solution of the shutdown/debt ceiling crisis?

On October 8, THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported that the privacy policy of the Maryland Health Connection (MHC), the state's Obamacare insurance marketplace, included a statement that the marketplace "may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement…

With just a little more than a year before the 2014 general election, Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas has a slim lead over his likely Republican opponent, first-term congressman Tom Cotton. According to a new poll from Talk Business and Hendrix College, the incumbent Pryor has 42 percent…

President Obama stopped by Martha's Table food pantry in Washington, D.C. and put on a green apron:

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted the roll-out of Obamacare today on MSNBC:

Is our deliverance at hand?  There is "breaking news" that Obama and Biden will meet with Reid, McConnell, Boehner and Pelosi at the White House at 3 p.m.

The launch of federal government's Obamacare insurance exchange, Healthcare.gov, has been plagued with delays, errors, and poor website design, even prompting USA Today to call it an "inexcusable mess" and a "nightmare".  Now comes another example of why the website's reputation is in tatters.…

An unnamed official sends this email to the White House's press list:

The healthcare.gov website has been online for two weeks. But folks are having trouble signing up.

The headline on Richard Pollock's Washington Examiner piece is troubling, which is a high bar to clear, these days.

Mark Steyn, writing for National Review Online:

Mark Kirk, writing for the British Telegraph:

After the reelection of President Obama, House speaker John Boehner was disappointed, dispirited, and wary of a new round of clashes with the president. House Republicans had planned a fresh effort to repeal Obamacare, but, he told NBC News, “the election changes that.” He negotiated with Obama to…

Who's really to blame for the federal government’s shutdown? According to President Obama, it’s those ideologically obstinate congressional Republicans who will do anything to undermine the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of his presidency. For those same Republicans, it’s the…

For much of the last century the United States was the world’s beacon for capitalism, but these days we’re far from such a lofty perch. Since the end of the Cold War, countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain have moved to reduce the role of government in the economy by changing the tax code as…

While it was inevitable that a government shutdown would involve vindictive theatrics designed to make life irksome for ordinary Americans, the directive from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to close off the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was remarkable in that it was…

President Obama may have been distracted by Syria, but his domestic presidency proceeds apace, seeking what he heralds as “the transformation of the United States.” Especially is this true at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which aims to remake neighborhoods all across America,…

It was almost sad last June when the Los Angeles Unified School District announced its intention to buy an iPad for every one of its more than 600,000 students in a deal valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The scheme carried more than a whiff of desperation​—​education bureaucrats…

A five-minute tirade recently unleashed by a Newark resident against Mayor Cory Booker may not have surprised anyone had it remained a local TV news clip. “We are hurting here, this crime is killing us, blood runs on our streets,” the woman moaned to a reporter, responding to a late-summer murder…

Don Jon is a movie about Italian people living in New Jersey made by a person who has apparently never met an Italian person in real life, or ever been to New Jersey except perhaps on the way to and from the airfield in Teterboro, where private planes fly him and other celebrities from New York to…

Steam venting from the complex that houses the Soviet-era reactor in Yongbyon, spotted in satellite imagery taken at the end of August and released last month, tells us that the rogue regime of Kim Jong-un is about to go back into the business of producing plutonium. Weapons specialists and…

The best writing in newspapers, it used to be said, was in the sports pages. Variously known as the toy department or the playpen or the peanut stand, its interest restricted to matters of supreme inconsequence, the sports pages allowed the people who filled them more latitude for the prose…

Minneapolis

Thought experiment: Imagine you are a national security reporter, covering the release of a massive, 2,000-page report on domestic intelligence gathering activities and future threat assessment from the National Security Agency. But instead of issuing the full report, the NSA issues a 30-page…

"What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give in to this hostage taking .  .  . ” (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, Oct. 1).

In the midst of media coverage of the government shutdown (it’s the Republicans’ fault!) and the glitch-filled rollout of Obamacare (it’s not Obama’s fault!), Americans may not have noticed the October 1 speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United Nations General Assembly. But…

All politics is local, the late Tip O’Neill is alleged to have said. The Scrapbook isn’t quite sure if that’s true. But it has certainly been true during the “shutdown” of the federal government, in which President Obama has used metropolitan Washington, D.C., as a stage on which to dramatize his…

The past few years have brought a steady stream of awful news about America’s finances. 

A purportedly funny photo ricocheting around the Internet popped into my inbox last week, apparently courtesy of the right-wing blog RedState. The Photoshopped image is a play on the famous Dos Equis beer campaign built around the bearded, debonair “Most Interesting Man in the World,” who says, “I…

"The savoring of unintended ironies” could well be the tagline for this clever and enjoyable collection of poems. The phrase, appropriated by George Green from the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, cogently sums up the underlying theme of the verse compiled here: Green delights in overturning…

Despite the government shutdown, Vice President Joe Biden is vacationing at Camp David this long weekend. He's joined at the Maryland retreat by his family, including his wife (Jill Biden), children, and grandchildren.

Secretary of State Kerry and Afghanistan's Karzai say they are this close to an agreement that will keep some U.S. forces in the country after the big, 2014 pullout. As Indira A.R. Lakshmanan & Eltaf Asefy Najafizada of Bloomberg report:

A New Mexcio man recently saw his health insurance premium triple due to Obamacare:

The New York Times looks at some of the Obamacare problems:

Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz, writing for the Washington Post:

Janet Yellen, dubbed “Ms. QE Infinity” by some wags because of her support for printing money to create jobs, and her willingness to pierce the Fed’s long-held 2 percent annual inflation ceiling, will have more to worry about than monetary policy when she steps into Ben Bernanke’s ample shoes on…

James Grant: "America’s default on its debt is inevitable."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the government shutdown and whether the GOP has a strategy to end it with a policy victory.

It was a fitting match, yesterday, in Pittsburgh. Kathleen Sebelius and her failing health care plan and the struggling Pittsburgh Steelers, whose coach has resorted to desperate measures such as banning:

After Senate Democrats blocked GOP efforts to defund Obamacare, House Republicans voted for a number of modest compromises: delaying the individual mandate as long as the business mandate is delayed, repealing the medical device tax, and the Vitter amendment ending Congress's special…

The findings of the newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll are simply brutal for congressional Republicans. Not only are they getting the lion's share of the blame for the government shutdown, but President Obama's numbers have actually improved. Worse, Obamacare's numbers are improving,…

Republicans seem to have been spooked by three recent polls suggesting that the American public is siding more with President Obama than with the GOP in the budget and/or debt-ceiling battles.  But neither poll asked what is perhaps the key question:  Do you know what the Republicans’ position…

Last night, the organization formerly known as President Obama's reelection campaign, Organizing for Action, held an Obamacare event in Greenville, South Carolina. The event was called "Obamacare and You!"

Back in the real world where there is an economy and people worry about jobs and such, morale plummets.

Headline from the Hill:

An Allentown, Pennsylvania TV station reports that, because of Obamacare, one mother is forced to choose between a "new health plan or putting food on the table":

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

While Republicans in the nation’s capital try to decide whether or not they’re committed to beating back Obamacare, a Republican Senate candidate from Nebraska is making his opposition to Obamacare the clear centerpiece of his campaign.  During a speech earlier this week that officially launched…

Just because the government is shut down (sort of), that does not mean that members of Congress are magically relieved of the need for money to finance the next campaign during which they will spend the money to persuade constituents to return them to Washington to continue in their good work.

If “stealing jobs” were as bad as – and essentially no different than – stealing cars or stealing horses, Texas Gov. Rick Perry might expect to wind up at the end of a rope – the traditional fate in cowboy movies for horse thieves and cattle rustlers in the Lone Star state.

Senator Tom Coburn tore up a poster of what he called "Congress's credit card" on the Senate floor:

A week before the government shutdown began, the State Department awarded a $130 million contract to design and build a new embassy compound in the city of NouakChott in the West African nation of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, which lies between Mali and the Atlantic Ocean. The contract went…

Since first writing about the conduct of the National Park Service yesterday, events have accelerated somewhat.

Bad news on the jobs front, with Reuters reporting that:

A local Iowa affiliate reports that it could confirm only 5 people in that state have signed up for Obamacare:

In a letter sent yesterday to Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, 94 members of Congress question the federal government's decision to close open-air memorials during the federal government shutdown.

Contrary to many pundits’ expectations, congressional Republicans seem to have zigzagged their way to a reasonable position in the ongoing budget battles. To be sure, their clumsy manner of getting there has helped to obscure this conclusion. Nevertheless, the GOP has the better argument in the…

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, claimed today that a New York Times editor confided in him that Paul Krugman's column is "their biggest nightmare." Scarborough wouldn't reveal which Times editor told him that, and he said it was told to him "off the record."

Contradicting the Obama administration, Moody's Investors Service says that hitting the debt limit shouldn't be confused with default. The Washington Post writes:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Jonathan V. Last on his recent editorial, The Park Police.

James C. Capretta, writing for National Review Online:

On October 2, Arab media reported that a Kuwaiti radical Muslim television preacher, Tareq Suwaidan, was prohibited from visiting Saudi Arabia. Suwaidan had sought to go to Mecca to perform “umrah,” a shorter version of the annual hajj pilgrimage.

While everyone else has spent the last few days obsessing about Gravity, the government shutdown, and the real possibility that the NFC East division champ will have six wins, it’s quietly been an interesting week for sociology nerds who think about marriage.

On Wednesday morning, Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham mapped out a path to victory over Obamacare.

Earlier today, an unidentified bearded man took it upon himself to bring his lawnmower and a few tools to the Lincoln Memorial to provide free groundskeeping work to the closed federal monument.

Tuesday morning, THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported that the doctor search feature on the Maryland Health Connection Obamacare insurance exchange was not yet operational and returned a "no doctors are found" message.  A reader from Minnesota points out that MNsure, the Minnesota exchange, has not…

A Florida TV station reports that people's credit score's will "have a big impact" on how much they pay for Obamacare:

The fighting goes on in Afghanistan.  As does the dying.  United States troops have been in the country for 13 years and more than 2,000 of them have been killed there, four of them last Sunday.  As Adam Ashton of the Tacoma News Tribune reports, the dead included: 

And, then, there are those breakthroughs that demonstrate, again, just what a restless, problem solver the human animal is.  It accounts for things from satellites to smart phones to zip lock bags and now, as Karl Henkel of the Detroit News reports:

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee has put together this chart to show that U.S. has added two times more debt than economic output in the last two years: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the shutdown and the Republicans' position in resolving Obamacare, funding the government, and the debt ceiling.

Stars and Stripes reports that this weekend "Defense Department officials acknowledged that the shutdown had halted the $100,000 payouts given to fallen troops’ families, usually paid within a few days of their deaths."

Harry Reid is reportedly considering holding a vote to raise the debt limit with no strings attached, but the Senate majority leader doesn't appear to have the support of the entire Democratic caucus.

Maryland's Health Connection, the state's Obamacare marketplace, has been plagued by delays in the first days of open enrollment.  If users are able to endure long page-loading delays, they are presented with the website's privacy policy, a ubiquitous fine-print feature on websites that often go…

It's not just that Obamacare isn't off to a smooth start, it's also true, as CSMonitor.com points out, that many are facing an increase in the cost to their health care: 

Cory Booker is this political season's designated superman.  The stuff of legend.  Kind of guy who hangs out with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  Does all the cool digital stuff, like tweeting.  (Can you believe it?) A natural.  And so forth.

The new Mosaic essay by Robert W. Nicholson is about the evangelicals, Israel, and American Jews:

Last night, Jon Stewart asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a simple question: Why was business given the opportunity to delay Obamacare, but individuals were not?

One Georgia reporter "spent the entire work day trying to sign up online" and on the phone for Obamacare:

"If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor," President Obama assured the public as he worked to sell Obamacare in 2010.  However, in July 2013, visitors to Healthcare.gov received a less confident "you may be able to" in answer to the question, "Can I keep my own…

An essential tactic in the shutdown is, it seems, to  deprive people of things that they need or badly want.  Make them pay.  And when their suffering is no longer bearable, they will come back, chastened and grateful for the blessings government bestows upon them … something like that, anyway.

Eugene Robinson makes the case for Obamacare by writing, essentially, that it is a done deal.  Time to get over it and move on.  This is a corollary of the "law of the land" argument, which asserts that the thing has been written in stone and those who are still opposed and favor repeal should quit…

"I was laughing at Boehner -- until the mail came today."

A little anecdote from Mercurynews.com:

Northern New England is in its glory; now and for the next week or so.  The leaves are nearing peak color and until yesterday, there has been a big high pressure zone parked over the area so the weather has been what would once have been described as "heavenly." It has been raining now but in a few…

Just a week before the government shutdown kicked in on October 1, the State Department awarded a five-year, maximum $5 million contract for custom handcrafted crystal stem and barware, according to a report in the Valley News, an online news site in Vermont (via Charlie Perkins).  Valley News…

The government shutdown is frustrating. But it doesn’t mark the end of the Republican party, as some have suggested. Here are 8 reasons why.

As Mike Allen reported this morning, Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican, is going on the offensive against Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, who recently voted to protect the special subsidy for Congress in Obamacare. Here's video of that ad:

George Selgin reviews The Memoirs of Walter Bagehot for the Wall Street Journal:

Only "essential" employees of the federal government are still working during the shutdown. And at the Federal Election Commission that means practically no one is coming one. 

A notice posted on the website of the Small Business Administration (SBA) warns furloughed employees that it is a "criminal offense" to use federal resources during the furlough period, including accessing government email accounts. Although the notice is directed to SBA employees, presumably the…

David Gelernter, on what Republicans should be saying during the shutdown:

On September 20, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed strict new limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants. Energy industry critics, along with a number of influential unions, were quick to decry them. The regulations would limit carbon emissions for new coal plants to 1,100 pounds…

Yalta

Like the Eiffel Tower, the Capital Beltway is an industrial monstrosity that, inadvertently, has come to represent its hometown to the outside world.

The news is good in this book, and the work is nice, indeed. Meticulously detailed and a joy to read, it recounts not only how much there was to Hermes Pan’s partnership with Fred Astaire, but how much there was beyond it. 

Berlin

Ted Cruz’s tribute to Dr. Seuss, Darth Vader, and White Castle hamburgers wasn’t the only verbal display last week that exemplified the growing clash between Washington’s self-seeking old guard and its ambitious upstarts. Just a few hours earlier, lawyers argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…

When the cops finally raided the now-convicted killer’s house, he wasn’t particularly disturbed by the intrusion. In fact, he warned police not to go in the basement. Eventually, one of them put on a Tyvek jumpsuit and descended downstairs. The basement was mostly empty, but the flea infestation…

In his big speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Obama pointedly avoided one particular subject: himself. Just kidding! The famously self-regarding Obama alluded to himself almost 50 times in his remarks. (That’s 7 mys, and 42 Is for those keeping track at home.)

Alfred Duff Cooper, the British writer-politician-Lothario, once divided the stages of human life into three-decade increments: youth up to 30, middle age until 60, and old age thereafter. For Cooper, who died at the age of 63 on New Year’s Day 1954, this pattern made a certain sense.

Obamacare remains decisively unpopular with the American people, and most Republicans are staunchly committed to its repeal. And why shouldn’t they be? The ideological core of the bill runs contrary to the vision of limited government, market-based solutions, and individual choice that has formed…

One of the most successful endeavors of the academic left in the field of American history and foreign policy has been convincing many colleagues, and thousands of students throughout the country, that the traditional understanding of the Cold War is wrong. 

In Unutterable Horror, his deeply knowledgeable, lively, and unabashedly opinionated history of supernatural fiction, S. T. Joshi suggests that a taste for ghost stories and weird tales is far more than a slavering hunger for blood and grue. The most important supernatural fiction doesn’t merely…

Thirty-eight years after the last American helicopter took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, it might not seem possible for any new book to offer important insights and reporting on the Vietnam war.

Assessing contemporary figures on the world stage is tricky business. It takes time to properly reflect on what a man has done, and judgments based on brief acquaintance are often wrong. So it was that in May 1997, lots of Westerners and Westernized Iranians thought that the newly elected president…

I went to Enough Said, the new movie starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini, certain I would not write about it. Its producer, Anthony Bregman, is a friend of mine—so if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying so, and if I reviewed it favorably, I would…

"Valerie Plame’s career as a CIA operative was cut short when her cover was blown by George W. Bush’s White House,” reads the blurb of Plame’s latest imaginative stab. “Now, after dedicating herself to protecting the nation from its enemies, Plame turns to fiction .  .  .”

It probably seemed safe enough. The people advising the first lady may not even have taken a poll or run a focus group. After all, who could possibly be opposed to .  .  . water? Even Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity drink the stuff. Not enough, probably. Which might, come to think of…

Ted Cruz has sparked a Republican civil war. He has done the bidding of the GOP fringe, in a self-aggrandizing crusade. And while he has enhanced his own position in the conservative fantasyland he seeks to rule, the practical effect of his quixotic campaign to defund Obamacare has been to elevate…

In the late summer of 2011, a 29-year-old woman named Crystal Kelley of Vernon, Connecticut, agreed to become a surrogate mother for a Connecticut couple who already had three children, all of whom had been born prematurely and two of whom had subsequent medical problems. The couple hoped for a…

Aiming to be the next Chad Ochocinco, 49ers safety Donte Whitner announced he was legally changing his last name to Hitner. But according to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the paperwork cannot be completed because of the government shutdown. In fact, it may take a few weeks before the name change and thus a…

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew refused to answer Fox host Chris Wallace's simple question this morning: How many people have signed up for Obamacare?

Twin raids in Libya and Somalia this weekend demonstrate that America’s fight against al Qaeda continues in jihadist hotspots around the globe. And the raid in Libya shows, once again, that al Qaeda’s “core” members are pushing the terrorist organization’s agenda far from Pakistan.

Another open-air memorial in the Washington area is closed and barricaded off: the Iwo Jima Memorial, just across the bridge from D.C. in Rosslyn, Virginia. A source sends along this picture of the barricade set-up at the memorial, which is also called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial:

Bill Kristol, with Molly Ball, Jon Favreau, and Jake Tapper, yesterday on CNN:

Via William Jacobson, NBC's affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave the memorial at one point on Friday.

The Obamacare exchanges have experienced problems in the startup phase.  But this, the administration tell us, is to be expected.  Even Apple deals with glitches.  

Two stories were prominently featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. America either is, or in a few months will be, the world’s largest producer of energy, “a new era of opportunities,” says Adam Sieminski, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And…

This week, President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have said they're willing to pass a continuing resolution that funds the government at the level Republicans want.

Maggie Haberman reports on Cory Booker's "lackluster campaign" for U.S. Senate:

A portion of the website of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was apparently hacked as long as two months ago.  SAMHSA is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS also runs the new Obamacare insurance marketplace, Healthcare.gov.  

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Shutdown, Obamacare, and Netanyahu's visit.

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak uses her piece today to implicitly make the case that Obamacare and gun control might have been able to prevent yesterday's police shooting and last month's Navy Yard shooting.

James Pethokoukis, again, on the absence of a jobs report and imagining what it would have been like to be covering the release on one, 30 years ago, when:

On Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. One NPS employee was operating a forklift. There usually aren't any NPS employees working at the World War II memorial.

John McCormack reports that the barricades at the World War II memorial are wired shut today:

The adverb "unexpectedly" gets a rest today.  It has earned it.

Although the government shutdown continues, it appears President Barack Obama and the White House are not getting any closer to negotiating with Republicans. A quotation from an unnamed senior administration official in today's Wall Street Journal explains why.

David Samuels’ deeply reported oddball narratives and profiles have appeared on the covers of Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and other magazines. Samuels has also contributed two long interviews for Amazon’s new Kindle Singles series: The first with Israeli President Simon Peres, and his…

Paul Hitlin and Nancy Vogt of Pew Research report that:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on his recent piece "The President's Shutdown."

Adam Kredo reports:

On Monday, Congress unanimously agreed to pass a standalone measure to pay the troops during the partial government shutdown, and President Obama signed the bill into law. But on Thursday morning, Senate majority leader Harry Reid blocked votes on House-passed bills to fund veterans, the military…

The Air Force and Naval academies will play as scheduled this weekend.  However, overseas military personnel accustomed to getting their football on Armed Forces Network will not be able to watch.

Senator Claire McCaskill reports on Twitter that shots have been fired outside the Capitol:

On Monday, Congress unanimously agreed to pass a standalone measure to pay the troops during the partial government shutdown, and President Obama signed the bill into law. But today, Senate Democrats blocked votes on House-passed bills to fund veterans, the military reserves and National Guard, the…

White House spokesman Jay Carney, an "essential" federal employee, can tell you how many people have visited the Obamacare website ("7 million") but he can't tell you how many people have enrolled in Obamacare:

In an attempt to dramatize the effects of the federal government shutdown, Washington state Democrats may have revealed more about their state and about the state of the economy under President Obama than they intended.  The Advance, official blog of the Washington state house Democrats, posted the…

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was a global murder capital held hostage by warring drug cartels. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it looked like a potential failed state. These days, it is described as “Latin America’s rising star,” “Latin America’s rising oil star,” “Latin America’s…

Blame it on Rouhani Fever. Earlier this week, Foreign Policy’s website reported that for the first time in decades an Iranian official used the word “Israel”—“not Zionist entity,” “not occupying regime”—to describe the Jewish state. Later acknowledging their story was wrong (“Death to Israel” after…

The bad news of Shutdown '13 seems not to have made things worse as measured by the weekly first time unemployment claims.  Well … not much, anyway.  As this headline from Bloomberg puts it:

WSMV in Tennessee was unable to find a single person who successfully signed up for Obamacare:

The partial federal government shutdown is certainly serving to illuminate the stark divide between what everyday Americans care about—being free to visit monuments to American heroes on the National Mall, watching the Air Force-Navy football game—and what the modern Democratic party cares…

Ari Shavit on Bibi's speech.

The specter of municipal bankruptcies spreading across the land – especially in states like Illinois, California, and Michigan – has been out of mind of late.  Pushed off the agenda by other crises.  But it has not gone away even – or, perhaps, especially – in jurisdictions where the problem was…

The World War II memorial was barricaded earlier today. So was a World War I memorial. And, it turns out, so is the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, which is right near those others on the Mall in Washington, D.C. 

Via the Washington Free Beacon, Senate majority leader Harry Reid was asked by CNN's Dana Bash this afternoon why Senate Democrats won't agree to pass a bill that provides funding for the National Institutes of Health, which includes programs for children with cancer. 

The Washington Post today printed President Obama's letter to all federal employees, which was sent yesterday. The printed version appears on B4 of the paper's Metro section, "The Federal Worker" page, and is titled, "President gives shutdown notice while praising public servants."

The process of bringing what was then called "Red China" into the light and joining it with the rest of the world began with ping pong.  Some seem to think Twitter will be the agent that accomplishes the same thing with Iran.  As Nathan Olivarez-Giles at The Verge reports:

Sometimes timing is everything. Yesterday was day one of the federal government shutdown, and one of the biggest stories of the day was the barricading of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., nearly preventing a group of 92 veterans from Mississippi who had been flown in on an Honor…

Fred Barnes, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Showing the good sense for which it is famous, the federal government—specifically the Obama Department of Defense—has announced its plans to cancel the nationally televised Air Force-Navy football game on Saturday, thereby jeopardizing millions of dollars (and inconveniencing a great many…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Mark Hemingway on his view of the government shutdown from inside the Beltway.

The federal government is shutdown. That means only federal government employees that are deemed "essential" are going in to work.

At least four National Park Service workers are erecting a barricade around the World War II memorial, John McCormack reports:

Not all parks are closed during the present unpleasantness.  Recreational Resource Management is announcing on its website that:

John McCormack reports on Twitter that a World War I Memorial is closed due to the federal government shutdown. However, a sign posted by the National Park Service says that despite the memorial's closure, there is an exception "for 1st Amendment activities."

Lost in the shuffle of last week's German elections was the plight of the Green party. It was understandable, of course. Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats dominated. The Free Democrats fell out of the Bundestag. And the CDU is meeting with Green party officials to discuss a potential partnership…

Well, at least Vice President Joe Biden has some staff on hand for the government shutdown. Otherwise, who else would've edited his daily schedule sent out to the press?

The congressional GOP has finally taken a position in its budget struggle with the Obama administration that maximizes its chances for a decent outcome.  Unfortunately, it only got there after going through several other steps first, a process that may have jeopardized the advantage they should be…

The text of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech today at the United Nations (via Haaretz):

Harry Reid, speaking earlier today on the Senate floor about the government shutdown:

A CNN reporter tried to sign up for Obamacare, but wasn't able to because of a glitch:

One year after renewing its ties with Naval ROTC, Columbia University held a welcome ceremony for its returning midshipmen yesterday afternoon.

Congressman Tom Cotton of Arkansas was blocked from signing up for Obamacare due to glitches earlier today on the healthcare.gov website. Cotton tweeted the two separate error messages he encountered;

On the very day the Obamacare insurance marketplaces opened for business, a new topic appeared on the HealthCare.gov website:

Michelle Obama will not be tweeting as frequently, due to the federal government shutdown. The announcement was made today on ... the first lady's Twitter account. 

Jacqueline Klimas of the Washington Times reports that the Obama administration has issued a ruling that members of Congress and their staff will be able to enroll in health insurance plans, paid for mostly by taxpayer dollars, that cover elective abortions:

Virginia-based trade publication Politico says that President Obama is winning by shutting down the government.

Our upcoming WEEKLY STANDARD cruise had me thinking (only a bit!) about blackjack, since the ship's casino is occasionally (rarely!) frequented after dinner by TWS editors and guests. I remember being told on a previous cruise by a real gambler that the characteristic error of occasional blackjack…

As the Washington Post reports, nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives have voted to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate.  The nine are as follows:  Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Dan Maffei (N.Y.), Sean Maloney (N.Y.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Steven Horsford (Nev.), Ron Barber (Ariz.), John…

A Minnesota affiliate reports that MNSure, the state's Obamacare exchange, is down due to a glitch:

The federal government has shutdown. So what does this mean for the White House? Vice President Joe Biden keeps 12 staffers and President Barack Obama keeps 129.