June 2014

Tel Aviv

On Monday evening, Hillary Clinton said that she found the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case "deeply disturbing." Clinton added that "it’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Adam J. White on the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

A new poll finds Colorado Republican Cory Gardner neck and neck with the Democratic senator Mark Udall in what's become one of the hottest Senate races of the midterm elections. Rasmussen Reports finds Udall with 43 percent support and Gardner, a two-term congressman, with 42 percent support, a…

The White House says that President Obama will deliver remarks on "immigration reform" later this hour:

The White House says "the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees" with the Supreme Court's decision today on the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare:

Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez has taken the occasion of the final day of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, as proclaimed by President Obama, to clarify that his department provides the "full protection of the federal non-discrimination laws that we enforce to transgender…

The Associated Press reports:

Gary Strauss of USA Today reports that:

Writing on the White House blog, Ambassador Susan Rice, the president’s national security advisor, accuses the Senate of harming national security by not confirming more ambassadorial nominees. Rice contends that the current backlog of forty-eight is unnecessary and harmful:

Commenting on the results of the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, NBC’s Chuck Todd remarked, “This poll is a disaster for the president.” Indeed, he continued, “essentially the public is saying, ‘Your presidency is over.’ ” 

The other day a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that a First Amendment challenge to an Ohio law should be heard in the lower courts. While the decision may have seemed a minor one, it represents an important advance for freedom of speech.

When I sat for my SAT exams as a high school senior, I thought to myself, “This is the last standardized test you will ever have to take!” I had never considered myself an intellectual and was vaguely distrustful of anyone who chose the cocoon of the academy over the rough-and-tumble of the “real…

They came from the west through the Syrian Desert, across the Euphrates River, and down off the Nineveh Plain. Mosul, Baiji, Tikrit, Samarra—cities held by the U.S. military just two and a half years before—fell almost without a fight, absorbed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a…

American strategists are taken with the idea of India’s strategic potential: a large democracy with a blue-water navy and the world’s third-largest armed forces that happens to be jammed between an imploding Pakistan and an expansionist China. But a deeply dysfunctional Indian defense community has…

After the upset of House majority leader Eric Cantor at the hands of GOP primary voters, many congressional Republicans may be looking for ways to show they are listening to their constituents. One way they can do so is to take renewed aim at Obamacare.

The key to understanding the publishing sensation called The Fault in Our Stars—John Green’s young-adult novel that has dominated bestseller lists for more than two years and has already sold more than nine million copies worldwide—is first to imagine Holden Caulfield in the 21st century. Then…

One of the many things that The Scrapbook doesn’t like about life in modern Washington—aside from the politics, of course—is the extent to which the nation’s capital, especially its downtown core, has become a high-pitch security zone. Access to public spaces and buildings is severely restricted;…

Feminism is in control of America’s colleges and universities, where its principles at least are held as dogmas unquestioned and unopposed. Yet in what should be a paradise with those principles at work, women speak of a “rape culture” that sounds like the patriarchal hell we thought we’d left…

In late April, a 70-year-old Chinese journalist, Gao Yu, was taken into custody, one of several human rights activists rounded up to keep them from observing the 25th anniversary of the massacre of student protesters by government troops in Tiananmen Square. Shortly afterwards, Gao appeared on…

Back then, it was not known as World War I, for the obvious reason that the Second World War still lay in the future. It was simply the Great War, for the world had never seen anything like it.

Of late, the last four years or so, I rarely go out for long without being praised. I am praised not for my writing, my perspicacity, my elegant bearing, my youthful good looks, my extreme modesty, but for my eyeglasses. “Nice glasses,” strangers say to me. “Like your glasses,” they say. “Love…

In the history of art, self-portraiture constitutes a world of its own, presenting us with moods ranging from the lighthearted to the sordid. There is sheer delight in Rubens’s painting of himself and his first wife Isabella Brant in a bower of honeysuckle bliss; acute menace when Caravaggio decks…

There is a new reason to visit London. It is wooden, but lively. Old, but new. Shadowy, but luminous. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is a reconstruction of what an indoor theater might have looked and felt like around 1600, when Shakespeare was 36 and at the height of his career as an actor,…

My father is one of the reasons that student loans cannot normally be discharged via bankruptcy. Such an outcome was never his goal: quite the opposite, in fact, because exempting student debt from bankruptcy relief makes little economic sense and is patently unfair to the students saddled with…

President Barack Obama’s job approval seems to be slipping again. After a brutal couple of months following the failed launch of HealthCare.gov, the Real Clear Politics average of opinion polls found his approval at 40 percent in December. But the government claimed to have fixed HealthCare.gov,…

It’s always a solemn occasion when The Scrapbook finds John Edwards back in the news. At this point, the stories are less a reminder of the former senator and vice-presidential candidate’s odious conduct than fresh evidence that there’s no Democratic rehabilitation project the media won’t…

When Ottoman armies marched into Europe in the mid-14th century, Europeans started looking hopefully eastward for enemies of the Turks. Spanish and French kings sent ambassadors to Tamerlane when the last great Muslim Mongol conqueror started marching west. Europeans and Byzantines rejoiced when…

Qassem Suleimani is apparently the most interesting man in the world. To judge by the profiles in major Western media outlets—including the New Yorker, BBC, and the Guardian—the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ external operations unit, the Quds Force, is the most feared and…

This is a story about campus sexual harassment, involving a female graduate student in philosophy and a prominent male philosophy professor at an Ivy League university. Except that the alleged events didn’t take place on a campus or anywhere near one. Nor did the alleged events meet any legal…

Movies have the Oscars. TV has the Emmys, Broadway the Tonys. And the conservative movement has the Bradley Prizes. The Scrapbook isn’t exaggerating—much. Last week, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation held its annual celebration of individual achievement in the cause of freedom, and it was more…

Nobody has time to read these days. Everybody says so, anyway. So in the case of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, is there any good reason to buy the book and read it? Not much, going by the reviews. None has called it a page turner and, at more than 600 of them, you’d like to have a reason to keep…

Prominently featured at the website of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is an "An Open Letter of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to our American Jewish Interfaith Partners" which is signed by the denomination's three senior officials and which begins:

President Obama's closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett says there's no way, no how Michelle Obama runs for political office. But will Jarrett? The aide is leaving that possibility open.

Peter Berkowitz, writing in RealClearPolitics:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on his recent piece "The Real Lesson from Mississippi."

In spite of a string of worrisome human rights and freedom of expression violations, the Obama administration is holding out hope that Egypt's government lead by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is still headed for democracy.  State Department official Richard Stengel, under secretary of state for…

To meteorologists, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property. It can lead to pollution and adverse health effects. To Wall Street dealmakers, and now to most boards of directors, an inversion is a cross-border merger that allows the buyer to reincorporate in a…

President Obama felt the need to weigh in on the U.S. national soccer team, declaring, “We’re a middle-of-the-pack team. We’re not Germany yet. Or Italy or France, but — or Argentina or Brazil — but we're now in the mix.” 

There has been a long stagnation following the “Great Recession.”  No good news there. Lots of unemployment, hence no competition for labor and, thus, no increase in incomes.  But … at least there is no inflation.  That, anyway, is what we are told by the engineers with their handles on the…

David Jackson of USA Today reports that President Obama told an audience, yesterday, that Washington is out of touch and obsessed with politics. Or something like that. And that instead of focusing on things that are important to the average citizen, Washington is peddling:

The City University of New York must really be rolling in dough. The school’s administration recently turned down a $10 million grant from the Koch brothers to establish a new financial center at Brooklyn College. The business dean explained that he would have to focus on the school’s accreditation…

Despite Hillary Clinton’s disappointing book sales, and a gaffe-prone publicity tour, she remains the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination. If anything, the last few weeks have only confirmed her advantage. Despite these disappointments and mis-steps, there is no substantial…

President Obama said the United States soccer team isn't the worst, but it isn't the best either. "We're a middle of the pack team," the commander in chief said in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Two and a half years ago, President Obama tired of the Senate's refusal to confirm several of his nominations. Dissatisfied with the Constitution's general requirement that the president make appointments only after receiving the Senate's "advice and consent," he chose a more direct route. He…

Fresh off the New York state federal primaries, one conservative group is out with a new ad targeting a top Democratically-held seat. American Action Network, which supported New York state senator Lee Zeldin in his successful House Republican primary victory Tuesday, has a new web ad highlighting…

President Obama addressed the illegal immigration crisis on the Southern border in an interview that aired this morning on ABC's Good Morning America:

Most Americans don’t think it’s their job to bail out insurance companies who lose money under Obamacare, but that’s exactly what’s poised to happen. Obamacare’s risk-corridor program — which President Obama has been using as a slush fund to placate his insurance allies and keep them quiet about…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the June 30 / July 7, 2014 edition of the Books and Arts section.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Adam White on today's Supreme Court rulings.

Were Lois Lerner’s allegedly lost emails actually destroyed? An Ohio-based trade association, the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM), isn’t so sure, and they don’t find IRS commissioner Koskinen’s explanation of their loss very plausible. 

Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York Times reports a court has ruled in favor of individual freedom.  

In NLRB v. Noel Canning, whatever the differences between the bare majority of five justices led by Justice Breyer and the four dissenters for whom Justice Scalia wrote, there is no question between the contending sides that President Obama acted unconstitutionally in making three ostensible recess…

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: 

In the first quarter of 2014, GDP in the U.S. plunged at a 2.9% annual rate, and productivity—the inflation-adjusted business output per hour worked—declined at a 3.5% annual rate. This is the worst productivity statistic since 1990. And productivity since 2005 has declined by more than 8% relative…

Immigration reform is deader than ever in 2014 and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says President Obama is to blame.

The Associated Press reports:

Reports from the economic front, this week, have been discouraging.  Especially yesterday's revise in first quarter GDP to almost three percent negative growth.  A contraction, in other words.  Another one of those, on the back of that one, and we are officially in a recession. Yesterday, the…

On balance the Republican “establishment” has done fairly well this primary season. Its favored candidate in the Nebraska Senate race lost, and of course Eric Cantor went down to defeat, but Thad Cochran, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell all hung on. So, all is right in the world, right?

The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton's published, Simon & Schuster, isn't likely to sell enough books to make back her hefty advance.

A press release from Ways and Means Committee chair Dave Camp claims a Republican U.S. senator was targeted by the IRS: 

Former President Bill Clinton says he's "for whatever" Hillary "wants to do" in regards to the 2016 presidential contest. He made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg Television:

Why were the words of Fouad Ajami “never welcomed in the cultural salons of Beirut and Cairo?” asks Samuel Tadros in Tablet magazine. And why are they now “unfashionable … in the halls of power in Washington?” Because “instead of following the herd and blaming the ills of the region on the…

In June 2013, even before the launch of Healthcare.gov, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded a contract to Hewlett-Packard to replace Verizon's Terremark subsidiary as host for the Obamacare website and related Data Services Hub (DSH). However, as the March 31, 2014 date for…

A new memo on the Obamacare risk-corridor slush fund from Jeffrey H. Anderson of the 2017 Project:

Elise Stefanik beat Matt Doheny in New York's 21st congressional district GOP primary on Tuesday. With almost all of the votes tallied, Stefanik topped Doheny 61 percent to 39 percent.

The final accounting on the 1st quarter for the economy is in and it is not pretty.  As Jeanna Smialek of Bloomberg reports:

The problem America faces is not that government is dysfunctional—an election might fix that. It is that America is now governed by a New Political Class, divorced from the concerns of all save its richest constituents. The Class is bipartisan, with members of both parties strolling arm-in-arm into…

Veteran New York congressman Charlie Rangel seems to have held on in Tuesday's Democratic primary. The third-longest serving member of the House has a lead over just about 1800 votes over his top challenger, state senator Adriano Espaillat. Rangel has claimed victory in the primary, although…

Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi edged out challenger Chris McDaniel in the Republican primary runoff Tuesday, ending a hard-fought, often bitter campaign for the party's nomination for the Senate. Cochran won the runoff by just around 4000 votes, and is a favorite to win the general election.

Two-term congressman James Lankford won the Republican primary Tuesday in Oklahoma for the U.S. Senate, defeating former speaker of the house T.W. Shannon. Lankford, who has so far received more than 57 percent of the primary vote, will run in the general to finish out the remainder of Republican…

The White House twice misspelled the name of President Ronald Reagan in an email this evening to reporters. The email was of the president's schedule for tomorrow.

Senator Jeff Sessions argues that "lax enforcement" of border security is driving the illegal immigration "surge." Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, made the comments today on the Senate floor.

Obama is the man who broke the Middle East.

Ken McIntyre reports at the Daily Signal: 

Former President Bill Clinton insists he and his wife, Hillary Clinton, are not out of touch. The examples he cites? They talk to people at their "local grocery store on the weekend" and, he adds, they "talk to people in [their] town."

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the latest news on the IRS scandal.

Jennifer Bendery reports that a woman fainted in the White House press briefing today, almost immediately after spokesman Josh Earnest finished his second day on the job as press secretary.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is hoping that fear will cause Democrats to donate money. The latest plea comes in an email with this subject line: "kiss all hope goodbye."

This clip explains, better than countless learned articles could, the essence of Obama's foreign policy. He's got a "four-stage strategy:"

Secretary of State John Kerry tells Fox News's James Rosen that the Obama administration does not "do foreign policy by polls." That, the sescretary of state said, is "a good thing."

The editors of National Review write:

In January.  And this time, presumably, there will be no extension, which has been the administration’s preferred tool in dealing with the more onerous provisions of the Affordable Care Act.  There have been some 21 such extensions and perhaps the White House will again come up with a way. But for…

Forty-four years after the legendary May 1970 Life magazine cover story first exposed the disgusting and shameful mistreatment of our nation’s Vietnam-era veterans in government medical facilities, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is once again in desperate need of reform. Courageous…

In a new editorial, the New York Post notes the odds are stacked against New Jersey's Jeff Bell, the Republican challenger to incumbent Democratic senator Cory Booker:

Hillary Clinton will be getting $225,000 to speak at a university fundraiser later this year. Students at the same school, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, have recently been outraged that the institution is raising tuition by a staggering 17 percent.

Conservative super PAC American Crossroads has a new ad running in Arkansas calling Democratic senator Mark Pryor a "rubber stamp" for Barack Obama.

The IRS comissioner insists his agency did not break the law or relevant statutes. But under questioning by Rep. Trey Gowdy, the IRS commissioner also admitted that he doesn't know the law or the relevant statutes:

Republican congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio excoriated the Internal Revenue Service commissioner Monday night in a House hearing looking into the agency's malfeasance regarding conservative non-profit groups. Jordan focused his questioning to when IRS comissioner John Koskinen knew about the loss of…

The public and published reason that U.S. military units were pulled out of Iraq is that it became impossible to conclude a status of forces agreement with the Maliki government.  One suspects that the overriding reason was that President Obama simply did not want them there.  And this seems the…

Ryan Crocker, writing in the Washington Post:

From the boss's weekly newsletter:

Pellentesque venenatis tellus id ante mollis tempor. Phasellus dictum convallis enim nec dapibus. Nam et luctus urna. Phasellus non viverra dolor, quis auctor dui. Nullam interdum erat justo, a sodales ligula aliquet eu. Phasellus consequat ac nisl ac imperdiet. In eu justo egestas, dignissim nisl…

Fusce eu adipiscing ante. Ut non sapien id neque sollicitudin interdum quis a nisl. Cras ultricies velit eget felis malesuada tempus. Nunc egestas ligula a ipsum iaculis pretium. Aliquam eu lorem ac risus consequat blandit vitae id est. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus.…

Aenean ac nisl eu nulla ornare feugiat sed in felis. Vivamus dignissim velit a urna varius ullamcorper. Nulla rutrum consequat leo non tristique. Maecenas ut justo in eros pulvinar pretium. Fusce pellentesque, risus et ultrices pulvinar, tellus justo lobortis arcu, et porta erat nisl in odio. Nunc…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum tempus tempor odio, eget ultricies lorem vulputate non. Praesent sagittis turpis at nisl rhoncus, et hendrerit justo rhoncus. Cras rhoncus dolor nulla, et ultricies massa interdum vitae. Pellentesque pharetra dignissim augue sit…

Most Republicans say the United States should doing something about the violence in Iraq, according to a poll from CBS News and the New York Times. The poll found 52 percent of Republican adults say the U.S. has a "responsibility" to act in Iraq over the recent wave of terrorism there, and 53…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum tempus tempor odio, eget ultricies lorem vulputate non. Praesent sagittis turpis at nisl rhoncus, et hendrerit justo rhoncus. Cras rhoncus dolor nulla, et ultricies massa interdum vitae. Pellentesque pharetra dignissim augue sit…

Maggie Flick of Reuters is reporting that:

Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for governor in Texas, is now accepting the digital currency Bitcoin. He's just now released this ad, letting supporters know:

In what some are interpreting as a veiled shot at Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden says that the fact he isn't rich shouldn't be held against him:

Reporting on the Fed’s latest revision of its forecast on the economy (downward, of course) Pedro Nicolaci da Costa of the Wall Street Journal writes:

With much of the Obama administration's foreign policy in tatters, John Kerry is clear on at least one goal he hopes to achieve by the end of his time as secretary of state: having lesbian, bisexual, and transgender ambassadors representing the United States.  In remarks to a GLIFAA (formerly Gays…

The death of Fouad Ajami this weekend, at the age of 68, deprived this country and the world of a uniquely powerful voice – one that is at the same time both Arab and American – that could have helped guide us, as he has in the past, through the hazards and complications of his native Middle East.  

Republican primary challenges are all the rage these days. The GOP is reeling from House majority leader Eric Cantor’s loss last week in Virginia to David Brat, a relatively unknown economics professor who campaigned on local issues and against the GOP leadership’s flirtation with immigration…

A time bomb does not have to be elegant; it just has to be lethal, primed, and in the right place when the moment comes. Britain’s next general election is set for May 7, 2015. That is likely the day when David Cameron will pay the full price for failing to have defused the revolt on his right.

In the long, tortured history of race in America, there are few bright spots shinier than the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Democratic and Republican reformers from across the country overcame the resistance, mainly of Southern segregationists, to pass legislation that broke the back of Jim Crow. In…

In the final scene of My Architect, Nathaniel Kahn’s 2003 documentary about discovering his father Louis I. Kahn (1901-74) through his architecture, Nathaniel stands in the National Assembly building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, speaking to Shamsul Wares, a local architect who knew Kahn and claims that…

That the North Korean regime has taken another American tourist hostage—this time it’s one Jeffrey Edward Fowle of Miamisburg, Ohio, who was seized in May after a Bible was reportedly discovered in his hotel room—is hardly surprising. North Korea is ferociously repressive, and, as Paul Marshall…

Movie stars go cold. It’s part of the way popular culture works. For a long time, people just love watching them. People can’t get enough of them. And then, after they go to the well once too often with a formula that has gone flat, or after their messy personal lives get all mixed up in the…

Reports have surfaced of a professor with a mania for self-examination. His line of inquiry, however, is not of the Socratic philosophical sort. An expert in computer science, he is collecting data on his bodily functions. To improve his diet (and reduce his weight) he tracks what he eats down to…

"Our health care coverage was canceled as a result of Obamacare. Our premiums have increased 30 percent. We have higher deductibles and less choice.” It’s a story that could be told by millions of Americans and a story that surely will be told in hundreds of campaign ads this fall. What makes these…

Kiev

Kevin McCarthy won the race to replace Eric Cantor as House majority leader in the blink of an eye. Less than 24 hours after Cantor’s defeat in a Republican primary in Virginia, McCarthy, the majority whip, had amassed enough pledges to be confident of winning the vote for a new Republican leader,…

As the Obama administration’s case for the Bowe Bergdahl-Taliban prisoner exchange further unraveled last week, the geo-political implications of the deal became clearer. They’re not pretty.

Our friend and contributor Joseph Epstein once called himself a “serious dilettante,” which he defined as “someone who feels he needs to know nearly everything, but not all that much of any one thing in particular and certainly nothing in the kind of depth that will weigh him down.”

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, has long been hard for the central government to control because of its combustible mix of Arabs and Kurds. The first time I visited Mosul was in August 2003 when a tenuous calm was maintained by the 101st Airborne Division. Its commander, a then-obscure two-star…

In the largest turnout in a congressional primary in the history of Virginia politics, the voters of the Commonwealth’s 7th Congressional District last Tuesday decisively chose not to renominate their seven-term representative, now serving as House majority leader, who had massively outspent his…

Two weeks ago, George Will wrote a column about how progressives have exaggerated the prevalence of rape on college campuses. The column was not well received by some or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. Last week a press release landed in The…

The virtues of Stanley Payne, the outstanding living historian of the Spanish Civil War, are on gratifying display in this comprehensive volume. He writes with appropriate sweep: “[C]ivil war in Spain was not a complete anomaly, but rather the only massive internal conflict to break out in Western…

Nancy Russell, the chair of the Hanover County GOP, isn’t shy about saying she supported Rep. Eric Cantor in his Virginia primary race last week. She expected most of her fellow Republicans in the 7th District, which stretches from the northern suburbs of Richmond north and west into the rural…

The Scrapbook heartily recommends a new documentary on George H. W. Bush, 41 on 41, that airs this month on CNN, just in time for the 90th birthday of our 41st president. Among the talking heads brought out to kibitz and reminisce—41 of them, as you might have guessed—the popular historian David…

This year’s turbulent primary season, which hit a crescendo this month with David Brat’s upset victory over House majority leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, is an opportunity for conservatives to reflect. Why have our political leaders struggled…

Arriving home the other afternoon by car, I noticed an elongated object straddling the lawn and driveway in front of our house. “Is that a snake?” I asked my alluring wife, whose fondness for such creatures is approximately the same as my own. But before she could answer, or even focus on the…

For at least three reasons, the contemporary persecution of Christians demands attention: It is occurring on a massive scale, it is underreported, and in many parts of the world it is rapidly growing.

One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his…

House majority leader Eric Cantor’s stunning primary loss to Dave Brat, an underfunded, virtually unknown challenger, has a simple explanation: Republican voters don’t much care for their own party’s politicians these days. That’s why they keep losing to amateurs and upstarts.

Chris Hedges is a former New York Times foreign correspondent whose popular antiwar polemic, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), enabled him to quit the newspaper business and become a full-time prophet, left-wing division. As Hedges has grown more austere in appearance—working-class duds,…

The IRS reportedly used a private company to back up emails, a new report claims. The company is called Sonasoft, which boasts, "Email Archiving Done Right."

Joe Lieberman and Vance Serchuk, writing in the Washington Post:

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking yesterday in Guatemala City, Guatemala, addressed the recent influx of immigrants on America's Southern border. He said a "vast majority" of these immigrants "will be going home."

And we thought the bad old days of oil shocks were over. Embargoes, price spikes, gasoline lines in America, a sweater-bedecked president ordering the end of hot water in many facilities, collapsing retail sales as high gasoline and energy prices hit stores as much as a big tax increase would,…

Many journalists and partisan Democrats excitedly reported Thursday that Scott Walker was at the center of a "criminal scheme" in which Walker's campaign illegally coordinated political activity with outside organizations. What these reports either downplayed or ignored altogether is that two…

Writing at the Washington Free Beacon, editor in chief Matthew Continetti explains how a donor to Hillary Clinton is trying to keep his reporters out of the University of Arkansas library. One of those reporters, Alana Goodman, had gone to Arkansas and uncovered audio tapes of Clinton reminiscing…

The people who run the VA are doing great work and they know this because they have been telling themselves so:

The Washington Free Beacon's Daniel Wiser reports that House candidate Elise Stefanik is leading Matt Doheny ahead of the June 24 GOP primary:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast withe editor William Kristol on Hillary's second horrible week in a row.

A new ad set to be released later today alleges that Mississippi senator Thad Cochran is in part responsible for the release of 5 Taliban commanders from Gitmo. The ad, titled "Cochran Supported the Release of 5 Terrorists," is being released by the Campaign for American Values, a super PAC run by…

Thirty-five years ago, the first issue of a magazine called Computerworld was launched into a world that had never heard of all sorts of things that have become essential elements of ordinary life.  Now, the magazine is taking a step that seems, somehow, very late in coming. It is ceasing…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the June 23, 2014 edition of the Books and Arts section.

White House aides have anonymously attacked the honesty of soldiers who served with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and testified that he deserted. But Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to President Obama at the White House, would not say Friday morning if she agreed that Bergdahl had been "swiftboated" by his…

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan took IRS commissioner John Koskinen to task over the agency's claim that hundreds of emails sent by IRS officials were lost. The emails were requested in an investigation into the IRS's improper treatment of conservative tax-exempt groups in the run-up to the 2012…

Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast reports:

The White House is now using the phrase "unlawful migration" instead of the more commonly heard phrase "illegal immigration." The new term is used in a readout of a phone call President Obama had yesterday with President Peña Nieto of Mexico.

The full video of Corporal Kyle Carpenter being awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday at the White House is worth watching:

Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey won a special election last November with 55 percent of the vote, but the former mayor of Newark is now under 50 percent against a little-known Republican challenger, according to a new poll. Rasmussen Reports finds in a survey of likely voters in New…

In January during his State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled his new myRA program. “Let’s do more to help Americans save for retirement. Today, most workers don’t have a pension. A Social Security check often isn’t enough on its own. And while the stock market has doubled over the…

House Republicans elected California congressman Kevin McCarthy as their new majority leader Thursday afternoon. The election comes just more than a week after the outgoing majority leader, Eric Cantor, lost his primary in Virginia. Cantor will step down as majority leader on July 31. McCarthy…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on President Obama's Iraq speech to the press.

In Iraq: Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra of the AP report that:

The Washington Free Beacon, which has broken several scoops related to Hillary Clinton, has been banned from using the Clinton archive at the University of Arkansas:

The University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus has decided it won’t be involved in the White Privilege Conference anymore. Since 2007 the campus’s Matrix Center for Social Equity and Inclusion, directed by UCCS sociology professor Abby Ferber, had lent the controversial conference some…

President Obama said the government of Iran can play a "constructive role" in stablizing Iraq, with a condition.

President Barack Obama said there would not be combat troops deployed to Iraq, but he left the door open for sending 300 military "advisors" to the country. In a Thursday afternoon White House press briefing, Obama said the United States has "humanitarian...strategic...and counterterrorism…

Senate majority leader Harry Reid claims that one side--the Democrats--doesn't "have any" billionaire backers:

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraising pitches like this have been coming in for a couple years--most of them come from Democrats 2014 or Democratic Headquarters; quite a few from Nancy Pelosi; a handful from Obama and Biden. But I'm pretty sure this is the first one from Elizabeth…

Outgoing White House press secretary Jay Carney says he felt “liberated” when he left Time magazine to work for the Obama administration. At a breakfast with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor a block from the White House Thursday morning, Carney was asked about his transition…

The events of the last few weeks have been gut wrenching for many active duty members of the military and veterans. We have watched the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care scandal unfold, the absurdly lopsided trade of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five top-level Taliban commanders, and now…

Weekly first time unemployment claims came in almost exactly as expected (which, in itself, is sort of unexpected) at 312,000.  One thousand less than economists were predicting and 6,000 less than last week.  Which amounts to something like treading water.  We aren’t drowning, but we aren’t…

Vice President Joe Biden was in Brazil Monday for a meeting with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and to attend the USA's World Cup game versus Ghana. The following day, Biden addressed the staff of the U.S. embassy in Brasilia and related an anecdote from the World Cup game to illustrate what…

Tom Cotton, speaking yesterday on the Bowe Bergdahl-Taliban swap:

Earlier this year, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton—now locked in a toss-up Senate race with Democrat Mark Pryor—voted against the farm bill. According to politicos and pundits in Washington, D.C., this is a politically dangerous vote to have cast. This recent article from Politico mentions his farm…

Norman Podhoretz: "Iraq: What We Know Now and What We Knew Then."

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is giving away a signed copy of Hillary Clinton's latest memoir, Hard Choices. In an email sent out to the DCCC's list, Nancy Pelosi says the book will be given to someone who signs an e-card thanking Clinton for serving this nation.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Michael Warren on the Hillary Clinton book interviews.

Vox.com, the fancy new journalism "explainer" website founded by Ezra Klein, is up with a fresh take on the IRS scandal: "The IRS scandal shows the IRS needs a bigger budget." 

President Obama sought the advice of three initial supporters of the Iraq war on the current situation in Iraq. According to a White House readout of the meeting, the president this afternoon met with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner, all of whom voted to authorize the…

In 2003, Arkansas senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat, voted for a federal ban on partial-birth abortion, a particular procedure that the late New York Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan described as "too close to infanticide." But now as Congress considers a bill to ban late-term abortion…

The world’s eyes may have been trained on the World Cup this weekend, but a different heated contest also took place in South America on Sunday night. In Colombia, incumbent president Juan Manuel Santos, who has made “peace” talks with leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)…

When asked during a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour last night whether she used drugs, Hillary Clinton was admirably firm. Had she done marijuana? “Absolutely not,” she replied. “I didn't do it when I was young, I'm not going to start now.” She is, however, more wavering when it comes to…

President Obama had lunch today with columnist Paul Krugman and several economists, the White House announced. 

Last week was a very, very bad week for Hillary Clinton.

In line with President Obama's official proclamation of June as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month," the banner headlining the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Wednesday proclaims the agency's celebration of the same, noting, "It’s also about…

The white-hot issue of what to call the professional football team currently playing its home games in the vicinity of the nation’s capital just got hotter.  Earlier this week, Senator Harry Reid said he wouldn’t accept comp tickets (truly a first for a sitting senator) to the team’s games so long…

Madison school board member Mary Burke is the Democratic challenger to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. But Democrats should hope interested voters don't head to MaryBurke.com. Wisconsin Republicans snagged the web address before Burke could and have created a near-mirror image of Burke's real…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the capture of Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala, and why his capture wouldn't likely yield many answers.

The results of a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) audit released Tuesday found that "[w]hile the IRS is complying with GSA requirements to recycle or donate used information technology (IT) equipment, TIGTA found several areas for improvement." The IRS got rid of more than…

Democratic senator Mark Udall of Colorado appears in a new TV ad targeting Republican congressman Cory Gardner for his opponent's "beyond troubling" record on birth control and abortion. "Because this really matters, it's important you hear this directly from me," says the Colorado Democrat at the…

The U.S. Postal Service is seeking a company to help develop a program called the Internet of Postal Things. The Risk Analysis Research Center (RARC), part of the Postal Service's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), is looking for a supplier "who possesses expertise and critical knowledge of the…

Tom Joscelyn discusses ISIS on Fox News.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with contributing editor and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Max Boot on his recent story "Obama's Iraq."

Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows recently with her assertion that the five Taliban commanders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are "not a threat to the United States." John Kerry, in remarks Thursday to the U.S. Embassy staff in London, seemed to take issue with Clinton's…

Jeanna Smialek and Shobhana Chandra at Bloomberg report that:

The Washington Post reports:

Jack Keane and Danielle Pletka, writing for the Wall Street Journal: 

The Big Hangover is a flopped ’50s film that is better forgotten, but it is the permanent state of Barack Obama, still in his bathrobe and feeling quite queasy, due to a headache called Bush. “Six years in, Barack Obama is still battling a Bush hangover,” says Politico. “The hangover was much, much…

In the print edition of Politico, columnist Roger Simon asks, "Will the Real Hillary Clinton Please Stop Talking?"

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published a month ago but just publicly released on Monday found that while the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken steps to see that ineligible beneficiaries do not receive reduced-price or free school meals, oversight still needs to be…

The economy isn’t going anywhere.  Not anytime soon, according to the IMF.  As Anna Yukhananov of Reuters reports:

President Obama hits the road, again, today. He is, as Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP reports:

In an email this evening, a veteran publishing source calls the latest Hillary Clinton book, Hard Choices, a memoir of her State Department years, a "bomb." The source is referring to the early but underwhelming sales figures.

Lee Smith, writing in Defining Ideas:

This week the fabulous Factual Feminist answers some listeners’ questions — starting with why she calls herself a feminist at all. Watch her here:

The War on Terror may be over but the warriors seem to be keeping busy.  Which could mean that those already in captivity should be kept there and that space should be available as more are captured.

In an interview with Yahoo's Katie Couric, Secretary of State John Kerry says "we have the security we need for our Embassy" in Iraq. This comes just as some Americans are leaving the embassy. 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered "the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde into the Arabian Gulf," the Defense Department says in a press release. "The ship has completed its transit through the Strait of Hormuz," says a Navy admiral.

It’s widely agreed that the collapse of Iraq would be a disaster for American interests and security in the Middle East and around the world. It also seems to be widely assumed either that there's nothing we can now do to avert that disaster, or that our best bet is supporting Iran against al…

EPA chief Gina McCarthy agreed with Bill Maher on Friday that the Obama administration is engaged in a war on coal:

Study with the boss in Jerusalem this winter at a weeklong seminar, “The Case for Nationalism,” offered by the Tikvah Fund.

Vice President Biden departs today for Latin America, where he'll visit Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala. In Brazil, he'll head to the World Cup to watch a soccer game. In Guatemala, he'll address "misperceptions about U.S. immigration policy," according to a White House…

Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

Frederick Kagan, writing for the New York Daily News:

Bill Kristol, with Donna Brazile, Laura Ingraham, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, yesterday on ABC's This Week:

Reverberating through the chattering classes of Europe and America is the recent triumph of Nigel Farage’s U.K. Independence party (UKIP) in the European parliament elections. UKIP bested both Labour and the Tories not only in England but also in Wales and Scotland. The victory might be explained…

T.S. Eliot thought that the first requisite for being a literary critic is to be very intelligent. The second, I should say, is to have a well-stocked mind, which means having knowledge of literatures and literary traditions other than that into which one was born; possessing several languages; and…

Charles Murray was invited to speak in April at Azusa Pacific University about this, his latest book. The event had been scheduled for months, but two days before Murray’s appearance the president of Azusa Pacific canceled it, writing to the American Enterprise Institute (where Murray is the W. H.…

In 1871, when Albert Edward Prince of Wales (1841-1910) and his wife Alexandra lost their youngest child after a premature birth, Queen Victoria advised that they go into prolonged mourning. Bertie’s response exhibited one of the great differences between him and his notoriously woeful mother: 

The climate change crusaders, who have been at it for a quarter-century, appear to be going clinically mad. Start with the rhetorical monotony and worship of authority (“97 percent of all scientists agree!”), add the Salem witch trial-style intimidation and persecution of dissenters, and the…

The creation of a new Palestinian “national unity” government has raised a slew of questions in the United States. What should our policy be toward a government that has the support not only of the Fatah party but of the terrorist group Hamas as well? Should all aid to the Palestinians be…

The Scrapbook was dimly aware that the U.S. Army was reengineering its ammo but still was taken aback to read that it took 15 years and an estimated $100 million to come up with a new 5.56 NATO round for our infantrymen. It cost so much and took so long because, you know, it’s not easy being green.…

"My goal was to get something done,” President Obama said at a Chicago fundraiser in May. Yet he’s pursuing a strategy that makes it nearly impossible to achieve that. He’s not acting in his own interest.

In our episodic “national conversation about race,” perhaps it is time to take notice of Rothe Development Corporation of San Antonio, Texas, which, you could say, has been having its own conversation about race—in the federal courts. Rothe is a government contractor that has now brought two…

The Scrapbook notes, with sadness, the death last week in London of 91-year-old Mary Soames, the youngest and last surviving child of Sir Winston Churchill. From her time as a very young woman in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (the British equivalent of the WAC), where she assisted her father at…

President Barack Obama and his advisers have long sought to release the five most dangerous Taliban commanders held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo. Bipartisan opposition scuttled a possible deal in 2012 because of a consensus that the “Taliban Five,” as they’ve come to be known, posed too great a…

This is the way democracy ends, not with a bang, but a footnote. In April, the Congressional Budget Office—the nonpartisan agency typically relied on to make fiscal assessments of government programs—-reported that it was no longer possible to measure the cost of Obamacare. This fact wasn’t…

An arithmetic riddle: How much money would the U.S. government collect if it were to impose a 5 percent tax on the $2 trillion currently parked in offshore accounts to avoid the high U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent?

“Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity. Period. Full stop. We don’t condition that. That’s what every mom and dad who sees a son or daughter sent over into [a] war theater should expect not…

It's an article of faith among bien pensant liberals that all institutions in society must achieve perfect gender parity. Consider, for example, the left’s outrage at the dearth of women employed at Google and other tech firms (despite the fact that far fewer women study computer science than men)…

The much-maligned new comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West is actually pretty funny in spots. But it’s very strange. It’s an affectionate western homage, a mash-up western, a western pastiche. That’s not odd. What’s odd is that it’s an homage to a parody, and paying tribute to a spoof is just…

The first writer I ever met was my Uncle Joe. He was tall, with a fading cap of screwy red hair, big mischievous eyes, and a smile that might have been drawn by Dr. Seuss. 

When Abigail Adams first met her daughter-in-law Louisa, wife of future president John Quincy Adams, she was not greatly impressed. Even before the marriage, Abigail “was troubled by the fear that Louisa might not be made of stuff stern enough, or brought up in conditions severe enough, to suit a…

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 31, Barack Obama strode confidently to a lectern in the White House Rose Garden flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who had gone missing from his platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2009.

Hillary Clinton says that the "American political system is probably the most difficult, even brutal, in the world." She made the comments in a recent interview:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she's done being "carefule about what to say." She made the comments at a recent book event associated with her most recently published memoir:

Until Eve’s encounter with the serpent, Adam did not spend a lot of time looking for work. Didn’t have to. Expelled from Eden and cursed with the necessity of earning his bread “in the sweat of his face,” he found work. Had to. Therein lies a partial, but only partial, explanation for one of the…

If there is any realm of policy that the American Founders were most firmly committed to having be decided by the most representative branch — the Congress — it was presumably the realm of taxation.  Those who wrote the Constitution were not content even to let the Senate initiate tax policy. …

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary's horrible week.

The Ready for Hillary campaign-style bus has apparently broken down in Philadelphia, according to Washington Post reporter Ben Terris.

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

All options are not on the table as President Obama figures out how to deal with the ongoing situation in Iraq. The president promised not to send U.S. troops back "into combat in Iraq."

Still warm, anyway.  But struggling.  As Tim Higgins of Bloomberg reports, the company:

In an interview to promote her book on BBC, Hillary Clinton called the Russian so-called reset "a brilliant stroke." The statement came in response to a question about whether she was in retrospect embarrassed about the policy.

Secretary of State John Kerry says that he "would anticipate timely decisions from the president" on what to do in Iraq. 

The administration has found at least one fight it is willing to make right to the end. Whatever that end should be. The first lady is rallying supporters to:

Bloomberg's Jonathan Allen reports: 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the June 16, 2014 edition of the Books and Arts section.

For nearly a year, Louisiana's Democratic senator Mary Landrieu has avoided taking a position on a federal bill that would ban almost all abortions during the final four months of pregnnacy. Politico's Burgess Everett reports that Landrieu has finally taken a stand on the legislation. Landrieu says…

In a Sunday show appearance in 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "no one should miscalculate America's resolve and commitment to helping support the Iraqi democracy." She added, "We have paid too high a price to give the Iraqis this chance and I hope that Iran and no one else…

NPR host Terry Gross pushed Hillary Clinton on her mixed record on same-sex marriage in a contentious exchange. Listen here:

White House Secretary Jay Carney has said that the president only learned about the secret waiting lists at VA from the news. However, the Daily Caller has unearthed an Inspector General report proving that members of the administration were aware of the problems as far back as 2010:

NBC reports that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will return to America tonight:

As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, President Obama's Iraq policy is coming under increasing scrutiny.  On the Senate floor today, Senator John McCain even said: "It's time that the president got a new national security team." But the White House website's page on Iraq continues to…

First Lady Michelle Obama is holding a White House garden harvest ... inside the State Dining Room. The event was originally scheduled to be held in the garden but got moved indoors due to bad weather. 

As Iraq falls apart, it's worth remembering Vice President Joe Biden hailing that country as one of President Obama's "great achievements" in a 2010 interview with then CNN host Larry King:

Lee Trevino was once asked about the pressure in some gaudy PGA tournament he was playing and recalled his days husting golf in Texas, "You don't know what pressure is,” he famously said, "until you've played for $5 a hole with only $2 in your pocket."

Initial claims came in, this morning, slightly higher (317,000) than expected (310,000). While retail sales were, on the other hand, slightly lower.  Expectations (i.e. hopes) were for an increase of 0.6 percent. Seems we’ll have to settle for half that. Which would lead one to conclude that the…

In an interview with President Bush's daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, President Obama said that "a lot of young men of color aren't doing well." He also talked about his own childhood, growing up without his father in his life.

Last week, George Will wrote a column about how progressive politics have fomented "rape culture" on college campuses. The column was not well received by some, or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. I received the following press release yesterday,…

In a statement released just now, the White House press secretary says that the U.S. government will "increase" assistance to the government of Iraq "as required." The White House also "strongly condemns the recent attacks in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)."

President Obama made the case at a Democratic fundraiser this evening that Eric Cantor's loss yesterday does not mean that "the politics of immigration reform seem impossible now." Instead, he seems to believe,so-called immigration reform is in reach.

Reuters is reporting that:

Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon writes:

Two years ago, Islamist political posters plastered Giza's impoverished Omraniya neighborhood. But two weeks ago, as Egyptians went to the polls for the seventh time since the 2011 uprising, a military man's banners monopolized the wall space. "Abdel Fatah al-Sisi knows how to fix the country,"…

Jake Tapper has a report of VA officials telling members of Congress to buzz off, more or less, when they came looking for information about the sort of thing that has been in the news lately – lost patients, long waits for this who are not lost, and a clever bookkeeping system for covering it up.…

Eric Cantor is expected to announce his plan to resign as House majority leader today, probably at a meeting of all House Republicans. Cantor lost the GOP primary to David Brat, a little-known college professor, in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District on Tuesday.

Eric Cantor will step down from his position as House majority leader on July 31. The news of his resignation follows his failure to win the Republican nomination for his seat on Tuesday. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports:

Dave Brat's stunning victory over House majority leader Eric Cantor is being hailed as a huge win for the Tea Party and immigration hawks, but might Brat actually owe his victory to Democrats, who were eligible to vote in Tuesday's open primary? That's a question Republican strategist Patrick…

In late March of this year, President Obama stayed in Brussels, Belgium for about 24 hours on a weeklong trip through Europe. Lodging at The Hotel in Brussels cost $1.5 million, as we reported in April, including rooms for the president and his entourage, as well as for the advance team in the…

Sean Sullivan, at the Washington Post, writes that:

But if there were, terror would be winning.  In Iraq, as Bill Roggio and Patrick Megahan report, in Long War Journal:

Hillary Clinton says the Taliban 5, released more than a week ago by President Obama, are "not a threat to the United States."

In the New York Times, Jonathan Martin calls David Brat's defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary "one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history."

The FBI announced Tuesday in Savannah, Georgia that eighty-eight people have been charged in "one of the largest federal food program frauds ever prosecuted." Fifty-four of the defendants were charged with conspiring to open "purported grocery stores" specifically for the purpose of defrauding…

With their misleading talk about passing an immigration bill this year, Republican leaders are partly to blame for House majority leader Eric Cantor’s defeat at the hands of an unknown college professor.

Around 7:00 p.m. this evening, as the polls closed in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, and as a populist, anti-Big Government and anti-Big Business challenger was about to record an amazing upset of the House majority leader in the GOP primary, an email arrived in TWS inboxes.  It was from…

On Tuesday, Eric Cantor, the Republican congressman from Virginia, became the first sitting House majority leader to lose a primary for reelection. The victor, political newcomer and college professor David Brat, won nearly 56 percent of the vote to win the GOP nomination for the Republican-heavy…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on Eric Cantor's surprise primary loss in Virginia's seventh congressional district.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the roll out of Hillary's new memoir.

President Obama blasted gun violence in a Tumblr event today at the White House. He said that it's "off the charts" here in America. 

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, fell today to jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a group with long ties to al Qaeda. Parts of Kirkuk, ninety miles to the southeast, are under ISIS control and the fighting there continues. The implications for Iraq, for the region,…

Earlier this week, a couple shot two Las Vegas police officers while saying "this is a revolution." They draped the police officers' bodies in Gadsden flags and swastikas, and evidence later emerged they had gone out to support rancher Cliven Bundy. They were also totally out-of-touch with reality,…

Hillary Clinton signed books earlier today at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan. A number of people came out to get their copy of her newly released memoir signed. 

Nancy Pelosi is fundraising to amend the Constitution of the United States. 

The new documentary "Alise vs. the Mayor," produced by the Blaze, concludes with its final episode. Shot against the backdrop of New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's fight against providing rent-free public school space to charter schools, the film follows young Alise, a Harlem Success Academy…

Former Clinton aide Kiki McLean defended Hillary Clinton's claim that she was "dead broke" and "struggled" after leaving the White House by saying that the Clintons "have a life and a set of expectations that are different" from middle class Americans. McLean made the comments on CNN:

Veterans Affairs has problems. This, we all know. Among the questions raised since those problems first began making headlines are: how widespread are they?  Are we talking outliers? A few rogue operators.  Or is the system, itself, dysfunctional.  Today’s partial answer to that question is … kind…

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is celebrating fathers who empower daughters.

Hillary Clinton thinks the war on terror led to "some very unfortunate, un-American actions." But in excerpts released of a recent interview with NPR, the former secretary of state doesn't name the "un-American actions" that she appears to blame on the Bush administration.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn't able to name a top achievement when she served as this nation's top diplomat:

Hillary Clinton tells ABC's Diane Sawyer that she's probably on blood thinners for the rest of her life:

The last question asked at Monday night's closed-door briefing of members of the House of Representatives was a simple one: Who made the decision to transfer five top Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the return of the Taliban's lone American POW, Army sergeant Bowe…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his recent story about  how many White House statements about the Bergdahl/Taliban 5 swap have been contradicted either by facts or by testimony. 

In an interview that will air tonight, Hillary Clinton will tell Diane Sawyer that the Benghazi terrorist attack that left four Americans dead is "more of a reason to run" for president of the United States.

Did the detainees in Guantanamo Bay know about the transfer of five senior Taliban commanders before members of Congress?

A new USA Today/Pew poll shows that American veterans strongly oppose President Obama's decision to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl: 

A spokeswoman for the State Department referred to the Taliban operatives released from Guantanamo Bay as part of the deal to retrieve Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl as "gentlemen." In a Monday afternoon appearance with Andrew Mitchell on MSNBC, Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson at State and an alumna of…

The Motor City is betting big on gambling to bring it out of bankruptcy and back to life.  Maybe not eight the hard way but close. As Michael Erman at Reuters reports:

The Emergency Committee for Israel has announced that an anti-Hillary Clinton ad will air tonight during the former secretary of state's interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC News. 

If the mainstream media have their way—and to the degree they can prevent the continued groundswell of outrage about the Bergdahl/Taliban deal from interrupting the party—this week will be all Hillary, all the time. But will the party be good for Hillary? Or will we end up with a Hillary hangover?

Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner of Colorado has a new TV ad saying the Senate needs a "new generation--one that's accountable to the next generation." The 39-year-old congressman says he wants to "shake up the Senate" but doesn't mention by name his Democratic opponent, first-term senator…

Among the arguments in support of the Affordable Care Act was that unless there was something close to universal insurance, the nation’s emergency rooms would be flooded with people needing care.  Now, as Laura Unger reports in USA Today:

Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst, a Republican, leads her Democratic opponent Bruce Braley by five points, according to a new poll from Republican polling firm Vox Populi. The survey of "active voters" (culled from registered voters who voted in the last two elections) in Iowa found 49 percent…

Hillary Clinton explains to Diane Sawyer that after leaving the White House she and her family "struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education." That's why Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton have made over $100 million since leaving…

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to deflect some of the blame for the failure of preventing the Benghazi terror attack on hired experts. She made the comments in an interview with Diane Sawyer:

A man described as President Obama's "spiritual adviser," Pastor Joel Hunter, recently visited Iran for a week to discuss "religious tolerance" in the famously oppressive countty. Now Hunter will, according to a news report, brief President Obama on his trip there.

In her new book, Hillary Clinton picks out a few foreign policy topics on which she thinks it now safe, even helpful, to express disagreement with the course taken by the Obama administration. She wanted to arm and train the Syria rebels, while Obama did not. She thought it unwise to call for Hosni…

The art of biography, as it is practiced today, nearly always involves the biographer as mediator between past and present, a bridge over the ever-widening gap between the two. As history has more and more become the record of what we feel we ought to be ashamed of our ancestors for, the…

Since 2009, the world has been trying to make sense of America’s foreign and national security policies under Barack Obama. Allies and enemies, historians and scholars, the president’s critics and his supporters—all have struggled to define, or even discern, an Obama Doctrine. So last week, the man…

I happen to like fried chicken. I like just about everything about it. I like being in the store and looking for the right chicken. I like cutting up the chicken, and then preparing the pieces for frying, and then frying them in the big pan we use for that purpose. And I like eating my portion. I…

Perhaps you’re aware that a prominent athlete recently posed for an Instagram photo alongside an attractive woman who happened to be involved with another man. Her significant other got carried away with his emotions. Hounded by the green-eyed god jealousy, he acted foolishly and spoke rashly. And…

Call them Jillary: as in Jill Abramson plus Hillary Clinton, two women of an age, of a kind, and of a political genre, the reigning queens of modern identity politics, each rising high and becoming a model for generations of feminists who admired their guts and brashness and gall. And call him…

President Obama’s announcement that U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 should have been no surprise. As the Washington Post editorial page pointed out, “You can’t fault President Obama for inconsistency. After winning election in 2008, he reduced the U.S. military…

One of the ironies of the Affordable Care Act is that many of the governors who zealously supported the bill failed spectacularly in its implementation. Oregon, Maryland, and Minnesota are among the most prominent failures. The Massachusetts exchange, the primary inspiration for the ACA exchanges,…

The practice of “sharing” is now so widespread and ingrained in our daily lives that it bids fair to become the distinguishing feature of our age, much as the use of stone tools once defined an earlier period of progressive enlightenment. As with other important developments in our cultural and…

Is a single standout scene in a movie worth a half-billion dollars? That is the question to be answered by the worldwide gross of this seventh film in a series that began back in 2000. 

Hillary Clinton will shortly release a memoir, Hard Choices, chronicling her tenure as secretary of state. If what she has to say in its pages resembles what she had to say from the stage at the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) annual Global Forum on May 14—where she claimed undue credit for…

The New York Times recently ran a story about college students requesting “trigger warnings” to alert them that something in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Great Gatsby might freak them out. Such warnings would alert a student that The Merchant of Venice contains anti-Semitic elements…

On May 23, a young man killed 6 people and wounded 13 others near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, before turning a gun on himself. But you probably knew that, because the incident was unavoidable in the news. Despite all of the national coverage, the…

"I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Maya Angelou, a true national treasure whom I have admired for many, many years. Dr. Angelou was much more than a literary genius, a chronicler of Jim Crow, and a witness to history. Through her extraordinary work, she captured the tenacity of the…

The evening before the battle, a Union officer walked among troops who would be assaulting Confederate positions in the morning and observed something he had not seen before. As he wrote after the war, “I noticed that many of the soldiers had taken off their coats and seemed to be engaged in sewing…

The Scrapbook keeps an eye on the British press—largely because it’s interesting, and sometimes fun, to read; but also because, now and then, a little nugget emerges which tells a larger story. 

I was raised in a Hoover household. By the time I came along in 1944, Herbert Hoover had already begun to reclaim the respect of many Americans, despite the vilification he had suffered at the hands of the New Deal propaganda machine. As the Great Depression waned and America went to war, and we…

In a March 28 speech at the Körber Foundation in Berlin, China’s president, Xi Jinping, called for historical truth-telling. He had in mind the Rape of Nanking, the massacre carried out by Imperial Japan’s forces in 1937-38 during their occupation of the then-capital of the Chinese Nationalists…

Minneapolis

The Department of Veterans Affairs has admitted that 23 deaths are linked to “secret waiting lists” for health care and other malfeasance and mismanagement at the agency, though the actual total is probably significantly higher. So far, dozens of veterans have lost their lives. Not a single VA…

First, a confession. When I was a 9-year-old reader of comic strips, having recently set aside the (to my thinking) infantile pleasures of Blondie and Dennis the Menace, my eyes wandered to their considerably cooler cousin, Doonesbury. I wonder now what appeal it held for me at that age. It could…

In 1882, Louis Bamberger bought the stock of a bankrupt dry goods store and used it to open a store of his own in Newark, New Jersey. By 1928, it was one of the largest and most profitable businesses in the country: Bamberger’s department store had expanded from a rented storefront to a million…

I'm sorry to report that Joe Shattan—talented writer, dedicated anti-Communist, and above all a truly fine and decent man—has died after a courageous struggle with cancer at the age of 63.

In an interview with CNN, Secretary of State John Kerry is careful not to say that Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction."

There is a concerted push to sanitize the records of four of the five Taliban leaders transferred from Guantanamo to Qatar. But before delving into some of the specifics, let us recount the basic facts.

It has been a while since there has been a winner of thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown.  Thirty-six years, in fact.  Twelve horses have had a chance before today, when California Chrome gets a shot in the Belmont. Eleven of those horses came up short and one did not run.  When Affirmed won the…

While some top Obama administration officials are downplaying threats posed the five senior Taliban officials released from Guantanamo in the prisoner exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, not long ago the administration went to court to prevent one of those men from going free. In a decision on May 31,…

It figures. In the June 2 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, I devoted a Casual to my inability to keep pace with technology. Try as I might, at some point in time, it gets to be a bit much (I refuse to pay anything by smartphone). But much of the column was spent poking fun at my parents for being so…

It is mandatory for economists to point out that one data point does not make a trend. We then all-too-often fill space with, er, a discussion of one data point, most usually the monthly report on job creation. Not being one to defy convention, I will report that Friday’s jobs report was a yawner.…

Continetti: Obama's YOPO philosophy.

When the EPA released its new rules aimed to get the nation on the road carbon free (sort of) energy generation, the news was plainly bad for coal. No surprise there.  The prospects for renewables – solar, wind, hydro, etc. – were enormously enhanced by the plan. This was also unsurprising.  But…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the political moment created by the Sgt. Bergdahl-Taliban 5 swap.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice is sticking by her praise for Sgt. Bergdahl. Sort of. 

Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst of Iowa leads her Democratic opponent, Bruce Braley, by nearly seven points in a new poll from Loras College. Fresh off her victory in the GOP primary Tuesday, Ernst has 48 percent support from likely voters in a new poll from Loras College. Braley, a…

A buddy of mine who works in tech has been telling me for years that we're all doomed. The problem, he says, is that there are too many systems that are too unsecure. When Stuxnet hit, the only aspect of the hack that surprised him was that the American security establishment was willing to show…

Senator Jeff Sessions has released a statement that says, "7 Million People Have Left The Workforce Since The President Took Office." The statement is in response to today's jobs numbers.

Recently at a funeral for a catcher dead too young at the age of 55, his college teammates recalled his showboating antics. One game, they recalled, the catcher homered his first time up. Watching the ball sail off into the distance, he tossed the bat away dramatically, embarked on an emphatic…

Two stories about the problems at the Veterans Affairs.  Both come with numbers, if not faces, attached.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Terry Eastland reading his casual "Fry, Fry Again."

Yesterday, the Virginia DMV sent cease and desist letters to popular ridesharing services Uber and Lyft. In neighboring D.C., Uber has run into trouble with regulatory officials multiple times, but this latest move is surprising because Virginia generally has a much more sane regulatory…

Hillary Clinton's book roll-out has been discussed at the White House. Clinton, and her former boss, President Obama, apparently were able to settle on a simple message in the meeting between surrogates: "Obama's team of rivals became an unrivaled team."

In Bénouville, France, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have gone out of their way to ignore each other.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 217,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Which means that there are now more people working than there were before the recession and, for that matter, than ever before in…

According to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Time magazine is reporting that during an interview about the deal to trade Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo, when "[a]sked whether the Taliban would be inspired by the exchange to kidnap others, a commander laughed. 'Definitely.'" The response should not come as a…

It's no surprise New York Times editorials reflexively defend President Obama, but the decision to refocus the blame on Bowe Bergdahl's fellow soldiers for his apparent desertion is pretty astonishing. And yet, here we have the Times is fretting about "The Rush to Demonize Sgt. Bergdahl":

American spies: Qatar may "magically lose track" of released Taliban.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the June 9, 2014 edition of the Books and Arts section.

Poor Walmart. The Arkansas-based retail giant just can’t catch a break. On Wednesday, employees began striking across the country, demanding higher wages. The move is the latest in a long-standing battle between the company and labor interests. And on Friday, labor’s allies in the world of activist…

Over at Forbes, Peter Ferrara has written an interesting assessment of the state of the debate among conservatives on how to advance an alternative to Obamacare that will lead to its repeal.  His analysis gets many things right.  Most especially, he is right that it will not be possible to move…

Harry Reid on when the White House notified Congress of the Bergdahl-Taliban swap: "What difference does it make?"

Why would the leading textbook on domestic violence law persist in publishing a fantasy? Watch the Factual Feminist debunk the sinister legend of the “rule of thumb” -- the claim that English common law countenanced wife-beating as long as the stick a husband used was no thicker than his thumb.

So bad that, as the New York Times reports:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a book coming out next week. Today, her publisher released images from the back cover of the book. The pictures mostly show Hillary meeting global leaders and attending important meetings.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough got in a heated debate with colleague Chuck Todd Thursday morning over whether the father of recently released POW Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl should be subject to criticism over his actions. Scarborough criticized the Obama administration for including Bob Bergdahl in a Rose…

More people filed for unemployment last week than had the week before … But the average for the month of May was lower than it has been since 2007.  And, for lagniappe, there is the fact that the number that came in almost hit “expectations” dead center.

Not even the vice president supported the trade of the Taliban 5 for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. According to a new report, Vice President Joe Biden remained "neutral on the prisoner swap."

Brandon Friedman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, sent a number of tweets last night speculating about the motives of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl who was captured by the Taliban. According to Friedman, Bergdahl may have wandered…

The administration for children and families, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued guidance in a memo on Wednesday regarding application of the federal government's policy on same-sex spouses/marriages to all Head Start and Early Head Start programs.  

Addressing a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum earlier this week, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers detailed a laundry list of national security threats that the United States faces today, the American Forces Press Services reports, including:

The shakedown problems with the Affordable Care Act were supposed to be behind us and it was going to be smooth sailing from now on. People would, we were told, first become accustomed to this new way of doing things and, then, learn to love it.

Congressman Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and U.S. Senate candidate, told Neil Cavuto of Fox News Wednesday afternoon that the decision to exchange five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay for the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has put the remaining American troops in Afghanistan in…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the Obama administration's changing explanations of the Bergdahl prisoner swap.

Reuters reporter Mark Felsenthal reports that Sgt. Bergdahl's hometown in Idaho is cancelling its planned celebration. "Bergdahl's home town in Idaho has canceled plans for a celebration, city administrator says," reports Felsenthal on Twitter.

Senator Mark Pryor is making entitlements an issue in the Arkansas Senate race. Both Pryor and his Democratic allies are hitting Republican nominee and House member Tom Cotton over his support for a budget proposal that would have, starting in 2022, gradually raised the retirement age for receiving…

"Everything reminds Milton of the money supply," Robert Solow once said of his fellow Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman at a symposium. "Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper."

Baltimore's CBS affiliate WJZ reports that Democratic congressman Dutch Ruppersburger of Maryland is blasting President Obama's decision to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl:

A U.S. Army soldier goes missing at night from a remote post on the edge of enemy territory. Depressed and anxious, he has expressed doubts about the U.S. mission and disillusionment with the war. He allegedly leaves behind a note recording these doubts. There are some reports that he consumes…

American Crossroads will be staying out of the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate in Mississippi and will not be spending money on the runoff between incumbent Thad Cochran and challenger Chris McDaniel. The Republican-affiliated super PAC, who once employed former Mississippi governor and…

New York City has become a central battlefield in the fight over school choice and education reform since Bill de Blasio, an ally of the teachers unions and opponent of charter schools, became mayor in January. De Blasio decided early on in his administration to force out charter schools like…

Twenty-five years have passed since a lone man stood in front of Chinese tanks and dared to defy Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. His bold challenge to the Chinese Communist Party was one of history’s most profound reminders of the insatiable human desire to live free even in the…

Appearing on the Today Show this morning, Chuck Todd reports that, in response to allegations of possible desertion by Bowe Bergdahl, White House sources are accusing the soldiers that served with him of "swift boating." Prior to the allegations made by those who served with Bergdahl, National…

Another discouraging report on the economy and it will be hard to write this one off to the weather. As Kathleen Madigan of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Before President Obama took office, the federal government left Americans free to buy only those products or services they chose to buy. Under Obamacare, however, that has changed. For the first time in our nation’s 200-plus-year history, the federal government now compels private American citizens…

An event taking place this morning on Capitol Hill: "The Weekly Standard will join with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to host a policy forum examining the impact of India’s recent presidential election on efforts to rebuild U.S.–India trade and investment ties. Moderated by Weekly…

The two most impressive victories in GOP Senate primaries last night were by Joni Ernst, who swept to a huge win in Iowa, and Jeff Bell, who came from behind to win a close four-way contest in New Jersey. Both are pro-Main Street populist reform conservatives who will pose a real threat to their…

In a recent edition of Kristol Clear, a weekly newsletter (you can sign up for free here), the boss mentioned an instance of some homeland heroics by a group of Marine volunteers. When a California wildfire reached Camp Pendleton last month, a group of Marines volunteered to save a dozen large,…

In the March 10 WEEKLY STANDARD, we wrote ("Get Off the Sidelines," TWS March 10, 2014):  

On Sunday, Senator Claire McCaskill gave a full-throated defense of the president's decision to release five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo prison in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. "We saved this man's life. The commander-in-chief acted within his constitutional authority, which he…

The problems at the VA cannot be laid at the feet of the unions that represent its workers.  A leader of one of those unions says so.  This astonishing news is reported by Charles S. Clark at Government Executive, who writes that:

General Shinseki may be gone but his leaving has not salvaged the reputation of the VA.  As Susan Page of USA Today reports:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Thomas Joscelyn, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and frequent contributor on why the Bergdahl swap is a terrible deal for American Security.

Like many supporters of marijuana law reform, Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon makes his case for legalizing pot by...talking about how terrible alcohol is. A marijuana legalization “FAQ” posted on the congressman’s official web page informs readers not only that “marijuana is less…

From 2005 through 2008, legal scholars and Democratic politicians heaped relentless scorn upon the Bush administration for arguing that the president's constitutional commander-in-chief powers superseded statutes that might limit his discretion. And so it is quite interesting to watch the Obama…

The 620,000 residents of Washington, D.C., are not exactly partisans of supply-side capitalism: In most elections the nominees of the various green/workers/socialist parties usually come close to the vote totals of whatever Republican sacrificial lamb the local party convinced to run.

At the White House press briefing Monday, Jay Carney was not asked directly about his statement from June 2013 that "we would not make any decisions about transfer of any detainees without consulting with Congress and without doing so in accordance with U.S. law," as we reported yesterday. However,…

In a memo issued yesterday from the White House, President Obama warned the heads of departments and agencies in the executive branch of the "humanitarian situation" that's a result of an "influx of unaccompanied alien children."

American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove, is launching a new TV ad today that throws everything but the kitchen sink* at moderate, pro-choice Republican Matt Doheny, the businessman running againt conservative Elise Stefanik in New York's 21st congressional district. 

The New York Times reports that Bowe Bergdahl made it clear to those he served with that he was going AWOL.

In May, the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), part of the National Archives, hosted an "editathon" to "focus on improving Wikipedia entries related to government publications." The event was promoted on the websites of both Wikipedia and the OFR. Two OFR officials attended the meeting (David…

Dave Brat, a college professor challenging House majority leader Eric Cantor in next week's Republican primary in Virginia, has a 60-second ad touting his conservative credentials.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was recently traded for five Taliban prisoners from terrorist captivity.

Josh Korder, a soldier who served with Bowe Bergdahl, told CNN that "he's at best a deserter and at worst a traitor."

The Obama administration is facing mounting questions about the controversial prisoner swap that freed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from jihadists in Pakistan in exchange for the transfer and ultimate release of five senior Taliban commanders previously held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

Among the questions being raised about this weekend's exchange of  Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo is why Congress was not informed of the move ahead of time. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Meet the Press on Sunday that concerns over the health and…

Senator Lindsey Graham has written a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin and ranking member Jim Inhofe asking for them to hold a hearing on the Obama administration's deal with the Taliban.

Six American soldiers died in their search for Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Time magazine's Mark Thompson provides the names, photos, and stories of the men who did not return from their mission: staff sergeant…

The Obama administration will roll out a plan, today, for fixing the climate, having already fixed foreign policy and the economy. As Wendy Koch of USA Today reports:

Today the Palestinian Authority announced a joint interim government uniting Fatah and Hamas. West Bankers and Gazans cheer the move because the division between the two most powerful Palestinian factions has been a black eye for the Palestinian nationalist movement. Their rival religious and…

President Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, said on ABC that Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that "Sergeant Bergdahl wasn't simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield." 

Former Obama administration national security official Michael Leiter called the release of five top Taliban leaders from Gitmo a "big win" for the Taliban:

Several men who served with Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan say Bergdahl deserted in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. Bergdahl's release this weekend as part of an exchange with the U.S. for five top Taliban operatives who were being held in Guantanamo Bay has prompted those…

Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, doesn’t make statements often. Omar is so reclusive that some have even speculated that he is either dead, or otherwise incapacitated in Pakistan. But on Sunday the Taliban released a statement attributed to Omar, who declared the release of the top five…

The public’s judgment of President Obama is that his performance in office is not so great. Nearly every opinion poll shows that more Americans disapprove of how he’s doing his job than approve. Sometimes the gap between disapprove and approve is more than 10 percentage points.

I'm poor in everything but ironies, and to be truthful, I’ve forgotten what’s so good about irony in the first place. It’s just the resting state of the universe. .  .  . Irony is not order, but it gives a shape to things.

Looking for issues to push in this year’s congressional elections, Senate Democrats are proposing a constitutional amendment that would enable government at the federal and state levels alike to heavily regulate campaign contributions and expenditures. The effort is driven by the Democrats’ intense…

Last month the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition went to the White House. Ahmad Jarba and the Syrian rebels want American weapons, in particular the shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles that might neutralize Bashar al-Assad’s air force and stop it from dropping barrel bombs loaded…

Why does it feel like a modest triumph that the new version of Godzilla is actually not bad? This is really the best thing to say about Godzilla—if said in a surprised, huh, who’da thunk it? kind of way: Hey, not bad! It’s an achievement of a kind when a film about a rubber-suited character…

This new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) begins by taking us to the scene of his funeral. We ascend the stairs of the Schwarzspanierhaus, just outside the city walls of Vienna, and enter a candle-lit room, where we see Beethoven in his coffin, arms folded over the front of his body, a…

The Indian elections that ended with a resounding victory for the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi and an even more resounding defeat of the ruling Congress party have huge implications not just for India’s potential prosperity, political evolution, and unity but also for the region and the world…

In the spirit of bipartisanship, The Scrapbook is happy to endorse the proposal​—​offered by the two Missouri senators, Claire McCaskill (D) and Roy Blunt (R)​—​to rename Washington’s Union Station for the 33rd president. If all goes as planned, the main railroad terminal in the nation’s capital…

What does America owe its veterans? Perhaps the best answer to this question I have ever seen came from a young woman named Julie Ponzi—wise beyond her years—in response to a review I had written of Karl Marlantes’s magnificent Vietnam war novel, Matterhorn. She observed that by providing a real…

We’ve weighed in sufficiently in recent issues on unhappy commencement activities at the nation’s universities. So here’s a change of pace: a fantastic speech, delivered by Admiral Bill McRaven. As Navy Times blogger David Larter reports, McRaven “is a bad-ass​—​and fount of good advice. Head of…

New York

If John Cheever was the Chekhov of the suburbs, Paul Gauguin was the Cheever of the South Pacific. A nonconformist whose iconoclastic art would be used as a motif in the literary art of another artistic iconoclast (namely, Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus), the Parisian-born Gauguin gravitated to…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect Americans from predatory practices by financial institutions. That sounds like a noble goal, but asking a federal agency to police irresponsibility has almost always been a bad idea in practice.…

If you’re one of the more than 132,000 Twitter followers of the Ready for Hillary super-PAC, or one of the more than one million supporters on the group’s email list, you’re probably aware of two things: Hillary Clinton has a new book coming out June 10, and the super-PAC held house parties last…

In the annals of villainy, Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of Richard III holds a special place: In the 1955 film version of Shakespeare’s play, Olivier’s Richard brims with malevolent energy, all the more lethal for being witty. In On Acting, his tricks-of-the-trade book from 1986, Olivier describes…

"The more I read the news, the more it looks to me that four words are becoming obsolete and destined to be dropped from our vocabulary. And those words are ‘privacy,’ ‘local,’ ‘average’ and ‘later.’ A lot of what drives today’s news derives from the fact that privacy is over, local is over,…

With growing amusement (and only mild alarm), my wife and I have been noticing how our parents’ quirks have gotten, well, quirkier. My mother and father, for instance, steadfastly refuse to text-message. “I don’t want to get charged,” my mother says. And besides, “Why do you need to text when you…

The F-22 Raptor is America’s fifth-generation, supersonic, super-maneuverable,air-superiority fighter, capable of engaging in electronic warfare, collecting signals intelligence, and launching fire--and--forget/-beyond--visual--range/-air--to--air missiles. The life story of Eddie Rickenbacker, the…

London

Hillary Clinton is back in the news, facing questions about her health and lingering doubts about what exactly happened in the aftermath of the Benghazi terror attack. Meanwhile, some Democrats—Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont most notable among them—have been making noises about challenging…

They had a dream. For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth. Their keen intellects…

If you’ve been around for a while, you know what it feels like to be in the middle of a congressional “wave” election, when the electorate is turning sharply against the party in the White House. If the wave is with you—think 1994 or 2010—you can feel the energy and sense the anticipation. If the…