February 2014

Matthew Continetti on Jim Messina, empire builder.

Kiev

After delivering remarks on Ukraine, and warning Russia, President Obama headed over to DNC where it's "officially happy hour with the Democratic party."

Amid reports that Russian military forces have entered Ukraine, CNN reports that U.S. officials are calling the incursion an "uncontested arrival," not necessarily "an invasion," and that this distinction is "key."

Amendments to Arizona's religious freedom law were demagogued to death this week by a mob of pundits and politicians who warned that the law would usher in a new era of Jim Crow for gay people. "You can believe anything you want," said CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin. "You can't turn away gay people…

A Capitol Hill source source says that Senate Democrats will not produce a budget this year. The news is expected to come from Senator Patty Murray's office at 3 p.m. today, as part of a Friday afternoon news dump. Murray is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Writing at the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel points out that the IRS targeting of conservative groups has only gotten worse:

In an interview with Fusion's Jorge Ramos, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards was asked, "When does life start? When does a human being become a human being?"

The political action committee associated with Arkansas Democratic senator Mark Pryor received a maximum donation from Koch Industries, despite the fact that Pryor, as well as many other Democrats, has frequently criticized the influence of the Koch brothers in an attempt to raise funds.

Hard to imagine anyone running for anything as a proud and unequivocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act. Anyone, that is, this side of Joe Biden. Democratic candidates for the House and Senate are already running ads asserting, essentially, I was for it before I said we had to fix it. And now,…

Cotten Timberlake at Bloomberg reports:

The White House's Let's Move campaign released the following video of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden spending time together through exercise. Watch the video below:

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees aren't necessarily better at investing in stocks than everyone else, but they are much better at getting out of bad investments before the "bad news" hits. That's according to a new paper by Shivaram Rajgopal and Roger M. White, called, "Stock…

A Florida TV station reports that a man has spent 50-60 hours trying to cancel his Obamacare plan, and he still can't get off it:

Seniors disapprove of Obamacare at higher rates than other influential voting blocs and their opinion of the law could sway which political party they support in the midterm elections, according to a Republican poll shared with the Washington Examiner.

The GOP's frontrunner for Vice President in 2016.

Radio host Hugh Hewitt makes the case that the GOP is "suicidal." In a piece with the headline, "The Tone-Deaf, Insulated, Suicidal D.C. GOP," Hewitt writes:

Christopher J. Griffin and Robert Zarate of the Foreign Policy Initiative write:

Senator Marco Rubio will unveil "new policy ideas" at a Google's Washington, D.C. headquarters on Monday, spokesman Alex Conant announced on Twitter.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is everywhere. The former KGB officer has used virtually everything at hand to catapult himself as well as his country, the shell of a once mighty empire, on to the world stage. Whether it’s Putin’s determination to host the Winter Olympics in a semi-tropical…

There are several reports that Attorney General Eric Holder has been taken to the hospital with chest pain:

A New York pet store owner has decided not to expand his business because of $100,000 in new costs from Obamacare:

Jack Kingston, the longtime Republican congressman from Georgia and a U.S. Senate candidate, is out with his first TV ad of the primary season. The 30-second spot will introduce Kingston, a South Georgian based in Savannah, to the rest of the state, particularly the Atlanta media market. The…

First Lady Michelle Obama wants to make changes to the Nutrition Facts label. It is all "part of an effort to help families make healthier choices," according to the White House.

The South Koreans are reporting that North Korea fired off four short-range missiles today. "South Korea says North Korea has fired four suspected short-range missiles into its eastern waters," reports the Associated Press. 

The headline from The Hill reads:

A bipartisan group of law professors, including both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage, has sent Arizona governor Jan Brewer a letter explaining the religious freedom bill now sitting on her desk has been "egregiously misrepresented" by its critics.

Marco Rubio delivered a speech on Iran on the Senate floor and called on Congress to take action:

A Republican congressman will run for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Mark Udall, the Denver Post reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section of our March 3, 2014 issue.

Harold Ramis died on Monday morning. Having written, directed (or written and directed) five of the funniest movies of the last 40 years, I think it's safe to put him on the short list for Funniest Guy of His Generation.

There appears to be a new Obamacare strategy on the left: to tell people their Obamacare horror stories are made up. First, Harry Reid said, "Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America."

As Andrew Tilghman at Military Times reports, Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, is telling the troops that, while they may not be getting much in the way of pay raises, they will be better off for it and that:

Rodrigo Campos at Reuters reports that:

Harry Reid spoke about the Obamacare "horror stories" on the Senate floor this morning. He said that "all are untrue."

Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry was joined in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department in Washington, D.C. by Catherine M. Russell, ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague for a "Discussion on Ending and Preventing Sexual Violence…

News broke this week that under a plan released by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the United States Army will be reduced to its smallest force since before World War II.  Though not directly related to that plan, another announcement this week by the Defense Department gives, perhaps, a taste of…

During a celebration of African-American History Month, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I may be a white boy, but I can jump." The comments were made at Biden's home, the Naval Observatory.

President Obama thanked the group that used to be his reelection campaign, Organizing for Action, in event tonight in Washington. 

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on President Obama's defense cuts.

The Associated Press reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with Hoover Institution Senior Fellow James Ceaser on his recent feature story, The Great Disappointment of 2013.

Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican, spoke Monday on the Senate floor about the reign of oppression in his parents' native Cuba and in Venezuela. Rubio gave the address after Iowa Democratic senator Tom Harkin gave a rosy evaluation of Cuba after a recent trip there. Drawing on the example of…

Ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg was arrested earlier today as part of raid conducted by counterterrorism officials in the UK. Begg has spent most of his time living in the UK following his release from Guantanamo in 2005. He is one of the most prolific anti-Guantanamo advocates.

When President Obama, and (before that) candidate Obama, was on top, they loved him.  All the tinsel talents, that is, who judge people by their ratings.  Now, as Jonathan Easley and Elise Viebeck of The Hill write:

Vice President Dick Cheney ripped President Obama's defense drawdown in a phone conversation with Sean Hannity:

German chancellor Angela Merkel is in Israel visiting Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This photo, apparently taken by photographer Marc Israel Sellem of the Jerusalem Post is making waves:

It's been almost a year since THE WEEKLY STANDARD quoted Philip Larkin’s great 1969 poem, “Homage to a Government." Yesterday the Obama administration released its 2015 defense budget, shrinking the Army to its lowest size since 1940 and reducing base defense spending to less than 3 percent of GDP.…

President Obama has released a statement mourning the loss of filmmaker Harold Ramis:

Details of the Healthcare.gov rescue in the fall of 2013 continue to dribble out via months-old contracts and modifications posted online.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) exercised two contract modifications in quick succession in October/November to increase the cloud…

Majority of Americans now think foreign leaders don't respect Obama.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on President Obama's influence with foreign leaders and Ted Cruz's role in the GOP.

The Republican chairman of the House Budget committee criticized the Obama administration's plans to shrink the defense budget in a statement. 

Reuters is reporting that Russian high officials are expressing “grave doubts” about developments in the Ukraine.

The Obama administration is wasting no time in showing support for the new government forming in Ukraine.  The State Department has announced that Deputy Secretary of State William Burns will visit Kiev, Ukraine on a February 25 to 26 trip that will include a stop in Istanbul, Turkey, as well.…

Malfunctioning health care websites don’t come cheap. And as long as everything else related to the Affordable Care Act seems to be gummed up, why not:

The political committee for former Montana senator Max Baucus, a Democrat, wrote a large check to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee just days before being confirmed as the new U.S. ambassador to China. According to the DSCC's public filings, Friends of Max Baucus made a donation of…

President Obama and Senate Democrats have gone to great lengths to secure the appointment of executive-branch officers and judges and thus help advance his policies and programs. Obama has made recess appointments in a way no president before him did, an action now being challenged in National…

Last week, South by Southwest—the hugely influential technology and music festival held in Austin every spring—announced its keynote speaker for 2014. The keynote speaker last year was Elon Musk, of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors fame. Other South by Southwest keynotes in recent years have been…

Edward Snowden’s revelations about the foreign and domestic surveillance practices of the National Security Agency have inspired a great deal of anger around the world, but nowhere has the fury been stronger than in Germany. “Goodbye, Friends!” read the front page of Die Zeit last November, when it…

The Scrapbook hesitates to kick a football town when it’s in the dumps, but we are baffled by the crazy news coming out of Cleveland. And no, we’re not talking about the Cleveland Browns coaching drama.

Hazel Motes, the hyperanxious protagonist of Flannery O’Connor’s great novella Wise Blood, finds himself so bedeviled by the demands of religious belief that he rebels by founding a religion of his own: The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ. The mainline Protestant churches of the twentieth…

Recently, a close friend told me that he had to cut our conversation short because he had tickets to see Steve Martin and Edie Brickell in concert. He clearly expected me to covet his immense good fortune, though my immediate reaction to this statement was, “Better you than I.” Then, “There but for…

Never before in history have liberal clichés about the evils and the rapacity of capitalism been combined so ironically as they are in The Lego Movie, a gargantuan triumph at the box office in its first weekend. This fast, flashy, colorful, and intermittently hilarious movie—from the…

On February 4 the Congressional Budget Office dropped a bombshell. Analysts there found that Obamacare’s structure will create an enormous implicit tax on work, such that people on the lower end of the economic scale will have an incentive to quit their jobs or scale back to part time to maximize…

Seems like this is the season for showing the American automobile some love. Also, the town that the automobile built—Detroit, aka the Motor City, where packs of feral dogs now roam the streets and den up in vacant lots between the abandoned buildings. Detroit, these days, seems far more deserving…

On February 11, writing for the Washington Post, Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers ably summarized the latest “bad week for Obamacare.” The Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obamacare will cause “a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to…

Two weeks ago the Treasury Department sanctioned a senior al Qaeda official, Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov, also known as Jafar al-Uzbeki, for facilitating the flow of foreign fighters into Syria. The Levant appears to be ground zero in a struggle between al Qaeda and an Iranian-led axis of terror…

It was not, one assumes, the kind of review F. Scott Fitzgerald had hoped for.

The president just signed into law the Agricultural Act of 2014, a multiyear, comprehensive agricultural, rural, and nutrition policy measure. As legislation goes, it was rather unremarkable. What was remarkable was the path it followed to approval. Unlike most farm bill debates, which tend to be…

In a recently leaked private phone call, an EU foreign policy official, Helga Schmid, grumbled to the EU’s ambassador to Kiev that it was “very annoying” that the United States had criticized the EU for being “too soft” to impose sanctions on Ukraine. Criticism may be annoying, but EU softness is a…

With a presidential election less than two months away, all eyes in Afghanistan should be on the coming vote. It could be Afghanistan’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power, and 11 candidates are running. Instead, Kabul is buzzing over the actions of term-limited outgoing president Hamid Karzai,…

"So Barbie is posing for the 50th anniversary Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, histrionically titled SI Swim Legends. I get it, I do. She is 55 years old; I’m sure it’s extremely flattering to be asked. And although I’m a feminist, and I’m trying to raise a daughter to value herself for a million…

A number of things seem to have “gotten us through” the Great Depression—Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, FDR’s presidential oratory, the movie musicals of Busby Berkeley—but the fact that one of them was a 6-year-old child who sang and danced and acted like a veteran is nothing short of amazing. So…

On December 20, Cover Oregon—one of 14 state-based Obamacare insurance exchanges—began robocalling all Oregonians who had attempted to get health coverage through the state’s new marketplace. “If you haven’t heard from us by December 23, it is unlikely your application will be processed for…

News from academia! “President Salovey and I,” writes Yale’s provost, “have invited a distinguished group of academic leaders to a diversity summit at Yale on February 11-12, 2014. Their visit will include a series of discussions with faculty and administrators about the challenges of diversifying…

In an essay on Winston Churchill, the late British psychoanalyst Anthony Storr mentions that Churchill, at age 11, expressed a desire to play the cello, but that the interest “was not encouraged, and soon died out.” What might have been, in Churchill’s case, is intriguing to Storr: “It is possible…

Oh, what fun smokers won’t be having in 2014. As of New Year’s Day, Boston joined six other large cities banning smoking in its 251 city parks. The fine for violation is $250 and includes anyone caught “vaping” a smokeless electronic cigarette. In Oregon, there is now a $500 fine for smoking in a…

Two truths tend to strike people around middle age: Money buys less than it once did, and manners are in decline. 

Paradise is generally something that seems very far away, especially in mid-winter. Paradise Planned is a compendious reminder that paradise, or a decent shot at its earthly manifestation, is rarely far off at all. 

When Anders Breivik went on his shooting rampage in Norway in 2011, he left behind a curious and lengthy manifesto identifying himself as Christian with zionist sympathies. The media focused narrowly on his pro-Israel Christian views when discussing his motivation, even though the addled manifesto…

The boss made the argument this morning on ABC's This Week that conservatives have to be serious about making work pay:

Bill Kristol, with Tom Friedman of the New York Times and Martha Raddatz, discussed the crisis in Ukraine this morning on ABC's This Week:

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, has just published a very timely book— especially for anyone interested in the likely success of the Obama administration’s diplomatic engagement with Iran. Dancing with the…

Some three hundred years ago Sir Walter Scott asked, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.” Well, in America corporations are legally deemed  “persons,” so the answer to Scott’s question is “Yes,” at least when it comes to tax…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his recent feature story on new revelations about Benghazi.

The movies folks responsible for the making of House of Cards seem to have been reading their own reviews or taking a page out of their own (ludicrous) scripts.  Or something.  As Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post reports:

But as the New York Times is reporting:

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg met with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at United Nations headquarters today for Bloomberg's new role as United Nations special envoy for cities and climate change.  At the photo op, the secretary general was effusive in his praise of Bloomberg, even…

Four United States Senators have a written a letter to FBI director James Comey about the indictment of author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza. Senators Charles Grassley, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee are the four senators, all Republicans, to have…

The new administration line on the state of things with Obamacare appears to be, Not bad … close enough for government work … if the kids would just shape up and do the right thing …

Matthew Continetti writes at the Washington Free Beacon on the consequences of a feckless foreign policy. He channels Thomas Hardy and his 1915 poem, "The Convergence of the Twain." Here's an excerpt:

President Obama's budget marks the end of "austerity," reports the Washington Post. 

First Lady Michelle Obama joined Jimmy Fallon and Will Ferrell, who were both dressed in drag, for a sketch last night on the Tonight Show.

First Lady Michelle Obama told Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon last night that "young people are knuckleheads," which is why they need to get Obamacare:

Not just Kiev: Photos from protests in Venezuela.

President Obama told Democratic governors that "we know how to win national elections." But, he said, Democrats need to win state elections and focus on this year's mid-term elections.

A friend who lives in Kiev passes along this note calls it "now a war zone."

The 2014 Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Georgia remains effectively tied up among the five top candidates, according to a new poll. Businessman David Perdue, a first-time candidate and cousin of former governor Sonny Perdue, has the lead with 12.7 percent, the Daily Caller reports.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with Sean Trende, a Senior Elections Analyst at RealClearPolitics on what the 2014 landscape looks like for Republican senate hopefuls.

Two leading Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say that Michael Morell, former deputy director and twice acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, provided an account of his role on Benghazi that was often highly misleading and at times deliberately false.

President Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone about the violence in Ukraine. The two leaders agreed "to stay in close touch in the days ahead," according to a White House read-out of the call.

A new Presbyterian study resource is being condemned by Jewish groups for its harsh anti-Israel rhetoric. But the controversy over the booklet could actually help defeat anti-Israel divestment, which the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly will consider once again in June, after defeating it…

Laura Ingraham, writing in the Washington Post:

A recently released Department of Agriculture (USDA) report on the "Food Assistance Landscape" for the fiscal year 2013 shows that for the second year in a row, participation in the federal government's SNAP (food stamps) program has increased despite a corresponding drop in the unemployment rate,…

One Republican candidate hoping to replace Oklahoma's Tom Coburn in the U.S. Senate is out with a new ad introducing himself to voters statewide. T.W. Shannon, the 35-year former speaker of the state house, has a 60-second television spot highlighting his biography as a "sixth-generation Oklahoman"…

The office of First Lady Michelle Obama is taking credit for moving the nation "towards a new, healthier norm," according to a press release celebrating the four year anniversary of the "Let's Move" initiative.

At first glance, a page on the Health and Human Services (HHS) website seems to be giving that agency's official advice on the "The Health Benefits of Nootropics," a classification of purportedly memory-enhancing drugs.  The page is found on the website's subdomain of the Assistant Secretary for…

Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the number of Obamacare enrollees will likely fall short by one or two million people.

George F. Will on the end of unions.

Republican Matt Doheny, a House candidate in upstate New York, lost his two previous bids for the seat. His more recent defeat, in 2012, came after photos and video surfaced of Doheny, then engaged, kissing one woman and canoodling with her and another woman outside a Washington, D.C., restaurant.…

Buying local has, in recent years, become somewhat of a fad movement among trade unionists, greens, foodies, and anti-free traders. Believers in the movement -- usually the foodies -- often refer to themselves as “locavores.”

A couple weeks ago the great Kay Hymowitz gave New York Times readers the vapors by writing a data-driven account of how single motherhood creates sub-optimal outcomes for both the mothers and their children. The piece was titled, "How Single Motherhood Hurts Kids."

Could President Obama’s recent focus on climate change and the environment be a diversion?  A way of softening up some of his supporters for the disappointment if his administration should approve construction of the Keystone Pipeline?  

Republican Senate candidate Tom Cotton has a four-point lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in a new poll of the Arkansas race. According to the new Impact Management Group poll, 46 percent of likely Arkansas voters said they would support Cotton, the first-term congressman from Dardanelle, and…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section of our February 24, 2014 issue.

As the clock ticks down toward the end of Obamacare's first open enrollment period on March 31, the White House continues to invest considerable resources in publicizing the president's signature domestic program.  On Thursday, Vice President Biden will host a 30-minute "off the record" conference…

Republican investment banker and two-time candidate for Congress Matt Doheny is running again for a House seat in upstate New York. Roll Call reports:

A White House spokesman, Ben Rhodes, tells the press that President Obama is considering "taking action against individuals who are responsible for acts of violence within Ukraine.”

What we have been told is a “recovery” has a way of throwing off false trails.  We were told to expect a robust performance, this year, from the housing sector yet, yesterday, for example, we learn that home-builder confidence has not merely fallen, but cratered.   As Reuters reports:

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an IDF base on the Golan Heights that treats wounded Syrian civilians who safely made their way across the border. Netanyahu visited the wounded and then later, surrounded by IDF doctors, nurses and soldiers, addressed the press in this…

Americans for Prospertiy, a conservative tax-exempt organization, has a new 60-second television ad running in Michigan that criticizes Democratic congressman Gary Peters for his vote and continued support of Obamacare. The ad features Michigan citizen Julie Boonstra, who describes how she was…

The Department of Defense (DOD) has just announced that the public will be invited to vote in a video competition called "Fight the Enemy."  In this case, the enemy is tobacco.  The innovation office of the military's assistant secretary of defense for health affairs is sponsoring the competition…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with executive editor Fred Barnes on President Obama's approval rating among those who voted for him and how he keeps finding new ways to talk about all the wrong issues.

Yesterday, in front of a Presidents’ Day crowd at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, House majority leader Eric Cantor unloaded one of the most comprehensive critiques to date of the Obama White House’s foreign policy. “An America That Leads” hit all the salient points—from…

Lawrence Freedman’s post, “Iran, History, and Strategy by Analogy,” in the strategic and military affairs blog “War on the Rocks,” is a thorough and respectful engagement with Elliott Abrams’s recent article in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, “A Misleading Cold War Analogy: Don’t count on containing Iran.” 

The Swiss airforce only works during normal business hours. And don't expect it to react between noon and 1:30 -- that's lunch time.

If you were concerned that the Affordable Care Act might add the the nation’s unemployment woes, as predicted by the Congressional Budget Office, then you might take heart from what a senior administration official is saying:

The Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Iowa is wide open, according to a new survey of GOP voters in the Hawkeye State. Mark Jacobs, a businessman and self-funding candidate, leads the pack with 22 percent, while state senator and Iraq veteran Joni Ernst earns 11 percent. Two more candidates,…

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a front-page story (“Spying by NSA Ally Entangled US Law Firm”) by James Risen (a Times reporter) and Laura Poitras (a freelancer who has had the "good fortune" of being a recipient of material stolen from NSA by Edward Snowden). The opening line of…

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius excused the sloppy Spanish-language Obamacare website after being asked about it by a Florida reporter:

An 18-year slump.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, on President's Day and why Obamacare is causing big trouble for President Obama and Democrats.

One Colorado Republican running for the U.S. Senate this year has a message for voters: He cares. Ken Buck, who is running to challenge incumbent Democrat Mark Udall, has a new ad in a series touting his record of helping people in his role as district attorney of Weld County, north of the Denver…

The White House is recognizing President's Day 2014 with a blog post entitled "Dive into the Presidency for President's Day."  The post features a biography of Thomas Jefferson, a high-definition photo of a painting of George Washington, a special interactive gallery that includes "pages from…

The Hill reports:

An interview former NBA star Charles Barkley conducted with President Obama aired last night on TNT. In the interview, President Obama defended Obamacare and called signing up for the health care program "just part of growing up":

Jerusalem

Perhaps the most unpleasant aspect of my otherwise quite enjoyable job as a college professor has been the requirement to assign grades to students. Given that we’re now about halfway through implementation of the Affordable Care Act—which even President Obama is happy to call “Obamacare”—it seems…

There’s an anecdote here that perfectly captures the choreographer-director Bob Fosse (1927-1987). At the end of the musical Pippin (1972), the hero is supposed to say he feels “trapped but happy” with his new family. Over the protests of his team, Fosse cut the last two words, deliberately sending…

Successful entertainers are often awful people. If you put fame, wealth, and narcissism in a blender, the resulting brew can be toxic. Fame causes ordinary folk to worship the entertainer and to view him as a superior being to be served. Wealth provides the means and the opportunity for indulgence.…

Last month, just 12 days after taking office as Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring abandoned his state’s defense of its marriage laws in a federal lawsuit brought by same-sex couples. Switching sides to join forces with the same-sex couples, Herring explained that he had concluded that the…

Appearing at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, President Obama gave a speech on the growing threat to religious liberty around the world. As Obama speeches go, the message was a good one. But as is typical for Obama, the message was at odds with his commitment to the issue:

Los Angeles

Men, it is said, do not like to go to doctors. Clearly I qualify here. I have long considered myself a Christian Scientist, minus the Christian part. A realist in my taste in fiction, I am a fantasist in my views about physiology. I prefer, that is, to pretend that I do not have such organs as a…

What are we to make of Floyd Abrams?

Cass Sunstein had to be the happiest academic in America following President Obama’s recent State of the Union address. After all, in just four short years he got his analysis of how people need help making good choices—a nudge in the right direction he likes to call it—from manuscript to a brand…

A graduate of two Ivy League institutions, the author of one highly regarded book (the less said about The Audacity of Hope, the better), and a former lecturer at the University of Chicago, President Obama has a reputation for being something of an intellectual. It’s clearly part of his…

The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus), as its name would suggest, is a longtime denizen of the frozen north, customarily ranging in the polar regions, upper Canada, Alaska, and northern Eurasia. In recent years, however, it has been migrating southward and, during the past few decades, has been sighted…

Income inequality in the United States has been increasing for a generation. The share of pretax income received by the top 1 percent of earners rose from 7.8 percent in 1973 to 17.4 percent in 2010. A broader and widely used measure of inequality—the Gini coefficient—indicates that inequality for…

Let’s be clear. Cut through the spin. Get right down to it. In the Republican Senate primary in Georgia, there’s only one candidate with a successful, lifelong career in business. There’s only one candidate who has the experience and network of a statewide campaign. There’s only one candidate with…

Martha Bayles, one of the great unsung critics of the baby boom generation, has written a book that is unusual for her. This is a brisk, how-policy-has-gone-wrong-and-what-to-do-about-it book, which conceals in its pages something more: a brilliant and courageous meditation on the difficulty of…

Chalk it up to the polarized times we live in—another sign of just how bad things have gotten. The past few weeks have seen a dazzling burst of intellectual activity and new ideas on the right: Republican elected officials, think tanks, journals, and columnists exploding with fresh thinking about…

Last month, the House Republican leadership released its guiding principles on immigration reform. While mostly boilerplate, the document suggests that the House GOP envisions a bill similar to last year’s Senate compromise spearheaded by Marco Rubio: enhanced border security in exchange for…

While in the popular Portlandia-inspired imagination, Portland, Oregon, may be nothing but an endless array of organic food shops, “fair-trade” coffee roasters, and “subaltern”-themed, not-for-profit bookstores, Portland is still a midsized American city with the typical problems that midsized…

Secretary of State John Kerry said today in Indonesia that climate change is "the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction."

Janet Yellen made her first appearance before Congress since assuming the chair of the Federal Reserve Board and produced the yawns she was seeking, even thanking several of her interlocutors for calling her “unexciting.” Knowing that some Fed critics are seeking to rein in the bank’s independence…

Poll: Voters wish Obamacare had never passed.

Looking ahead to 2016, political analyst Charlie Cook suggests what few have so far: that Hillary Clinton will not run for president. Here's how Cook begins his column Friday:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on Obamacare and Valentine's Day.

Over at the Washington Free Beacon today, Adam Kredo’s report confirms what THE WEEKLY STANDARD has been reporting since the November meeting in Geneva where the P5+1 came to an interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear program: the sanctions relief that the Obama White House offered was…

Vice President Biden spoke to Democratic members of the House of Representatives.  He was upbeat and feisty, as Emma Dumain of Roll Call  reports, telling his audience that:

The highest rents in the country aren't in major metropolises like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago--they're in Williston, North Dakota. Business Insider reports that the highest average monthly rents for entry-level, one-bedroom apartments can be found in Williston, a small town in northwestern…

Millions of people get their music through Pandora and this being the age when no data is left unmined, the preferences of this vast audience will soon be used for political purposes.  As Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Wall Street Journal reports:

A new poll of likely voters in Michigan shows GOP candidates for U.S. Senate and the governorship ahead of their Democratic counterparts. According to the Detroit Free Press, the latest EPIC-MRA poll shows incumbent Republican governor Rick Snyder leading his challenger, Democrat Mark Schauer, 47…

And it is playing hob with the expectations of economists, as Jeanna Smialek at Bloomberg reports:

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, describes how many in the mainstream media tried to dismiss the Beacon's extensive reporting on archives from Hillary Clinton's close friend during Clinton's time as First Lady. Here's Continetti:

Laborare est orare: Work is worship. Once upon a time that Latin cry arose from scores of medieval monasteries. Their monks believed that—as Carlyle later put it--“all true Work is Religion: and whatsoever Religion is not work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Spinning Dervishes, or where it…

Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue says in an op-ed that the U.S. needs more low-skill immigration because Americans are not "qualified" or "willing" to do such work.

Politico reported on Tuesday that Mitch McConnell’s Tea Party challenger, investor Matt Bevin, supported the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program, contrary to Bevin's present claims. The letter, signed by Bevin and the investment firm's vice president, said TARP was a "positive" development and…

Politico reported on Tuesday that Mitch McConnell’s Tea Party challenger, investor Matt Bevin, supported the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program, contrary to his claims. The letter, signed by Bevin and the investment firm's vice president, said TARP was a "positive" development and included the…

Those who have wondered how Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius could have been unaware of the manifold problems with the Affordable Care Act website before its disastrous rollout now have an answer.  Sort of.  Seems she was busy, as Jonathan Easley and Kevin Bogardus of The…

Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia sent out a message on his Senate office's official Twitter account that claimed Republicans would blame this week's winter storms on Obamacare. Warner, who is up for reelection this year, deleted the message, though it remains recorded at Politiwoops, a…

Six years ago Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated when the headrest in his car was detonated in Damascus. While Israeli intelligence neither denies nor confirms its involvement, the Mossad is generally believed to have been responsible for his death. And yet there is no shortage of…

As reported in the Washington Post on February 3, tough punishment of Saudi Arabians who travel abroad for jihad has been decreed by King Abdullah, absolute ruler of the desert monarchy.

Braving the weather, the BLS has released the weekly first-time claims numbers. They were off, a bit, on the high side. The “expected” figure: 330,000.

In the early days of the Obama administration, “smart power” was all the rage—and not just on the foreign policy scene. In April 2009, National Public Radio reported how one Allentown, Pennsylvania, mother was saving more than a hundred dollars each month on her electric bill. Tammy Yeakel’s power…

On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that enrollment in the Obamacare private exchanges increased by 1,146,071 in January. In December, HHS reported 1,788,000 enrollees in the month of December. That suggests a drop-off of approximately 500,000, or 29 percent. (See…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with executive editor Terry Eastland on whether the courts will weigh in against President Obama's tendency to change the rules without the input of Congress.

Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a conference call Wednesday afternoon to tout the fact that 3.3 million Americans have signed up for health insurance plans through the Obamacare exchanges. But Sebelius and other HHS officials declined to say how many of those Americans…

Remember a few years ago when Iranian officials had to intervene to prevent Hezbollah gunmen from turning on their Syrian patrons? Few people do. Today, the "axis of resistance" is as strong as ever, with Iran and Hezbollah fully committed to fighting for the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s regime,…

The Affordable Care Act has been subjected to many revisions, alterations, waivers, and do-overs since it became law some four years ago.  Twenty-seven of them, according to one report.  And while the cumulative effect has been to make the law a lot less shiny (even Democrats are now running…

The FBI released a press release with this headline just days before Valentine's Day: "Looking for Love? Beware of Online Dating Scams." Criminals use dating sites, too, says the FBI.

Gossip in Jerusalem suggests that many Israelis misunderstand John Kerry’s obsession with the peace process: They believe that the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate is using Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as a platform to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 nomination. That’s not likely.…

A new TV ad running in Louisiana from Americans for Prosperity focuses on how the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has negatively affected citizens' lives. Democratic senator Mary Landrieu, who voted for Obamacare in 2010, is up for reelection in Louisiana this year.

President Obama  recently characterized al Qaeda as a nearly-spent force “on the path to defeat,” an organization whose “remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.”

A new poll of likely Alaska voters finds incumbent Democratic senator Mark Begich leading a potential Republican challenger by 12 points with the inclusion of an independent candidate. Begich, who was first elected in 2008 over scandal-plagued Republican Ted Stevens, has 45 percent support in the…

Kevin Faulconer, a Republican city councilman, won Tuesday's special election for mayor of San Diego. Faulconer defeated Democrat and fellow councilman David Alvarez in the race to fill the seat held by Democrat Bob Filner, who resigned his position last year amid numerous sexual assault…

The dress first lady Michelle Obama wore at last night's state dinner was the topic of discussion last night on CNN: 

The website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was repeatedly hacked on Monday and Tuesday this week by an online drug retailer. A Tuesday Google search of the site, www.globalchange.gov, revealed dozens of pages hawking everything from Xanax to Levitra to Ambien. A partial list is…

President Obama has repeatedly suspended parts of the Affordable Care Act without the consent of Congress. The latest unilateral action happened Monday night, when the administration announced another delay of the employer mandate, the law's provision that businesses with more than 50 employees…

How Republicans should respond to Obama's lawlessness.

This snippet from a union leader’s speech to his membership suggests that he might be getting ready to take to the barricades, knock heads, and get nasty:

The Army’s venerable Reserve Officer Training Corps program is finally getting rebooted.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on his memo to the House GOP, and how the GOP can position itself for a successful 2014.

The campaign of Lindsey Graham, the two-term Republican senator from South Carolina facing several primary challengers this year, is making significant radio and TV ad buys this week in markets around the Palmetto State. The purchase price of the ads is reportedly $220,000.

A conservative news site otherwise known as the Washington Free Beacon couldn't get a shoutout on cable news yesterday for its publication of reporter Alana Goodman's article revealing new details about Hillary Clinton's time in the White House. Watch the video below:

At today’s press conference with French president François Hollande, a member of the French press asked President Obama whether France had replaced Great Britain as America’s closest ally.

Max Boot, writing for the Financial Times:

Tom Coburn, the retiring Republican senator from Oklahoma and an influential conservative, endorsed Ben Sasse in the GOP Senate primary in Nebraska. Roll Call has the story:

Another conservative organization has endorsed congressman Paul Broun in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Georgia. The Madison Project, headed up by former Kansas congressman Jim Ryun, endorsed Broun over four other major GOP candidates.

I understand House Speaker John Boehner has just announced to his conference that he intends to bring the floor of the House a clean debt limit increase. Conservative members of the conference had argued for this course. Conservatives will vote against "Obama's debt increase," but expect it to pass…

The Affordable Care Act is subject, as we learned again yesterday, to fluid interpretation by this administration.  If there are parts of its own law that it finds inconvenient, then it can simply delay implementation of them.  The irregularities of the system now include, as Jonathan Easley of The…

New IRS commissioner John Koskinen is beginning his tenure with some blunt words: If you need IRS help on the telephone, be prepared to wait -- a long time.  The IRS posted a YouTube video of the commissioner's message to taxpayers as the pace of the 2014 filing season picks up.  The commissioner…

A post Monday on the White House blog announced that two paintings by American artist Edward Hopper have been added to the wall of the Oval Office, while a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln was removed.  The copy had been there since Martin Luther King Day in 2010…

Kristol, and others, on who will be in the GOP's 2016 primary field.

President Obama "quipped" today during a visit to Monticello with the French president, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." 

CNBC reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section of our February 17, 2014 issue.

Vice President Biden going off unscripted always makes a day more interesting.  In his most recent bit of spontaneity, he says what in the mouth of a civilian would be a commonplace observation:

A candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, who calls himself a “life-long Republican,” once donated $1,000 to the Senate campaign of Democrat Jon Corzine. Mark Jacobs, a Republican businessman who is running for the Senate seat of retiring Democrat Tom Harkin this year, gave the money to Corzine, the CEO…

New York Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, an author of the Senate immigration bill, may have succeeded in helping Republicans kill his own bill.

The good times roll on in Washington.  But out in the country ...not so much. 

At the Washington Free Beacon, Alana Goodman reports on a trove of archives papers documenting Hillary Clinton's tumultuous tenure as First Lady. Here's an excerpt:

The war in Afghanistan is winding down and al Qaeda is on the run. Perhaps. But the war goes on.

Kiev

Obamacare is failing. Faced with this unpleasant reality, President Obama offered up during his State of the Union address his only remaining defense of his eponymous program: There is no alternative. “[M]y Republican friends…if you have specific plans…tell America what you’d do differently….We all…

Barack Obama’s latest State of the Union address was a dreary, tiresome affair—which, to be fair, could be said of most such addresses by most modern presidents. The only real surprise was how he soft-pedaled the problem of inequality. Pre-speech hype had promised this would be the centerpiece…

"One spring Martin Buber came to Chicago,” Seth Benardete tells us in his Encounters and Reflections, “and [Leo] Strauss was asked to introduce him. .  .  . ‘I have the great pleasure to introduce Martin Buber,’ Strauss began, ‘who is probably the greatest Jewish thinker since Mmm .  .  .’ And…

For reasons too boring to go into, I have recently inherited custodial duties of the family dog. When Buster first arrived, more than a decade ago, we spent a fair amount of time together. I took responsibility for training him with a rigorous program lasting several weeks. To this day, if you ask…

Of the thousands of books on Congress and the legislative process that adorn the shelves of libraries, few tell the story of how bills actually become laws—least of all in a way sure to capture the attention of both practitioners and curious laypeople. Here, Michael Allen does precisely this, and…

President Obama is rushing to implement the six-month interim agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran that went into effect last week. Together with five other world powers, he is now working to negotiate a long-term agreement aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. He regards his…

New London, Conn. 

President Obama’s State of the Union speech brimmed with ideas to increase upward mobility and spur job creation—most of which have been tried previously, without good results. From calling on Congress to raise the minimum wage to announcing the creation of six new “high-tech manufacturing hubs”…

A remarkably depressing Pew survey released last week found that a full 40 percent of Americans now consider themselves “lower class,” or “lower middle class” versus 44 percent who see themselves as “middle class.” As recently as 2008, 53 percent of Americans considered themselves “middle…

"Historical treasure. Do not enter.” 

President Obama has just announced the creation of a new program, which he calls myRA, as part of an overarching agenda he’s implementing, which could well be called myConstitution. 

After the 2012 election, Mitt Romney’s loss prompted questions about the future of conservatism. A year later, the ongoing drama of Obamacare’s failures has seen similar concerns voiced regarding the future of liberalism. So what, exactly, do we mean when we talk about “liberalism”? Conservatives…

The Scrapbook has devoted plenty of column inches over the years to detailing the incestuous relationship between public employers and public employee unions. Every election cycle, union dues—paid with taxpayer dollars—go to Democratic politicians, who, when in office, thank their donors with…

For five years, the Obama administration has touted its success in the war against al Qaeda. In formal addresses, daily press briefings, and campaign speeches top administration officials have celebrated the “decimation” of al Qaeda and predicted its imminent extinction.

I could, if I chose to, make this sentence go on and on and on—forever, really. Don’t worry: I’m not going to do that, but it’s noteworthy that I could. In fact, I have the ability to write a sentence that’s longer than the longest sentence previously written, just by adding another relative…

President Obama couldn’t resist confiding to a recent interviewer, “I am comfortable with complexity.” In fact, he is comfortable with a kind of pseudo-complexity that lends itself to pseudo-thoughtful formulations.

Pete Seeger’s death at the age of 94 has brought forth scores of celebratory tributes. America had long ago showered him with honors, which all but made up for the scorn with which he was once held in the age of the blacklist. Seeger received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill…

Where you stand on President Obama’s State of the Union address last week depends, to some degree, on where you sit. Liberals thought the president was feisty, determined, basking in the glow of historic achievements, throwing down the gauntlet at obstructive Republicans. Conservatives thought the…

Athens, Ga.

Herblock: The Black & the White, a documentary about the editorial cartoonist Herbert Block, had its cable premiere on HBO last week, and we can expect repeated showings for many weeks to come, creating a low-buzz Herblockfest interspersed dizzily among re-airings of Girls. 

President Obama and French President François Hollande will visit Monticello tomorrow afternoon, according to the official White House schedule. It's in the spirit of "the shared values we hold dear:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," says the White House.

Corporations across the country are helping promote Obamacare, including tax preparers Jackson Hewitt, the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves, and Latino-focused television channel Univision. The Los Angeles Times reports:

New analysis by the minority-side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that Obamacare will reduce compensation by more than $1 trillion between 2017-2024. Analysts in that office have produced this chart to show the lost compensation by year:

Mr. Vladimir Putin intends that the current Olympic games be forever stamped with his glory.  Sochi is being protected by a “Ring of Steel.”  Thus has spoken Russia’s current Man of Steel, who sees himself as the rightful descendant of the original, although Mr. Putin’s bared breasts on such…

Democrats are fundraising off the threat that President Barack Obama will be impeached. It would seem, according to the Democratic Party, that the threat of impeachment is coming from Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia.

Continuing his pattern of intruding upon every major event (or at least the ones he’s aware of), President Obama appeared on Friday night’s broadcast of the Winter Olympics, just before the Opening Ceremonies.  When Bob Costas asked, “[D]o you have a message for the United States team?”  Obama…

When economic forecasts prove wrong, it is customary to blame the weather. So cold that consumers stayed home, or so hot that consumers, well, stayed home. So cold that outdoor construction was unexpectedly low, unless of course unusually high temperatures made such work impossible lest heat stroke…

Mitch McConnell down in a new poll.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on the week that was, Obamacare, the Sochi Olympics, immigration reform and the 2014 election cycle.

As Beth Reinhard of National Journal reports, people for whom support of Obamacare is instinctive and unquestioning are not inclined to campaign in support of it.  

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon, on how the New York Times newsroom sounds a lot like high school:

Princeton University is restoring ties with Navy ROTC (NROTC). Starting this fall, students will be able to participate in a cross-town program with Rutgers University, itself established only recently, in March 2012. 

The monthly employment numbers are out and even the New York Times is dismayed.  The economy added 113,000 jobs in January, which was (all together now) unexpectedly short of the 180,000 economists were predicting.  This news:

The Turkish press is reporting that a man attempted to hijack an airplane and demanded to be flown to Sochi, the site of the winter Olympics. 

Secretary of State John Kerry was asked about security at the Olympics. He said he wasn't too concerned, but then brought up the Boston Marathon.

Jeb Bush will not be at next month's Conservative Political Action Conference. Instead, he'll be going on a "business trip."

In response to various media reports on the Iran sanctions bill, the chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, William Kristol, released this statement:

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says Sochi is a "very bad choice to have the Olympics":

Despite my earnest intentions, my family and I are still not covered on the Washington, D.C. Obamacare exchange. I am beginning to despair that I will ever obtain insurance from the exchange.

Obamacare is extremely unpopular in Colorado, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, and that looks like trouble for the state's senior senator, first-term Democrat Mark Udall. In its survey of registered voters in Colorado, Quinnipiac found that 60 percent oppose the health-care law, and only 37…

Nearly two months after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that her agency would create a new Chief Risk Officer (CRO) position to prevent a repeat of the Healthcare.gov debacle, the position is apparently still unfilled.  HHS, however, has continued to solicit…

Documents recently released by the government show that the value of hotels and local transportation contracts for the U.S. delegation to Nelson Mandela's funeral in December were considerably higher than previous estimates.  On December 19, we first reported the cost at about $11 million. However,…

Kerry invokes Vietnam experience in push-back against Israeli cabinet member.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with senior writer Mark Hemingway on why the IRS scandal won't be going away anytime soon.

News of a new and creative way for the recipients of federal grants to spend the money.  Use it to pay lobbyists.  Who will, presumably, work their magic in order to get more federal money, which can then be spent to lobby for yet even more federal money.  

As evidence of increasing heroin use around the country accumulates and the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman puts a face on the problem, the political class sees an opportunity and takes it.  As Humberto Sanchez of Roll Call reports:

In Chicago (where else?) if you are busted for a serious crime you will, as Mark Niquette of Bloomberg reports, likely be:

Michael Doran, writing for Mosaic:

In an interview on Wednesday, CNN's Jake Tapper questioned Secretary of State John Kerry about Iran, the security of the Sochi Olympics, and Syria. On the latter issue, Tapper asked the secretary point blank if the Obama administration's Syria policy had failed:

Testifying before the House Budget Committee yesterday, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf said of Obamacare, “[T]he act creates a disincentive for people to work.” He declared, “[B]y providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income and then…

The CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, said on CNBC this morning that "Obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company."

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Insurers are facing pressure from regulators and lawmakers about plans that offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals, a tactic the industry said is vital to keep down coverage prices in the new health law's marketplaces." 

David Horovitz, writing for the Times of Israel:

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a new study finding that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will cause "a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024."

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a new study finding that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will cause "a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024."

There hasn't been a lot of polling in the Nebraska Republican Senate primary so far, though the four way contest to succeed retiring senator Mike Johanns has been heating up. Today, ConservativeIntel released its poll of Nebraska showing that Shane Osborn and Ben Sasse are in a dead heat:

There hasn't been a lot of polling in the Nebraska's Republican senate primary so far, though the four way contest to succeed retiring senator Mike Johanns has been heating up. Today, ConservativeIntel released its poll of Nebraska showing that Shane Osborn and Ben Sasse are in a dead heat:

ABC reports:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on why the Obamacare jobs numbers are trouble for Democrats.

Detroit’s government by machine-party politics (Democratic, in case you were wondering) resulted in the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.  And the meter is still running.  As Reuters reports:

A lawmaker at a Benghazi hearing stumped U.S. intelligence officials yesterday with this question:

The Sochi Olympics are busy setting some sort of record for glitches and one of them has attracted the attentions of the indefatigable Senator Charles Schumer who is perturbed by the Russian’s unwillingness to allow the importation of yogurt.  

Remember back when the Democrats tried to sell Obamacare to a skeptical citizenry as health care “reform” that would cost “only” $848 billion—far less than a trillion—over a decade?  Indeed, that was the alleged 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions, according to the Congressional…

The head of an Iranian nuclear organization, Ali Akbar, says the "entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on," despite the nuclear deal reached with the United States and other Western nations. Akbar made the comments in an interview with PressTV, an Iranian propaganda outfit.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger blasted the Obama administration's foreign policy in a speech on the House floor yesterday, saying, “Our enemies no longer fear us, and our allies no longer trust us.”

Richard Engel reported last night on NBC that all visitors to the Sochi Olympics are getting hacked as soon as their electronic devices connect to any Russian network:

President Obama, an ex-smoker, released this statement applauding CVs for stopping the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products:

Betrayed by Obamacare.

The White House press secretary says in a statement that President Obama met with his national security team today in the Situation Room to discuss security at the upcoming Olympics in Sochi, Russia. 

The big news from this morning's annual briefing by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) was that for the first time ever, sales of bourbon and Tennessee whiskey exports generated over $1 billion. Admiral Peter Cressy, president of DISCUS, referred to a "whiskey renaissance"…

The Congressional Budget Office has come out with a report on the effects of Affordable Care Act on the U.S. economy.  As Erik Wasson of The Hill  reports, the findings are not pretty.  

It was hardly a surprise when last week’s much-anticipated Geneva II conference bringing representatives of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime together with opposition members came up empty. Nor was it surprising that, as recent press reports show, the administration’s plan to rid Assad of his…

David Wildstein, a former Port Authority official appointed by Governor Chris Christie, leveled a very serious accusation last Friday in a letter released by his lawyer. The letter claimed that “evidence exists … tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when…

Hard to blame anyone for wanting to get out of Washington and flee to some destination where the air is not polluted by politics.  Understandable, then, that as Shane Goldmacher of Government Executive writes:

Curtis Williams, of Oil & Gas Journal, reports that former Energy Secretary Steven Chu had this to say about the Keystone pipeline project:

John Kerry has a new look: a beard.

The U.S. ambassador to Djibouti, Geeta Pasi, says that "The preeminent security threat to the United States continues to be from al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents around the world." Pasi made the remarks at the 2014 Gulf of Aden Regional Counterterrorism Forum in Djibouti, according to a…

The Washington Post reports that Sandra Fluke is preparing a run for Congress in California. 

At a time when there is no shortage of bad news, one hopeful sign has been the reintegration of ROTC programs on university campuses that not that long ago shunned any connection.  For those who care about the long-term health of civil-military relations, this is a step in the right direction. …

We can be proud of what we achieved in Iraq.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with executive editor Fred Barnes on the pre-Super Bowl interview Fox News's Bill O'Reilly had with President Obama, and how it shows what a bad job the White House Press Corps is doing.

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

David Ignatius has been writing from Israel recently. His column from late last week included the following passage illustrating why Israeli-Palestinian peace might "still prove insoluble":

The Keystone Pipeline, which has been studied for more than five years, will be studied some more.  A State Department study was generally thought to be the conclusive and it has now been delivered. But we are told by the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, that there is more studying to…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with literary editor Philip Terzian on the Books & Arts section of our February 10, 2014 issue and an interview with Ron Radosh on his piece The Red Warbler.

Ezekiel Emanuel—Rahm’s older brother and the man who, as far back as 2009, current Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse warned was “quarterbacking the details” of Obamacare—has authored a New York Times op-ed in which he criticizes the proposed alternative released last week by Senators Coburn,…

Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and Senate minority leader, is tied with the leading Democratic candidate, secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes, in the race, according to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports. McConnell's Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin, meanwhile,…

After a couple reports on the governor of Oregon's disastrous rollout of the state's Obamacare exchange, Governor John Kitzhaber abruptly canceled an interview with affiliate KATU:

Al Qaeda is not on the run. And John Kerry, according to a report in Bloomberg, is finally admitting it.

Consumers whose sign-ups on the HealthCare.gov website left them convinced that:

In the immediate days leading up to President Obama’s January 17 speech on the National Security Agency, news stories and leaks from the White House suggested the president would largely ignore the set of overhauls that had been put forward by his own presidential review panel—Peter Baker’s New…

There are a lot of Republican politicians who ostensibly favor the repeal of Obamacare.  But there are a lot fewer who give the impression of having the ability and determination to lead the way in bringing about that nation-defining result.

In an interview with Vulture.com, Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels concedes that mocking Republicans is easier than going after Democrats.

The boss, who just joined ABC News as a contributor, with Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, Paul Krugman, and Ana Navarro, yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

Brooklyn

The last time I heard from Alex, he emailed from Kabul. “Our lengthy discussions about your trip to St. Petersburg were apt, because you are like Russia: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” As was not uncommon with an email from Alex, I didn’t quite know what to say, so I didn’t…

If you read only one book this year to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, let me suggest Wounded rather than one of the more conventional histories. 

At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, the pro-life Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, was barred from speaking. The message was if you are pro-life, you have no place in the Democratic party.

The place to begin a visit to this important exhibition is with a sculptural work it doesn’t include: the Dying Gaul, on loan to the gallery from the Capitoline Museum in Rome. This fallen warrior’s powerful presence results from a masterful integration of spatial design with the complex structure…

"Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business,” promised a blurb written by Pynchon himself for his previous novel Against the Day (2006). Promised, that is, or warned, depending on whether the reader is a free and accepted 33rd-degree Pynchonian or a hopeless “normal” who finds the author’s “usual…

Doug Kmiec has had an amazing political journey. Today a chaired professor at Pepperdine Law School, Kmiec has traveled nearly the full gamut of public life: He worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and pursued an active career teaching law, at Notre…

Election Day is almost nine months off. But right now Republicans seem almost certain to hold the House of Representatives and are likely to take the Senate. Which raises the inevitable question: How might the GOP seize defeat from the jaws of victory?

Analyzing the Islamic Republic isn’t a guessing game—at least it shouldn’t be. Iranian Islamists’ words and deeds are pretty consistent. Memoirs, speeches, and biographies have poured forth from those who made and sustain the regime. The New York Times and Senator Edward Kennedy may have called…

The Scrapbook is a grizzled veteran of the groves of journalism and so can’t compete, but his fellow print and online journalists with less than 10 years of professional experience should be aware of the looming deadline (February 11) for the annual Robert Novak Journalism Fellowships. Both…

In the wake of all the “leaks” by Edward Snowden of the National Security Agency’s collection programs and the resulting debate over those programs, one constantly hears from elected officials and the commentariat about the need to strike the right balance between privacy and security. More often…

Among the many topics of discussion that do not keep The Scrapbook awake at night, the naming of federal buildings is high on the list. The Department of Justice building, for example, was recently named for Bobby Kennedy—not the most distinguished attorney general in American history—and the U.S.…

Minnesota’s Keith Ellison made history as the first Muslim elected to Congress. He is a former member and local leader of the Nation of Islam who first ran for office as a Democrat in 1998 under the pseudonym Keith Ellison-Muhammad. He’s a voluble striver and a hustler emitting Marxist claptrap…

Duncan, S.C.

The indisputable achievement of American society in the second half of the 20th century was surely the ending of legally authorized discrimination against African Americans. Among the overwhelming majority of Americans who glory in this achievement, however, there is a not-inconsiderable number who…

The Scrapbook’s attention was drawn last week to a front-page story in the New York Times about a small organization, based in Los Angeles, that is applying for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. Called the Friends of Abe, it is a loose association of about 1,500 “players in the…

With his unique appeal to the young, President Obama has suddenly transformed the “experiments” in Colorado and Washington state into an experiment involving every kid in America.

When President Obama addressed the U.N. General Assembly last September, he spoke about the importance of removing chemical weapons from Syria and emphasized that President Assad must give way to a more broadly accepted government. He did not mention human rights. He also spoke about his hopes for…

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times:

Eliana Johnson of National Review Online reports:

President Obama surely deserves to relax this weekend and enjoy the Super Bowl after an arduous week in which he prepared and delivered his fifth State of the Union message, one the White House admits set forth a rather limited agenda, and then took to the hustings for stops in four states on the…